Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 98: The Art of Storytelling - Experience From a Microsoft AI Ambassador

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

The ability to tell a captivating story to your customers and/or readers is a crucial skill. Sometimes storytelling can be lost when using AI for content creation. Doug Thompson, former AI ambassador for Microsoft, expert storyteller, and founder of TheDougThompson.com, joins us to discuss how you can tell stories with AI.  Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageMore on this topic in today's newsletterJoin the discussion: Ask Doug and Jordan questions about AI and storytellingUpcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: [e-mail] with Jordan on LinkedInTimestamps:[00:01:20] Daily AI news[00:03:35] Intro to Doug Thompson and background[00:06:05] Finding the balance between AI and storytelling[00:10:29] Should we use AI in storytelling?[00:13:30] Doug's experience as an AI ambassador for Microsoft[00:16:30] Microsoft Copilot and the future of work [00:19:30] The challenges of "expensive" AI tools[00:23:30] How to tell a story[00:26:30] The power of storytelling in pitches[00:29:18] The future of storytelling with AITopics Covered in This Episode:Topic: The Art of Storytelling with AI- Importance of storytelling in capturing the audience's attention and making a message resonate- Steve Jobs as the best technical storyteller- James Whitaker and Mary Rodriguez as examples of individuals who excel at storytelling- The speaker's best pitches are tailored to specific audiences and environments- Using ChatGPT to assist in crafting effective stories- The importance of editing and adding the speaker's own voice to the contentTopic: Elements of Effective Storytelling- The use of a story arc and the hero's journey- Starting a story where the audience lives, using personalized and relatable experiences and language- Stories should inform and persuade, particularly in the context of marketing products- The focus on imagining a better life with a product, rather than relying on features and benefitsTopic: The Future of Work and Storytelling- The speaker's perspective on the future of work and storytelling, given their experience with technical innovation and understanding of consumer behavior- The influence of AI on the future of work and storytellingTopic: The Guest's Background and Mission- Doug Thompson's background as a technical sales nerd with experience at MicSend Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info) Start Here ▶️Not sure where to start when it comes to AI? Start with our Start Here Series. You can listen to the first drop -- Episode 691 -- or get free access to our Inner Cricle community and all episodes: StartHereSeries.com Also, here's a link to the entire series on a Spotify playlist. 

This is the Everyday AI Show, the Everyday Podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in Adobe Firefly, the All In One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome. The assistant accelerates execution. One skill that I think no one is talking about

ever since we've been riding this huge generative AI wave is storytelling. The ability to tell a captivating tale that brings viewers, readers, and potential customers along for the journey. So that's what we're going to be talking about today on everyday AI. This is your daily live stream,

podcast and free daily newsletter, helping everyday people like you and me, not just learn what's going on in the world of AI, but how we can all actually leverage it, how we can leverage it to grow our businesses, our career, and everything else. My name's Jordan Wilson. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm excited. Hey, as a former journalist, I'm excited to have a dedicated episode on storytelling and a great guest to come along with us on today's episode.

So if you're joining this live, let me know where are you joining us from. If you're on the podcast, make sure to check out those show notes. We always have related episodes and other links to help you come and join us on this journey. All right. So before we get into that topic today, let's go over what's going on in the world of AI news, what we do every single day. So, number one, meta has re-entered the large language model race. So recent reports show that meta is training a new AI model,

specifically to go after GPT4, which right now is kind of the leader of the past, in the generative AI large language learning models. So meta is investing in a lot of chips and new data centers and everything that a company needs to create a leader in the large language model space. So keep an eye on that and more in the newsletter as well. So next big story of the day, Google pledged $20 million for a responsible AI fund. So this is from an Axios report that details Google's philanthropic arm. they invested into the digital futures project,

about a $20 million round, to go out to companies that they felt were doing positive things in the world of AI, and to make sure that AI doesn't kind of go into those dangerous pitfalls. So a group of nonprofits and academic institutions were named the first recipients. All right, and last but not least, AI is outperforming humans in building software.

That might not be a surprise for many, but a new study showed that AI agents could develop software in less than seven minutes and for about $1 in costs. Yeah, that's right. Seven minutes, $1. Crazy, right? So researchers from Brown University and a few Chinese universities tasked in AI-powered agent kind of experiment to create 70 different programs in this study. and they found that on average, it took the AI agents about seven minutes to develop each of those programs and only cost about a dollar.

Wow, right? You know, when we talk about the future of work, you have to keep AI agents in mind. But today we're not here to talk about AI agents or the future of work, or maybe we'll talk a little bit about the future of work. But we are talking about storytelling and about AI as well. So I'm extremely excited to have today's guest onto the show. Please help me welcome. Doug Thompson. He is owner of the Dougtompson.com.

Doug, thank you for joining us. Appreciate you coming on the show. Hey, thanks a lot for having me. Yeah, it's an easy name to remember. I hate trying to remember what my website is. So I just look at that. Just the Doug Thompson. Doug, your experience is all over the place.

And I feel I would do an injustice if I tried to quickly recap it on my own. But could you just quickly tell our readers a little bit about your background because it's impressive. So I'm going to let you brag on yourself here first. Oh, well, Jay, I never give me a microphone to brag about myself. So anyway, I am a technical sales nerd by trade by nature by most of my career. I spent 20 years at Microsoft before I came to my current employer, Taneum. And, you know, it's sort of interesting being a new employee at 60 years old. So it's

I'm like Methuselah if you look at from the technology age started back in the Windows 3 I mean I'm really used to have floppy disk to put things in

so I've been sort of a nerd self-taught just always sort of curious about things. I'm a storyteller. I learned that somewhere along the way we can get to that if you want.

I'm actually going to write a chapter for a book coming up here soon about that sort of event where I discovered hey I am a storyteller. I did it. unintentionally. But it's just been a fun journey. And it actually sort of led me into the, I know you talk about your favorite role as my AI ambassador role, which we can talk about a little

bit. And it sort of led me to that. So I'm on a mission now to help all my technical sales nerds, nerds, just anybody that is out there. You're trying to sell something or relate to another person. I, you know, heck even tell your story. And I'm here to help you do that. Because it's storytelling can be taught, but they don't do it in school. And they don't really have any of the things that I had to do when I was in school to sort of develop those skills. The texting by phone now has sort of just ripped that storytelling piece out of us because everything's sort of shortened up.

Yeah. It's so true. And let's actually start there, Doug, because like I said at the top of the show, I'm a former recovering journalist, I guess. And, you know, it's, I think right now, and maybe it's, it is. because of AI, because so many people are pumping out just mediocre content at extreme rates. And I feel as consumers now, we are being just buried in a lot of just copy and messaging. That's just not very good because of how easy it is to create not very good content using AI.

So with that, Doug, like what kind of recommendations and kind of given your background and recent history and really helping others tell stories. How can people still find that good balance between using AI but still telling a compelling story? Yeah, the biggest things that I see happen is you read a story and there's two things. One, it doesn't really jive with the audience that they're doing and doesn't really resonate well. It's just sort of a generic story. Imagine a cartoon with no color and no special characters or anything like that. You know, you watch Mickey Mouse and you expect certain things to happen, right? And, you know, you get these things now that come out of a paper or something that you used to trust. And they just don't have any flavor. They're just bland. And they're not even,

sometimes you question the factualness of it, you know, that some can be suspect. But we're wired to hear stories and learn from stories, but it's a very human thing. It's a very experiential thing. And I talked about that in my TED talk that I did sort of where stories developing were wired to learn from them. And they need to be personalized. They need to do something. So I use chat GPT as we discussing my podcast that you were on, which drops next week. The Doug Thompson podcast, it's hard to figure these things out. You know, I just, my branding is just so, so bad. But we talked about that is, you know, when you start, I start a story. I was talking to a guest on my podcast the other day. He's a dog trainer. And, and I've said, well, you know, obviously you tell nonverbal

stories to dogs to train them. And they said, actually, the very first time is go meet a dog at their house where they are, where they live, get experience with it. And that's really where you need to start your story is where your audience lives. What's their experiences? What's the words that they use? What is their life like? So that as you're trying to tell a story that a story is meant to inform, but also in the sales words, to convert, right? To show them the value of your product.

And if you can't verbalize it or articulate it in their language, then they're just going to, okay, just another pitch or something. You know, you need to do that, right? And you gave me some good tips on how to sort of best use chat GPT to help do that. But it takes work. You just can't have it. The very first draft that it spits out is horrible.

Yeah. I mean, I have to go back and, and so, okay, no, do a little bit of this, a little bit of the massaging and stuff.

Because I have to put my voice in it. It has to be in my voice. And I think, you know, as a journalist there, that you sort of recognize when you could probably recognize, okay, they didn't even try on this one,

or somebody ghost wrote it for them that didn't have their, their flavor and stuff. So that's the key thing of that. And then simply the art of storytelling where you have the arc and there's struggle and there's other things in the hero, the hero's journey. So those are the two things that I work with. Again, the very first one is starting where the audience lives and making it

familiar to them, right? You can't write a generic story. Yeah, speaking of making it familiar with the audience. Thank you. Thank you for the audience joining and tuning us. tuning in right now. So, you know, Bronwyn's saying, you know, she, she prefers a book and a pen and then adding it to the computer. Great, great tip there. And just as a reminder, you know, Yaddy here also remembers the floppy disk era. If you have a question for Doug on either his

background in Microsoft, which we're going to get into in a second, or just, you know, ways to improve your storytelling with or without AI, go ahead and drop that comment in now so we can get to it. But I'm going to ask. I want to talk about that book and pen here real quick because there is scientific study. that as you're writing things down, like taking notes in the class, there's studies back when I was back at Microsoft and the education team that typing, you don't remember, you don't connect with a lot of stuff. Or if you're writing, you have to sort of summarize things in your head and make the connection

and write that down. So it has a more personal feeling to it. And I think it does resonate. Unfortunately, I can't remember. I can't read what the hell I wrote. So that doesn't help me very much. Oh, man. That's a good point.

So I'll ask this, Doug, because, um, being a huge AI advocate and enthusiast myself. You know, I'm always encouraging, you know, listeners for the everyday AI show and just other people I meet. Like, hey, you should start to tap into the world of AI because I believe it is the future. You know, all the big companies are, you know, even changing how search engines work and making it more conversational with, with a chatbot style, right? So what's your advice for people to still, or do you even encourage people to use AI in their storytelling? Or should they just go the old school way like Brown one was saying pen and paper? Like how can we still tell great stories?

No, I mean, even if you take it further to jobs of the future of jobs today. And I'll go back to when I was an AI ambassador. So when we're coming around with AI, this is, I don't know if chat GP, was ever even sort of a figment in somebody's imagination back then. Again, I'm talking five, six years ago that we were doing this. And the AI ambassador role came out because Microsoft was starting to do a lot of stuff with artificial intelligence, machine learning. And we had to sort of articulate the message of what we were planning to do at the time.

And, you know, they were looking for storytellers because, again, AI was just sort of this big, big scary, you know, the AI to that point was Arnold Schwarzenegger, I'll be back, right? I mean, that's what it was. And our job here was to relate that, hey, it's best done as a co-pilot. I'll use the brand that they're using now. Somebody to help the human be better. So take off some of the task and stuff that takes a lot of time or analyze so much damn data that the human would take decades and decades to do to help make them make better decisions.

So it was really there to sort of aid that and sort of articulate that message out. And that's why they had us go along. It was really cool. It wasn't really defined. went through different iterations before I left, but I got to talk people and really sort of get all lay their fear that it's not all evil. Anything can be used for evil. But if, if you don't sort of embrace it, if you don't do this and you're somewhat of a competitive disadvantage. So in the storytelling, yeah, you can use it, especially if you're like me who has sort of, I try to write and

edit at the same time a lot of times. So I get no words out. I can't get anything out. So I'll say, Here's an idea. Put something out there. Let's see. And I end up rewriting most. I may use about 30% of what is put out. But it helps get me out of where I'm stuck. So yeah, definitely, definitely use it. But use it well. Right. And you give a lot of great tips on how to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. And that's, yeah, it's something we teach people all the time. You know, we have a little course prime prompt polish, the PPP method where we walk people through that and how you can still retain. you know, that human voice or those important details of the story and kind of balance with AI. But I do, I do want to hit rewind here, Doug, because this one, we've talked about it. I'm so fascinated. You know, my, my wife always jokes around and tells me, hey, you know, you're either very early to something or, you know, you were born too late. But I have to talk about you being a Microsoft AI ambassador, you know, for those, you know, two years. Talk about timing, right? October, right, October 2018 to December 2020, you were an AI ambassador for Microsoft, right? And then

months later, or right around that time, actually, kind of, you know, kind of all this GPT just started to hit the shelves. So talk a little bit about what your experience was like as an AI ambassador. And also, being early to the party, it must have been very difficult to advocate for something that now, I think, would be very easy to advocate for and to be an ambassador for. Yeah, I mean, it was great because I got to talk to a lot of people I normally wouldn't get to talk to, you know, going to talk to events and things. And it was sort of nice being on the inside understanding from that perspective at the time, what the plan was.

You know, and one of the things we, one of the fundamental questions we had to do if we were trying to somebody, we found a use case for a customer or something that an account team did that want to use AI for, we would have to go through this review process. And one of the things, you know, it's like ethics and stuff that comes in, one of the things was just because we can do it, should we do it? Right. Because you look at something here where you could automate something or do something where it could decimate and the only employer you're in town of a developing country, is that the right thing to do just because you can. Yeah. Um, you know, so that was some of the discussion with philosophical discussions and stuff that we would get to have and that, you know,

we were sort of helped taking crowdsourcing, if you will. What do you think you could use AI for? What do you think would be a good use for that? And we got to do some of us. So it's really just, it's like sometimes you're in this area where you don't, there's no rules. There's no rule book and you're trying to figure out your way and what's a good path forward.

You're stuck in sort of this in a sailing, you know, example. You're sort of stuck at the start of the race. You really, you've got some science of where the wind may be blowing and stuff, but the wind changes. Yeah. based off what's going on. And that will, you know, the end of the road, we want to be here. But my road there is like over here, over there.

It's not a straight. If you're watching, it's not a straight path. Yeah. So a lot of learning and a lot of listening. So, and I think that's helped them end up where they are today. Sure. And I think where they are today and where we all are, I think, and, you know, we talked about this a little bit before the show.

I had an episode a week or two ago about Microsoft co-pilot. So from someone that worked there for 20 years, you know, my hot take, Doug, is that Microsoft co-pilot is going to be a much, is going to have a much greater impact than even chat GPT has had over the last, you know, year, probably I would say 5x 10x. What's your thoughts on that? And just real quick, you know, if you are new, Microsoft co-pilot is essentially think of,

you know, generative AI, but on your operating system, you know, So if you're using Microsoft 365 and the newest version of their operating system, having that generative AI follow you around in a good way, I think, you know, from all your different programs. So Doug, talk a little bit about what you think Microsoft, you know, 365 copilot means specifically for the future of work. Adobe just introduced an entirely new way to create, bringing the power and precision of its creative suite into one conversational experience. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in the Adobe Firefly app, the all-in-one creative AI studio. Powered by Adobe's creative agent, Firefly AI Assistant lets you start with your vision, just describe what you want, and shape the outcome as it takes form with the Assistant.

The Assistant orchestrates multi-step workflows, drawing on 60-plus pro-grade tools across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier, Lightroom Express, and more to help bring your ideas to life. You can also get started with creative skills, a growing library of pre-built workflows for common creative tasks like batch editing photos, creating mood boards, portrait retouching, and creating social variations. Every step the assistant takes is visible so you can refine, redirect, or take over at any time. You stay in the driver's seat as the creative director. Adobe Firefly AI assistant now in public beta. See it today at firefly.adobie.com. I go back, you know, when I was there, you may remember Clippy.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So that was the early attempt based off the technology we had at the time to be helpful to go on and help you do. I see you're doing, you know, Saturday Night Live did a great skit on the, on the clipy thing. Go watch that YouTube. I'll watch that every now and then just to laugh. But, you know, it got a bad rap, but somewhat ahead of its time. But really, because the back end wasn't there to make it.

extremely useful, right? So it was sort of, we did the same thing with tablet. So when I was started out, I was in the Oian division. We did Windows XP and then we had the tablet PC edition. So you had pen and paper. That was always Bill Gates's big thing. So pinned on a thing. But the hardware and software, the hardware really wasn't there to support it

because they weighed eight pounds and had a 40 minute battery life. You know, it was just not until you came out with the iPad and stuff that it didn't, that form factor really didn't come to life. But so I think Clippy was the same thing. Now, now you've got the back end to do it and it can be more useful instead of saying, hey, it looks like you're doing. You know, it's simply saying, you know, you can tell it what to do. It's a little bit more of like a virtual assistant, truly, that responds when you ask it to do not be so pushy that pops up everywhere and just annoys a hell out of you.

So it's, yeah, it's there. It's, you go back to the early thing. It's rough when you're, you've got a great idea, but there's not the back end to support it. I think this is great timing. And it makes a lot of sense because office and everybody, so many people use that and going back to the PowerPoint, if you go back there, they had this sort of presentation coach, right?

They built that feature in to say, hey, look, you got way too damn many words on this. I have to apologize because we allow you to do bad slides. There's a reason when I was there, the death my PowerPoint has a true because people would abuse it. How much stuff can I cram on here? Yeah. So in using things,

knowing what makes a good presentation and stuff it helps you not shoot yourself in the foot. So I think this is the good improved clip. I don't think it'll go away. Although there are privacy concerns and stuff that you have about that too. Oh, absolutely. And just as a reminder, if you are just tuning in now,

we have Doug Thompson joining the Everyday AI show talking about storytelling AI, but also his background at Microsoft. So one question here, I want to bring up Jackie's comment here. So talking, you know, saying co-pilot is expensive to incorporate, been told by many enterprise companies that. I'd like to get your take on that, Doug, and I have a hot take as well, because I believe that, you know, Microsoft co-pilot is about, I think it's $30 a month to kind of incorporate per user. So, yeah, if enterprise companies have, you know, hundreds or thousands of employees, it definitely is a big cost to incur.

So, again, not asking you to put your Microsoft, you know, sales capital. on, but I have a hot take on this, but I want to know what you think, Doug, about this, you know, because it is, you know, I think we've been trained to expect very cheap, you know, because the $20 a month for chat GPT and a lot of these tools are even free to use. So what's your take on this price of, or on this piece of the price of generative AI for enterprise companies? Yeah, I mean, I would have to think, again, I haven't been in that realm for a long time, but I know just some current environment that everybody's looking to trim IT expenses, which it's a battle.

Is it a strategic asset for you or is it a nuisance that you have to have? I mean, they do it from a security standpoint as well as they try to go in and cut budgets here. Well, we don't need that, right? We've got and they can't, but they can't hire people to do it because there's not enough of the people to do the security. But I think that, you know, for everybody in there, a janitor doesn't necessarily need that access, right? But if you have knowledge workers who are truly trying to do this, then you have to evaluate how much time are they spending trying to do it manually. And it's not the object is in a, from a society standpoint, the object's not to eliminate humans is to make them more productive at what they do. There's a lot of job openings, although they've, you know, they've had layoffs too.

They come up. So it's sort of a mixed thing. I think you've covered it on there that there is a risk that there is a risk that this will replace some people. But every transition that you've had in history, you know, there's nobody making ice boxes anymore, although Yeti does a pretty good job with the cooler. That's true, right?

Right. So you have to go ahead and sort of evolve. But you do at judiciously. It's not just not for everybody there. So the cost is based off, you know, how you are going to use it, the number of employees and stuff. I don't know what the licensing is for that. It probably goes into the enterprise suite somehow.

Yeah. But, you know, it's always a value thing. What, do you see the value there? If not, and you're not going to use it, you know, when I was at Microsoft, we had so many people there that would buy a suite of stuff and not use half of it. They'd go out and buy a third party thing to go do it because they liked it better and whatever. And it's just not a smart way to spend money if you're just going to do it and not use it.

Right here. Yeah. We're going to shelfware, as we would call it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Gosh, don't remind me about my shelfware right now, Doug. I'll say this. And I'm echoing Douglas.

comment here saying 30 bucks a month for software that multiplies your productivity is actually a savings. I'm in that vein because I had a guest on a couple months ago, Corey Warfield, and I'll make sure to drop the link to this later. But he essentially said that the companies that aren't using generative AI top to bottom are putting themselves at risk to go out of business in 18 months. And I agree with that. I say this. Even for enterprise companies, even for enterprise customers, if they're not willing to pay that $30 a month, that just means, in my head, that they're putting themselves at risk to lose their market share by far, because, you know, I think for these tools that are 20, 30, 50, I mean, even $100 a month, you make that up, you know, within a couple

clicks of using it, of using it correctly. I do want to get, I want to transition a little bit here, Doug, because we have some great, some great comments that I want to get to. So again, thank you, everyone, for getting in your comments. Doug. So let's get this one here. So Dr. Harvey Castor asking any tips regarding storytelling, top suggestion on which AI tools to use, and any out of the box recommendation. So yeah, do you have any specific, you know, AI kind of tools or software that you think can help in storytelling? Yeah, again, chat GPT used the right way prompt and stuff can definitely help with doing that. There are, I haven't tried a lot. I have seen some out there that sort of

They're almost like a coach to help you do that. Yeah. Maybe for me, for the elementary type stuff, it may be okay for somebody if you want to get to, say, like, I don't know, fifth grade, sixth grade level of doing it. Or maybe, again, I haven't used them. But those are the things. But the storytelling piece of that is think about when you're, again, starting with what the message you want to convey. But think about how you talk to your friends, not necessarily your coworkers. what I find, especially with very smart people like our doctor friend here probably,

is that when they're talking to their peers, it's a totally different conversation they have because everybody has the same basis, base level of knowledge, right? And so you take shortcuts. You talk about things that are sort of with the three-letter acronyms, or whatever you use. And where the normal person or your audience and stuff does not use that. They don't understand and they will just tune you out.

So that's why I think about, you know, but you talk to your friends that don't understand or you're some of your family that doesn't that, that, you know, how do you talk to them and explain it? Because that's the language you may think to do. If you're not talking to, again, your peers, go talk to them about that. Now, if it's a scientific paper and you got a bunch of Sheldons out in the audience and stuff, and, you know, that's fine. Nerd out because that's what they expect. But if you're talking to a, like, that's the thing I do when I'm going to talk technology to somebody. I may talking to a chief marketing officer or something who doesn't really care about technology at all. I got a problem.

Can you help me do that? And that's the language, again, getting back to starting your story where your audience is, that's the language that I get rid of. I have this, I've been on this mission for probably close to a decade to end tech explaining, right? So you combine mansplaining with technology. And that's what a lot of very smart people do is they text plain. You know, it's death by features function speed. Nobody cares about that.

Don't use it. how does this help me? Right? Focus on that. Who's your audience? What do they need and start there? Yeah, that's great advice.

And I think so many times, Doug, especially when we see, you know, so many new AI softwares and tools, I think we rush to try to use the next versus just focusing on what you said, is who am I talking to?

What are their problems? And really just starting there. I'm actually curious. Woozy, thank you for this question, because I'm sure in Doug's lifetime, he's heard a lot of great stories. So Woozy's question right here is asking you, what's your most memorable story that you've heard in a sales pitch demo?

So kind of what's that most impressive or memorable story that you've heard kind of in the business world, Doug? Wow, I'm glad he didn't ask what my best one was because honestly, I, I'll answer his question just a minute, but the pitch that I use, is different every time. The best ones that I've had, somebody's come up to me after I said, you finally said something and I understood. I said, good, could you tell me what I said?

Because I honestly don't remember. Because I get, it's a little bit of an improv type thing. Again, I'm taking what environment they're in. Questions that come up about. I talk to people ahead of time. I do just a little LinkedIn stalking on who I'm talking to. So I'm trying to get this picture here of what I want to do. Then I'll tailor the core message.

Maybe there's five or six different things to that. the best messages that I've, the best things that I've had is that Steve Jobs was the best technical storyteller that I've ever seen the way that he could, he could get us to, you know, I didn't know I needed 10,000 songs in my pocket until he told me about it. Right. So, so those are the best pitches and all that I've ever seen that they're not really a pitch. They are a story that connects with something that I lately want or I don't even know that I want. It would be cool, then then makes me go take an action to go do that.

Those are the best ones. If you want examples, again, Steve Jobs, I do this. A guy that did a really good job was a mentor of mine, was James Whitaker. He worked for Microsoft and Google then back at Microsoft. Now he's out brewing beer and telling stories or stuff, something like that. Mary Rodriguez is a good technical. She's got a book called Brand Storytelling. They were both mentors of mine.

But Steve Jobs by and far, if you want to sort of see a technical story done well, that's it. And the best sales pitch is not a pitch at all. It is something that a story that connects that makes me want to go take an action in part with my hard-earned money to go do something. Yeah. And even to add on to that. And I think it's actually easier now to explain after hearing you say it, Doug, is I think effective stories are not necessarily, you know, selling. You know, you have all these different copywriting, you know, very famous, you know, copyrighting techniques, you know, ATA, features and benefits. And I think what you just said right there, Doug, is amazing, is the best stories aren't.

you know, taking those traditional quote-unquote copywriting routes. They're helping you imagine how much better your life would be with something, but not talking about it through, you know, the features and benefits or, you know, attention and all these other, you know, traditional writing techniques, which is extremely interesting. So one other thing, Doug, I want to ask, what is, you know, because from your perspective, you've seen a lot. You've seen a lot of technical innovation.

You kind of understand where consumers are from working on the front end and now helping them on the back end. Where do you see just the future of work going and maybe even the future of storytelling? Because I think it changes every day. And I think consumer behavior is changing. So where do you see kind of the future of storytelling going, especially with AI? Yeah. I mean, well, unfortunately, the tension span of humans keeps.

going down and down and down. So the art of storytelling is to be, how concise can I do then? And it really sort of becomes sort of this, here's this hook and then maybe one chance to back it up to get interest, maybe two very short ones, but it needs to happen in less than two minutes. And that's really, I mean,

when you're giving a presentation, you one of the things, you got about two minutes for people to decide, yeah, or nay, am I leaving the back of the room or I'm going to give this person some time? So you really have to have that hook that goes to that. So that won't change.

you know and i use storytelling because there's always been things for good books things like that right so the longer form stuff will be there that that really doesn't change that much other than self-publishing and you how do you know that it's not chat chabit that wrote the whole thing i you know i i think that the authors that still put their secret sauce that's step eight that i call there's a bunch of different things i have that is your secret sauce into that that makes that connection with people and all that. I saw somebody mentioned Simon Sinek earlier. You know, starting with why is a great thing to do. But he has some great thoughts. Seth Godin has a lot of great thoughts and stuff that go in. You know they didn't come from Chad GPT. Right. So you can

connect with that. But from the pitch perspective and all that or selling or these other, when I've got to do this, then I think you have to just learn to be very concise. And I've had mixed results with chat GPT being very concise and totally missing the point. Yeah, okay, you got me five, You got me 100 words. What the hell is you lost the essence of what was going on, right? And you explained it to me is the model and stuff that they use. It's predictive type thing. It should get better over time.

But right now it's sort of a challenge, right? And so you have to sort of evolve. And I totally lost the first part of that question. She got me on storytelling on that. But the future of work here, I think. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about that quick. Yeah.

You know, I started out. My first degree was an industrial electronic. and electricity and I had assembly code language was the thing that I had because at the time, the oil boom was one of the oil booms was going and I lived in Southeast Texas and there were five jobs for every person. Most of them were offshore and this was back in the early 80s were $50,000 years a lot. That was a good pay. And by the time I graduated, we had a bust and there were five people for every job. So I had to go learn to do something else. I worked on copy. I was a copier technician for a while. And, but, but,

But I, again, curiosity came. But I always had that curious thing about, okay, what's this technology do? How does it work? I was a kid that would take things apart and try to put things back together without too many extra pieces. Right? I was, that's just the way. You have to have that curiosity. You have to, if you're not, if you just simply ignore what is out there under fringe.

And I think you told me you had like a gazillion. You talked about shelfware. You tried everything that came out just to see what it was. And see is there some potential and stuff there. That's what you have to do. You have to have that curious mindset to go on to do that. Or you can't trust just because I've always done it and good at this, you know, turning a knob or do something like that.

That's not always going to be there. There will be some automation. There will be some things that happen. So learning to use AI and learning to do these other things, that puts you a step above everybody else that has no interest in doing it because it's hard. Right. I, you know, I don't like it.

Right. That's sort of the things. It's adapt or die almost. I mean, sorry, that's the same thing about it. Yeah. What a note to end on, right? Adapt or die. Okay, adapt or suffer.

Yeah, I know, right. So we've been over your background. We talked about your time at Microsoft, how to tell better stories. But as we wrap up here, what is the one kind of takeaway that you hope people, you know, listening, whether it's, you know, improving their storytelling through AI or just, you know, maybe. not using AI, but what's your one, you know, takeaway piece of advice for everyone listening out there to just tell more impactful stories, whether using AI or not? If I boiled it down to one phrase, the story is not about you. It's about the listener. It's about what they can get out of it. You're taking them on a journey. They're investing their time with you.

They want something out of that. That's the best story is the one that's not about me. I'm simply the vehicle of which that story is told. Absolutely. It's, it, Reminds me, you know, when people ask for copywriting tips, my number one thing is as well, no one cares about you. I think that's important, important to keep in mind, right? So, Doug, yeah, thank you so much for joining us. We covered a lot as a reminder. Make sure to check out today's newsletter. We're going to be sharing a lot more from Doug, hopefully sharing some great resources and other things from his website. And also, if you haven't already, please make sure that you do go to Your EverydayAI.com. Sign up for that free

daily newsletter where we will be breaking down today's episode in great detail. So don't worry if you miss it all or tuned in late. We got you. Doug, thanks again so much for joining us. And I hope to see everyone else back for another day of everyday AI. Thanks, y'all. Thanks. Meet Firefly AI assistant.

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