[00:00:00] Nostalgia: Growing Up Without the Internet --- [00:00:00] Whitney Lee: So Cote, I was hanging out with my best friend Bonnie this weekend. She's about the same age as me. I'm 46, and we were talking about how we're like the last. [00:00:10] Generation to grow up without internet. Not only without internet, but we didn't even have like personal computers at our houses when we were kids. [00:00:18] Whitney Lee: Did you? Mm, [00:00:19] Coté: yeah. Yeah. But [00:00:20] my dad worked at IBM, so. [00:00:21] Whitney Lee: Oh, okay. Right on. So, so just like pure playing in the dirt, making stuff up, reading books, like real, actual paper books. Like [00:00:30] that was our childhood. Yeah. The Evolution of Technology and Its Impact on Kids --- [00:00:31] Whitney Lee: And then, so then we have, uh, people like my son who did have internet, but then it was slow internet. [00:00:38] Whitney Lee: Then we have, and we [00:00:40] have kids that are grow up with streaming internet on demand, whatever they want, whenever they want. They can Google anything. And now kids born these days are young, these days [00:00:50] have freaking ai. What's that gonna do to them as adults? [00:00:56] Coté: Yeah, well, we're very far from dirt. We went through, we went dirt, [00:01:00] wood, pulp, uh, maybe like fax machines, uh, you know, kind of downloading things slowly. [00:01:06] Coté: Yeah. And then fast internet. Yeah. Uhhuh and then the AI stuff. Well, I think I [00:01:10] comment on this frequently, but I, I, I feel like I can't get my kids to use AI enough and, and I, I try to just shove it on them all the time. Yeah. And they're always like, [00:01:20] no, I'm, I'm, I'm fine. I think, I think maybe, maybe I haven't figured out how to motivate to them, like, why you should be using this. [00:01:28] Coté: Like, like, like what would be [00:01:30] useful? Because I think I'm always trying to get them to use it for school. And maybe that's my problem is they're like, how about nothing when it comes to school? [00:01:38] Whitney Lee: Or they're like asking you [00:01:40] questions about life and how to be a human. And as your dad, you're like, stop asking me. [00:01:44] Whitney Lee: Stop troubling me with that. Go ask your computer overlord this. [00:01:48] Coté: Tuned robot that I've created [00:01:50] for you. [00:01:53] Whitney Lee: Awesome, awesome. The future of humanity. I feel great about that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think, I think it'll be, it'll be [00:02:00] good, but I do think like, uh, some critical thinking skills for our whole species are, are gonna fly right out the window. [00:02:08] Coté: Yeah. Yeah. It could, it could [00:02:10] be, I mean, I guess the technologist argument would be like. Well, you have to have it be pedantic with you and explain why it's doing that instead of just giving you the answer. But it's not like when we used to [00:02:20] go to do a Google search, we would have it explain it, explain how it got to it, we would just get the answer. [00:02:25] Coté: We don't, we don't, we don't need, uh, you know, we wanna be like, where's the, where's the cheapest tofu I [00:02:30] can get? And we don't want to it to be like, well, here's how I would do that. And then eventually I'll tell you where it's, [00:02:36] Whitney Lee: um, I would love to hear our guest's opinion on, [00:02:40] um. How exactly are species and is doomed? [00:02:43] Whitney Lee: Add some color to, or whether it is at all really, but how do you think AI is gonna affect kids? Introducing Our Guest: Betty Janod --- [00:02:49] Whitney Lee: [00:02:50] Betty, will you introduce yourself please? [00:02:52] Betty Junod: Hello? Hi Whitney. Hi Kote. Um, I am for folks listening, Betty Janod, uh, CMO of [00:03:00] Heroku, and I know you from Salesforce and I know you lovely people from VMware. [00:03:05] Whitney Lee: Yeah. We all used to work together. [00:03:09] Betty Junod: Yes. [00:03:10] So glad to be recon reconnected, and on this podcast with y'all. [00:03:14] Whitney Lee: Yeah. So glad you're here. And I wanna hear, I know that you've been doing a lot of writing and such about [00:03:20] ai. How do you think AI is going to shape, um, future generations? I. [00:03:27] Betty Junod: Um, you know, I think, well I also, I have [00:03:30] school aged children, um, ah, and so it's interesting to see how each of them react to it. [00:03:35] Betty Junod: Um, where one, one of them is like, I'm using it all the time when [00:03:40] I'm doing my homework, and I'm like, well, just, you're doing more than copy and paste, right? [00:03:45] Betty Junod: Yeah. [00:03:46] Betty Junod: Lemme check your work. There you go. Um, and I [00:03:50] have another one who's completely like, literally rejects all things. Technology. Okay. Like I have to fight with them to carry their phone with their, when they go [00:04:00] places, because I'm like, how will I know when to pick you up? [00:04:03] Whitney Lee: Yeah. From [00:04:04] Betty Junod: said destination Uhhuh or where you'll be at that time. Um, so it's really [00:04:10] interesting to see how they process it, um, when. When we're in this place of it is, it's everywhere, right? Mm-hmm. Um, and so, so [00:04:20] that, it's just been really interesting to see. And so I've been talking, I've been, uh, you know, showing how I use it, um, but then how I [00:04:30] use it as part of my day where it helps my day versus, um, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's. [00:04:37] Betty Junod: Taking my life over. So it's kind of like a responsible [00:04:40] use, you know, like, um, like there were people that were freaked out when cars showed up. Right? What's gonna happen to horses? Yeah. Well we, you know, we can now do these other things. [00:04:49] Betty Junod: [00:04:50] Mm-hmm. [00:04:51] Betty Junod: Um, in how we, uh, you know, in transportation, um, and, uh, uh, because it was more efficient. [00:04:57] Betty Junod: We could get to places faster, we could carry more things. [00:05:00] Um, but, you know, um, and for some reason, and, and people still use, use horses, but it became for different purposes, right? Yeah. They still enjoy horses, but it [00:05:10] wasn't like the primary, um, mode. Um, oh, I heard that. So how, oh [00:05:16] Whitney Lee: yeah. Oh yeah. [00:05:17] Betty Junod: No, go ahead. AI in Daily Life and Marketing --- [00:05:17] Whitney Lee: How do you use AI in [00:05:20] your daily life? [00:05:21] Betty Junod: I constantly ask it questions. Um, and I also, um, you know, being in marketing, there's a lot of like, you know, we read and then we [00:05:30] write stuff. Mm-hmm. Um, uh, we thought litter all over the place, and I often myself, I say, who [00:05:40] else is saying stuff like this? Or is this a new idea or not a new idea? [00:05:44] Betty Junod: Um, you know, it is, I think it's the, it's at the base [00:05:50] level. It is a search engine I've been waiting for. Yeah. [00:05:53] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. Because, [00:05:55] Betty Junod: um, what was it, uh, a few months ago I was, I was, you know, [00:06:00] talking with my husband about like, you know, we were talking about, you know, AI and especially using things like CHATT for just like basic search and stuff. [00:06:09] Betty Junod: And I was [00:06:10] talking about, well, here's how I used to do search myself before chat gt, and I was explaining my process and he is like, oh my God, you're literally doing the thing that now. [00:06:20] That's what the software's doing for you. So it's gonna save you like ways of time. Because I used to do a search and I would take all the, you know, the first page and I would click through, [00:06:30] literally click through each read through and just do that deep thing and take my notes, Uhhuh. [00:06:34] Betty Junod: Yeah. And that was a lot of time. You think, [00:06:37] Whitney Lee: so you're saving a lot of time, but [00:06:40] also you maybe like were motivated and earned that knowledge in a way that you don't. You could have it now without the motivation, so maybe, uh, it's [00:06:50] harder to tell who an actual motivated thought leader is, if everyone has access to that. [00:06:56] Betty Junod: Yeah. Yeah. The Role of AI in Critical Thinking and Curiosity --- [00:06:57] Betty Junod: The question you ask about are we going to critical [00:07:00] thinking, but it's like, are we, what is gonna happen with curiosity? [00:07:03] Betty Junod: Because critical [00:07:04] Betty Junod: thinking doesn't come without, you're not gonna think about it unless you're curious. And if you ask [00:07:10] cha EPTA question, or you know, plot or whatever, and it gives you an answer like, will you question the answer? [00:07:16] Betty Junod: Will it make you curious to. Ask a, [00:07:20] even asking a follow up question to the AI and be like, well, I don't know. So now let me try asking it in a different forum. [00:07:26] Betty Junod: Uhhuh, see what [00:07:26] Betty Junod: happens. You know, or go to a place where other [00:07:30] humans can react to my question and see if, um, is this answer here the norm or is it kind of like from, is the machine answer, [00:07:40] um, the norm? [00:07:40] Betty Junod: Or is it kind of like a, it was trained on data that, you know, kind of is on the, is on the edges, right? Mm-hmm. I hope it doesn't get rid [00:07:50] of curiosity. I hope it actually expands curiosity because we can, we can kind of scour the world's, you know, the world's information better. [00:07:57] Whitney Lee: Yeah. Like maybe we don't need to [00:08:00] relearn the building blocks over and over again and can start from a slightly more advanced place. [00:08:04] Whitney Lee: Yeah. [00:08:05] Coté: Yeah. You could be curious about different things like maybe analogously in cooking, like, [00:08:10] uh, I have to imagine in like 1982 if you wanted to like make a bowl of ramen at home. It's like the old Carl Sagan thing of like, well, first you need to invent the universe because you're [00:08:20] gonna, I don't even know, I don't even, I don't even know all the ingredients in ramen, but I'm pretty sure at like the, uh, the, the food basket over there in Austin in [00:08:30] 1982, I couldn't get it. [00:08:31] Coté: Like, whatever it would be, but, and so similarly, maybe, I don't know, now we can make ramen or something. I don't know how far that analogy [00:08:40] goes. Well, like, so I, I was, I was, uh, uh, I was watching. You did a, uh. It said it was six years ago, so I forget the exact year, but you did a, a talk at Heavy Bit when you, I [00:08:50] think you were at solo about like, here's a messaging and position framework. [00:08:55] Coté: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which, which was, which was great. I was like, I should send this to all my marketing friends, [00:09:00] but so I, you know, you're making, I, I'm wondering, like you're saying, you know, if, if, if you're using AI stuff daily. Like, obviously [00:09:10] you don't have to recall this 17 minute talk to perfection, but like where would you use it in coming up with like your one pager of like the messaging and positioning, like, like [00:09:20] what would you feed into it and like how would you evaluate it? [00:09:23] Coté: Like how, how would, 'cause that tool didn't really exist back then, so how would you use it nowadays for that kind of thing? [00:09:29] Betty Junod: [00:09:30] Yeah. Um, and I do this, um, I'll ask questions of like, you know, um, other, like, other, you know, uh, vendors that we may compete with, [00:09:40] right. Or if I have, um, some points on like, okay, I think this new feature or new whatever, um, these might be [00:09:50] where, you know, the, the solution that we're, that we're building is good for, what do you think? [00:09:55] Betty Junod: Yeah. [00:09:55] Betty Junod: Right. And it's like, compare this with, tell me who else. What other [00:10:00] companies or people have said these types of things. Um, and in that sense it's like you can get some of that reaction, um, um, in a way that's more [00:10:10] than like a, just a list of, um, links to go read. Right? Which is where it's different than a search engine. [00:10:15] Betty Junod: Um, yeah. So in that sense, it's been a, it's, you know, there's the people that use it [00:10:20] as they talk about it as like, here's your, here's your, like. Buddy at work that never sleeps, never runs outta energy, right? Sure. Um, but also needs a lot of [00:10:30] very discreet instruction. That's where it's like, you know, you can have some of those cycles. [00:10:35] Betty Junod: Um, there's some really cool stuff on, um, [00:10:40] video. I don't know if you've seen that, where folks will like make a video demo, but then it can have it like, uh, translate, there's these tools that'll translate [00:10:50] it into multiple languages, so, oh, awesome. Oh. Yeah, some of the, it still needs to be like fact checked, right? [00:10:56] Betty Junod: Because, uh, uh, making sure it's, you know, conjugating [00:11:00] everything correctly and meanings are correct, but, um, just cutting some of those cycle times down is really interesting. [00:11:07] Coté: Yeah. You, you, you, there's, there's, there's one thing you, you've kind of [00:11:10] mentioned a few times to, to put it in some other different words here, which is, uh. [00:11:14] Coté: What would you call it? Maybe like uniqueness verification and, and especially like [00:11:20] if you're trying to figure out like, you know, your differentiation or I, I don't know an analogy outside of that, but like, you know, like you're saying would, how, how would someone else say [00:11:30] this? Or does someone else say it this way? [00:11:32] Coté: It's almost like making sure you're coming up with something worthwhile, which worthwhile is a judgmental way of putting it, but it's, uh. [00:11:40] It's, it's all, you know, there's, it's taking, it's taking advantage of a power that AI stuff has, which is being bland basically. And so you can see if, like, [00:11:50] do you, like, is this bland by seeing what it would respond with or, or something like that. [00:11:55] Coté: I don't know. It's a good baseline. [00:11:56] Whitney Lee: I have a question about that too, which is, um, how [00:12:00] do you know when you're working with something that's so current, how do you know that you're not getting outdated information from, from chat GPT or from ai? Like whatever [00:12:10] it's trained on is at least a little bit old. [00:12:12] Betty Junod: It's, yeah, it's whatever. When that model was, was released, right? Right. So it was released. If it's released last week, then if [00:12:20] something else was, uh, if there was some new news that came out this week, it might not have it. Yeah. Um, unless somebody fed it into the, into the machine. Um, but if you think [00:12:30] about some of the, you know, as marketers, how would some, how would competitive analysis or, you know, whatever things like that happen normally? [00:12:37] Betty Junod: Well, you would do like just a regular Google search and then you [00:12:40] would go and read everybody's sites. That had anything close Right. Um, to that, um, to those keywords or, um, there's always a, some [00:12:50] number of vendors or like, these are our primary competitors and then, oh, here's everybody else that's doing similar use cases. [00:12:55] Betty Junod: And then, you know, humans would sit there and physically read them all. [00:12:59] Betty Junod: Mm-hmm. [00:12:59] Betty Junod: And [00:13:00] then try to compare to like, okay, now I wrote, I wrote this thing. How does that compare with the 500 web, uh, webpage? I just read Uhhuh where I split out across my [00:13:10] team. So I think that one, it's, um, you know, it's really great at like taking all that information and then kind of synthes synthesizing it back to you. [00:13:18] Betty Junod: But it, [00:13:20] it's not a, it, it's not a replacement for the process. [00:13:24] Whitney Lee: Yeah, it's a supplement, right? Do [00:13:26] Betty Junod: the work, right? Yeah. [00:13:28] Whitney Lee: Uh, some things, [00:13:29] Betty Junod: some things that were [00:13:30] really manual and hard, go a little faster. Um, like, um, what I like now is it'll give you, it'll, you'll give you some answers and you [00:13:40] can say, like, cite your sources. [00:13:42] Betty Junod: And it'll say like, here are the links that I got these, that information from. So you could still go click through and read those, but I don't have to read all of the internet to then get to those [00:13:50] answers. Challenges and Tips for Prompt Engineering --- [00:13:52] Whitney Lee: Do you, do you, you talked about how you ask it questions, and I'm wondering if you have, um, if you have any good [00:14:00] tips around how to ask it, the right questions to get the answers you want, or I guess prompt. [00:14:04] Whitney Lee: Prompt engineering is the way to say that. I'm not, I feel like I'm a good [00:14:10] communicator, but I don't feel like I'm always. Communicating like I'm a good communicator to humans and I think I have room for improvement with the way I communicate with an AI chat [00:14:20] bot. Do you have any tips? Yeah. This, [00:14:22] Betty Junod: I know this is such the thing in that, um, uh, I am okay better. [00:14:28] Betty Junod: Sometimes it's better than others. [00:14:30] Other times, um, I don't know why. Um, I am probably not the best prompt engineer, but, um, you know. Because I think you, I think Whitney, you and I are [00:14:40] similar in that, like, we like to have a conversation with people. [00:14:42] Betty Junod: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. [00:14:42] Betty Junod: So it's kind of a, based on the response that person gave me, I'm going to maybe ask, uh, like a slightly different follow up [00:14:50] question or you get to know that personality so that you, we want to navigate through and get to a common understanding. [00:14:57] Betty Junod: And unfortunately like machines and systems, [00:15:00] that's. What they don't, what They don't have a personality. They don't have like they, so it's like that. It's ultimately, that prompt is basically to [00:15:10] turn what seems like human English into this. It's like a pseudo, it's like pseudo code language. [00:15:17] Betty Junod: Yeah, it [00:15:17] Betty Junod: is regular English terms, but [00:15:20] it's. [00:15:20] Betty Junod: It's, um, I think, uh, Kote were you saying is like, it sounds like super pedantic the way we have to describe it. [00:15:26] Betty Junod: Yeah. I [00:15:27] Betty Junod: feels unnatural sometimes. Yeah, [00:15:29] Betty Junod: [00:15:30] exactly. [00:15:31] Whitney Lee: Based on what you just said about how we're similar in that we like to have a conversation. I have. Used AI in a way. I like to use it to tell it, to ask me questions, like [00:15:40] let's Oh, nice. [00:15:41] Whitney Lee: Ask me questions. Like, I want you, yeah, I want to brainstorm an idea with you, and I want you to ask me one idea at a time, like to make a, a talk, uh, an abstract, for [00:15:50] example, and like, let's really hash out the idea before and maybe write a talc outline before we try to actually write the abstract. But I'm saying we like me and chat GPT or whoever, but um, little buddy.[00:16:00] [00:16:00] Whitney Lee: My little, my, the dummy, the brilliant dummy in my pocket. Yeah. So I really like asking it to ask me questions and, um, [00:16:09] Betty Junod: I still, yeah, I've done better with [00:16:10] the text side, um, text side of it. Um, where I've had, where I think I've had the most, um, not the, not the results that I wanted is in the, um, is an [00:16:20] image. [00:16:21] Whitney Lee: Oh yeah, [00:16:22] Betty Junod: yeah. That one is like, it gets really squirrely for me very quickly. Um, so I mean, I'm sure there's, there's people out there that are like, oh, here's, [00:16:30] this is how you would ask, you know, a, a string of prompts to get exactly what you want. And I'm like, okay. [00:16:36] Whitney Lee: Yeah, I remember in the early days of, of AI [00:16:40] seeing prompts that actually got into like what was happening behind, like outside of natural language to be able to, to tell it like, I want this to be a photorealistic thing and I don't want you to put [00:16:50] any weird styling on it. [00:16:51] Whitney Lee: Like there would, it would be like, tell it 0.532, and then it knows to make it a photo realistic thing. And, um, are we beyond that [00:17:00] now? I hope so. Yeah. [00:17:01] Betty Junod: I think in some places, um, I do think that, um, there are folks who are, yeah, it's, it's that, that alone is an art, right? Um, to [00:17:10] be really good at. The right set of commands and prompts and things. [00:17:14] Betty Junod: Yeah, [00:17:14] Coté: yeah. Yeah. I, I find, I find with the image stuff, it's a lot like, uh, I mean, I only use the chat [00:17:20] GPT and the mid journey image generation, and it's kind of like, it's kind of like, uh, you're, you're, you're, you're trying to like reform someone with, with bad addictive habits [00:17:30] to the style that they wanna do. [00:17:31] Coté: And if you know, you can like, get them reformed to do something in a different style, then like, you know, midjourney is like Marvel superhero. [00:17:40] Perfectly zero body fat people style. And like you can move it and move it, and then you'll go back a few days later and you're like, oh, you're into the stuff again. [00:17:47] Coté: Like you totally reverted to, uh, what you [00:17:50] wanna [00:17:50] Betty Junod: do. [00:17:50] Coté: And like nowadays, chat, GBT wants to do like, what is it, the Studio Ghibli thing? Like, or what, however you say it. Like, unless you like, spend a lot of time prompting it, it's [00:18:00] always gonna revert to that. And it's just, uh, but you know what, early hack I really let or hack prompting, I, I remember reading a couple years ago, was to ask it to do, uh. [00:18:09] Coté: Uh, [00:18:10] a screen capture from a DVD. And that had a nice aesthetic to it, which is Oh, okay. Like anytime you, you could always tell it to do a, a, a screen cap from a [00:18:20] DVD of an 80 sitcom, and it would come up with a pretty, pretty delightful, pretty delightful things. Uh, with, with that. Well, so, uh, go ahead. [00:18:29] Whitney Lee: [00:18:30] Oh, I was gonna tell Cote and I have a game where, and maybe you can do this for us. [00:18:34] Whitney Lee: Oh, yes. Uh, where in Chachi pt put in the prompt, make a picture of what you [00:18:40] think I look like and a style you think I would appreciate. [00:18:43] Betty Junod: Oh my gosh. [00:18:44] Whitney Lee: Yeah. I want you to do that and get back to us please and we'll post it on [00:18:49] Coté: on our slack. I'll [00:18:49] Betty Junod: [00:18:50] do [00:18:51] Coté: it. I'll do it. Maybe that should be the thumbnail that we use from now on if people have access to it. [00:18:55] Betty Junod: It depends. I'm gonna prescreen that because you know,[00:19:00] [00:19:01] Betty Junod: the worse it is, the [00:19:02] Whitney Lee: better it [00:19:03] Betty Junod: is. Yeah. [00:19:07] Betty Junod: Picasso. [00:19:10] [00:19:10] Coté: Yeah, we could feed it the transcript for the show, and that would be a good, maybe that would be for our personal collection. [00:19:15] Betty Junod: Oh, and you can say enough please and thank yous, um, to the ai before we do, before [00:19:20] we get the transcript. [00:19:21] Coté: Well, well on, on a, on a different topic. So, so, uh, let's see, you, you, maybe you know these numbers better, but like looking, you know, looking [00:19:30] over your, your, your LinkedIn career thing, right? [00:19:32] Coté: Like I was, I, I sort of intuitively knew this, but, well, intuitively whatever. I had a foggy notion of this, but you've got like, uh, you worked at. From Big Tech to Startups: Lessons Learned --- [00:19:39] Coté: [00:19:40] Well, you worked at big tech companies for a little while, like VMware and Riverbed, and then you went off into Startup Land, uh, for six, seven years or so. [00:19:50] I, I think, uh, [00:19:51] Betty Junod: I think, uh, probably, yeah, [00:19:55] Coté: de depending on which month the year was and yeah, which month the year was, which month in the year it [00:20:00] was. [00:20:00] Coté: Uh, like, and, and then, and then, uh, let's see. And now you, and then you went back to, uh, VMware where we met and now you're at, uh, Heroku, Salesforce. [00:20:10] And like, so I'm always, I'm always interested, like, so when you went from big companies to like startups, like what's something that you brought from [00:20:20] startup land that like worked that, that wasn't being done there? [00:20:23] Coté: Because there's plenty of things that wouldn't work, but like what's something that you brought to the startup people and they're like, wow, big [00:20:30] companies aren't all stupid. Like, like that, uh, that, that was an effective technology or tool or something like that. [00:20:37] Betty Junod: Yeah. Um, and I think, uh, let's see. I think the [00:20:40] biggest thing is, you know what we, a lot of times we later complain as being like, bureaucracy, bureaucracy and red tape is, it [00:20:50] is really a framework so that you can help like tens of thousands of people understand what's going on. [00:20:57] Betty Junod: Right, right, right. [00:20:58] Betty Junod: So like that's, [00:21:00] and what's interesting is if you take in some ways, some of those, like quote unquote planning templates, or you would see them like every quarter when we kick off doing the thing, we have like these [00:21:10] 10, you know, well at big companies sometimes it's like, you know, 10, 30 slides that follow a specific structure. [00:21:16] Betty Junod: But, um, when you take a portion of that and [00:21:20] you roll it out at a, you know. 30, 40, 10, even 10 person startup. What it does is just frames thinking we have all these ideas. [00:21:30] Well, how will we organize ourselves? Um, and you don't need, you know, when you're at a small startup, you don't need like all the different like, um, various sync meetings and everybody's [00:21:40] gonna align because everybody aligns, sits, sits across like the lunch table, right? [00:21:45] Betty Junod: Mm-hmm. Um, but you need a way to organize everyone's opinions [00:21:50] into. Well, how are we gonna, what are we gonna do and why? Mm-hmm. And how will we do what we do? Um, you know, so it still moves faster, [00:22:00] but Yeah. [00:22:01] Whitney Lee: I imagine if you have a process defined for that ev at a smaller company, it can help people not take it personally if their particular idea isn't the one [00:22:10] that's being prioritized for that. [00:22:12] Betty Junod: Exactly. Exactly. And if you say like, you can do like, uh. I guess long-term planning and startup [00:22:20] plan might be like four months, but then you can figure what we'll do for two in the two week sprint. Right? Yeah. [00:22:26] Coté: And, and do you, do you think at, at like, [00:22:30] let's see, do, do you think having that, let's call it regular structure of the deliverable, like, like, you know, is useful in, in like that four [00:22:40] month cadence? [00:22:40] Coté: Like, is it good to stick with, let's, let's reference it again. Like, you know, you've got your, uh. Heavy bit talk messaging framework, like is it, do you think it's [00:22:50] more often important to use that same two page thing over the course of three years or to like, change it around whenever you need something new? [00:22:59] Coté: I mean, I'm, that's, those [00:23:00] are two extreme ins, but like where you's figure out how frequently you change [00:23:04] Betty Junod: it. Yeah. I think that, um, uh, every time you do, so it depends on how, um, product is [00:23:10] releasing, right? Um, I think if you're, uh, if you're. If you're a, you know, just releasing all the time, every day, all the time, you might wanna just say like, Hey, every [00:23:20] couple of months do we do a quick check. [00:23:22] Betty Junod: Right. 'cause, um, depending on, I think there's two things that can change it is, one is you've shipped so many new features [00:23:30] or so much new products that, uh, what you're saying, you're what you're, who you're reaching and like what you're providing for your customer has changed enough, [00:23:40] materially enough that you have to take a look at it. [00:23:42] Betty Junod: Um, and then the other one is, um, if the world change around changes around you. I think that, um, this time last [00:23:50] year, we were not thinking it would be what it is now. Mm-hmm. Right? Um, so much has just happened in the last six months that even has changed. Like, what do we mean when we're talking about [00:24:00] ai, right? [00:24:00] Betty Junod: What is it gonna do with us in, in our day-to-day work and at home and what have you? Um, so like those two things are the things where [00:24:10] it's like, okay, it's kind of like redefining, like, who are we in this world? Who are we and what are we pro? What are we bringing, um, to bear? [00:24:19] Whitney Lee: [00:24:20] What did we think AI was going to be six months ago versus what it's actually become? [00:24:26] Betty Junod: I mean, I don't know how we answered that question. Are we having like a,[00:24:30] [00:24:33] Betty Junod: I think some of the things around, um, the. I [00:24:40] have an, I have a question that I like to ask on like, what are we trying to really solve with this whole thing? Because it's really interesting, different people talk about it. Um, and then the, the, the, [00:24:50] uh, like existential question of those, like what is, what is meaning in life? [00:24:57] Betty Junod: Um, but, [00:25:00] uh, you know, like it's interesting to see how this has, can be applied to things like automation, you know? Mm-hmm. Um. Because [00:25:10] there, there were just some hard problems like that we couldn't solve before there. Um, I think it's really interesting to see where it's going, you know, just in our [00:25:20] world in software development, like how it's, what's happening there. [00:25:24] Betty Junod: Um, like who can create what [00:25:30] has been really interesting, like it's. The definition is expanding and I'm curious. I'm curious to see where it goes. I don't, you know, it's not gonna be, [00:25:40] no tool is ever solves everything. 'cause with each new problem we solve, we create other ones. [00:25:45] Whitney Lee: Yeah. [00:25:46] Betty Junod: Yeah. So maybe the [00:25:47] Whitney Lee: domain that it's touching, the domains that it's [00:25:50] touching in, the way that it's able to orchestrate tools and processes across domains is maybe all just more expansive than we expected, especially so [00:26:00] soon. [00:26:01] Betty Junod: It is. Yeah. 'cause it's like, you know, think about, um, like it, so in the, in the late nineties when I [00:26:10] was, uh, first entering the job market, I remember we worked with, um, I had like these, I was working with these, um, it, it's like systems management tools, right? Like [00:26:18] Betty Junod: mm-hmm. [00:26:19] Betty Junod: Um, [00:26:20] and it was a whole low code. Low code thing where you are dragging and dropping boxes in order to say like, here's my server and like [00:26:30] my big server and it's located here 'cause I scanned the barcode. [00:26:33] Betty Junod: But that's how you built like this like, uh, service management workflow uhhuh, and it was super rigid. Um, a [00:26:40] lot of those tools, like nowadays low code tools are, are still very drag and drop. But then like how does that, what happens with that? Mm-hmm. When you're like, I can just type some things. [00:26:50] Um, you can read my, um, you can read my log information and probably have a better map of where are my services, where is my stuff than, [00:27:00] um, me having to go find some mix of physical and cloud instances and what have you. [00:27:06] Betty Junod: So [00:27:06] Coté: it's, it's like your, uh, your search thing. You don't have to like look through every page on the [00:27:10] first page. Yeah. I don't have to physically [00:27:11] Betty Junod: search. Yeah. [00:27:12] Whitney Lee: Or we have different people specialized in different layers of this stack. Yes. Yes. And when we need less people [00:27:20] to maintain those layers, if we, or maybe almost zero people, we're, we're just gonna have no idea what we're building on top of anymore, because AI is managing, understands it. [00:27:29] Whitney Lee: And [00:27:30] no humans have to, well, [00:27:32] Betty Junod: I mean we, what was the joke? It's like, oh, we have the cloud. No one needs data centers anymore. Well, you know, there's a lot of people working on [00:27:40] very deep, low level kernel and hardware's stuff at the cloud providers. It's just concentrated right. And we just moved [00:27:48] Whitney Lee: it.[00:27:50] [00:27:52] Whitney Lee: Interesting. Yeah. [00:27:54] Coté: Well, so I, I have, I have another, uh, big, big small marketing, uh, question here. [00:28:00] And that is, let's see, which, which one of the, well, I'll, I'll ask this one first, which is, so it's kind of connected to what I was asking earlier is, uh. I think, well, as Whitney likes to [00:28:10] say, she's relatively new to tech, so maybe she's only been through this once. [00:28:14] Coté: Uh, but, but I think, I think you, you and I, Betty, we've been through these cycles where, uh, like [00:28:20] new executives come in at a company that you've worked at for a long time over the course of all of our careers. And then there's like, there's a new template to use for marketing [00:28:30] or a, a new system to, to use and like. [00:28:34] Coté: It seems like you often don't have a choice because your bosses have told you to do this, that you have to kind of [00:28:40] like translate what what you're doing and like, but is, is there anything good that comes of that? Like, like why? Why are you shifting to, should you [00:28:50] assume that Because the previous regime is no longer there, what they were doing didn't work and so now we have this new thing and we need, instead of Betty's two page.[00:29:00] [00:29:00] Coté: Marketing and positioning template. We have the page and a half marketing and positioning template that you print out in landscape and you draw doodles and pictures on [00:29:10] one side, and then you connect to, you know, I don't know, I'm just making up some silly system. Right. But like, [00:29:14] Betty Junod: or your, or your sub comment commenting to what? [00:29:16] Betty Junod: I first, uh, came back and joined Tanzu and said like, [00:29:20] do this guys. [00:29:21] Coté: It's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a common occurrence, right? I'm joking and sometimes it's, yeah. So sometimes it's good and bad and. I guess, I guess like the [00:29:30] question is like, how, how do, how does an individual or a team figure out how to not cynically embrace the [00:29:40] work? [00:29:40] Coté: Right. Like, I know, I know like, like figure out doing something because there's not an option to not do something. I, I, mm-hmm. I don't know. It's a weird phenomena that that seems to [00:29:50] happen. [00:29:51] Betty Junod: Yeah. 'cause you're like, are we just rearranging the deck chairs? [00:29:54] Coté: That's right. Mm-hmm. That's right. [00:29:55] Betty Junod: Yeah. [00:29:56] Coté: Yeah. And, and, and, and then also, yeah, yeah, exactly.[00:30:00] [00:30:00] Whitney Lee: Go on. I, I have this cynical, like, oh, there's a new executive. They have to come put their fingerprints on it to make sure we all know what's there. And it's, you know, how does this actually affect me? And, and [00:30:09] Coté: I, [00:30:10] I, I guess, I guess to add more, more rambling to the question, like, like as an analyst I would see at startup, well I would see at big companies, but you see at startups especially where. [00:30:19] Coté: [00:30:20] As they figure out what we would call their product market fit. Of course these things evolve, right? Yeah. Because kinda like you were saying earlier, if you've got new developments or uh, a new market that you have, you evolve it. [00:30:30] But I, I don't know. I mean, it seems like that has to be something that the, whoever's in charge of marketing, or even more so the permanent people right underneath [00:30:40] marketing to use kind of a government organiz thing. The Role of New Executives in Company Transformation --- [00:30:41] Coté: Mm-hmm. Like that's a core competency. They have that every one or two years. You gotta redo the slides [00:30:50] in, in whatever the new format is. [00:30:54] Betty Junod: Yeah, and I definitely, I would, I would say, uh, one, um, uh, probably guilty as [00:31:00] charged from just places I've landed. Um, uh, some of it's twofold. I think, uh, sometimes it is definitely like. [00:31:07] Betty Junod: Especially if they're bringing, if companies are [00:31:10] bringing in new executives at, um, new executives, likely what they're, they're bringing them in also for like, Hey, you've done certain things at other companies. We like what [00:31:20] we like, um, transformations or growth or whatever. They're hired because of certain type of experience and skill sets. [00:31:27] Betty Junod: Come do that here. And so they may have like, well, [00:31:30] these are some of the steps we put in to do that. And I do have a format that I like. Mm-hmm. Um, not all of the leaders brought in that way are maybe [00:31:40] have, maybe they're tasked with that change, but maybe they do not have the authority for that change. [00:31:46] Betty Junod: 'cause it depends on, you know, who it [00:31:50] is. Uh, it meaning like, like if we use our, um, uh, where we worked at together, like within the business unit, we could do certain things, but we were still having, we [00:32:00] still, um. Uh, rolled up into a corporate planning and a corporate structure process. So corporate rolls rolls out the, here's the templates and the [00:32:10] formats. [00:32:10] Betty Junod: Right. Um, so some of it is definitely like, yeah. New leader is like, if they don't change anything, then it's gonna like, well, what did, well what are you here for? [00:32:20] Um, [00:32:20] Betty Junod: right. [00:32:21] Betty Junod: But, uh, yeah, and then everybody has their, like, you know, their quirks and their, uh, styles that they like, um, to do, do the styles and formats, [00:32:30] um, that they like to use. [00:32:31] Betty Junod: So that's kind of a, that's kind of a thing. Um, it's funny because like, [00:32:37] Whitney Lee: oh, what's your style or format? What's one [00:32:40] thing about. That's unique about your leadership? Leadership Styles and Honoring Company History --- [00:32:43] Betty Junod: Um, I, you know, I did a lot of reflection after a time at VMware before I was, uh, [00:32:50] went to look, start looking for my next thing, and it was, Hey, here's what you know, I am, here's what I know that I'm, I can bring to an organization [00:33:00] what I do well. [00:33:00] Betty Junod: Um, but the big one is, big. Part of that is I don't wanna just come in guns blazing. Because a big thing is there's, you have to honor [00:33:10] the, the, the past. So if you, [00:33:13] Betty Junod: yeah, [00:33:13] Betty Junod: you join a, if you join an existing company that is, has some, that has momentum or a certain size already, you have to honor what's [00:33:20] there and then you're placed in it. [00:33:23] Betty Junod: Um, if you're at a brand new startup, you have to on, you have to, if you're at an early startup, you have to honor the, the, the, the [00:33:30] original drive that made those founders create the thing. [00:33:32] Betty Junod: And [00:33:33] Betty Junod: then think about like, what is your, what is your place in that to take it to that next step? So that is [00:33:40] like, here's what I know what I can do, and is it, you know, um, is, is a hundred percent of my skills applied, you know, in full force at this stage for the next year? [00:33:49] Betty Junod: Or is [00:33:50] it, you know, what, uh, what should, what should I be doing? What part of my skills should I be, uh, leveraging First to help take them to, you know, take it, take folks to the [00:34:00] next goal. So I think it's, it's always a blend. It's like, Hey, I have a way of like deducing like information and organizing things and helping put uh, strategies and plans together. [00:34:09] Betty Junod: But then it's like, [00:34:10] okay, let's look at where we are in time and place [00:34:13] Betty Junod: mm-hmm. [00:34:13] Betty Junod: And the structures that are here. And then I. Working within that. [00:34:18] Whitney Lee: I think that's so wise. [00:34:20] Yeah, [00:34:21] Betty Junod: it's very different. It doesn't, it doesn't, [00:34:23] Whitney Lee: yeah. It doesn't mean you're not gonna knock shit down eventually, but you're gonna understand it first and then [00:34:30] bulldoze it a lot more [00:34:31] Coté: respectful. Navigating Company Culture and Processes --- [00:34:33] Coté: So, so how, how have you that that's, that that is an interesting line of thinking and, and having worked at like, well, [00:34:40] most recently at Heroku. Right. But, and then also at VMware, like both of those companies. They, I guess, VMware's older, uh, but they, they're [00:34:50] relatively in the same generations. Kind of, sort of. [00:34:53] Coté: May, maybe, maybe Heroku was a freshman when, when VMware was a senior in high school. But like, you know, it all, it all kind of comes [00:35:00] out in the wash, which as you get older. But like, that was one thing I was curious to hear about is like, so when you went, when you joined Heroku. Like they're almost, I have [00:35:10] no idea, but there could almost be a crushing amount of history and culture for how old, old the company is. [00:35:15] Coté: Similarly like with VMware, like you could come into VMware [00:35:20] or IBM or Oracle and just sort of be like, I. Well, I thought I had some ideas, but now I'm, I'm a company X, Y, Z person, right? Like I, there's like nothing. [00:35:30] I'm just here like, because they, it's so monolithic, but I, I don't know what, what's it, what do you do with that, like, big chunk of history? [00:35:39] Coté: Like, [00:35:40] like how do you work with it or does it need to be malleable and at, at some point. [00:35:46] Betty Junod: Yeah. Um, this is a, this is a great, great [00:35:50] question. Um, and with VMware, what's interesting is I worked there from 2005 to 2013. Oh. So, um, I [00:36:00] think I was, um, it was maybe my [00:36:02] Betty Junod: very early, [00:36:03] Betty Junod: yeah, very early. I think it was maybe my third job out of college. [00:36:08] Betty Junod: It was 15. VMware was [00:36:10] 1500 people when I joined. Yeah. And then when I left it was 20,000 people. 'cause I was like, it's too big now, it's, I can't do it. Right. [00:36:20] And I thought, you know, 'cause you go from literally knowing everybody and having like the free lunch Wednesdays or whatever that we had back then to who are all these people that I [00:36:30] see on campus. [00:36:31] Betty Junod: Um, and then, um, you know, going back to VMware was interesting because I was like, oh my gosh, it's like double the size when I left. Yeah. [00:36:40] Um, but there were enough people that I had worked with the first time or people who had joined towards the end of my first tenure that were still there, that, you know, you had [00:36:50] that I can call on a few familiar faces, understand what's going on, who are the players, who, who knows what, how, how can I find things? [00:36:58] Betty Junod: Um, because I also [00:37:00] joined rejoined the company during the pandemic. Yeah. Right. So BI used to be a very in-office culture, and that's, you know, you walk around and you meet people in the kitchen or during lunch and you know, [00:37:10] you can, you know, you can navigate around that way. Um, but that was, that was, I don't know how I would've done that. [00:37:16] Betty Junod: Um, I. Without, without having [00:37:19] Betty Junod: those, [00:37:20] uh, knowing people. [00:37:20] Betty Junod: So, yeah. [00:37:21] Whitney Lee: Not people, but processes. When you, when you came back, could you see some of the old processes that you remember from the early days? No. Still [00:37:30] there? No. It was all [00:37:31] Betty Junod: just Totally, yeah. And this is where the people helped. Having familiar people. [00:37:34] Betty Junod: They're like, Hey, remember that? Well, it's now this. [00:37:38] Betty Junod: Okay. [00:37:39] Betty Junod: And here, [00:37:40] go talk here. Um, you should talk to these people. Have you met them yet? So it's like having a little guide to help you around, um, uh, and one with trust [00:37:50] already built in because you knew them from a decade before. Um, so that's a, that's a whole thing. [00:37:55] Betty Junod: Um, um, I remember thinking like, gosh, I don't know how I would join this [00:38:00] company just brand new, like, especially during a pandemic for a very, for something that was such an in-office culture. Um, I. Fast forward, [00:38:10] um, joining the Heroku team at Salesforce. Um, Salesforce is a much bigger company. Um, but you know, I think one of the things that's really interesting about the culture [00:38:20] is every new employee has a, what we call a trail guide. [00:38:23] Betty Junod: So it's someone that's your buddy for three months, so they are there to answer all your questions. And, um, I remember my trail [00:38:30] guide, I would just be peppering them every day, like, what's this? What's that? And they'd be like, oh, go search here, or you should meet these three people. You know? So that's, it's the helping make those connections. [00:38:39] Betty Junod: [00:38:40] Um, and it's, it's been twofold. Is one understanding. The broader, like, you know, what is Salesforce like? Mm-hmm. What is Salesforce culture like? Um, [00:38:50] you know, how does Salesforce do things? And then also, um, hey, what is the time and place for Heroku as a product inside the Perfor portfolio? [00:39:00] So. So what have we done? [00:39:01] Betty Junod: What are we trying to do? Um, you know, uh, and like how do we do things, you know, because you know each, this is [00:39:10] always the case when you're in a big company with lots of products. Each product has its own little personality. Yeah. Inside of the family. Yeah. The portfolio. So yeah, I mean. I think [00:39:20] I'm nine months in now. [00:39:21] Betty Junod: Mm-hmm. I still, I feel like I've, sometimes I've just shown up and, uh, that, and also that I've been here forever. [00:39:28] Coté: I, I like, I like [00:39:30] this idea of like the, uh, the, the, the lore keeper. Slash slash trail trail person who can just like explain like, oh, let me tell you why we do that. Yeah. At this, [00:39:40] this, this is, this is how that came about. [00:39:41] Coté: Why, this is why we only have burritos On Tuesday [00:39:46] Whitney Lee: at Datadog, I have an onboarding triad, a manager, a [00:39:50] mentor, and a buddy. Nice. So someone for technical questions, someone forgetting around questions, and then mm-hmm. Someone whose job it is to make sure I'm doing all right. [00:39:58] Coté: Yeah. Wait, wait. What does, what does, what does [00:40:00] the buddy do? [00:40:00] Coté: I. [00:40:01] Whitney Lee: Yeah, they, they're more like, like, um, who do I need to know? Or how do I find this? Or like, where do I look up this? How do I claim my internet [00:40:10] expenses or whatever. [00:40:11] Betty Junod: Oh, I have a buddy. Okay. Okay. [00:40:13] Whitney Lee: Or yeah, maybe also a safer person to ask who, who has no skin in the game? I, is it more, more [00:40:19] Betty Junod: peer, [00:40:20] peer level, same type of job function, or. [00:40:23] Whitney Lee: Yeah. Uhhuh. [00:40:24] Betty Junod: Yeah. [00:40:25] Whitney Lee: And the mentors, uh, mentors went up, went above a very technical. Mm-hmm. [00:40:30] [00:40:30] Coté: So, so then on the other side, whe when, when you see, uh, I mean, not to only generalize it, but like, let's say you, you promote someone from within an [00:40:40] organization to become like the VP of marketing. Like what does that signal or usually lead to different than if you hire someone from the outside?[00:40:50] [00:40:51] Betty Junod: Hmm. [00:40:54] Coté: You know that the, the rare time when someone from within gets promoted, I guess. Yeah. [00:40:58] Betty Junod: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think, [00:41:00] um, I mean, I think, uh, as a, as an outcome, it's like, you know, someone promoted within brings the benefit of like, they already know everyone. They know how the organization [00:41:10] works. They may or may not be from that. [00:41:13] Betty Junod: Product group as an example, right? Like you could have someone from a different team, different different team, um, different [00:41:20] focus area, but they know the function. Um, I think that plus the, oftentimes the, the reason for bringing someone in from the outside is like they're bringing a perspective on the [00:41:30] market or that portion of the industry or a competing product, right? [00:41:34] Betty Junod: And they're gonna bring that, um, bring that knowledge and kind of like networking. [00:41:39] Coté: I mean, I mean, [00:41:40] bringing something new to the table that, that didn't exist, obviously, which, which can be great. The Importance of Industry Analysts --- [00:41:46] Coté: So, so another thing I always, I like to ask people in marketing is like, what [00:41:50] is in our, in our kind of marketing is what do, uh, what do you, what do you think up with the industry analysts nowadays? [00:41:56] Coté: Like how do you, like on the sell side, [00:42:00] I don't know a better word for it, use them like, or how do you, how do you involve them in the ongoing work of, of, of the company? [00:42:07] Betty Junod: Oh my gosh. I love working with analysts. [00:42:10] Are you kidding me? Yeah, of course. I spend a ton of time with them. I mean, uh, different analysts, um, different, uh, firms, um, focus on some different things, uh, different types of, um, whether it's [00:42:20] um, more advice or it's like they're gonna help do, cus they do research or they do custom content work. [00:42:27] Betty Junod: Some specialize in, um. [00:42:30] Uh, subspecialize in different like segments, you know, like there, there's like the boutique ones, right? Um, so I make it a point to speak with all of them [00:42:40] regularly. That's like one of the first things I start to do. Um, yeah, to get a collective opinion, um, and then work, you know. You just, you, you, [00:42:50] because a lot of, a lot of like end user customers do work with those analysts too. [00:42:55] Betty Junod: 'cause it helps, it's like their agent right? To get like an aggregate experience, aggregate [00:43:00] feedback. Yeah. So, you know, you gotta, you gotta make sure you spend time with 'em. And [00:43:05] Coté: you do, you do, do you, do you have like, so I, I mean obviously I, [00:43:10] since I've been an analyst, I spend way too much time thinking about them as their own industry. [00:43:13] Coté: Uh, but. Like, it seems like, so if, so, if we look at the analysts, you still have like Gartner and [00:43:20] Forrester and IDC, which are like, they've cracked the model. Like they, they've been doing that model for a long time. Mm-hmm. And then, you know, there's the boutique people like your red [00:43:30] monks, who also interestingly, have also cracked the model in the same way. [00:43:35] Coté: Like they've, they've done a little bit of new things here, but there's also like, like for [00:43:40] example, I'm kind of fascinated by like, what's up with futur? Because they seem to be like bundling together a bunch of analyst things and then seeing [00:43:50] like what if we took that crazy video stuff the Cube people do and like ANA analyst did eyes at it. [00:43:57] Coté: How do you say that? Did industry analyst version [00:44:00] of it. And I, I don't know that that's a weird. Mixture that they have going on. And I, I, I don't know, like do you work with the Virum people? Do you, do you Yeah, yeah. Kinda pay attention to what they do. Like, so how do [00:44:10] they fit into the grand scheme of things? [00:44:11] Betty Junod: Oh, I've, um, uh, it's like the futurum and like the cube silicon angle. Like they, yeah. I assume that they're both like a analyst [00:44:20] as well as kind of like, uh, media, like reporters. Yeah. [00:44:23] Betty Junod: Yeah. [00:44:23] Betty Junod: More so than like, as, um, whereas like, uh, I, you know, like the, the, like, the big, big ones like the [00:44:30] Gartners, um, foresters and IDCs do a ton of like, research. [00:44:34] Betty Junod: Um, I see the, uh, those like, uh, the Cube and like the future rooms doing a lot of, um, it's almost [00:44:40] like they're like news channels Right, exactly. As part of their analysis. And so I think it's interesting to see the models evolve. Um, rum Hass been doing a lot of like, yeah. Consolidation of some of the [00:44:50] independents. [00:44:50] Betty Junod: Right into, into one, um, into their larger organization. So I think it's always. [00:44:58] Whitney Lee: A remedial question, [00:45:00] which is when you say you're, you spend a lot of time with analysts or spend a lot of time talking to analysts, are you paying them for their time to give you information? Are they, are you a [00:45:10] source for them? [00:45:11] Whitney Lee: What's the, who's getting from what, how? [00:45:15] Betty Junod: No, no. They have all these, they um, they have like, uh, subscription models [00:45:20] and such, but there's a lot of, like, you can brief analysts anytime. Okay. It's like you pitch them and you're like, 'cause we did that at startups when we weren't, um, clients of some of them, but we'd [00:45:30] say like, Hey, um, we have news. [00:45:32] Betty Junod: We're in this space. And you would, you know, submit it in. And, um, if it's a, if it's an area that they were interested in covering, they'll, you know, might give time. 'cause they want to [00:45:40] balance, like if you're, if you're known as like a, you know, the, the person in the industry that knows all about X topic or mm-hmm. [00:45:48] Betty Junod: Um, you're gonna talk to like the big companies [00:45:50] as well as the, the new up and coming. Companies in that space, so, [00:45:55] Whitney Lee: so you tell them what you're doing and Yeah. Don't need to ask [00:46:00] them questions unless you pay them. Yeah. The, [00:46:03] Betty Junod: it's like, it's called an inquiry. Yeah. [00:46:05] Whitney Lee: Okay, [00:46:05] Betty Junod: cool. Thank you. So there's all these server bottles. [00:46:07] Betty Junod: Yeah. [00:46:08] Coté: Yeah. I, I used to think of it [00:46:10] exactly as Betty is saying that you can, you can always, you can talk at them, but they try to get money if you, if you want them to talk at you. Right. Like, like if you, if you wanna ask questions, that's, that's [00:46:20] when, uh, they, they prefer to be paid. But, you know, I, I'm, I'm sure Betty never does this, but you can kind of. [00:46:26] Coté: Throw in a few freebies and questions in throughout a [00:46:30] briefing for, for 'cause. Sometimes you find analysts who just can't help themselves, but other ones are professional and, uh, I [00:46:37] Betty Junod: think is saying when he was an analyst, he was [00:46:40] always throwing in some questions. [00:46:41] Coté: Sure, sure. I'll always, yeah. I, I, I don't know, like I have a weird, I don't talk with analysts that much anymore, but when I do, I'm always like overly polite about like [00:46:50] not getting free shit from them. [00:46:51] Coté: But I don't know, may, maybe I shouldn't be. But, uh, anyhow, I try [00:46:56] Betty Junod: to be respectful of everybody's business models. [00:46:59] Coté: There you [00:47:00] go. That's, that's, that's, that's in the, the, uh, everything I need to know about life I learned in my MBA program. Uh, [00:47:08] Betty Junod: you know, just like I'd want everyone to be [00:47:10] respectful of ours. Like I just trying to [00:47:13] Coté: That's right. [00:47:14] Betty Junod: Pay forward in the same way [00:47:15] Coté: the, the second golden rule of business. I, I don't know what the first is, but that, that feels like it would [00:47:20] be. [00:47:23] Whitney Lee: I have like a gen AI issues that's come up for me that I wonder if you can relate to. Oh. Um, so [00:47:30] when, so I review a lot of talk proposals either from friends or peers or, or sometimes as part of a program committee. [00:47:37] Betty Junod: Mm-hmm. [00:47:37] Whitney Lee: And they're all starting to [00:47:40] become the same gen ai. Proposal. Like very similar formats, very similar sentence links very similar like dense [00:47:50] sentence structure, two adjectives when one will do. [00:47:53] Whitney Lee: Um, and it's kind of flattened out how they all look. And I'm wondering, [00:48:00] do you see the same thing again across like marketing copy, where you can be like, look at a website and be like, oh, that was obviously written by J Gen ai, [00:48:10] [00:48:10] Betty Junod: or do you. [00:48:16] Betty Junod: Sometimes some things. 'cause I'm like, if it seems it's, it's [00:48:20] where it's like, uh, it's missing a little personality. [00:48:23] Whitney Lee: Yeah, [00:48:23] Betty Junod: yeah. I know what you mean. It's like, it's like we took like the, uh, what was it when we were, um, like in high school and college, like the [00:48:30] MLA format or whatever, [00:48:31] Whitney Lee: Uhhuh. [00:48:31] Betty Junod: It's like now weirdly, everyone's following it and it's become super boring. [00:48:36] Whitney Lee: Boring. It's so boring. And I like, I, I'm finding [00:48:40] where if there's like silliness or even like. Mistakes, then I know it's human and I'm more attracted to it in a way. Yeah, [00:48:46] Betty Junod: yeah. Like the corks are missing from like the, the phrasing. [00:48:50] Yeah. [00:48:50] Coté: Right, right. Yeah, I think, I, I think, I think when, when you and I are talking about this previously, Whitney, you, you pointed out something interesting, which is, uh, this is a plus material, [00:49:00] right? [00:49:00] Coté: And, and like there's, there's no flaws in it, so. Maybe creative flaws as you're saying, but like if you are asked in, in a conference proposal to address how [00:49:10] you are gonna help these three people and the takeaways they're gonna have, it will do that. Right. Whereas like a human proposal, probably not, or like the way it's gonna do [00:49:20] it is not gonna be so great to to, to ask these things. [00:49:23] Betty Junod: I mean, the sheer number of times we've always had to ask, um, people that we were working with to, um, make sure you add a takeaway [00:49:30] to the audience. [00:49:31] Whitney Lee: Exactly. [00:49:33] Betty Junod: So like what? I'm like, why should they come to your talk? Make sure you say why they should come and then add a few takeaways. This [00:49:40] is what they'll learn. [00:49:40] Betty Junod: Yeah. [00:49:41] Whitney Lee: So now the takeaway part is taken care of, but now you need to add how you're human and how, how going this talk is different from just reading the documentation. [00:49:50] [00:49:51] Betty Junod: Yeah. Oh my goodness. Yes. [00:49:54] Whitney Lee: It's shifting. Yeah. Balancing Marketing to Buyers and Users --- [00:49:55] Coté: So, so I I, I have one last, uh, like enterprise software marketing [00:50:00] question, and then, and then maybe if, if Whitney has one Cote [00:50:02] Betty Junod: keeping us on track here, he's just like, let's take it back to the business questions. [00:50:06] Coté: Oh. You know, sure. Multiple tracks. But, so, [00:50:10] so, uh, in, in our, you know, thinking through the places you've worked, you've like, like for example, when you were at Docker, I think I, I don't know, I have the timelines wrong, but I think you might have. [00:50:20] Switch tracks between these two things, but in a lot of the kind of, uh, software that, that, that we've all worked on, your buyer is not the user essentially, right?[00:50:30] [00:50:30] Coté: Mm-hmm. Like you're selling, you're selling to someone way up who ne like never uses the thing. Um, and how do you, what do you do with that marketing [00:50:40] wise? Like how do you, 'cause in that situation, I mean. Based on my experience. Maybe, maybe you've got some great counterintuitive insight, but like you [00:50:50] have to talk to both of those Yeah. [00:50:52] Coté: Groups. And so how do you figure out balancing that out or what to do? Like how do you manage those two, two groups that you're marketing to? [00:50:59] Betty Junod: It's, [00:51:00] the struggle is real. If you're trying to get to one messaging doc for sure, that two pager becomes like a novel. Um, but, uh. [00:51:10] I think that the, at the highest level, like you, you, you want to like kind of have a messaging structure that, um, that can support that [00:51:20] people have to make a big buying decision because ultimately their buying decision is anchored on 'cause it's the outcomes that they want for the groups of individuals that have to use it.[00:51:30] [00:51:30] Betty Junod: So what, like in our developer tool space, right? Like it's all, if we say like, oh, it's gonna be so great for like, you know, uh, Jenny, when she does this in her day to day, what [00:51:40] does it mean for Jenny and her entire, her colleagues, all of her, all of her buddies that are doing the same thing every day? How does that result into something at the end? [00:51:48] Betty Junod: If you take 15, [00:51:50] 20, a hundred, Jennys. If that makes sense. So you do a messaging framework and you have this outcome. And then like if I were to break this D [00:52:00] down, um, within outcome, one of some, some benefit value statement. Um, what is the value to the business? What is the value to the team? What is the value to the [00:52:10] individual? [00:52:10] Betty Junod: Does that still line up? Can I cascade it? You know, can, can I follow that rabbit hole down? And it doesn't, it doesn't seem unauthentic. Mm-hmm. [00:52:18] Betty Junod: Right. [00:52:20] [00:52:20] Coté: I like that. It's, it's [00:52:22] Betty Junod: stoic. It's, [00:52:22] Coté: yeah. Also, I mean, this may not be universally applicable, but it's making me think that, uh. We've got all this, uh, what would you call it? [00:52:29] Coté: [00:52:30] Uh, can't or secret language of marketing and outcome. It's definitely one of them. And, and like, maybe, maybe an outcome means like the aggregate of Yeah. A [00:52:40] bunch of people's work, right? The aggregate of Jenny's, right. So like all your Jenny's working together equals an outcome. And so whenever you're doing outcome-based marketing, it's like the aggregate of the work where I guess, [00:52:50] I guess a Jenny could have a singular outcome, but that seems more like [00:52:53] Betty Junod: Absolutely. [00:52:54] Coté: Yeah. Yeah. But, but it's, uh. Yeah. Yeah. So the, the cascading roll up, do cascades [00:53:00] go up or down? I, I should figure that out, but like, [00:53:03] Betty Junod: Hmm. Um, in this, I think in our space of developer, kind of [00:53:10] like developer tooling, I think it cascades up. 'cause, uh, if, if we don't impact the, the day-to-day, um, of the individuals and the [00:53:20] collective experience of those individuals that we're serving, there is no higher order like. [00:53:26] Betty Junod: Business result outcome thing. [00:53:29] Coté: Right? Right. [00:53:30] And, and you kind of, you kind of started that way of saying like, well, you, you gotta talk to the buyer because if they don't buy it, there's no Ginny or, or Jenny is help, Jenny will be there, but yes, you're right. Ginny [00:53:40] is not helped by, by your tool. So start with, start with the, uh, with the, the buyer first. The Impact of Generative AI on Marketing --- [00:53:48] Whitney Lee: I have one more [00:53:50] question and that is, so we kind of talked about how Gen AI can help you research a lot faster or how it could [00:54:00] help write, um, marketing copy more quickly, whether or not it's as good, but like probably the whole process of getting to good is shorter because we have Gen AI's help. [00:54:10] So the question becomes like, do you need less people or. [00:54:16] Whitney Lee: If those people are now freed up to do new things, [00:54:20] what are those new things? Like what frontiers are being explored? [00:54:25] Betty Junod: I think that there's never enough people to do the creative work anyways. [00:54:30] Mm-hmm. We're always, I mean, we've all been in, um, some form of marketing and it's like, okay, my backlog list just keeps growing and I can ne and, and it's, [00:54:40] we always ask our bosses like, reprioritize. [00:54:42] Betty Junod: Yeah. Um, I think that what we have the opportunity to do is actually help more of [00:54:50] the, the customers, the users that we meant to, because sometimes when we reprioritize we're like, oh, but we knew this one feature was like kind of quirky, so we needed to, you know, [00:55:00] make this video or write these blogs and we never get to it. [00:55:02] Betty Junod: Right. [00:55:03] Whitney Lee: How does marketing directly help customers? [00:55:07] Betty Junod: Um, so when I think about marketing, um, [00:55:10] because I also, um, in this new role with is, um, have like folks in Dev re I think about like what can we do, um, [00:55:20] what the people that we're trying to serve with our product mm-hmm. Um, what are they trying to do in their jobs today and how can we show them that, like, using, you know, some variation of our, our [00:55:30] product in some way makes some of those things, some of those things that are hard, easier. [00:55:35] Betty Junod: Or is it a new way that they can do it or, you know, you have a new release and you know, the [00:55:40] feature works a certain way. So how make sure that, um, they're educate, that, make sure that we create the material to educate the user to do the steps in this [00:55:50] order as an example. [00:55:51] Whitney Lee: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. [00:55:53] Whitney Lee: Yeah. So making sure they're able back to Penny. Yeah. They're gonna, if they're successful. Yes. Yeah. [00:56:00] Conclusion and Wrap-Up --- [00:56:00] Coté: Well, I think, uh, I think we've solved. The marketing issue working at places, small, large, going in between. That's a good source. And also we've, [00:56:10] uh, we've figured out some ways to use generative ai. How, how, how is that for a wrap up, Whitney? [00:56:15] Coté: I don't need to use the, uh, [00:56:18] Whitney Lee: we'll ask, we'll ask Chachi BT [00:56:20] later. [00:56:21] Coté: That's right. Oh, that, that we could, we could ask for a wrap up and it'll be, it'll be perfect, but oddly not fun to listen to. [00:56:28] Betty Junod: Oh my [00:56:29] Whitney Lee: God. God, [00:56:30] I'd rather hear, I'd rather you hear, hear you do a bad job than hear Jane. I do a good job. Uh, so [00:56:40] thank you. [00:56:43] Coté: Anyhow, well, well, uh, speak, speak. Speaking of things, that would be a good job if people wanted to check out more of your stuff. Betty, where [00:56:50] do, do you have a, uh, do you have a cabin on the, the worldwide web? They can come knock on and look through your, your library? What, what do you got going on there? [00:56:57] Betty Junod: So, I've got betty od.com, but [00:57:00] my, but it's a little out of day, but you can still go there. [00:57:03] Betty Junod: Um, and then, uh, you know, workwise, just check out what we're doing at Heroku. [00:57:07] Coté: Yes. Very, very good. Well, I, uh, [00:57:10] I recommended earlier, but I think, I think your, uh, 17 minute, 45 second, however long it is. Marketing overview. I. Just do that. And I, and I think, I think marketing will improve [00:57:20] at many organizations. [00:57:21] Coté: We'll, all, we'll all help the users by, uh, having, having a better messaging framework in. Getting marketing people to spend something, some, uh, something, their time on [00:57:30] something better than not coming up with a new one. You can always modify it, but, but start with that. So, speaking of things that you can't modify, is that the past that you just spent listening to, [00:57:40] software defined interviews? [00:57:41] Coté: If you, if you wanna get the, uh, to that presentation, other things we mentioned, you can go to software defined interviews.com/ 1 0 3 and, [00:57:50] uh. It'll be there. We have a, we have a Slack channel you can join along with the other, uh, podcast software defined talk. All sorts of stuff over there. Uh, where you could start [00:58:00] submitting, uh, your picture of what, what was the prompt, uh, Whitney [00:58:04] Whitney Lee: make, make a picture of what you think I look like and a style you think I would [00:58:10] appreciate. [00:58:10] Coté: Yeah, just put that in the software defined interviews, uh, channel there and, uh, we'll, we'll see what's there. I think if you haven't seen it already, you should check out the one that, that, uh, it generated for Whitney. [00:58:20] I [00:58:20] Betty Junod: think pretty [00:58:21] Coté: wonderful. [00:58:23] Betty Junod: Alright. Mind right after this? [00:58:25] Coté: Yeah. Yeah. That'll be fun to see. [00:58:27] Coté: Alright, well with that, we'll see everyone next time. [00:58:30] Bye. Bye bye.