Could AI Be The End Of Creative And Copywriting Jobs?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - You're listening to Let's Talk Jobs,

00:00:08.640 | where we give you practical insights into jobs and careers.

00:00:11.600 | I'm Tim Chen, and today we're joined by Jesse Ratner.

00:00:15.000 | He's a marketing consultant for copywriting,

00:00:17.400 | content strategy, and so much more.

00:00:19.240 | Jesse, how are you doing?

00:00:20.920 | - I'm great, Tim, thanks for having me.

00:00:23.360 | - Now today's podcast episode's gonna be very interesting

00:00:26.200 | 'cause we're gonna be talking

00:00:27.040 | about artificial intelligence,

00:00:29.040 | and then we're gonna go into authenticity and humanity,

00:00:32.160 | and then we're gonna somehow end on personal growth

00:00:34.800 | and just freedom from our addictions.

00:00:36.920 | So hang tight, 'cause this is gonna be a fun ride.

00:00:39.240 | Jesse, before we get started,

00:00:40.320 | can you just tell me a little bit

00:00:41.320 | about what you're doing today?

00:00:43.560 | - Yeah, I'd love to.

00:00:44.880 | So today, as of April 5th, 2024,

00:00:49.640 | I'm doing a couple of things.

00:00:52.400 | My main engagement is with a laser manufacturer

00:00:58.000 | called Coherent, where I'm the lead content strategist,

00:01:01.160 | and I'm doing team management and digital strategy

00:01:06.160 | and a whole bunch of other things,

00:01:08.280 | and I've been doing that for about four years.

00:01:10.840 | In addition, I'm a copywriter for Kalibra,

00:01:14.880 | which is a data intelligence company

00:01:16.480 | that's been pivoting into the AI space more recently,

00:01:19.520 | and I write blogs and eBooks and things like that for them.

00:01:23.680 | I'm doing some work for MongoDB, writing SEO pages,

00:01:28.080 | mainly about AI topics like what is prompt engineering,

00:01:33.080 | what are embedded vectors,

00:01:37.360 | and then I'm also doing a little bit of work

00:01:40.920 | for another agency, Outliant,

00:01:42.920 | where I'm helping them with some brand repositioning

00:01:45.320 | and hopefully some other things.

00:01:47.080 | So I'm busy.

00:01:49.560 | I like the variety, I've always liked that.

00:01:52.940 | I like to work different parts of my brain,

00:01:56.620 | so my main role at Coherent, I'm a strategist,

00:02:01.180 | I'm managing the writers,

00:02:03.060 | I'm working with the stakeholders.

00:02:06.460 | Coherent has a very broad portfolio.

00:02:08.420 | They offer products for the life sciences space

00:02:12.540 | and the networking space,

00:02:14.300 | which means they're selling transceivers to hyperscalers

00:02:18.820 | and they're selling lasers, for example,

00:02:21.620 | to the EV markets, so EV manufacturers

00:02:24.660 | that are doing very advanced production lines

00:02:27.900 | and need very fast, high power lasers

00:02:31.020 | to help do the welding and all sorts of stuff.

00:02:34.340 | So that's a fascinating job.

00:02:36.220 | And my role is mostly strategic and planning,

00:02:39.580 | and the other roles are more,

00:02:43.040 | I'm executing on briefs, I'm writing blogs and eBooks

00:02:49.900 | and webpages and things like that.

00:02:52.500 | And other things come up now and again.

00:02:54.580 | I keep myself pretty busy

00:02:56.140 | and it's been that way for quite a while.

00:02:58.480 | I've been a consultant for nearly seven years now.

00:03:03.480 | - No, it's been fascinating

00:03:05.940 | just watching your career trajectory,

00:03:08.900 | 'cause when you and I met back at Logitech,

00:03:11.500 | you were writing copy for .com

00:03:13.460 | and I was managing the website of stuff,

00:03:15.300 | and I've always known you to be a very creative,

00:03:18.140 | hilarious, and just a fun guy to be around.

00:03:20.540 | And just kind of seeing you broaden your skillset

00:03:22.940 | and applying to different things,

00:03:24.780 | it's just really, really cool.

00:03:26.780 | And recently, you and I have been going back and forth

00:03:29.500 | online just talking about AI, right?

00:03:31.740 | And how does that affect our various lines of work

00:03:36.580 | or just addressing the fear of possibly

00:03:39.780 | AI displacing jobs and whatnot.

00:03:41.460 | So I'm just kind of curious, just jump right into that.

00:03:43.940 | What's top of mind for you

00:03:45.260 | and how do you see it impacting your field?

00:03:48.540 | - In a big way, I think it's already changing

00:03:53.540 | how creatives, copywriters, designers, SEO folks,

00:04:00.660 | strategists, creative directors,

00:04:04.020 | it's changing how I think fundamentally,

00:04:06.620 | not only how we go about our work,

00:04:10.700 | because I would say the majority of creators are using it.

00:04:15.020 | And if you're not using it,

00:04:16.220 | there's probably some resistance

00:04:17.780 | that's rooted in a real sort of animosity

00:04:21.420 | toward the technology.

00:04:22.260 | But I feel like I use it.

00:04:26.820 | I use the heck out of it.

00:04:27.860 | I have a subscription to ChatGPT Pro,

00:04:31.420 | to Gemini Pro, and to Cloud3 Opus.

00:04:36.420 | Because I wanna try them out and see which one's the best.

00:04:42.780 | Frankly, I find Cloud3 quite good

00:04:46.860 | and a lot better in a lot of ways than ChatGPT,

00:04:49.900 | even though that one gets most of the attention.

00:04:52.380 | So for now, in the moment today, April, 2024,

00:04:58.540 | it's affecting, I think everybody,

00:05:01.700 | to the extent that everyone's trying to use it

00:05:03.580 | and figure out how to use it well.

00:05:05.460 | If you wanna write a blog about embedded vectors,

00:05:09.580 | which I did recently, I'll use ChatGPT

00:05:14.300 | because it'll not only source the information for me,

00:05:17.740 | I'm not an expert in, I'm not a computer scientist,

00:05:20.260 | I'm not a data scientist, I'm not an AI engineer,

00:05:24.340 | but I know how to use the prompts to get me a draft.

00:05:27.340 | Now, there are lots of ticks,

00:05:29.620 | like there's certain linguistic patterns that,

00:05:33.180 | for example, ChatGPT often repeats,

00:05:36.060 | people will be familiar with this if they use it,

00:05:38.420 | the phrase in the realm of,

00:05:39.940 | like everything seems to start with that.

00:05:42.540 | And if you don't, if I were to be the kind of writer

00:05:46.420 | that just got a draft out of ChatGPT,

00:05:48.860 | said, "Oh, that's good enough, it makes sense,

00:05:51.020 | "the sentences are complete,

00:05:52.740 | "there's a subject and a verb and it's all,

00:05:55.300 | "it sounds right," and handed that over to my client,

00:05:58.540 | I would be surprised if they didn't throw it back at me

00:06:01.340 | and say, "What are you doing?"

00:06:02.940 | So any copywriter, I think, with his song

00:06:06.820 | is gonna know, okay, I really need to heavily edit it.

00:06:09.660 | Not only do I edit it, I need to work with the tool,

00:06:13.220 | the chatbot, to prompt it to iterate and improve.

00:06:18.220 | And so there's lots of things I think,

00:06:21.580 | whether it's executing on a blog

00:06:24.020 | or creating content strategy

00:06:25.900 | or thinking about brand strategy

00:06:28.540 | or coming up with a creative brief.

00:06:31.060 | I worked for a stint for Snapchat.

00:06:34.300 | And when I was at Snapchat,

00:06:35.540 | I was asked to develop some digital ad campaigns.

00:06:38.980 | And in order to get a quick look at some ideas,

00:06:41.780 | I worked with ChatGPT, I used Chat,

00:06:44.260 | I mean, I worked with ChatGPT,

00:06:47.300 | I used it as an assistant to help generate some ideas,

00:06:50.380 | but not only was it helpful in generating some ideas,

00:06:52.700 | some of which were really bad, like used to race,

00:06:54.820 | some of which were okay, needed refinement,

00:06:56.860 | but it gave me like a structure for a creative brief

00:07:01.860 | that was instantaneous.

00:07:04.860 | So although maybe only 50% of it was useful

00:07:09.740 | from beginning to end,

00:07:11.300 | and I had to do a lot of work to get it into a good spot,

00:07:14.820 | it's a productivity accelerator.

00:07:18.340 | I think none of us can deny that.

00:07:20.020 | And that's just for today.

00:07:21.380 | I think, so for today,

00:07:22.980 | I think we're trying to make sense of it.

00:07:25.180 | There's a lot of folks that are scared about it.

00:07:27.660 | Recently, Jon Stewart did this hilarious piece

00:07:31.380 | where he has snapshots of like Sam Altman saying,

00:07:36.380 | "I hate to be the awful tech bro,

00:07:41.860 | "but this stuff is gonna solve cancer.

00:07:45.100 | "It's like a no brainer."

00:07:46.780 | And then, this isn't exactly what he said verbatim.

00:07:50.580 | And then Sundar from Google says,

00:07:53.820 | "AI is more profound than fire or electricity."

00:07:58.500 | And then Jon Stewart like stops the tape

00:08:01.300 | and he says, I don't know if I can curse on this podcast.

00:08:06.300 | I guess I can, right?

00:08:07.780 | And he says, "Suck my beep, fire."

00:08:12.780 | Like, yeah, suck.

00:08:18.780 | So he's like, and I think Jon Stewart

00:08:20.900 | was just highlighting how optimistic

00:08:23.900 | I think some people are about it.

00:08:30.100 | It's gonna save cancer, cure cancer

00:08:33.300 | and solve climate change and overpopulation.

00:08:37.980 | And so I think you have very respected leaders

00:08:41.380 | in the tech industry saying,

00:08:42.860 | it's more profound than fire,

00:08:44.380 | which on the face of it sounds totally ridiculous.

00:08:46.420 | So when Jon Stewart satirizes that,

00:08:48.620 | I think we all just laugh 'cause, oh yeah, no way.

00:08:52.060 | But I don't know if he's wrong.

00:08:56.380 | I mean, honestly, and the reason is,

00:08:58.740 | so I'm talking about the things I'm using it for now,

00:09:01.340 | it's chat GPT-4.

00:09:03.980 | Well, what about, think back into like 2010

00:09:08.380 | when the iPhone three or four was out

00:09:10.700 | and it was kind of smallish and boxy.

00:09:14.220 | There was a lot of things that it didn't do

00:09:16.980 | that it can do today.

00:09:18.780 | The quality has improved tremendously.

00:09:20.900 | What are we on iOS 18?

00:09:26.380 | And so imagine chat GPT-18 or 10.

00:09:29.140 | So I think it's ability to accelerate productivity,

00:09:34.140 | to help creatives get to places

00:09:39.220 | that they need to go faster is transformative,

00:09:43.420 | but we're all scared.

00:09:46.420 | I'm scared that, okay, chat GPT-6 or 7 or 8

00:09:51.260 | maybe does my work better than I do and faster.

00:09:56.020 | - Yeah, I know it's interesting.

00:09:57.620 | In the hands of the right person

00:10:01.380 | who knows how to utilize it,

00:10:03.060 | that individual will probably be the one

00:10:05.220 | that displaces an individual who does not use it, right?

00:10:07.540 | 'Cause I think you're right.

00:10:08.900 | Like the ability for it to help refine your ideas

00:10:13.020 | or help you expand your brainstorming is just unparalleled.

00:10:17.340 | Right, like the way in my own applications

00:10:19.380 | when I'm writing content or headlines

00:10:21.580 | or even for website, as long as I am topically aligned

00:10:26.580 | to where I wanna go and feed it as much conditions

00:10:33.140 | or input as possible, it really helps refine ideas

00:10:36.180 | or exposes other things I haven't thought about.

00:10:38.260 | To your point, yeah, for me, it's even lower than that.

00:10:40.780 | Like only 30% of the stuff I'd probably even be comfortable

00:10:43.300 | using out of the box, but it's the constant iterations

00:10:46.940 | and refinement of ideas.

00:10:48.980 | That's where I think it's really cool right now.

00:10:51.380 | And I'm kind of curious about your take on this,

00:10:54.500 | which is, you know, my company included,

00:10:58.580 | and I know many companies have a lot of hesitancy

00:11:01.780 | or straight out ban chat GPT from internal use

00:11:05.860 | because they don't wanna put private information

00:11:09.540 | to be made publicly available, right?

00:11:11.260 | And so have you found, like,

00:11:13.620 | has that been a requirement imposed upon you

00:11:15.780 | where they want to limit your use of the tools

00:11:18.020 | for maybe certain topics or whatnot?

00:11:20.380 | Like, do you have to use discretion?

00:11:22.180 | - Companies have different policies around this.

00:11:26.780 | So right now, Coherent has issued licenses

00:11:29.460 | for all employees to use chat GPT 4 Pro.

00:11:33.540 | So they're encouraging us to use it as much as possible.

00:11:37.180 | Same thing with Mongo.

00:11:38.580 | Mongo, I worked on a sort of a playbook for them

00:11:43.060 | to help introduce AI and prompt engineering to their staff.

00:11:47.020 | They want folks to use it as much as possible.

00:11:49.180 | I mean, it's kind of core to their business.

00:11:50.700 | They're developing versions of their databases

00:11:54.980 | that are optimized for AI

00:11:56.980 | and for folks that wanna build AI applications.

00:11:59.340 | For Collibra, it's not as clear,

00:12:03.140 | and I don't generally use it for anything related to it.

00:12:06.500 | I certainly don't put anything that's, you know,

00:12:10.300 | not public or IP.

00:12:12.220 | I don't have really access to that stuff anyway.

00:12:14.740 | So, but I think it's a grab bag there.

00:12:19.740 | But just to go back to what you were saying

00:12:22.420 | about its usefulness and how much of it we can use.

00:12:26.020 | The challenge here is, and I do see Cloud3

00:12:30.380 | as quite a bit better than chat GPT

00:12:32.340 | in terms of reasoning skills,

00:12:34.220 | not just communication capability,

00:12:37.980 | but more of a natural conversational communication ability.

00:12:44.060 | Speed, it has a much larger, what they call context window,

00:12:46.980 | which means it can like hold more information at one time

00:12:50.620 | in one thread in its compute.

00:12:52.300 | So it's just, I think a lot better at this point

00:12:55.580 | for whatever reason.

00:12:56.620 | But I think the difference is, here's the thing.

00:13:02.900 | I think a lot of professionals, a lot of marketers,

00:13:07.420 | especially those that have budget responsibilities

00:13:10.260 | are gonna say to themselves,

00:13:12.580 | well, you know, chat GPT or cloud or Gemini or whatever

00:13:15.500 | is getting, or copilot, is getting useful headlines.

00:13:18.500 | Like they're not, I don't think,

00:13:25.500 | I don't think chat GPT or any of their cousins

00:13:29.540 | can at this point really write a super headline.

00:13:34.180 | Like recently I was blogging about,

00:13:35.700 | I posted on LinkedIn about my first,

00:13:39.740 | my very first, like actually my second,

00:13:41.460 | my first client as a copywriter,

00:13:43.500 | I was working on this movie, "Private Parts"

00:13:46.220 | by, that was a Howard Stern biopic.

00:13:48.700 | And I described like my process

00:13:50.060 | of getting to the line that made it.

00:13:51.820 | And if you know, many people probably recognize this poster.

00:13:54.460 | It's this giant Howard Stern.

00:13:56.700 | He's naked and he's standing in the New York City skyline.

00:14:00.100 | He's taller than the Empire State Building,

00:14:01.660 | which is sort of coming up between him,

00:14:03.780 | his legs and in front of his chest.

00:14:05.340 | And he's got this incredible Photoshop body.

00:14:08.580 | And so the movie is "Private Parts"

00:14:09.980 | and the title and the tagline is,

00:14:11.300 | never before has a man done so much with so little.

00:14:14.300 | I don't think chat GPT could come up with that line

00:14:17.580 | or a lot of other lines that other copywriters have written.

00:14:20.660 | But it could come up with a line that's serviceable for sure.

00:14:24.060 | And I think the challenge is gonna be,

00:14:25.860 | if you have P&L responsibilities or you're a founder,

00:14:28.940 | sometimes it's good enough, you know?

00:14:34.140 | - Yeah.

00:14:34.980 | - And sometimes I think, especially founders,

00:14:38.540 | what I've found working with startups,

00:14:40.820 | if it's a technical founder,

00:14:42.300 | they often don't know the difference

00:14:44.100 | with any kind of nuance.

00:14:46.140 | So I think creatives are in a position

00:14:48.380 | where we have to do a lot more to prove our value,

00:14:53.380 | to be nuanced about our choices with language,

00:14:57.780 | to, you know, resurrect cliches, but in an interesting way,

00:15:04.660 | to take a line and kind of fit it

00:15:07.220 | so it works a little bit harder.

00:15:10.420 | And I think that's something that AI can't do right now.

00:15:13.540 | It can't, AI is not, at least at this point,

00:15:17.500 | you're never gonna have an E.E. Cummings AI

00:15:20.980 | or a Toni Morrison AI or a T.S. Eliot AI

00:15:24.980 | or a Jordan Peele AI.

00:15:26.340 | I don't see that happening

00:15:27.700 | because AI can't make that intuitive leap

00:15:32.460 | that goes back to who we are as humans.

00:15:35.180 | We exist on this.

00:15:38.660 | I mean, a lot of times we're unconscious of it,

00:15:41.540 | but deep down, what is, who are we?

00:15:45.460 | What is in our souls?

00:15:46.980 | And what is that deep well of memory and relationships

00:15:51.980 | and childhood experiences and ancestors and all that stuff?

00:16:00.500 | AI just has data.

00:16:01.860 | - Yeah, you know, that reminds me of something,

00:16:06.340 | the inability for it to replicate human emotion

00:16:09.580 | or empathy or compassion, or even like cliches, right?

00:16:14.580 | There's a project I'm working on specifically right now

00:16:17.700 | where I'm sensing the limitation.

00:16:19.740 | And this could actually be a area

00:16:21.740 | for technology breakthrough, quite frankly,

00:16:23.340 | where I'm working on this project

00:16:25.860 | on globalization and localization, right?

00:16:28.580 | Your traditional workflow is you have a tool,

00:16:32.540 | you put a copy, you translate it,

00:16:34.860 | humans review it, and you upload it to a website, right?

00:16:38.500 | I'm trying to figure out how do I use machine learning,

00:16:41.220 | machine training, and AI/ML

00:16:43.380 | to hopefully reduce budget over time

00:16:47.380 | by using like machine language, right?

00:16:49.260 | And the limitation I'm discovering is,

00:16:53.100 | and this is why I asked you earlier

00:16:54.180 | about like closed versus open systems for AI.

00:16:57.260 | Like the way you talk about a brand,

00:16:59.860 | your tone, the way you talk about a product,

00:17:03.940 | specific phrases you use that are unique

00:17:06.180 | to you as a company, like those are not,

00:17:09.100 | those are purely internal, right?

00:17:10.900 | And so if I'm gonna train an engine

00:17:13.940 | to translate something in a way

00:17:15.980 | that I would speak as a human,

00:17:18.140 | it can't pull that data set from outside the company

00:17:21.060 | 'cause you don't want to pull in,

00:17:23.500 | you wanna be informed by whatever

00:17:25.060 | your competitors are saying, right?

00:17:25.980 | So it's very much internal.

00:17:27.020 | And that the limiting fact I'm realizing

00:17:29.500 | is that requires then a human piece of it

00:17:34.100 | where you have to train the engine.

00:17:37.340 | And the way you train the engine

00:17:38.500 | is it outputs a translation.

00:17:41.660 | As a human, you need to post edit it.

00:17:43.900 | And then you need to take that and retrain the engine.

00:17:46.100 | You have to do it at scale and my high quantity

00:17:49.540 | in order for the algorithm to be trained.

00:17:51.900 | And I'm realizing that this takes a lot

00:17:53.540 | of human resource and capital,

00:17:55.820 | and it takes a lot of money, right?

00:17:57.540 | And I think the area where I think

00:17:59.700 | technology breakthrough is gonna happen,

00:18:01.300 | I do know of one company which will not be named,

00:18:04.580 | but they're working on this,

00:18:05.980 | is they're using internally trained

00:18:08.660 | and built gen AI internally,

00:18:11.500 | and using that to train the translation engine.

00:18:15.260 | So the area where the humans doing the post editing,

00:18:17.460 | now the gen AI is talking to AI together

00:18:19.740 | to kind of figure it out.

00:18:20.900 | And then of course, there's still a human

00:18:23.140 | like a conductor piece of that,

00:18:24.460 | but that's what's fascinating to me.

00:18:26.340 | Like how do you take what's internal

00:18:30.380 | and then build that scale,

00:18:31.740 | especially sort of for smaller companies

00:18:33.140 | who may not have the budget to do something like that, right?

00:18:35.860 | It definitely takes an investment.

00:18:37.340 | But the thing I'm definitely realizing

00:18:39.260 | as I'm going through all this is,

00:18:41.100 | you're right, like it cannot replicate human tone

00:18:45.100 | and just the nuances of speech.

00:18:48.540 | And that's where I still have a little bit of hope,

00:18:50.860 | you know, like humanity will still thrive

00:18:55.100 | 'cause it has to, right?

00:18:56.340 | And there's a piece of that just can't be replicated.

00:18:58.220 | I'm just kind of curious, like what are your thoughts?

00:19:00.380 | Is something you've experienced as well?

00:19:01.860 | You know, like earlier you're talking about humanity

00:19:04.180 | and emotion drawing from your history,

00:19:06.300 | and obviously it's a crowded space right now

00:19:08.380 | in social media.

00:19:09.820 | I'm just kind of curious your thoughts on all that.

00:19:12.620 | - Are you saying if companies have sufficient technology,

00:19:20.500 | sufficient AI capabilities

00:19:22.580 | that they can build their own internal AI applications

00:19:27.060 | to leverage their brand voice requirements, et cetera,

00:19:32.060 | then they should be able to replicate what a human can do?

00:19:37.540 | Or is that?

00:19:38.380 | - No, it's more maybe even beyond that,

00:19:40.380 | which is maybe it's a different way

00:19:43.260 | of looking at this conversation and possibly a tangent,

00:19:46.180 | which is like, we're so focused right now with AI

00:19:48.740 | and how it's impacting social media and all the algorithms

00:19:51.900 | where I feel like the topic of transparency and authenticity

00:19:56.900 | it's starting to become blurred, right?

00:19:58.740 | Where you have all this information,

00:20:01.020 | you don't know where it's being sourced from,

00:20:02.700 | you don't know how genuine it is.

00:20:04.020 | And I feel like it's so much more important now

00:20:07.580 | to somehow cut through the clutter and be more genuine,

00:20:12.580 | right?

00:20:13.860 | 'Cause that's how I feel like the voices

00:20:14.980 | started becoming differentiated and heard.

00:20:17.020 | Is that something that you, can you relate to that?

00:20:19.220 | Or am I alone in that point of view?

00:20:21.020 | - I think it's always been a problem.

00:20:26.020 | In my experience, I have quite a number of years

00:20:29.540 | of experience working in tech.

00:20:31.060 | The challenge for tech companies is because they're technical

00:20:35.420 | when they go to market,

00:20:36.420 | their brand voice ought to be more human

00:20:38.300 | just to counteract the over technical language,

00:20:41.860 | especially if they're trying to reach decision makers

00:20:44.700 | and may not be engineers.

00:20:46.020 | So that's always been a challenge.

00:20:48.940 | And if you read, excuse me,

00:20:51.900 | if you look at one tech company's website

00:20:55.660 | and another and another and another,

00:20:57.020 | they all kind of sound the same.

00:20:58.380 | They're trying to be clear.

00:20:59.460 | They're trying to be concise.

00:21:00.500 | They're trying to be conversational.

00:21:02.740 | It's very rare that you find a brand voice

00:21:05.900 | that's very distinct.

00:21:06.900 | Like Apple is quite distinct.

00:21:08.980 | They're unabashedly boastful about their technology.

00:21:14.100 | So, and the difference between them and say Google

00:21:17.140 | is Google is gonna, okay.

00:21:18.940 | Let's say Google and Apple are both releasing new phones.

00:21:21.820 | Apple will say something more clever than this,

00:21:24.580 | but it would say the world's best phone just got better.

00:21:28.460 | But Google will say now 17.5 gillion gigabytes

00:21:34.940 | on our photos.

00:21:37.860 | Well, it used to,

00:21:40.060 | it would be more about the speeds and feeds

00:21:44.900 | and less about sort of the approach Apple often takes,

00:21:48.700 | which is more sort of boastful.

00:21:51.180 | So, but that's rare.

00:21:52.700 | And I think,

00:21:53.540 | and they have lots of marketers to help them

00:21:55.380 | get to that point, lots of creatives too.

00:21:57.740 | So, and it just, I think goes to show you

00:22:01.140 | that those brands that have those resources,

00:22:03.740 | and we know those two companies have lots of resources.

00:22:07.900 | That's what it takes, I think,

00:22:09.500 | to get to a really distinctive brand.

00:22:12.780 | And if you're not being distinctive on brand voice,

00:22:14.860 | you're really just distinguishing yourself on message.

00:22:17.020 | So, company is better at,

00:22:22.020 | I don't know, database speed.

00:22:27.020 | And another company is better at database flexibility.

00:22:32.300 | And another company is better at database scale

00:22:36.220 | or capabilities in some kind of way.

00:22:39.820 | So, it's not so much that the brand voice is distinctive.

00:22:43.460 | I think, especially when you see above the line marketing,

00:22:45.900 | when you look at commercials,

00:22:47.620 | that's where it often comes into play

00:22:49.540 | that I don't see right now AI being able

00:22:52.460 | to do the thing you're describing,

00:22:54.860 | because in order to really,

00:22:56.220 | let's think about some of the most memorable commercials

00:22:59.980 | over the years, like Apple's Think Different,

00:23:03.620 | or Wendy's Where's the Beef,

00:23:06.860 | or Budweiser's What's Was That, right?

00:23:11.940 | That one, or the Old Spice.

00:23:14.420 | I'm the man your man wishes he was, that kind of thing.

00:23:23.700 | Those ideas came out of, I think,

00:23:28.340 | not just an existing brand voice book,

00:23:33.700 | that the creators looked at and said,

00:23:35.460 | "Oh, okay, this is the idea,

00:23:36.660 | and here's how we're gonna say it."

00:23:38.580 | They came out of sparks of creativity.

00:23:41.300 | They came out of understanding the culture.

00:23:43.500 | They came out of leaps and intuition.

00:23:49.620 | And while that doesn't need to get worked

00:23:51.940 | into every line of copy,

00:23:53.140 | it doesn't always need to be in a lot of the copy,

00:23:55.660 | I think for brands that really

00:23:59.020 | wanna distinguish themselves,

00:24:01.900 | they're still gonna need to invest in creatives,

00:24:03.860 | humans that are creatives to help chart that path.

00:24:08.860 | And I think that's a real challenge

00:24:13.500 | when you look at it above the line,

00:24:14.740 | I think it's gonna be really hard to replace.

00:24:17.140 | But then again, OpenAI just released, is it Sona,

00:24:22.140 | which is the text-to-video,

00:24:23.900 | Sora, the text-to-video technology,

00:24:26.580 | and they had recently released some videos

00:24:30.500 | that they gave the technologies to some creative agencies,

00:24:34.580 | and they asked them to come up with something.

00:24:36.700 | And they just published this last month,

00:24:38.700 | and they are creative ideas.

00:24:42.500 | There's one called Airhead,

00:24:44.940 | which is basically the experience of this person

00:24:47.500 | with a yellow balloon as a head.

00:24:50.740 | And it's funny, and it's evocative,

00:24:53.140 | and they use this technology.

00:24:55.500 | Now, it was heavily directed by the people in the agency,

00:24:59.180 | but it was a beautiful piece of video.

00:25:02.540 | It didn't have some of the things we're seeing right now

00:25:07.060 | in fake videos where hands are weird and things like that.

00:25:11.780 | So, I mean, the truth is below the line stuff,

00:25:15.500 | like fact sheets for widgets and even web pages,

00:25:20.500 | like imagine product pages for, excuse me,

00:25:25.660 | like product page, imagine if you're at Logitech

00:25:27.820 | and you need a product page for a new mouse at $9,

00:25:31.380 | and there's like 42 other mice

00:25:33.100 | that they're selling for $9.

00:25:34.540 | Well, what better way to differentiate maybe

00:25:39.100 | and get those out quickly,

00:25:40.220 | but then to use T to produce it

00:25:42.300 | and just have a writer check it?

00:25:45.020 | - Yeah, you said something earlier

00:25:47.020 | that kind of reminded me of something,

00:25:49.460 | and maybe we can shift away from AI for a moment,

00:25:53.500 | which is you mentioned around speeds and feeds.

00:25:56.820 | And I'll use LinkedIn as an example in this case,

00:25:59.260 | where I remember at the very beginning,

00:26:02.820 | like everyone's used to Facebook, right?

00:26:04.460 | And then when LinkedIn came out,

00:26:05.620 | they weren't sure like, what do I post on here?

00:26:07.620 | Do I go personal?

00:26:08.820 | Do I go professional?

00:26:09.900 | Wherever it is, right?

00:26:10.740 | And clearly it's a professional network.

00:26:12.620 | And so people don't share as many personal stuff.

00:26:16.220 | And I feel like recently I've seen a big shift

00:26:19.540 | towards more of a speeds and feeds.

00:26:20.940 | And I don't know if part of it is like

00:26:21.860 | building your own cloud and your brand on LinkedIn

00:26:25.340 | as a professional, but I see it's starting

00:26:28.940 | to all kind of look the same.

00:26:30.540 | And your recent posts have been a little different

00:26:34.540 | where you kind of cut the clutter

00:26:36.340 | and there is some like truth

00:26:38.060 | and some pretty provocative thoughts

00:26:40.860 | in the things you're posting.

00:26:42.780 | I'm kind of curious, like what's driving you to do that?

00:26:45.380 | Like where's it coming from?

00:26:47.820 | And what are you passionate about

00:26:49.620 | that's changing the way you present yourself

00:26:51.660 | on social media?

00:26:54.780 | - Unprocessed emotions.

00:26:56.660 | I mean, that's some of it, right?

00:27:00.300 | I think in some ways, some of the things I've posted

00:27:03.420 | have been an effort to express some things

00:27:06.580 | that I've bottled up inside for a long time.

00:27:08.780 | And I felt they needed to be said.

00:27:13.740 | And for a long time, maybe I was worried.

00:27:16.100 | I was scared of the repercussions.

00:27:17.620 | I was scared of, would there be a backlash?

00:27:21.500 | Would I get fired from any of my current jobs?

00:27:23.980 | Because I'm saying stuff that maybe suggests

00:27:26.260 | that some of the places I've worked for

00:27:28.060 | have been a bit toxic.

00:27:29.460 | It's tough, yeah.

00:27:36.140 | - Were there a few posts in particular

00:27:37.620 | that really made you wonder if you should put out or not?

00:27:42.620 | Would you believe they'd be controversial?

00:27:45.180 | - Yeah, so I recently posted something about my experience

00:27:47.820 | getting pushed out of a big agency on the Google account.

00:27:53.820 | And I went into some detail about the way it happened.

00:27:57.660 | And I guess I had gotten to a point where,

00:28:00.420 | A, the company had been sold.

00:28:01.980 | I was less worried that they would sort of come back

00:28:06.020 | and it would hurt me, although it might.

00:28:09.460 | And I took a risk in posting this.

00:28:11.540 | You know, I was struck by something you said maybe,

00:28:18.260 | you had a podcast that you put out there

00:28:20.500 | about your own personal growth

00:28:21.660 | and about being in some tough situations

00:28:25.940 | where managers were not necessarily professional to you.

00:28:30.420 | And I was struck by, you said,

00:28:32.300 | one person came back to you and reached out and apologized.

00:28:36.500 | - Yeah.

00:28:37.340 | - And that really touched me.

00:28:38.180 | And that was after I had posted this thing

00:28:40.780 | about getting pushed out.

00:28:42.220 | That hasn't happened to me.

00:28:45.140 | And I'm grateful that maybe I've had the experiences

00:28:50.740 | I've had because when I got pushed out of the agency,

00:28:53.940 | it pushed me into being a consultant.

00:28:56.580 | And quickly after that, I started a small boutique agency

00:29:00.140 | and then that didn't work out.

00:29:01.300 | And I started another one and that didn't work out.

00:29:03.020 | But all those experiences gave me a lot of confidence

00:29:06.460 | and not just my skillset,

00:29:08.060 | 'cause I felt like I was already a capable copywriter

00:29:11.100 | and I could get jobs and hold them and advance

00:29:14.660 | and move up and manage other writers and other creatives.

00:29:19.180 | But I didn't know my worth in terms of the value of marketing

00:29:24.180 | as it relates to creative.

00:29:26.140 | As creatives, we're marketers

00:29:27.980 | and we have a lot of value to businesses.

00:29:31.300 | In fact, businesses only really have two jobs.

00:29:34.740 | That's to create a product or service

00:29:37.100 | and tell people about it.

00:29:38.340 | And, excuse me.

00:29:47.820 | And I wanted to start being...

00:29:51.020 | You're right in saying a lot of what I've seen

00:29:53.420 | also on Facebook, LinkedIn, it's a bit formulaic.

00:29:58.420 | It's like, I just reached a hundred million.

00:30:01.740 | Well, not a hundred million,

00:30:02.780 | but I just reached 10,000 followers.

00:30:05.620 | Thank you, which is great.

00:30:07.420 | Or here's three steps you need

00:30:10.340 | to make a million dollars in three days.

00:30:13.180 | Oh, that's not gonna work.

00:30:14.780 | Or here's all you need to do to be successful on LinkedIn,

00:30:19.780 | just post every day.

00:30:21.540 | Or any number of other kind of sort of really vapid stuff

00:30:27.940 | that I understand it's brand awareness, right?

00:30:33.540 | I mean, that's what folks are doing on LinkedIn.

00:30:37.500 | You're not getting leads right away.

00:30:38.820 | I mean, maybe some people are,

00:30:39.860 | but if you're looking for leads,

00:30:42.940 | I suppose to post regularly,

00:30:45.140 | put your name out there and you're creating brand awareness.

00:30:47.940 | Not that I like the term personal brand at all,

00:30:50.500 | but I think, so it has value, right?

00:30:53.700 | But you could be hurting your brand too.

00:30:56.100 | You can be putting stuff out there

00:30:58.380 | that undercuts your value,

00:30:59.580 | that says some things about you

00:31:01.100 | that maybe is not gonna help advance your business.

00:31:05.660 | So I've posted more, I think frankly,

00:31:10.140 | and I've always tried to do that.

00:31:11.300 | I think I don't see it as a place

00:31:15.660 | just to kind of post vapid stuff.

00:31:17.660 | Like I'm working on this post right now

00:31:19.260 | that I'm really worried about posting.

00:31:21.420 | It's a post about content marketing.

00:31:23.900 | It's called "Why Donald Trump is a Great Content Marketer."

00:31:27.500 | And I focus on his mugshot,

00:31:30.900 | which he sells as a coffee cup, or at least somebody does.

00:31:33.820 | So why is his mugshot coffee cup great content marketing?

00:31:37.340 | I break it down, like why it's helpful,

00:31:40.060 | 'cause it gives you a lot of information about him.

00:31:44.100 | It makes some great promises,

00:31:46.180 | and I add in some more colorful language,

00:31:48.140 | but oh man, I'm scared.

00:31:50.500 | If I post that, what's gonna, I mean, what kind of,

00:31:53.140 | I don't know.

00:31:53.980 | So it's kind of on the same level

00:31:56.180 | when I posted that thing

00:31:59.020 | about getting pushed out of the agency.

00:32:00.860 | It was scary.

00:32:02.500 | I thought a lot about it.

00:32:04.700 | I showed it to a couple of people, gave me some help.

00:32:08.500 | And I had people reach out to me immediately

00:32:12.940 | that I didn't know, strangers, and said thank you.

00:32:15.580 | I went through the same thing.

00:32:17.860 | And that's very gratifying.

00:32:19.580 | - Yeah, I totally agree.

00:32:21.940 | I've had several people reach out to me saying,

00:32:25.500 | hey, we looked at your YouTube channel,

00:32:27.900 | and here's things you can do to monetize it.

00:32:30.780 | And I'm like, you know what?

00:32:32.740 | I don't care about monetization.

00:32:35.340 | The whole reason for me to do this podcast

00:32:38.140 | was I'm just trying to help people, right?

00:32:40.260 | Like there's people who are struggling,

00:32:41.620 | and if there's any insight or knowledge

00:32:45.060 | or even one piece of advice that would allow them

00:32:47.660 | to approach and interview differently

00:32:49.900 | or to do a job search differently

00:32:51.740 | or just amplify their own work differently,

00:32:53.460 | like that's the whole point of it,

00:32:55.220 | especially with this economy

00:32:56.420 | with so much uncertainty around AI.

00:32:58.260 | Like that's why I'm doing it.

00:32:59.660 | And that's why your post really just kind of stood out to me

00:33:01.660 | because it's freaking refreshing, man.

00:33:06.420 | The lesson that someone should take from this is like,

00:33:10.220 | obviously you haven't posted your thing yet, right?

00:33:12.660 | What will be interesting is a discourse

00:33:15.100 | around like why you did it.

00:33:17.060 | 'Cause if you go in front of, let's say a,

00:33:20.460 | let's say somebody, you're interviewing for a job,

00:33:22.940 | and you've done something

00:33:23.940 | that might've been controversial,

00:33:25.380 | but the thought process that allowed you to take that risk,

00:33:29.940 | that is something that's worth inspecting into.

00:33:31.940 | It's like, what outcome were you trying to get

00:33:35.700 | for your audience?

00:33:37.460 | What were, what's your point of view?

00:33:39.540 | And what was your methodology in getting to that point?

00:33:43.180 | That skillset and, or courage,

00:33:47.420 | or even the thought process to go through that,

00:33:51.060 | you can't replicate that.

00:33:52.060 | You can't teach that.

00:33:53.540 | And for someone who's willing to do something like that

00:33:55.780 | versus just doing the safe thing,

00:33:57.460 | like I don't think right now is the right time to be safe

00:34:01.580 | because the market is tough.

00:34:04.260 | Companies have to stand out.

00:34:05.820 | And if you're just doing the same old thing,

00:34:07.620 | like it's just not gonna work.

00:34:08.980 | Like I'm proactively getting budgets cut

00:34:13.100 | because they are the same.

00:34:14.780 | And I'm being challenged to do more with less.

00:34:17.580 | And what does that mean?

00:34:18.900 | I gotta find a way to like innovate, right?

00:34:22.580 | And sometimes the innovating way you think

00:34:24.420 | and approach something is totally it.

00:34:25.740 | And again, it's really refreshing for me to see that.

00:34:28.500 | And I tend to gravitate a lot towards YouTube channels,

00:34:32.980 | you know, whether they're for work or just for fun, right?

00:34:36.140 | Like, and it's not even a political thing.

00:34:39.740 | Both aisles, if I see a truly authentic point of view,

00:34:43.860 | I wanna watch that.

00:34:44.700 | I don't wanna see the safe thing

00:34:46.300 | and something that clearly has an ulterior motive.

00:34:50.540 | So I just wanna kind of give you kudos on that, man.

00:34:52.660 | Like I hope you, whatever the reaction is,

00:34:55.900 | that it can turn into a different conversation

00:34:58.700 | 'cause I think the world needs it.

00:35:01.100 | - Thank you, I appreciate that.

00:35:02.340 | I think it is important.

00:35:04.620 | There's great pressure in corporate culture,

00:35:08.420 | whether you're in-house or not, to conform.

00:35:12.340 | - Yeah.

00:35:13.180 | - And often for good reason,

00:35:14.380 | because we all have to row sort of in the same direction

00:35:16.580 | to make progress.

00:35:17.780 | But can you row faster if you have some folks

00:35:22.980 | that maybe can help you build a bigger oar?

00:35:25.940 | I think, or a bigger sale.

00:35:30.580 | And I think maybe we could have more sales

00:35:33.820 | and less rowers, we get a little further down the line.

00:35:38.820 | It's very hard when you're trying to conform to be honest.

00:35:42.620 | And you touched on this, I think,

00:35:48.100 | in your podcast about personal growth,

00:35:50.020 | where you start then doubting yourself.

00:35:53.140 | Okay, why if I'm conforming,

00:35:57.820 | but I'm in a toxic culture, let's say,

00:35:59.900 | that's not validating my value,

00:36:02.900 | my skills and everything I'm clearly doing,

00:36:06.420 | you start to doubt yourself.

00:36:08.780 | And I think,

00:36:09.620 | I had another post that I posted.

00:36:17.620 | It was about racism.

00:36:19.580 | And I had this experience that I read something

00:36:26.780 | that took some lyrics from a Tupac song that changes lyrics,

00:36:31.780 | which is a song about the persistence of racism.

00:36:37.820 | And this person was,

00:36:40.620 | this person was an exec who was promoting a salesperson

00:36:47.900 | who in their sales pitch had leveraged these lyrics,

00:36:50.500 | but changed them from what they were

00:36:52.380 | to say something like, my website's broken,

00:36:56.460 | it really sucks, I need a new solution,

00:36:59.780 | I'm gonna get this new solution,

00:37:01.260 | which happened to be Webflow.

00:37:02.700 | And then all these people were jumping on her saying 100,

00:37:09.380 | but the emoji 100 and fire.

00:37:13.340 | And I was so offended,

00:37:16.780 | like righteously offended, unfortunately.

00:37:20.100 | And so I posted on it,

00:37:22.940 | don't you think this is appropriation and isn't that wrong?

00:37:27.940 | And the person, the original poster posted back,

00:37:32.820 | this isn't appropriation, this is respect,

00:37:35.100 | we loved blah, blah, blah.

00:37:37.060 | So I said, I think this is a parody.

00:37:39.540 | And she said, no.

00:37:42.100 | And I posted a definition of the parody,

00:37:43.860 | of what a parody is.

00:37:45.380 | And she deleted it.

00:37:46.420 | And then she DMs me on the side.

00:37:48.820 | And we had this long back and forth.

00:37:50.140 | It was my first Twitter war on LinkedIn.

00:37:52.620 | And anyway, so like a year went by.

00:37:57.100 | Well, no, that night I was so incensed.

00:37:59.340 | I wrote this like awful screed.

00:38:01.620 | I was gonna post about terrible this person was.

00:38:04.940 | I waited a whole year, I didn't post it.

00:38:07.380 | I posted it a couple of weeks ago.

00:38:11.180 | And for whatever reason, crickets,

00:38:12.740 | and I got really depressed and I deleted it.

00:38:14.940 | I should post it again.

00:38:18.220 | This person recently got promoted to a very senior position

00:38:23.220 | at a very prominent social media tool solution.

00:38:28.260 | Yeah.

00:38:30.220 | We disagreed.

00:38:34.260 | She had a great fondness, I guess, for Tupac.

00:38:37.060 | And she felt like she wasn't misappropriating

00:38:39.660 | or culturally appropriating his work.

00:38:42.700 | I thought she was.

00:38:43.780 | And I thought, it was more than just that she posted it.

00:38:46.900 | It was also the reaction.

00:38:48.180 | Like the hundreds of people that liked it.

00:38:50.380 | It was disgusting to me.

00:38:52.900 | I mean, so there's that.

00:38:57.380 | So some things I post, and then if I don't get a reaction,

00:39:00.220 | like I'm self-conscious about not getting a reaction.

00:39:03.940 | When I feel so invested in it, then I delete it.

00:39:08.460 | 'Cause I don't want it hanging out there

00:39:09.980 | and reminding me that no one really seems to care.

00:39:13.820 | Even though it's not about reactions.

00:39:15.580 | In reality, it's about, I mean,

00:39:16.980 | if you wanna think about performance per se on LinkedIn,

00:39:20.860 | it's about impressions.

00:39:21.860 | So, because you don't really know

00:39:24.020 | if someone's gonna react or not.

00:39:25.540 | If they saw it, then that means you reached somebody.

00:39:28.620 | - Yeah.

00:39:29.460 | So, you know, I've never had conversations with you

00:39:33.300 | like this before, you know?

00:39:34.820 | And it's pretty cool.

00:39:37.060 | And I see a lot of growth, you know?

00:39:40.060 | And you've clearly overcome a lot of things,

00:39:44.340 | whether it's self-inflicted or not.

00:39:46.500 | Can you tell us a little bit about your journey?

00:39:48.300 | You know, 'cause you and I have talked about

00:39:50.220 | whether it's addiction or could be whatever, right?

00:39:52.180 | And you and I have our own versions

00:39:53.740 | of whatever that looks like to us.

00:39:55.660 | But can you tell us about like your little journey

00:39:57.900 | and what you went through and where you are today?

00:40:01.580 | - Sure.

00:40:03.700 | You want the short version or the semi-short version?

00:40:06.340 | - Let's do semi-short.

00:40:08.140 | - Okay.

00:40:11.180 | When I was a youngster, I went to college in Oberlin,

00:40:15.740 | my first college.

00:40:16.820 | I ended up in Ohio.

00:40:19.220 | I was a California kid.

00:40:20.820 | I grew up in LA.

00:40:22.660 | And I ended up going to Oberlin, loved it.

00:40:27.660 | But also the summer before I left, my parents got divorced.

00:40:31.420 | There was a lot of kind of chaos

00:40:34.260 | in the few years leading up to that.

00:40:35.780 | I had been quite a good student.

00:40:38.220 | Like I was a scholar athlete,

00:40:40.340 | but I'd also gotten into using and drinking.

00:40:44.500 | And when I ended up at Oberlin, I was pretty isolated.

00:40:49.500 | I started smoking pot on my own a lot.

00:40:54.100 | Couple of years go by and I had this bad experience

00:40:59.900 | with mescaline and I lost it.

00:41:03.740 | I had a mental breakdown.

00:41:04.740 | So I dropped out of school

00:41:05.980 | and I ended up like going through a lot of stuff.

00:41:09.420 | Like eventually I ended up back at UCLA somehow.

00:41:13.180 | And I graduated from UCLA with an English degree

00:41:16.860 | and about the time I started that job

00:41:20.340 | writing copy for Howard Stern.

00:41:22.820 | But at the time, it's in 1993,

00:41:27.220 | my folks did an intervention and they said,

00:41:30.260 | 'cause I was living at my dad's house in Santa Monica

00:41:32.860 | and riding the big blue bus to UCLA.

00:41:35.460 | And he said, "You can't stay here anymore and keep using."

00:41:40.460 | I was getting high smoking pot.

00:41:43.180 | And it probably doesn't sound like a big thing,

00:41:45.980 | but I was stealing money from him to buy it.

00:41:48.420 | It was just not so hot.

00:41:51.540 | And so I ended up at a recovery house

00:41:54.980 | and I lived at a recovery house for 15 months

00:41:57.220 | while I went to UCLA.

00:41:59.340 | So imagine I was in a room

00:42:00.740 | with like six other recovery addicts

00:42:02.500 | and a house full of 25.

00:42:04.380 | It was a very intense experience.

00:42:06.500 | They had, I don't know if anyone's familiar with Synanon,

00:42:10.020 | but it's a cult out of Santa Monica that was eventually,

00:42:14.900 | the leader was like charged with federal crimes

00:42:18.540 | for like all sorts of awful stuff.

00:42:21.740 | Anyway, the guy that ran the house

00:42:23.940 | had an experience like that.

00:42:25.860 | He was very hardcore.

00:42:27.900 | We had groups where it was like ego smashing.

00:42:32.060 | You sat in the middle of the room

00:42:33.020 | and people just hurled insults at you for like hours.

00:42:36.180 | But it was supposedly, it was recovery.

00:42:37.580 | At the same time, I got involved with some other people

00:42:40.620 | that had a much more loving response.

00:42:43.580 | And so I stayed sober for a long time,

00:42:50.420 | moved up to the Bay Area in 2001.

00:42:53.780 | And I had done some work as a writer for taglines.

00:42:58.780 | And then eventually I got a job.

00:43:02.020 | I went back to school.

00:43:03.980 | I got an MFA in creative writing.

00:43:05.420 | I wrote a novel and I was teaching freshman composition.

00:43:10.420 | I got paid $400 a class.

00:43:12.900 | I had two classes per month, $400 per month.

00:43:15.500 | And I got a call from eBay to get a job as a writer

00:43:18.620 | and they were gonna pay $400 a day.

00:43:20.700 | So I took that and I've been a writer ever since.

00:43:23.660 | And then along the way, I guess,

00:43:28.660 | I was mainly sober, but until about, I guess,

00:43:33.180 | 2000, really about the time I had that push out,

00:43:37.980 | I have experience at the agency

00:43:39.340 | and I had a pretty rough time with this agency.

00:43:42.660 | I started where I had recruited a couple of people

00:43:44.500 | from the Google account

00:43:45.460 | and we just didn't work out together as partners.

00:43:48.700 | And I started using again off and on

00:43:51.220 | and then more intensely.

00:43:52.420 | And then in the last couple of years, quite a bit.

00:43:54.780 | And so I was sneaking it and I wasn't smoking so much.

00:43:59.780 | I would use other things like edibles or tinctures

00:44:03.980 | and I was really stoned all the time.

00:44:06.720 | I was functional, highly functional.

00:44:13.860 | I was earning a lot more than I'd ever learned,

00:44:17.460 | three, four times as much as I did

00:44:18.740 | as in-house corporate person.

00:44:20.500 | So that on the face of it, I was doing okay.

00:44:23.900 | Bought a house in San Francisco, have two cars,

00:44:27.220 | an Audi and a BMW, like we're doing fine.

00:44:30.140 | But emotionally I was dead in a way.

00:44:36.980 | And I was really dead to my wife and daughter.

00:44:39.860 | And at some point my wife said to me,

00:44:44.860 | "I know what you're doing, your daughter does too."

00:44:52.100 | She's like, "You have to stop."

00:44:54.300 | And so I did for a while and then I started again.

00:45:01.500 | And then more recently she said the same thing

00:45:05.540 | and I stopped again.

00:45:09.020 | And like immediately I had this intense explosion of energy

00:45:14.020 | and all that stuff I had bottled up,

00:45:21.460 | I was masking, was unmasked.

00:45:25.340 | And I'm still very close to that.

00:45:29.140 | I'm still working through it.

00:45:32.580 | I'm getting some therapy and a lot of therapy.

00:45:37.580 | And yeah, so I think all those things make up who I am today

00:45:46.240 | and I think I have a lot of respect for all the people

00:45:50.860 | that have been through things like this in other ways,

00:45:54.340 | but understand that we really only have today.

00:45:59.340 | - Yeah, I'm really proud of you, dude.

00:46:05.100 | When you have roots deep in anger or fear or pain

00:46:14.140 | and life adds to it and you cover it,

00:46:19.980 | when things bubble up, it's always really, really intense.

00:46:22.500 | And I can understand how you could fall back into it.

00:46:26.340 | I think for people listening to this,

00:46:31.780 | the part that's encouraging for me

00:46:33.620 | is you're able to find ways to get out.

00:46:36.620 | I think the key is obviously figuring out

00:46:38.740 | how to notice the indicators that pull you back in.

00:46:43.560 | But I'm excited that this time

00:46:47.860 | you described a burst of energy

00:46:49.500 | 'cause that's the first time you used that word

00:46:53.060 | at the exit of an addiction that you didn't use before.

00:46:57.820 | And I'm hoping this new life that you're discovering

00:47:01.900 | and re-energizing, reinvigorating,

00:47:03.460 | that you're channeling it into something else

00:47:05.240 | where those previous triggers that used to pull you in

00:47:07.780 | are now displaced by something new.

00:47:09.720 | And there is no need to go back

00:47:13.140 | 'cause now you found a new thing that gives you,

00:47:15.460 | that kind of hopefully covers over

00:47:19.020 | or makes up for some of the deficiencies you've had

00:47:21.540 | where you had to go and lean towards a substance

00:47:23.860 | to kind of take over.

00:47:26.220 | And so I'm happy for you, man.

00:47:29.280 | - Thank you.

00:47:31.700 | I appreciate that.

00:47:32.660 | And I don't think it's one thing.

00:47:34.180 | It's family, it's friends, it's really relationships.

00:47:42.820 | Some of it is what I think hopefully this podcast enables

00:47:47.820 | which is to help somebody else.

00:47:50.700 | Just one person would be a lot.

00:47:54.300 | And to know that we can go through hard times

00:47:59.300 | and still keep going that...

00:48:03.760 | I went to this concert in 2001 right after 9/11

00:48:13.380 | when Marsalis was playing at the Hollywood Bowl.

00:48:16.540 | And he played this 12 part symphony.

00:48:21.540 | And we mean he had the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra

00:48:26.420 | and then the LA Philharmonic and then the choir.

00:48:28.780 | And I think the symphony is named "All Rise."

00:48:32.620 | But at the end of it, they did the whole thing.

00:48:37.020 | It was like a two hour performance.

00:48:38.940 | And he gives this speech about how this horrible thing

00:48:43.940 | had happened in New York City, like the previous week.

00:48:50.500 | And he said, "You know what?

00:48:52.220 | We're gonna get up and keep going

00:48:54.860 | 'cause what else can we do?"

00:48:57.300 | Man, and then they did an encore.

00:49:04.620 | Like the LA Phil does not do encores.

00:49:08.180 | And it was cool.

00:49:10.940 | I lived in Hollywood at the time.

00:49:12.020 | I was like skipping all the way home.

00:49:13.740 | I was so happy.

00:49:14.980 | Yeah, I think music, for me,

00:49:19.060 | music is certainly inspiring.

00:49:20.780 | Writing, I've been writing a lot more.

00:49:23.860 | More personal stuff, too.

00:49:25.020 | I wanna really write more about more fiction,

00:49:30.020 | longer form stuff.

00:49:35.220 | I got an editor and I've been working on that.

00:49:38.700 | Exercise.

00:49:42.220 | Yeah, there's a bunch of things.

00:49:43.460 | I don't think it's any one thing,

00:49:44.860 | but I appreciate what you said.

00:49:47.300 | And I really do hope this reaches somebody

00:49:51.660 | and lets them know.

00:49:54.860 | I wanna say something about AI,

00:50:01.420 | but also something about just being human.

00:50:05.380 | AI feels really scary, I think,

00:50:07.540 | to creatives and maybe a lot of other people right now,

00:50:09.460 | because it feels like it's coming for our jobs.

00:50:11.860 | But AI doesn't really know right.

00:50:16.660 | I can say definitively,

00:50:17.740 | AI does not know right from wrong, but you do.

00:50:21.340 | AI doesn't have a soul, but you do.

00:50:30.740 | And I think that's really important to remember.

00:50:33.140 | - Yeah, I love that, man.

00:50:39.380 | I'm kind of in awe of just everything you said

00:50:42.380 | and quote, "What can't we do?"

00:50:44.860 | And I think maybe the advice I would give

00:50:48.460 | to people who are younger in their careers

00:50:50.380 | is look at me and you.

00:50:52.020 | We're old hats.

00:50:53.460 | I've got a white, my beard is white.

00:50:54.860 | I just cut it down.

00:50:56.500 | And I think that--

00:50:57.340 | - I'm white on my beard, I guess I do.

00:50:59.180 | It's salt and pepper.

00:51:00.580 | I think the thing that you and I are realizing

00:51:03.660 | is as we're kind of in this season

00:51:06.940 | of our career in our lives,

00:51:08.740 | we've done a lot of that, right?

00:51:11.620 | And we've, for the most part, we know who we are,

00:51:14.540 | or in some cases, maybe rediscovering.

00:51:16.580 | But there isn't this need or feeling

00:51:20.140 | like we need to go out and put ourselves

00:51:22.020 | in a way that we did when we were younger.

00:51:23.300 | And I think there is a need now

00:51:25.460 | to develop more genuine relationships

00:51:28.020 | or having more authenticity.

00:51:29.180 | Just coming back to the true center of who you are.

00:51:32.820 | And I think for someone who's young in their career,

00:51:35.140 | I would encourage you to discover that earlier.

00:51:38.540 | You know, 'cause I remember when I was early on my career,

00:51:40.700 | I was so focused on making a name for myself

00:51:43.660 | or creating a version of myself

00:51:45.860 | that I thought would be more marketable for employers.

00:51:48.780 | And along the way, it kept taking me away

00:51:51.220 | from my true north, my true center, right?

00:51:53.740 | And if I had just someone who just grabbed me

00:51:56.540 | and be like, "Dude, this is who you are.

00:51:59.140 | "Be who you are, be authentic.

00:52:02.500 | "Don't be afraid to be transparent."

00:52:04.340 | I think that would have caused me

00:52:07.300 | to make different decisions in my career.

00:52:10.260 | I think it would have made me approach conversations

00:52:12.140 | and relationships differently.

00:52:13.780 | It definitely would have made me approach interviews

00:52:16.500 | differently as well, in a way that probably

00:52:18.540 | would have felt refreshing to the interviewer,

00:52:20.260 | 'cause now they're getting something real

00:52:21.820 | and not some canned thing that was prepared.

00:52:25.620 | So yeah, and I love the reminder at the end of the day,

00:52:28.060 | it's like AI is there,

00:52:30.700 | but it's not gonna displace us as humans.

00:52:32.500 | And there's a role in it where we're invaluable, right?

00:52:37.500 | - There's a great poem by this Polish writer,

00:52:42.620 | Adam Zagajewski, I think he recently passed away.

00:52:45.740 | He has a poem entitled,

00:52:47.820 | "Do Not Let the Luminous Moment Dissolve."

00:52:51.380 | It's this amazing poem about the luminous moment,

00:52:56.380 | but he has a line in there,

00:52:58.500 | "We have yet to rise to the level of ourselves."

00:53:02.700 | That always struck me, like, okay,

00:53:08.940 | if I have to, what am I gonna do today?

00:53:14.660 | I don't know.

00:53:16.540 | I mean, maybe I have a plan, I have a list or whatever,

00:53:18.660 | but where can I really land at the end of the day?

00:53:22.620 | And then when I get to the end of the day,

00:53:25.460 | and I look back, where am I going tomorrow?

00:53:28.260 | I mean, in some ways it's a mystery.

00:53:30.140 | That's kind of the beauty of our lives,

00:53:32.180 | is if we can open ourselves up to the mystery

00:53:35.140 | and take a little bit of risk,

00:53:37.420 | even when we don't fully fill those shoes.

00:53:41.260 | I think I'm often surprised where I end up.

00:53:48.100 | I didn't expect to be doing this with you a year ago.

00:53:51.940 | I think you saw one of my posts and you reached out.

00:53:56.180 | - Yep.

00:53:57.020 | - So, yeah.

00:54:00.460 | - Yeah.

00:54:01.300 | Well, man, I wanna thank you for being on the show.

00:54:05.860 | I think there's so much goodness

00:54:08.180 | of what you kind of walk through in your stories,

00:54:11.580 | and I'm hoping that you'll join me again

00:54:14.900 | for a future episode.

00:54:15.780 | We're gonna talk about anything else,

00:54:17.020 | but Jesse Ratner, just wanna thank you

00:54:18.900 | for being on the show, man.

00:54:20.980 | - You're absolutely welcome, Tim.

00:54:22.340 | Thank you so much.

00:54:23.620 | - Take care.

00:54:24.460 | - All right, bye.

00:54:25.460 | (gentle music)

00:54:28.060 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Could AI Be The End Of Creative And Copywriting Jobs?

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