Become the best version of yourself

soleil-rain_2_09-06-2024_142132: [00:00:00] Hi Adam,

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Soleil: Hi, Linda.

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Soleil: Hi, Erika.

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Speaker 3: I'm sole rain a marketer and passionate storyteller,

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Soleil: Michael Baer is a fractional chief marketing officer with over 30 years of experience in omnichannel marketing that elevates brands and drives growth. Michael has worked across the board with Fortune five hundreds to startups. Ultimately transforming their marketing strategies to drive growth. Michael is an industry thought leader [00:02:00] and he developed the term stratecution, a concept that aligns strategy, execution, people, operations, and technology around a holistic marketing approach to accelerate growth. Michael, and thank you so much for joining me today. Yeah, I'm super excited for our conversation today. Before we start diving into health and wellness and marketing, can you tell us a little bit more about who you are, who Michael Baer is? Um, before you became industry thought leader and chief marketing officer?

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Sure, happy to. Um, I'm a lifelong marketer and I realized. Many years after I'd become, uh, a, a marketer that I think I was born into it because as a child I used to sing jingles. I used to say taglines. I used to quote adver a, a ad messages. So there must have something in [00:03:00] my brain particularly suited for it.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Um, I started my career in advertising. I spent over 20 years on the agency side as a, uh, account leader, strategic leader for big global accounts. In fact, I started in New York City. Uh, I worked at several big New York ad agencies, uh, on, uh, on packaged goods accounts on global businesses. And I pivoted then to, uh.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: To, I, I moved my career to Chicago for a, uh, 10 years, uh, to get some life, different life experience, but also I, I kind of approached my, my world in advertising as, uh, I wanted to make a horizontal. I. Swath across all of it so that I could extract the entire value of advertising, create my own lifelong MBA, and, uh, so that I could [00:04:00] move beyond it and become a, a, a holistic client side marketer, which is what I did.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: I realized early on in all in those days of, of, uh, of advertising in New York that I loved advertising, but really what I did was I loved marketing and strategy and I would. Really dig in and develop, you know, brand strategies. I, I love the idea of executing those brand strategies, but it was funny, I didn't really love ads.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: So, uh, so I, I, I think I, I was destined to ultimately, um, really oversee, you know, the totality of, of a brand's, uh, marketing versus just focusing on creating, you know, creating ads. As I was saying, I, I, my career took me from large global, uh, global, uh, lo global package goods, uh, advertising to more digital, digitally [00:05:00] focused, um, uh, agencies, and then even a media agency.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: And, and that was my entree into my first, uh, CMO gig, being a CMO for, uh, B2B businesses, uh, for about a decade prior to my time as a consultant.

Soleil: Hmm, that's great. When I was, how old was I? I think I was 19, 19, 20 years old. I was in college still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and where I wanted to go, what I wanted to major in. And I sat down with my mom and, and she was like, maybe you would like marketing. And I looked her in the eyes and I was like.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Right, right.

Soleil: every time I thought about marketing, like as a child, I thought of marketing as like the ad advertisements I would see in like gas stations and stuff, right? For like sodas or candy and stuff like that. I was like, don't wanna, I don't wanna do that. You know, I don't wanna just like make advertisements all day.

Soleil: That [00:06:00] sounds so boring. You know? It sounds like almost that was kind of your, but you, you actually experienced the ad side of it.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: I mean, I, I honestly, around the same time you did, uh, not in, not in chronology, but in my life, uh, chronology, um, n not in the actual timeline of, of the world, um, I had almost the exact same, uh, experience when I left college. I was trying to decide what to do and something or other, uh, got me focused on advertising as this combination of.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Kind of business and, you know, strategy and creativity and innovation and art and those two things, it's like left brain, right brain, yin yang was abs absolutely defined to me like from the early days. And there was something about that, that, that, that, that drew me in. Uh, so I, I had the, almost the same thing.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: So when I, you know, again, when I got into advertising, it was. Because of [00:07:00] this, this duality, this left and right brain aspect, which to me is really what marketing is about. That's the, and, and, and to something we've talked about before, stratecution like strategy, uh, is is as much about left brain, uh, as it is about right brain.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: 'cause there needs to be some lateral leaps in lateral thinking, uh, that, that, that give it, give it something that makes it memorable.

Soleil: Yeah. Yeah. And you ha have developed the term stratecution after working with businesses in their marketing departments, in their ad departments for a while. What were you seeing that businesses were lacking that inspired you to create this concept of stratecution.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Well, I'll tell you what it was that got me initially to uh, to. Come up with this concept. But it's interesting. There are, I think there are multiple different ways companies don't stratecute, if [00:08:00] that's a word. I, I, I've referenced that I was working with, um, global packaged goods brands, and one of them was Unilever, you know, universally known for, you know, highly strategic, uh, marketers.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Um, and. And they, And they were, and they, they are. Uh, and I, and I worked for a while with, with a variety of different, uh, segments in Unilever, um, and different people, but many, many of them, they all held kind of the same beliefs, which was this idea of interrogating the brand and finding the DNA of, you know, of the brand.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: And, um, and I, and I loved all that. Uh, and we would spend months and months and months. In, in qualitative research, quantitative research, um, uh, creating, you know, strategic concepts and testing those and such. And finally getting to some, you know, brilliant strategy, brilliant strategic [00:09:00] idea, uh, to the point of, you know, we'd have, you know, you know, it be written up on papers and people would hang them on their bulletin boards and such.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: I mean, and then. The execution would just fizzle. Either they'd make an ad, there'd be nothing else. We'd try to convince them that this big idea that the strategy was built around should have an interesting pack sticker. Or you should print things on the boxes that are shipped to the, to the supermarkets or, um, we should do something else different in the way we go to market.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: That would. Disrupt and demonstrate these, these, this fantastic strategic idea and we wouldn't do it. They couldn't change the X, Y, or Z, or we couldn't manage to do these things. And I, and I felt like at the end of the day, there was this belief that strategy. [00:10:00] Was this, you know, kind of the, the, the, the, the, Lord's work.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: This incredible, powerful, brilliant people were working together and this was really the engine of, of it. And then execution was just me. You know, we just, it would just, we run itself as if, once you had a strategy, you didn't need to focus as much on the actual execution of your, of your marketing plan.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Uh. I, you know, I realized that strategy and execution, of course, go together. But that strategic execution, that actually brilliant and brilliant lead done, uh, execution will likely lead to success even more so than brilliant strategy. Amazingly enough, and, you know, it, it hurt me even to come to this realization that a brilliant strategy with weak execution will fail, but.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Mediocre [00:11:00] strategic idea or big ideas, uh, with excellent flawless execution will succeed at some level. So, you know, it elevated the idea of execution in my mind that, that you could execute strategically. Um, and that's how I came up with it initially, that execution, especially as the world became more and more digital, that execution needed to be viewed strategically.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: In other words. There were so many decisions you make along implementing, uh, implementing a digital effort and more, and more and more every day. But where to whom, how do we redirect? What should we follow up with? What's the it, you know, all these decisions that, that, are strategic At the end of the day, it's not just press play and your strategy comes out.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Uh, so that's, that was how I came up with this concept. But, but it's funny because as I. Have now pivoted, not pivoted, but my career has led me more towards smaller companies, growth companies, [00:12:00] startups, companies that maybe have, you know, obviously have less resource and less people and less time and less, you know, budget to do things.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Um, so many of them. Just wanna get started with tactics, and especially with this, and I, this is a whole other podcast we can do another time about. I think there's this myth of performance marketing that, that it's just a, that it's just a. Press play and it works and you grow. Like it's this thing that it's just, it's just a thing.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: You don't need to do upfront work. You just get somebody to make some ads, you do Google ads and it's just gonna grow. Uh. So I, I believe there's a bit of a myth there, but I think there's, there's this mindset in, in, in many startups that you just gotta start, Hey, let's do some social media. Let's do some, a dify campaign.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Let's, uh, [00:13:00] put some ads on Google. Let's, and so what's your strategy? Oh, it, you know, we'll just iterate and then algorithm will help us and it'll just keep getting better. It's like, what's your brand strategy? What's your message? What's your. Who's your customer? What do we know? Like all the things up front, the strategy, so, so, you know, I think stratecution, as I was saying, is, is is this idea that strategy and execution.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: two sides of, of, a, of the same thing that they need to be thought of in tandem. And that on the one hand, strategy isn't an end in and of itself. That strategy needs to be seen through this lens of doing what will I do to achieve this, this strategic destination. I'm, I'm. I, I want for, for my business and execution, similarly, needs to be seen through the filter of strategy.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: What's the strategy? Who, what, you know, who, what, and, and where am I going so that the, so that the execution leads you there. I've seen so many times that [00:14:00] people get so focused on tactics and execution that, that, you know, as your head's down. Doing the execution. When you look up, you're not anywhere near the destination you, you had intended.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: You're, you're to get to. So that's, that's, you know, the two different ways that stratecution can be undone is strategy as an, as an end for in and of itself and not executing. Formally or holistically and, and vice versa. You know, just going straight to execution and not having decided and defined where those execution and that activation will lead you to, or, or is, is designed to lead you to.

Soleil: Yeah. The way that I kind of think about the importance of strategy, and you can let me know if this resonates with your idea of stratecution and strategy, um, is that. a good reason why to you should have strategy, at least a small bit of it [00:15:00] to start off with is because you then you have something to compare it to in the future, right?

Soleil: So if you are doing something, you have a strategy and you execute it's still not working right, something something's missing. People aren't coming to you, people aren't buying. It could be a few things, but at least you could look back at your strategy and say, okay, well maybe there's something here that, that needs to be changed.

Soleil: Or maybe let's adjust this instead of maybe we're, we're targeting the, the wrong customer here, or something like that. Does that resonate with your understanding of stratecution?

michael.baer@techcxo.com: I mean, I think strategy, I agree with you. Strategy gives you a filter to review things on and with, so it creates a consistency, which is super important. I, I don't think it's given enough. Credit or emphasis, uh, you know, even consistent things that we didn't like at first. I mean, you could think of a lot of [00:16:00] ad campaigns.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: The first 10 you saw didn't, didn't resonate with you, but somehow consistency makes it kind of hang together. Uh, so I think strategic consistency is important so you can, like you say, look back and things can connect, but it also provides this filter, uh, I was talking about. So. So often if you're working either with vendors or partners or even just people in house and you're about to do something and the person shares it with you or you, you, you look at it, how will you react to it to de decide whether or not it's good or bad?

michael.baer@techcxo.com: It's not just some subjective thing is, is it on strategy? Does it tell the story we have built for ourselves? Does it lead to where we want it to lead to? So it, it provides. A filter of, you know, guardrails to keep you from straying too far. So I, I, I think that's, [00:17:00] that's a key part of strategy. Um, it, takes a lot of guesswork out

michael.baer@techcxo.com: too.

Soleil: Yeah, definitely. And you said you've been working with a lot of smaller companies recently. Um, and with these companies, do you norm normally notice that they have, I think you said that they normally have more execution, right? Instead of strategy, they kind

Soleil: over the, the strategy part. When would a founder know it's time to focus more on their strategy instead of just trying to execute?

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Well, I think strategy starts right at the beginning of your company. Uh, not that it needs to be a tremendous amount of your time because you're still building things and building product, and building capability and creating partnerships and, and, and. Driving investment if necessary. But at the, you know, you still have to think about who am I for?

michael.baer@techcxo.com: [00:18:00] Why am I a good choice for them? Uh, how will I get to them? There are a lot, I mean, especially, uh, you know, there are a lot of great ideas that. Aren't success. I shouldn't say great ideas. There are amazing products and solutions that probably have come up. I mean, we know 90% of new products don't, you know, fail, they don't succeed.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Um, it's not because necessarily they were bad products, but they probably didn't or address a customer need. Um, just because there isn't one yet. I mean, it's funny, we've, I've. Many times come to this point where it's like, Hey, here's this product or idea where there's no competition. It's this niche.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: And I always say, is it a niche? Because no one's thought of it before or because no one needs it. one wants it and no one needs it. Um, so I think [00:19:00] strategy really is just. Again, beginning to think through who is my customer? What do they need? How does this solve their needs? Who will pay for it? And you, you mentioned healthcare marketing.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: A lot of times there's, there's great ideas that don't fit the current healthcare ecosystem because there isn't really a buyer for it. Um, we know that healthcare is a strange beast with. End users, meaning patients with providers, with payers and, and government payers. And there's, it's a very complex world and sometimes you come up with this thing, uh, that.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Can identify something better than anything else. Maybe it's some diagnostic AI tool. But if you can't find who the customer is, who will pay for it, who's incentivized to provide money for that, there's value enough for them that either, [00:20:00] that you know how to get, how to enter that, then it, it's not going to succeed.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: And so part of your strategy, even in early days is again, who is my customer? How are they going to find value in this? And. Will they, or how will I monetize that value?

Soleil: Hmm. Yeah. So what I'm hearing is that you should just always start with strategy. should sit down and you should come up with a, like, at least a small strategy.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Yeah, I think so. I, I, I do believe that, I mean, 'cause even, even in the product development stage, you have to identify whether there is a market for it in that strategy.

Soleil: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense I think, as you mentioned, you know, is this product niche because nobody's like, nobody needs it, or is it niche because nobody's thought of it yet. [00:21:00] And most companies very unfortunately, fail and. I would think it's because a lot of them don't do that research at first.

Soleil: They don't sit down and they don't ask themselves. Or maybe they're just so excited, you know, about their product, these founders, and they think, oh, I'm gonna do it, and then they lack that. That piece of, okay. I need to go ask somebody if they actually like, in like actually want to use this. Right? Um, and we touch base a little bit on this in my, in the exclusive episode of Sweat Strategy and Success.

Soleil: But I wanna go into it here too. 'cause I feel like it's important when you're thinking about your customer and your consumer, what questions should you be asking yourself when you're creating a product and doing this research to create your strategy? In order to determine whether it is a product that people will actually use versus a product that you're just excited about and ready to get going without doing that customer research.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: we, [00:22:00] we've, I think, talked about it. Um, not necessarily specific questions, but what are their challenges? Needs, how are they currently solving those or are they solving those? What are their expectations for a solution in this And then is this, does, does, does my solution solve those? And then, you know what I was saying before?

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Will they pay for it or is there a, is there a participant in this ecosystem? Who, who will pay for that?

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Soleil: With my own personal work with starting, I.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: I.

Soleil: being a little bit entrepreneurial here and there, it's always like, okay, let's start off with a minimal viable product. Right? And then using that as a, as an entry point into asking people. So for example, I started getting really into surf photography, um, when I lived in San Diego.

Soleil: And I really thought that there was a. Great idea there for me to like start a online business where you could take pictures of people surfing and then you could go onto this website, find your picture, and you could buy it through the website. Right. I was like, oh [00:24:00] my gosh, this is a wonderful idea. I'm so excited.

Soleil: This is amazing. And so I started and I took some pictures of people and I started handing out some cards asking like, oh, like. Like, I took some pictures of you. Do you wanna purchase it? I think I had, like, I probably handed pictures out or handed cards out to maybe like 300 people and got like three purchases in total. Very, very low conversion rate. And so that, like that little experiment, I was like, okay. Yeah, maybe I should adjust my, my, uh, my thoughts a little bit. So I think when it comes to marketing and in specifically in coming up with a strategy, it's also kind of about, you know, where you're starting off with your minimal viable product.

Soleil: And if that's a good place to continue to market it, right? So.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Yeah, no. Analogy in that you probably didn't talk to the surfers themselves and say, would you be interested in this? Maybe [00:25:00] those are people who I don't know, they're, they're, you know, on their own kind of people. They, they like to do their thing and they don't want to picture themselves or, you know, maybe, or, so it could be that you didn't quite understand the actual audience. But there are all other things too. In fact, one of the parts. We didn't talk about yet, but it could be that it's just too damn hard. You know, it's an idea that's good, but it's gonna take a lot of money, meaning, uh, to get to the right people to create this product. Uh, there there's just maybe just too big, you know, a lot of direct, I think a lot of direct to consumer.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Businesses that are probably low margin and they think we'll just get out there and do DTC advertising and we'll grow this business. And we saw a lot of it during the doc, you know, during the, you know, uh, um, post, you know, in during Covid, [00:26:00] uh. Money was thrown at them, but I think most of them ultimately didn't really make money.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: 'cause it's, it's costly. It's very costly to go direct to consumer, especially if you've got a big wide target and you need to sell a bunch to, you know, cover, uh, you know, cover costs and margins. So, so there's there, that's part of it too is, I guess it's part of strategy is understanding how do you scale.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: What the business model is. Um, that kind of, that kind of thing. 'cause just having somebody be interested is, is a big first step, but it's not the only step.

Soleil: Yeah. That's great. And what kind of businesses have you been working with in terms of industry recently? I.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Um, I have focused largely on healthcare businesses, healthcare. Is a broad topic. Uh, so I've worked in a number of different areas in healthcare. I've worked with the [00:27:00] provider side and on the hospital side, uh, a little bit in, in strategic, uh, transformation work. And, um, I've worked in.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Uh, both, you know, small companies, startup companies, but also I've been working with, uh, a, a very large global, global company doing strategy consulting, um, with them and I've worked with. Companies that provide technology and solutions for, uh, for pharma, uh, companies that, uh, engage with HCPs in order to communicate both CME and, and, uh, and, um.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Access to them that, that companies, you know, obviously pharma companies wanna be able to [00:28:00] get their ads and things like that in front of, so, so solution providers, marketing services, providers, uh, and, and, and health tech health, um, di digital health companies.

Soleil: Hmm. And are you seeing any kind of trends happening in the health and wellness industry right now in terms of marketing?

michael.baer@techcxo.com: I think one of the trends that people aren't talking enough about it transcends healthcare. Um, but it's particularly evident in healthcare, particularly post covid, which is just the glut of communication, the intense amount of clutter that has. Intensified, particularly for HCPs. So, you know, we all know the story.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Covid came all the [00:29:00] feet in the street. The salespeople from, you know, from healthcare couldn't go out and see their, see their customers and get new drug, you know, get the, get, get the pharma, you know, pharma story out. And so all these companies pivoted to. It's called non-personal promotion and digital promotions and, and, and email marketing grew and all these, all these tactics that are digital, um, began to work very, very well.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: And so digital spending on, on, on healthcare grew tremendously, dramatically over the last 3, 4, 5 years. But what has since happened is because of that, all of a sudden this giant amount of clutter is, is. Now fighting the, fighting the performance. It's, it's challenging the performance that, that we've seen, um, you know, in early days.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: And doctors or [00:30:00] HCPs or any of our, really, any customer that we're doing outreach to has. Created a, a, a, very thin filter of what they'll allow in. So it's becoming harder and harder. And you see this again, across, across categories. Uh, email, open rates, e uh, click rates, all these things. A add click rates are, are, are declining day in and day out.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: And so that's a challenge. And what I, what I fear is with AI or with, with, uh, generative ai. Um. It's lowered the bar to creating middling level quality content. So it's even accentuating this, this seismic clutter, this seismic glut of of content. So I just fear it's just becoming harder and harder to get anyone's attention, let alone a. You know, one of 3000 doctors who work in a [00:31:00] particular specialty. Um, so I think that's the challenge for all Mar, you know, all healthcare marketers is how do I, how do I break through this, you know, vast cluttered landscape and growing. I mean, let's be honest, it's not going back. In fact, as I was saying this, you know, AI content is making, it's making it easier to do things on an on autopilot, on, um.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: know, to the nth, to the nth degree. So, uh, how do I, how do I break through? How do I demonstrate authenticity? How do I, um, generate attention and interest for my message when I'm competing with so much noise out there?

Soleil: Hmm. And you, do you think there's a solution for this challenge?

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Um, I am working on it. Uh, I don't think there's a one, [00:32:00] uh, like OneNote solution. There's certainly not a silver bullet, so one of the things I say is you have to kind of try to do as much as you can, not any one thing. So yeah, email. email. is email performance is, is declining from what I see. Uh, that doesn't mean don't do email.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Um, I think you need to do email, uh, or, or you should be doing some email marketing. Um, but it, you can't expect it to be the only solution. So, um. Also, do you know the other things you were thinking? So, you know, LinkedIn and other social media marketing do, you know, do those things. But I think we're seeing those, you know, also struggling and certainly the Google ads and the programmatic ads are all suffering similar.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: F uh, so I think, I think there's no one single, single solution. I think it's, you have to, you have to. Play the, [00:33:00] you know, play the, uh, as, as many, as many things you can do and you can afford to do and or your resources can attend to, uh, to try to break through. The, the other thing I think is, you know,

michael.baer@techcxo.com: lazy, um, half baked or just product centric messaging is. Destined to fail. I think people, people's filters are again, fine tuned enough to filter out the things they know are either spammy or celly or. Uninteresting. So you really have to fight the urge to just tell somebody your fo your product name or your brand message or your, you have to try to under, again, this is why understanding what the customer's thinking, needing challenges are, pains are, uh, and the type kinds of topics and information they actually are searching for.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Uh, and, [00:34:00] and if you can. Build around those things authentically as, as authentically as you can. I think you can, you can get through. Um, and if you think about, I mean one of the words I like to use is empathy. Uh, it sounds a little soft, but empathy just means I understand you and thus I will act accordingly.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: You know, I will, I will feel for you in ways, so I won't. Yeah, so I'll, I'll just behave, uh, in that manner. And I think if you, if you understand your customer, then you have some empathy around it, then your behaviors will, will follow that. Um, and so the instincts to just go out there and push a message, push the product, I get it.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: I mean, believe me, marketing is not. It's not, um, an art form. It's, it's a commercial endeavor to, to, to over some amount of time, sell your product and, and drive revenue. There's no question about [00:35:00] it, but you have to be a little patient because some things take a little bit of time and you have to also, you know, nobody buys, you can't sell anybody anything.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: They have to buy it because you've drawn them to it and they. Determine it's something they want to buy. Uh, so saying your product message more and more is not gonna sell it more. It's gonna actually repel it more. And so, um, I think that's, you know, overarching gotta be the approach you take.

Soleil: Yeah, and I can hear it when you're talking about it, but I just want to clarify for this, for the sake of this podcast, that this is a trend that will continue into the future, correct.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Oh yeah. I mean, again, we see it every day. I mean, how many LinkedIn requests do you get from people who are selling you something, uh, and they don't really think about you and [00:36:00] what your needs are. They're just saying, we sell a solution and you might need it. Let's get together. I mean, that's. Imagine, imagine somebody coming up to you and saying, I have, so I would like you to get married or have a date, or you, you have, I don't even know you yet.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: I don't, you don't know me. You haven't even asked me a question about me. It's, it's a little bit like that. So I, so I think it's, and yes, we know also of all the AI tools that are making it easy to. Create a persona, connect it to a LinkedIn platform and it'll push out automated AI posts for you at your chosen time.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: So it's all happening and growing, uh, but most of it isn't. I.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: It's just more and easier. And so I think, you know, [00:37:00] because, and this is also could be in another podcast that you and I have, I believe that America's the home of the shortcut. We don't wanna do the work, we wanna get it done fast. So, you know, we. You know, we have ai. AI just makes it easy to do something.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: It doesn't make it better. And now because it's easier, it's, there'll be a lot more of it. So yes, it's gonna continue in the future. This trend.

Soleil: Yeah. And it almost seems like the, the solution really, and I think people are doing this with their marketing already, but maybe not to the true extent that it should be as authenticity, right? That word is just thrown around all over the place, especially around social media. Oh, you have to be authentic.

Soleil: You have to be authentic. But yeah, how can, how authentic can you be if you are just putting a prompt into chat GBT and having it spit something out for you? Right. Is that really [00:38:00] authenticity? So it's a balance. I think as well, we we're not gonna live in a future without ai. And

Soleil: in your opinion, how do you balance the two?

Soleil: I mean. Like almost all businesses will be using ai. there a different way

Soleil: be using AI in our marketing in order to excel ourselves forward into this future without losing that authenticity?

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Yes. I, I think first and foremost, AI should be used where it's really driving huge value, which is I. Repetitive tasks, things that take a long time, uh, that could be done easily by ai. Um, summarizing interviews, finding, finding things, uh, in huge documents. All that stuff is hugely helpful and I've used it very, very successfully, um, [00:39:00] to help develop the basis and basics and foundations of strategies and execution.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: I think it can create, uh, I think it can create. Topics and outlines and sketches and ideas of things quickly, really quickly, that then you can evaluate. And that's, that's helpful too. And that gets you somewhere faster too. Uh, and I think you can use it for first draft. Um, but my experience, uh, which I, there's a lot of it is, it's, it's, it does require human, a human touch.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Um. Editing, prompting, reprompt, all those things. Um, I, I would be really, uh, hesitant to just create a model where AI was pushing things out, automatedly without me reviewing [00:40:00] them, thinking about them, editing them. At least at this point, I mean, we, we don't know where it's headed. Uh, there are. Proponents and detractors.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Um, probably somewhere in the middle. But, um, it's obviously going, there's, there's plenty of innovation, there's a lot of money behind it, so it's not going away. Um, but I, I think at this point people should be using it. A lot for those things that are really it, it's absolutely proven to help speed up. Uh, but be, but just be, be careful about how you use it, um, when you're touching customers, because like we said, there are so, there's, there's a lot of clutter out there and you don't want to create more of it.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: And what, what's, so, what's happened? What's different than, than when I grew up in marketing. Um, bad ads were easy to avoid. And so you just tuned them out. Now you actually actively are repelled by, by brands that are [00:41:00] too pushy, too demanding, too tone deaf. Uh, you actually turn them off. And so I think brands do a lot of that.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: They'll, they'll say, let's just try this email where we're just going to sell. And it's like, I think you might get one person to respond, but 99, you know, out of a hundred will actually. Block you or, or, or turn you off. And that's, that's a danger.

Soleil: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. thank you so much Michael. I'm gonna end this episode with one last question. If you could have one piece of advice I. For founders starting their businesses, creating a strategy and creating execution, where would you tell them to start? What would your advice be?

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Um, I. I think it was in this, this little piece, not the earlier piece we talked, but I would, uh, but I would reiterate it, it's do your best to understand [00:42:00] your customer, uh, and understand the, the, their challenges and their needs and how you and your solution can possibly answer them and address them and how.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Communicate that to them. I think that's probably the foundation of all strategy in my

michael.baer@techcxo.com: opinion.

Soleil: Yeah. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much Michael.

Soleil: appreciate your time with me today, and I know people are going to find this interesting. If you're interested in getting in touch with Michael, um, you can do so at his email, which is attached to this podcast today. Um, and yeah, Michael, is there anything else you wanted to add on what you do and how you can help people?

michael.baer@techcxo.com: No, I, I, I'd love to talk, uh, to any of you. Um, happy to. Set up time and chat about your customer, about your, your business, your needs, or just talk about marketing.

Soleil: [00:43:00] Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Michael, and maybe it sounds like there's a future podcast in our future as well. There's so many different little topics that got brought up that makes me excited.

michael.baer@techcxo.com: Oh, it's been fun. Uh, thank you Soleil. course. Thank you.

Speaker 4: Thank you again for listening to this episode of Sweat Strategy and Success. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to follow on your favorite podcast listening platform, give it a rating and share with your friends and family. Next Wednesday. I'm talking with Lacey Henderson Paralympian speaker model and certified mental performance coach, currently working with the Portland Timbers.

Speaker 4: You really won't wanna miss this one, so make sure to make it back here next Wednesday. See you soon.