How to Adapt, Thrive, and Stay Human in an AI-Driven World

John Jantsch (00:00.686)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is Jon Jantsch and I think I’m kind of the guest today because my host today is Sarah Ney, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing and she’s gonna, we’re just gonna have a conversation about some of the things going on in the world of marketing. I’ve said before, I think 2025 is going to be a year to remember in terms of change. I’ll say that next year too, I bet.

But I think the pace of change that I think we’re seeing right now, just in the first couple of weeks of January, it’s kind of flooring me. And I think it’s going to be tough to keep up. So strap in, hang on, and here we go, sir.

Sara Nay (00:40.285)

And we were just having a discussion with some of our team about how we’re always, you know, looked at it, staying in top of marketing trends. And that’s been the position of duct tape marketing for a while. And right now we feel like we’re sprinting more than we have before with all the advancements. And that’s a lot of what we’re going to talk about today. So thanks for letting me steal the host seat. I want to start with a question. Sure.

John Jantsch (00:46.574)

You

John Jantsch (00:58.368)

Yeah. Well, I can, throw in a joke, a lame joke. So R and D now stands for run and dash.

Sara Nay (01:03.805)

I it. Well, I’m going to start with a question. You’ve been in the game, the marketing game for quite some time now. So you were involved when websites, everyone started building websites and getting online. And also when social media became a thing and everyone was talking about how that’s going to change the whole entire industry. And so right now, obviously we’re going through a lot of conversation and discussion and excitement around AI and everything that’s evolving there. So I’m curious, how does right now feel the same?

than some of those different excitement phases that have happened or developments that have happened over the years. And also on the other end, how does it feel a bit different this time or does it feel different?

John Jantsch (01:41.964)

Yeah. So, I mean, in some ways it feels if there’s a same, it’s fundamentally what we’re here to do as marketers. I don’t think it’ll ever change. And so a lot of the changes that came along were like, wait, we have a new way to interact with customers. We have a new platform to be found. Customers, you know, have a different way to buy from us. So those were, those were kind of in a lot of ways, incremental changes, significant ones for a lot of folks.

In terms of the change with what AI is bringing, I think it’s much more foundational. It certainly feels very different. And I think partly because it impacts so many areas of a business. A lot of the website was kind of a marketing thing, whereas AI is impacting finance, it’s impacting customer service, it’s impacting certainly all the marketing functions. And ultimately it’s impacting consumers and what they’re able to do greatly.

I just feel like this is a, you know, I’ve heard some people say this, it might be kind of cliche, but you know, this is almost like, this is almost like, you know, the industrial revolution, like all these machines, you know, came along that automated, you know, manual labor that, you know, that, that really displaced a lot of jobs and started creating the, you know, the knowledge economy. And I think this is a bit more like that. This is going to fundamentally shift how we work.

Sara Nay (03:04.059)

Yeah, absolutely. And the school system, a lot of it was built from that era as well. And so I’ve heard a lot of conversation about, you know, potentially AI adjusting how we actually teach our children in school as well. Who needs it? It’s done for you. A lot of what you’ve spoken about over the years is strategy before tactics. And now a lot of people are talking about strategy before technology. And so I’m just curious your take on there’s, there’s a lot of shiny objects in AI.

John Jantsch (03:08.546)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (03:14.722)

Yeah, no more math, right? Who needs math? Who needs learned math, right?

John Jantsch (03:24.557)

Yes.

John Jantsch (03:31.278)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (03:31.867)

There’s a lot of, every time I check my email, there’s 10 different tools that are being recommended for me that relate to AI. And so I think a lot of people are getting sucked into just doing things and figuring out how it works, but not necessarily taking a step back and saying, how could this apply to my business? How could I approach this strategically? So what would your advice be there for someone that needs to get out of the shiny object syndrome and focus on the strategy behind it?

John Jantsch (03:54.498)

Well, I think there’s a real danger in not. In fact, think strategy is more important. And here’s why. It’s like taking somebody who used to ride a bike. You know, got a helmet, you’re riding the bike, you’re probably okay if you crash unless you’re like on a mountain or something, right? But now we’re going to put somebody in the seat of a Lamborghini without a seatbelt, without a helmet. We’re going to say, drive really fast. And if they don’t…

If they’re on the right road, if they don’t have the right map, if they don’t have the right skills, you know, they’re just going to, they’re just going to die faster. I know that’s sort of dramatic, but I think that that’s what’s going to happen from a marketing state, from a business. If your strategy is wrong, if your messaging is wrong, if your product market fit is wrong, you’re just going to fail faster now. So you might succeed faster as well.

Sara Nay (04:29.233)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (04:43.648)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (04:46.606)

But if you don’t have the right strategy in place, it’s going to say, here’s the path we’re going to take. There’s a real danger in just having a whole lot of technology that’s going to get you there faster.

Sara Nay (04:57.649)

Yeah, absolutely. What about the mindset shift too? Cause there definitely are different sides of things. People are like AI is the future, stuff’s changing quickly. This is the best thing ever. But there’s also the other side of things where people are like, I’m terrified as where we’re going, we’re going to lose all these jobs. And so what about adopting the right mindset to be able to advance with these different tools?

John Jantsch (05:04.824)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (05:10.424)

Sure. Yeah.

John Jantsch (05:16.13)

Well, I think there’s legitimate fear. There are a lot of jobs that are going to be displaced, a lot of positions, a lot of skills that are not going to be that important. mean, when you think about it, I now have the world’s smartest human beings, the world’s greatest IQ at my disposal. All of sudden being smarter is not going to be an advantage necessarily because we can tap that computing power.

so the mindset shifts, I think, I think it’s a two level, certainly at the leadership level, you have to embrace it. You have to train your folks. You have to get them ready. And I think at the manager, the skilled, you know, person working in an organization, you know, they have to realize that their job is probably not, any more about doing technical things. it is going to be about managing the path that those technical things are being done on. So.

You know, that might not be a fit for everybody who really likes to get in there and crunch the numbers and analyze the data. You know, instead of really looking at like, I need to be really good at reading actuary tables, for example, you actually need to be really good at analyzing this amazing output that you’re going to get from these tools and managing and orchestrating the output that you get and making sense of it and contextualizing it. And that’s probably a different skill set.

You know, before we got on the call, I was, and I give Lisa Adams full credit for this. her up on LinkedIn. If you want to find out some somebody who’s really doing some great things in AI. But she, she said this statement. I think we’ve been saying it for a long time. Strategy is going to be more important. The human element is going to be more important, but she, just nails it with this. As AI democratizes IQ, EQ is going to become more important.

Some people call them soft skills, but emotional quotient. The ability to bring emotion, the ability to bring reality into who you’re trying to market you, to understand your customers, to understand the context in which your customers are trying to solve their problems. Those are things that humans with high EQ are very, very good at.

John Jantsch (07:33.058)

you can take it farther. mean, AI is democratizing reach. So community is going to be more important. Like as we can like spam more people, you know, communicating is going to be more important as AI just makes it so easy for anybody who’s never written two words, or put two sentences together, can now create, you know, theoretically create long form content, you know, having that personal connection with your clients is going to become more important. So those are all things that

If you were going to go read a book or take a course on EQ, those are the kinds of things, listening, empathy are the kinds of things that they would talk about. And I think those are going to be the things that those are going to be the skills that are going to be valued in the job market moving forward.

Sara Nay (08:19.611)

Yeah, absolutely. And so we’ve talked about this a lot, you and I too, it’s right now it’s we’re not thinking about AI is replacing jobs. It’s helping us do different or better or higher level work. And so think that also sums up what you were saying there. We’re not like firing our whole team and letting them go because we’re bringing a bunch of AI. but we are helping them all elevate and us ourselves elevate, you know, to, focus on the strategic thinking and the creativity and the collaboration and the EQ elements that you talked about there as well.

John Jantsch (08:48.844)

Yeah, and sadly, there will be people that are looking at that way. Look, I can have all these agents and I don’t have to have any people. I saw somebody post on LinkedIn, the $3 billion company with only three employees. you know, those get headlines, those get clicks. But, you know, frankly, it is going to displace the positions or the functions inside of organizations. you know, certainly people with high EQ, I think, will

who can adapt to kind of a new way to work, I think will thrive. And there will be some, you know, just like everything. I mean, when the automobile came along, you know, when the factories came along, mean, different jobs got displaced when the computer came along, you know, different jobs got displaced. And, you know, the, the, it ultimately, you know, new jobs were created, new education was created, new training was created for people to, you know, to change the skills. But that’s

Sara Nay (09:20.669)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (09:44.482)

You know, it’s never great for somebody that, you know, all their life has done a certain type of job and now they’re being told, you have to, you have to work differently than you have your whole life. But you know, that that’s come really with, with even incremental changes, you know, over time in the workplace.

Sara Nay (09:53.776)

No.

Sara Nay (10:00.197)

Yeah, I think it’s really important. I read something the other day about the mind shift with AI and what you were talking about there is like, you really have to have a growth mindset with this thing. You have to be eager to learn and expand and grow as a human to be able to get the full capabilities of AI. And I think that’s a good, good way to think about it as well.

John Jantsch (10:07.918)

Totally. Totally.

John Jantsch (10:16.504)

Yeah. And I’ll acknowledge it’s exhausting. but you, you know, I think particularly at the speed, you know, that we’re moving right now, but you’re absolutely right. You have to have that gross mindset and, and it’s tough because I mean, it means you have to do things that are not comfortable. Maybe, you know, there, there’s a lot of people that you mentioned this idea that AI seems really frightening and kind of techie. And so there’s just.

Sara Nay (10:18.993)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (10:43.468)

You know, some folks that that’s, know, that’s not their comfort zone, but it’s a matter of, don’t mean this in a really negative sounding way, but, I don’t think we have much choice.

Sara Nay (10:55.079)

Yeah.

Another area I want to dive into a bit more is you mentioned the human element a little bit more and making personal connections with your clients. And so with the evolution of AI right now, we’re seeing people are producing more content. There’s chat bots online, you’re, you know, you’re getting cold outreach, direct outreach from AI tools. And so there’s a lot of stuff that feels very automated. LinkedIn comments is another example where it just feels very automated. So how can companies stand out from that noise by doing things such as, you know, building trust, building brand actually

John Jantsch (11:07.491)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:25.635)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (11:26.675)

connecting with people. So what are some examples to stand out from the noise?

John Jantsch (11:30.894)

Well, I think for a lot of marketers, particularly, you have to really understand your brand voice. mean, you have to have a brand voice. mean, that’s one of your differentiators. Duct tape marketing is quite often seen by people as very practical, down to earth, plain spoken. And that’s a brand voice that we’ve spent a lot of time developing. And shame on us if we use some of the automation tools to not sound like us.

so, so I think that’s really, you know, I feel like we’re very empathetic. think we’re very caring about what we do, and care about the people that we serve. and that comes out, I think in the content that we produce and, you know, it is really tempting to say, look, I can do a, I can automate somebody having a hundred LinkedIn comments, you know, spread all over the place. Well, first off, it probably is counter.

to what you’re trying to do because you know, you and I have laughed about it. You see these comments on your LinkedIn posts and it’s clearly, you know, that was just AI generated and, and, you know, it really actually kind of makes you want to ban that person, you know? And so it’s certainly not doing any value for them. But I think what it just means is it’ll get easier to spot something that is both AI generated and something that is actually authentically generated.

I think you’ll get, I think the gap between those two is going to get even larger. And so spending the time to say, Hey, here’s who I really am. And this is how I talk. And maybe I don’t use punctuation here, you know, whatever, whatever it is, that is your brand voice. I think just understand it and stay true to it. And I know there are a lot of people talking about, you can train AI to do that. but I can spot it.

Sara Nay (13:18.619)

Yeah. think one of the easiest ways to spot an actual human producing content for me versus AI, one of the best ways I can see is storytelling. If someone’s talking about their actual personal experiences, I think that’s an easy way to spot. do you think there’s going to be an increased importance of storytelling as a brand and also humans representing the brand as well?

John Jantsch (13:27.458)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (13:39.148)

Yeah. Yeah. I think storytelling has actually been, it’s been hot for 10 years. know, I mean that idea in marketing, but I think you’re right. It’s now going to be a key differentiator. mean, AI can’t make up that case story or that example of, know, what happened, you know, on the day at work in your actual office can’t be made up. And so, you know, I think that that’s a lot of ways going to be a huge differentiator.

Sara Nay (14:04.081)

Yeah, absolutely. Do you think there’s a specific area of marketing that’s being shaken up the most right now? So SEO, paid, any channels that are being shaken up the most right now?

John Jantsch (14:12.653)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:16.194)

Well, I think the content one was the first one that of course, you know, when people woke up and went, wait, I hate writing content. You mean I can just put this in this thing and it’ll spit out 700 words? I mean, the real temptation, you know, was first there because it seemed so easy. It seemed, you know, too good to be true, right? And so people certainly jumped in there. So it, now a lot of people are starting to realize the backlash of that and the fallacy of, you know, of that just being able to produce content. So that was the first area though that clearly got disrupted.

I would say the next one is clearly going to be coming in the creative space, the design, the video, the editing. mean, those are things that, again, I don’t think there’s too many people out there going to Dali and producing images for everything, but certainly it’s not far away and they’re not only having video and audio editing tools that work quite well, they’re going to have video and audio creation.

tools that are going to work, you know, to the, to the level where you could actually put in a script and it will actually create an entire video for you. So I think there’ll be some disruption there. Again, I think that’s one of those things that now all of a sudden there’s the, know, there’s a lot of things that AI tools can do. And, you know, I think the differentiator is going to be somebody looking at it and saying, you know, with our brand voice in mind, with our brand promise in mind.

what should it do? And so, you know, there are things, you know, I had somebody that wanted to have an AI bot interview me for a podcast, you know, for, for example, I was like, well, first off, I wasn’t interested, but secondly, I was like, why would anybody, you know, think that was a good idea? But, you know, there are a lot of things that people do because they look at it they go, look, if we connect this together and this connect and people get really excited about that.

Sara Nay (16:01.852)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:10.382)

But I think we have to stay real and say, okay, from a practical sense, what would be best experience for our clients?

Sara Nay (16:17.723)

Yeah, absolutely. And that’s why we’ve been really focused on recently in our conversations is what’s a good use case. Like, why are we exploring this? How can we actually make a difference with that? And I think that’s an important thing to keep in mind. Another area that I’ve heard you talk about a little bit is hyper personalization in terms of communication. And so it’s not going to be just about mass content to everyone that follows you. Like we have an opportunity to get a lot more focused in what we’re saying to specific people. So I would love to just hear your, your insights and what do you think the opportunity there is for 2025?

John Jantsch (16:47.352)

Well, for a lot of smaller businesses, the opportunity, mean, personalization has been there. Let’s face it, since email service providers came along and you could say, John, inside an email, that’s a level of personalization that’s been there forever. But what AI does is gives us easier access to a lot of data. So for instance, not only do I know your first name,

I know your LinkedIn profile and I know the last five things you’ve posted about. And that can actually be brought into a data set, you know, keeping all privacy, you know, things in mind that can be brought into a data set that would allow me to say, Hey, here are four products we sell. You talked about this. I’m going to send you an email on Tuesday morning at seven o’clock, because that’s when you post all the time. And I know you’re around on your computer. So I’m going to send you that email and I’m going to talk about.

not only a certain product that we have that I think would be a fit for you, but the problem that you uniquely identified that it solves for you. So that’s the promise of it. Now, the challenge of course is, you know, a lot of small businesses don’t have access to that data. A lot of larger organizations certainly are way ahead in that game. but

Segmenting and personalizing is something that, you know, a lot of the tool sets are going to start making easier in the very near future. And I think it’s, you know, a lot of what we have to do as marketers is informed by behavior that other companies are doing, that people get used to. And so when people start expecting that you’re going to understand, you know, what they need, or you’re going to understand it.

They already bought that product. They’re going to be less tolerant about, you know, your kind of one size fits all kind of promotion.

Sara Nay (18:41.275)

Yeah. On the sales side of things, I’m using a tool right now to prepare for sales calls where it basically brings in someone’s disc profile based on their LinkedIn. And it helps me understand how to sell to that unique individual, how to get their attention. Should I stay very high level or should I get down into the weeds? And so that’s just an example of more personalized sales. I know you were talking a lot about marketing, but marketing and sales go together. So

John Jantsch (18:57.485)

Right.

John Jantsch (19:05.582)

Yeah. I, it’s funny that I use that same tool. Of course, I just did a Google meet with somebody and it actually popped up in the Google meet and said, here’s how to talk with that person. So it was pretty, pretty cool. Yeah. I suspect it does in zoom. I didn’t, I’ve never done it, but I, that was the first time I’d seen it.

Sara Nay (19:16.414)

well.

Sara Nay (19:23.724)

Well, we’re at the top of our time about so any final thoughts just on the topic of 2025, what people should be focusing on right now in marketing.

John Jantsch (19:31.436)

Well, you said probably the one that’s the biggest, know, is, is continue to evolve. I mean, this is not going to stop. You’re not going to catch up necessarily. So continue, you know, to grow, continue to commit to growth. And I don’t think you have to, I don’t think you have to throw your hands up and say, I have to learn everything about this. Follow a couple of good people, focus on one new tool or one new use case, you know, a month.

or something so that you’ll start understanding it and start making it a priority for your teams to start, to continue to grow, to continue to learn these things so that you can actually explore them together and really start to get that mindset cemented about how we have to work with this new set of tools and technology that we’re all going to have available, whether we like it or not.

Sara Nay (20:24.893)

And I would add one more to I’ve learned a lot from just connecting and masterminding with other people that are doing really interesting things with AI and so I would also encourage you on top of what John just shared to form a mini mastermind group with some peers and share use cases and how you’re both all exploring the different tools as well because I think you can just learn a lot from others because we’re all just figuring it out right now.

John Jantsch (20:32.622)

100%.

John Jantsch (20:46.668)

We ought to do that. Why don’t we create a membership type of program where you can join and we’ll give you a use case once a month and kind of collaborate as a group in a live training or something. If that sounds interesting to you, send me an email, because that’s something we might actually work on. think that would be a really cool thing. So it’s just John at Duct Tape Marketing if you think that that idea of a collaboration membership.

around AI so you can learn in real time. Like there’s no way to create a course on AI because it’s changing so fast, but kind of having a monthly accountability group where you’re working on a use case might actually be kind of cool. So let’s do that, sir.

Sara Nay (21:26.609)

Let’s do it. heard it here first. We’ll keep it as practical as possible. So thanks, John.

John Jantsch (21:28.206)

All right. Awesome. Well, thank you all for tuning in to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. And this is where I guess I’m supposed to say, hopefully we’ll see you one of these days out there on the road.

Sara Nay (21:42.109)

Thanks everyone.