Blythe Brumleve:
0:05
Welcome to another episode of everything is logistics a podcast for the thinkers in freight. I'm your host Blythe Brumleve. And on today's show, I'm going to be hitting a few different topics. And sort of as a guest a roadmap for today's show is, first I'm going to be diving into some of the takeaways from last week's freightwaves sales and marketing Summit. There are a lot of gems there that I think you guys will like. So I'm going to cover some of those while I was watching all day and sort of took notes, not sort of, I definitely took notes. And then the next topic that we're going to get into is more chat GPT I want to cut in a little bit of our conversation over on freight waves. Now a lot of freight waves in today's show, I swear they're you know, it's a it's a good working relationship with them. But really great discussion on chat GBT that I had with Kaylee and Anthony on freight waves now back in December. So I kind of want to bring that up and then get into a few more updates that is going on with the platform. And then we're going to final out round out the show with embracing the conductor mindset, especially when it comes to marketing folks within this industry. But first, let's go ahead and dive into those freightwaves sales and marketing Summit and the takeaways from that and I have a few things that I wanted to bring up that I think is really important for a lot of folks, because for these kinds of events, this is the third annual freightwaves sales and marketing event. There are a few different sales and marketing logistics focused events going on within the industry has been kind of cool to kind of watch that grow. In addition to I mean, of course, there's the TMSA, which is the transportation marketing and sales association. So they've been around for like 90 years. So they have content like this as well. But on the freightwaves side of things, this is more of like a virtual event kind of all day event and they haven't typically around January of each year. So I attended all day watched all of it, so you don't have to but if you want to, you can go over to tv.freightways.com in order to catch the full length discussion, but I'm gonna give you the Cliff Notes. And the first one that I wanted to bring you is Lars over at Lars Ward, he is in charge of sales over at the company called freight Vana, there are three PL in this space. And if you're on LinkedIn, you likely know who freight vana is. We've had them on the show Previously, we had a really long form conversation on the role of marketing and sales within the free world about a year ago, at the manifest Conference, which is also coming up here soon, I will link to that conversation in the show notes in case you want to check that out more in depth. It's one of our more successful episodes that we've ever done. And it's because it's that long form format, where it's about 45 minutes. And it's nothing but sales and marketing tips from within working within the trenches in the freight industry. So it's a really good conversation that I'll link to in case you want to catch that after this conversation. But Lars was featured in one of the talks throughout the day. And he talks about his social approach, not just his but several members within the freight vata team who are frankly, all over LinkedIn. So if you haven't noticed them, then go ahead and connect with them. And I guarantee you'll start seeing some of their posts within your feed. And one of the things that they they've been posting on social media since the pandemic, that's really when they started doubling down on the LinkedIn strategy is during the pandemic during lockdowns when you really have nothing better to do than to try to, you know, connect with people on social media in order to have some kind of social interaction. But one of his quotes that really stood out to me is how he talked about his social media presence, leading to warmer introductions at events now that we're in a quote, unquote, post COVID world where everybody's going back to events now, and people are coming up to him and talking to him, because of his social media presence where and years prior, it would be the reverse where he had working in sales, is trying to reach out to different customers and trying to, you know, do business that way. And that is I thought was a really great takeaway is that he said, social has turned cold calls into a more interactive discussion, and a different kind of initial conversation, which is really important, because if you post on social media, then people already kind of have a general idea of who you are. And if you're doing it right of who you are, what you stand for the services that your company offers, and things like that. So I thought that that was a really interesting takeaway, that going to events now is much more fruitful, because he can have those high impact conversations. And it's not a cold lead. It's not that he's, you know, trying to chase somebody down to have a meeting with them. These people already warmed up to him and his company. And so it makes having those conversations much more seamless, and much more I guess, frictionless. So I thought that that was a really good quote that he said that social has turned cold calls into a more interactive discussion. at a different kind of initial conversation now a couple of other takeaways that he mentioned about his you know just braid vana overall their social and impact strategies. One of them was sending hats to influencers within the space in hopes that you know that so what happened is I was on the receiving end of one of these not and I hate using the word influencers but it is what it is. So but for Ivana personally reached out said, Hey, we want to, you know, send you a little care package, and what's your address, so of course, I get my address, and I get a really nice handwritten note in the mail from Shannon, who is their CEO over at freight, Vana. And then they put on the hat, it wasn't just a freight Vano logo, but they also put your initials on the side of the hat. This is now my go to be chat, I just haven't taken a photo with it on because it typically when I'm at the beach, it's a little I'm a little rough looking. I like to take cute pictures and post those the ones that are a little rough, they probably don't get posted as often when I say probably they definitely don't get posted as often so, but the meaning behind all of that. And the reason I bring that up is because a lot of people did post photos that have really large social followings thinking right off the bat, you know, Grace Sharkey, Cassandra Gaines, I know both of them had a freight, Vaughn hat, they post about it posted to their social media, and you get that impact. And they did that they sent these hats out to everyone without the I guess the requirement to post that on social media. Typically, when somebody sends you merch, they're doing it with the idea that you're gonna post about it to social media. And that worked flawlessly for them. So they had a bunch of influencers, because they took that initial step of just sending someone some things and hoping that, you know, they might get a little PR buzz out of it, it worked well in their favor. So they got you know, a bunch of additional exposure to these new people and you can grow your following and because you're growing your following on these different platforms, that leads to those warmer conversations. So that was one strategy that I thought was really cool. Another one and I think if you follow freight vado you probably already know this, but they have a really strong social initiative, you know, sort of a sustainability environmentally friendly initiative because they plant trees for every load shipped. And that he enlarge said during the conversation that it's a good intro for shippers who are looking for a new vendor and have their own sustainability goals. So because freight vana initiated this, you know, plant one tree per load shipped. Now, when other shippers are looking for a new vendor relationship, they're reaching out to freight Vana, because they know that they already have these different goals that goals that are the environmental goals that are important to the shippers are now considering freight providers that value that as well. So I thought that those were really important takeaways from Lars, his chat. And a related comment that I wanted to bring up next is, everyone is inundated with phone calls, your customers need a value to talk to you. And that was set by Nick dangles from he's the co founder over at kinetic, you can connect with him on LinkedIn as well. And he's also been on the show previously. So I'll link to Nick as well, in the show notes in case you wanted to hear more from him, but he's absolutely right. Everyone is inundated with phone calls, and your customers need a reason to talk to you before they will book a meeting with you. That's where social media comes into play. And that's why it's so vital to consistently put your message out there of who you are, what you stand for the services your business provides the problems that you're solving and doing it on a consistent basis. That's really, really important because of the fact that these customers are inundated. And it's a tight market out there, especially in a freight brokerage world where you're trying to scrape for any penny on revenue that you can get right now. But if somebody is a shipper or a customer is shopping for someone new, you need to provide that value for them. And they need to know about you, before you ever book that meeting with them. Or that cold email needs to just knock it out of the park, where you are providing that value initially and showing that you have done the research on that company. And this is why they need to have this conversation because the worst thing that you can do is to get on a call you cold call someone they're in a need. And they actually agree to have a meeting with you. And then they get on the meeting and it's completely useless. You don't have a good market fit for each other. You want to make sure that you know those at bats that you get with these meetings that they are they have a high probability of being successful and successful in generating future business. So stop wasting your customers time is essentially what Nick has said. And if you're not offering value ahead of time, they're probably not going to be taking that meeting with you. So I thought that that was another really good takeaway from the summit. The next one I want to bring up is Victoria and I am going to butcher her law Last name, but McHale ish at writer, Victoria writer, let's just go with that. But she was talking about how she evangelizes their employee base before marketing to customers. And I thought that that was a really great takeaway, because for a lot of companies and freight, you are lucky to have somebody that handles your marketing full time. And a lot of times that one person is almost like the puppet master with the freelancers that they're working with, and possible agencies that they're working with. And so they're, they're managing, also the executive expectations. So they're managing all of these different things. But marketing messages tend to go out without really anyone and I'm talking just sort of generalities here, not writer in particular. But marketing messages, when you're in that situation tend to just go out to the public, without any kind of feedback from the internal internal employees that you know, the people that are working in the trenches handling those phone calls, call it cold calling, you know, that first line of communication for a customer or for a driver. And so if your employee base is not aligned on what the company's goals are, then you're going to face a level of confusion, I'll give you a story. When I was working at a four PL, there was a woman that I worked with, and she was really wanting to have the sales team use a CRM, I know it's a crazy approach. But getting the sales team to use a CRM is a constant battle that I think that all marketers face, and just all sales directors, just anyone who wants any kind of consistency and communication. Getting folks to use a CRM can be like pulling teeth, and either some of them are really going to use it and they're going to use it religiously, which if you do thank God, I love you. But if you don't, then you make it a challenging environment for everyone else in that office. And because of that woman that came to me that one of the sales team to start using the CRM more is because she was working on an account major, I'll just say Pepsi, she was working on getting Pepsi. And because that she was working on that account, trying to get meetings and get try out a couple loads. And you know, just really get in the good graces of Pepsi. Pepsi ended up getting cold calls from somebody else in the building and getting a cold emailed from somebody within the same building as her. And you know, what Pepsi came back and said to her, they said, you don't even know what's going on in your own building. So how are you going to know how to handle our freight. And that story sticks with me on the dangers of not using a CRM and not having, you know, a general, just company goals that they're all sort of dialed in, and they're talked about, and they're discussed, and nobody can really sort of fly by the seat of their pants. And I think that that's a challenge for a lot of companies. But this approach by Victoria over at Reiter was unique in that she markets our message to the employees first, and that they even have company advisory boards, like meetings throughout the year. And so what they'll do is they'll have representatives from each different department within the company. And then they will have advisory board meetings, typically once a quarter, so that everyone is on the same page. And that same page communication can then be communicated to everybody else. That's what's on the team. So you set that certain level of expectations of how you're going to be conducting yourself and selling the company to these, you know, by having these different conversations. And so she also mentioned, so that that customer advisory board throughout the year, and how they evangelize their employee base first before marketing to customers was a really great takeaway. She also mentioned from the customer experience, she really focused the first year of her job over at or the first year of her role over writer, she really focuses on the customer experience from the website lead to the renewal of the contract. And if the website and the customer experience and how the marketing plays a role throughout that entire process. What does that process look like? And how can they remove the roadblocks within the company or within communications or answer questions ahead of time by using their marketing by using their website in order to make that transition from coming to the website becoming a lead, and then having that introductory conversation and then ultimately becoming a customer and ultimately renewing as a customer because that's what you know, we all want we want that seamless process, you know, from lead to customer to renewal. So I thought that that was another great takeaway. And then one final note that she said during the conversation is my first audience is internal, because my employees have to believe in and know the products and services that we provide. It sounds very simple, but if you are not hammering over the head, your employees, every quarter of what the company stands for, and the goals and initiatives that the company has, then it's going to be a challenging time because it might go back to that situation that I was just talking about with Pepsi, where they made the statement that if you don't know what's going on inside your own building, how can I trust you with my freight. And I think that that is a warning lesson to everyone that's out there that you need to get your own house in order first, market to your employees first. So they know what the company is and what they stand for the products and the services that are being offered. And then that way, everyone is on the same page, so that when a new marketing campaign or a new messaging campaign goes out, it's much more of a seamless transition that for potential customer a potential lead, sees that marketing message, and they pick up the phone and they do the things you want them to do. Or they fill out the website form, that they're not asking questions, or expecting the answer that has already been given on social and the internal employees don't know what that message is. So there has to be a cohesive marketing plan from not only to your customers and to your leads, but also internally first. So that was a really important takeaway. And then lastly, I want to end with what the truck because when the freight would show what the truck so when freight was has these events, these webinars, what's really great about it is that if you miss part of it, if you miss some of the talks, maybe you're working for the day, and you can't make all of the talks. But by listening to what the truck, you can get a good summary of the important takeaways of the day, and themed conversations around what's going on during that webinar. And so on what the truck dooner Over there had Paul Boris and Mario on now Boris. And Paul, you might know from freight caviar, Paul actually runs freight caviar. Boris is just a good friend of Paul, who runs freight caviar, Boris works for a logistics company over in Macedonia, I believe, which is a super interesting story. And then Mario is just a he's he's one of those guys that when you hear him talk, he holds he holds nothing back. And I love that about these different conversations. But they talked about how to crush it at social, it crushes social media and freight specifically when it comes to memes and funny content. And one of these quotes that was said during the show is that getting impressions is great, you can even pay for it. But capturing that attention for a specific audience is pay is better than paying for massive reach from people who will never buy from you. Now dooner goes on to continue that quote, and he says it's not the views. It's the who's and I think that that's where a lot of us get caught up. In the vanity metrics of we see some of these full time creators, such as Paul, such as dooner, and they're crushing it on social media and they get a ton of reaction, they get a ton of views, they get a ton of just overall awareness for the content that they're creating. But at the same time, it doesn't mean anything if that audience is not eventually going to buy from you. And so keeping it within the context of logistics, you know, Paul, a freight caviar specifically goes and targets freight brokers. It's a mean page created for freight brokers. And so then now that opens up the opportunity, because he's targeted that audience, that now he can move from becoming from being a freight broker into being a full time creator. And that's the move that dooner made as well. He went from a freight broker working in the you know, freight marketing aspect, and then working directly with Freightways creating content full time. So those are a few different takeaways that I thought were really fascinating. So hopefully, that will help you in your overall marketing initiatives and what you're planning on doing and so next let's talk a little bit about chat GPT. This episode is brought to you by SPI logistics the premier freight agent and logistics network in North America. Are you currently building your freight brokerage is book a business and feel that your capabilities are being limited due to lack of support and access to adequate technology? At SPI logistics, we have the technology, the systems and the back office support to help you succeed. If you're looking to take control of your financial future and build your own business with the backing of one of the most successful logistics firms in North America, visit SPI three pl.com to learn more. Now first before we get into sort of my takeaways of the current updates with Chet GPT. Because this stuff is changing so quickly and evolving so quickly, I want to play this conversation that I had on freight waves now with Anthony and Keightley back in December, sort of about a month after chat GPT had been launched. And even now we're recording this in the middle of January just a month later. And things have already evolved very, very quickly. So first, I'm going to play this clip and it's about 10 minutes long. So to Absolutely not really a clip, but I'm gonna play this segment from freightwaves. Now just sort of introduce what chat GPT is and the general discussion around it.
Unknown:
20:09
There is so much going on as you said, Go Jags there a second and the AFC South New Mexico State Aggies going bowling and a bowl game they after Christmas AI is taking over art. And now essays. Elon Musk is putting out crazy polls on Twitter, people are getting Platform D platform, there's just so much going on. And we're glad we have to talk about this all. Let's start off with AI aspect and really what's going on with that AI chat.
Blythe Brumleve:
20:39
So it's aI chat GPT it's kind of taken over the internet over the last few weeks, it was released in late November. And to kind of understand it, we've talked before on freight waves now about, you know, these different tools that are coming into the market Dolly, you know, dolly to being one of them, which is an AI jet image generator. And the way that these things work is that you take a prompt, say, a semi truck carrying Christmas cheer, and you take that prompt and you put it into the AI image generator, and it will pop out a semi truck driving down the highway during winter months, loaded up with Christmas lights all decked out in Christmas lights. And that's a perfect example of some of these tools that are coming into the market. And now not one of the newer ones that has come into the market by the same company open AI, they developed dolly too. And now they've released the chat GPT. And it's a language model where you can have a conversation back and forth with AI generated language models that have you know, essentially all of the human generated knowledge that we know of over the last a decade of learning has been loaded into the system and you can have conversational, you can have conversations with them. So there's already rumors being you know, sort of thrown around that is going to overtake doctors, whenever they prescribe. They listen to what you know kind of experiences you're going through, and then it will spit out a diagnosis. There are lawyers where you spit out or you enter in what's going on with a legal case that our lawyers are worried because now they're getting legal advice online. Marketers in and of itself are worried as well, because a lot of these jobs that we've been, we've been doing for years creatively. Now it's being you know, sort of, that's the next coming that that's coming for our jobs is all of these different AI tools where a lot of sort of the conversation has been in recent years around AI and automation that it's coming for the blue collar jobs, when in reality, it's coming for the white collar jobs first before it comes for those blue collar jobs. And we're experiencing that rapid evolution of these different technologies in real time. And a lot of the population doesn't even know that they exist, but they are already here. And they're evolving rapidly.
Unknown:
22:49
So do we now see the threat of an AI broker where a shipper calls a brokerage and says, Hey, I need this load and your AI answers and says, Okay, this is what we're gonna do. And boom, it's computer generated, it runs through a million different scenarios faster than your broker can do it. And then it essentially gets your broker out of a job is that the real threat to the freight industry
Blythe Brumleve:
23:10
100% It absolutely is a real threat. Because a lot of these different jobs that require a lot of computing, they require a lot of historical knowledge, all of that can be plugged into one of these AI language models, and what this sort of the landscape looks like, this isn't something that's going to happen, you know, in the next year or so. But it could happen within the next five years because Microsoft is one of the big funders of open AI which has given us the tools for chat GPT and Dali to and so if Microsoft is getting involved, then that means their search engine Bing is going to be affected and combining all of that data into their workplace into their workplace technologies is something to really be out on the lookout for now, for a lot of the you know, the transportation industry overall, as a personally as a marketer, I have really struggled with using TMS platforms in order to create marketing campaigns. And that was one of my first thoughts as as marketers are like, Oh my god, I would be able to take these data sets that TMS systems are using and plug it into a language model, like chat GPT and be able to come up with a year long marketing plan of the commodities, I'm going to target the shippers that that create that manufacture those different commodities and in you know, what kind of lanes are the most profitable for this company and create marketing plans based around all of that different data. So from a marketing perspective, I already see the possibilities with tools like this. And then it only makes sense for those tools to continue to evolve as we continue to add more language and conversational mechanisms into these platforms which are like I said earlier, evolving rapidly.
Unknown:
24:45
And why do we start to see AI in response to AI so for example, people reaching out, get an AI kickback but do we start to see AI reaching out to other companies and then you just have this interface of AI speaking to AI
Blythe Brumleve:
24:59
it There's actually a few use cases already for that there's one company in particular that is using these language models in order to help you get a cheaper bill. And so you will tell them what bills that you are already subscribed to, or maybe you have an insurance premium that you would want to get negotiated down. And there were actual use case examples of these technologies using a language platform like chat GPT, and then negotiating lower insurance premiums for their health insurance. And so there's different use cases like that already happening. But then there's also the ethical concerns as well, you know, some of these answers that the AI spits out are really incredibly mind blowing, but that some of them are just not very good yet. But that's part of the learning process for the for the language models within these API's. And so, for example, there are a lot of different, you know, I guess technologies that exist on the market that is not going to give you a clear cut diagnosis, but say, for web code, create a website for me to five page website based off of this information, and it will plug in, it'll just spit out all of the different website code for you immediately. But then there's the flip side of it, where you have somebody that is asking, Okay, well, how do you make a Molotov cocktail, and then the system gives you that recipe. So there's different sort of ethical, you know, moral things, discussions that are going on right now. And chat GPT has been updated to omit some of those answers from the platform. But it's also a situation where other users have been able to replicate that same sort of language talking back and forth to each other by simply rephrasing the question. So it brings up a lot of ethical concerns. And if we know anything about you know, sort of governments and how slow they are to react to social media and different technologies that exist right now, these are different technologies that are just going to simply take over in the near future. And I don't mean to sound like, you know, sort of worrisome, because I do think that a lot of these technologies are really impactful in a positive way. But you can't talk about the positive without talking about some of the negative aspects to do you think that we
Unknown:
27:04
start to see this evolution of like a dark AI space, like we kind of saw, you know, we've got the web and then we have like the dark web where all the shady things live? Do you think that we see that as well, where people take this kind of same concept and use it for nefarious reasons, in an environment that
Blythe Brumleve:
27:21
is less regulated? I mean, it's only a matter of time for before some of these things do happen. I mean, like I said, chat, GPT, the owners open aI have already restricted some of the languages and some of the things that you can prompt the system with. So for example, I asked it to write a contract for me, I'm a creator, I'm a podcaster. I asked him to write a podcast contract for me. And it wouldn't do that. It said, I'm sorry, you have to actually seek legal advice. But I just rephrase the question. I said, Well, what would be important to include in a podcasters contract, and it listed out five to six bullet points to make sure that I include in the contract, so there's the good side of it, but then on the bad side of it, like with a Molotov cocktail, and things like that. So the open AI company is trying to curve some of those and trying to prevent, you know, some of those sorts of nefarious actors and nefarious questions. But it does, it is an act of learning model. So it's, it's a situation where they're letting the public kind of play around with it right now to see what the possibilities are, in order to sort of, you know, put a stop gap on some of those things that could become a bigger problem in the future. But at this technology, it's safe to say that this kind of technology already exists and is available open to the public, that there's already a black market for it that's going to exist that has other types of language models that work exactly like Chet GPT. And they're going to be used for more nefarious reasons. And that's where you kind of got to get into the battle of you know, the good technology versus the bad technology, and how they're going to collaborate together or not collaborate together. And
Unknown:
28:57
Blythe one of the things that you did mention earlier, of course, is around some of the images that you're able to generate as well, do we start to see AI being able to identify or now identifying what some AI generated images are, or even really being able to identify maybe AI generated stories or articles and things like that, in order to kind of combat some of the maybe fake images or fake articles that might be written out? That may be a little bit deceptive?
Blythe Brumleve:
29:24
Well, there are some kind of tools out there already that exist that you know, you plug in. So say, professors, for example, are extremely worried about college kids being able to use this to write their research papers. And they he took a bunch of these papers, and he did a blind test study and he had some that were created with Chet GPT. And he had some that were actually created by students and a lot of the papers that he graded. The AI came into the bottom 20 of his students. So it was about on the level of like a bad college student, but it still was able to produce Something that was worthy of Him to give it a decent average grade. And so you have a situation like that, where you're not exactly sure how these programs are going to be used by nefarious actors in the future, but also the how you are able to check because there are tools out there that do check and see if you if you're using that different type of text methodology, because there is a certain kind of methodology that these AI platforms are using, and they're not able to judge it right away. It's not like a Copyscape, where you can take copy and plug it in and get you know, a plagiarism score. There are different because it's trained by humans. And because it's a act of human language model, it's very challenging to judge the difference between AI and what's actually human generated. And then there's also a greater debate on if you know that this still the AI is still human generated, you could still make an argument that you're responsible for the prompt that you put into these language models. And so is that a form of, of human work, and that's being debated as we speak, there's, you know, copyright concerns with a lot of these different images. But then there's also an artist who created all of these different prompts and created a story and put those together into a book. And she has filed for that book to become copyright protected. And that is going through the copyright courts right now. And that's going to be a major determination on if you can use these tools. And how much of human involvement really is involved during this process, she has to prove that that she came up with these prompts. And then they're going to make that judgment coming from there. But this is, it's all sort of new territory. And this, these tools are evolving very quickly. And we don't have the tools in place to combat some of the bad stuff, we don't have the tools in place to combat some of maybe the plagiarism that exists because if you're you're using these tools, these open AI tools such as image generators, and text, they are pulling that information from somewhere, and they're pulling them sometimes from copyrighted works as well. So it's a whole legal sort of land mine Whack a Mole situation where we're not exactly sure. Because they're evolving so quickly. And we don't know if these other platforms, and these other laws and regulations can keep up.
Unknown:
32:17
And it's gonna be a whole thing going forward, like thank you for joining.
Blythe Brumleve:
32:22
All right, thank you for listening to that long winded clip and giving sort of a rough overview of what's going on in the AI landscape right now, specifically, when it comes to the open AI tools that have created Delhi to and also chat GPT. And, and one of the things that I kept coming back to during that clip is the prompts and the strategy behind your prompts that you use within these different systems. And what I mean by that is the texts that you take, and that you input into these systems, hoping that you are going to get something good in return, whether it'd be a really great answer or a great outline for an article or you know, an image that you're looking for, for a blog article. You know, it really matters, the prompt that you input into the system. And I've had a chance to play around with Chet GPT, a bunch along with Dolly too, and along with another AI image generator, which is called mid journey. And what I've really found is that there are so many tools now that are popping up to help you with those main tools. And one of them in particular is for image prompts. There's a website called lexica. And lexica is L e x, I see a.rt. And if you go to that website, it's basically a search engine for prompts. So you can go to that search engine. And for example, I used semi trucks or cargo or containers. I inputted that into lexica dot art. And it spit out all of the images that have been created in an AI program and the prompts that were used to create them. So if you're you're struggling with different prompts, and playing around with these tools, and you're just not really finding success with it, it's likely due to the prompts is is a completely different way of learning how to use these systems is the value of the prompt that you're creating to tell the system ideally what you want it to do. So if you're struggling with that, and you kind of want to get a little bit of examples of what others have used in order to create the thing that you're trying to create. I think that lexica website will help a ton and a few other prompts that really helps me and sort of was a lightbulb moment for me that I've used personally which at GPT because by the way, check GPT is free for now. It's costing Microsoft a lot of money. I think I lost I read it's about $3 million a day that the data consumption of chat GPT is costing Microsoft and I say costing Microsoft because Microsoft has a relationship with open AI the makers of Chechi btw and there's rumors that they will be Incorporating this functionality into the Bing search engine. And because they are incorporating this language model into the Bing search engine, then Microsoft with their hosting platform Azure, and they are giving chat GPT the data credits to facilitate a lot of that different consumption. Because when for folks who don't know, when you go to a website, and you use it, and a lot of folks are doing the same thing as you, it can cause that website to malfunction, it can cause it to go down, it can cause it to suffer an error page. And then it takes a while to restore the website back up, because the traffic is just so much. It's called like the hug of death, as popularized on you know, a platform like Reddit where you know, a site that isn't used to getting a ton of traffic, you're probably on a shared hosting plan. And that when you do get a lot of traffic to your website, your website can't handle it, because of the hosting plan that you're on nine times out of 10. If your website is slow, or if it's malfunctioning, it's likely due to the host aspect. So if you're struggling with any of those, let me just go ahead and give the pitch for digital dispatch.io. That's the company I founded, which we specialize in hosting and maintenance updates, and integrating those sales and marketing tools on your website. And we help freight companies build a better website. So head on over to digital dispatch.io In order to get help with any of those things. But that's what Chet GBT is suffering from is just a massive amount of people that's using the platform. And they're handling all of this different data, not only the input, but the output as well, which matters greatly when it comes to performance. But back to the prompts. Here were a few of the prompts that I thought were really fascinating as far as answers are concerned. And one of those prompts that I entered into chat, GBT is what should a new freight broker learn about sales and marketing, they had a pretty decent response. And it was very good like introductory level. Now if you're if you already kind of have a good idea about sales and marketing techniques, that's probably not going to be a prompt, that's going to give you valuable information to take your skills to the next level. But it is a good introductory place for you know, those people who are just coming fresh out of college, or maybe you've worked in another industry and you're not exactly sure how to market a freight brokerage, or you as a freight broker, that's a good spot to enter that information and just sort of read through it. And then it can spawn additional ideas and additional research for you to you know, either study during work hours or in your off time, however, you're you sort of have, I guess valued or placed value on your working role within a freight brokerage. A couple of other prompts that I put in is this one, it says can you create a sales pitch for a freight broker reaching out to a hockey equipment manufacturer and hopes that they can become their three PL now that is a loaded sentence. But this to me was more the promising way of using chat GPT I was very specific when it comes to the manufacturer I was mentioning and then it was also a sales pitch from an email standpoint. So ideally, you could take this email and copy and paste it and send it off to a cold lead, you know, a cold hockey equipment manufacturer lead and in hopes that they will become your three PL so that prompt, I think can be used, you know, just subbing different words can be used, you know, create, can you create a sales pitch for a freight broker reaching out to blank blank manufacturer in hopes that they will can become their three PL and that it spit out a great answer. So go to chat GPT it's free, try it out and enter in a you know, whatever manufacturer you're trying to target. And you will get a good example of a sales pitch that you can email to them. The only tip that I would give is that these emails that Chet GPT was spitting out were pretty long, a little too long, I think for most cold emails to be successful. So I would just round it out with that prompt and just add in, say, you know, the same exact question, but just say in 200 words or less, or in 150 words or less, or whatever you think is the appropriate amount of words, to send in your cold email. That's you just add that on to the prompt and it will spit it out directly like that for you 150 words, but you also with the caveat, you want to read through it and make sure that it's accurate to the company and the services that you provide before you just blankly just you know, copy and paste and send it off to you know, 1000 different leads. Hopefully you're not doing that anyways. But that's another prompt that I think could be helpful. There was another one that I did, can you create a sales pitch for a freight broker reaching out to a cold lead, who needs their frozen burgers shipped, but is currently using a competitor to ship them. So that's gets a little that gets a little bit more dicey. So if you have a target customer that you're going after, and you know this person or this brokerage is that's their one of their customers, then you can kind of you know, use chat GPT as a way to figure out what your differentiation is from you versus your competitor. Again, read through it, make sure that that is accurate, tweak it a little bit and then That way you can use that as your cold outreach and your cold emails. Couple more. How can freight brokers plan their sales outreach plans month by month for the rest of the year? That was another good one. And then what is the most important thing? I think this one is really valuable. A question frame to like this is what is the most important thing to know about shipping ice cream. Now I use that specific prompt, obviously, you can take out ice cream and put anything else in there and see what the result is. But that can also help you in your research process. When it comes to scoping out new leads that you want to target, maybe creating a landing page on a website that covers these nuances. Just make sure that you are also speaking to somebody who is experienced with shipping that particular commodity because then they can act as your proofreader before that email goes live or for that landing page goes live, just acting as you know, additional checks and balances in chat GPT. So far, for me has been great at assembling outlines, assembling ideas, you know, I, I can also take a transcript and I can say, Hey, can you create a blog summary based on this transcript, I will say that I have that's probably the biggest use case that I've used so far. But it also can be inaccurate. There, I there was one podcast that I just did recently, on creating, actually creating a podcast for 2023. Go back and listen to episode if you're listening, if you're interested. But when I took that transcript, and I created a summary from it, I then went to Chet GPT, because Chet GPT now has a word limit on their transcript. So you can't just upload the full transcript. So what I did is I created my own summary, based on the takeaways from the conversation, I use otter.ai, to create that after the transcription was made. So my workflow looks like recording an episode, creating the transcription, highlighting the takeaways and then using the takeaways to create a blog post from that. And I use those takeaways, which is probably about 400 words, and I pasted it into chat GPT. And I said, Can you create a blog post summary based on this, and I listed out all of the bullet points from the takeaways. And it did a I would say it was about 80% there. The only thing that was concerning to me is that in the in the summary that chat GPT gave me they mentioned influencer marketing. And I never once talked about influencer marketing during that show, or in the takeaways. So why it decided to include that in the blog post summary, I do not know. But again, this is a free tool. It's new to the market, it's learning. So while you know some of these prompts are really fun to input and get the result and feel like you finally you know, especially for the one person marketers out there, you finally feel like maybe you have a co worker that you can bounce ideas off of. That's what chat GPT feels like to me, that co worker is not going to be right all the time. Neither is Chet GPT. So it's very important that you can use this for inspiration, you can use it for I you know, creating different ideas and outlines and summaries, but you still have to go it still requires a nuanced view and a certain skill set to look at something and say, Okay, this is good to publish, or we need to tweak it or that's trash, we're not going to use it whatsoever. So that's what I think about Chet GBT, and it sort of goes into the last conversation that I wanted to bring up. And that's really embracing the conductor mindset with your marketing, you know, from the sales and marketing summit and hearing the takeaways, you know, a lot of people, especially marketing departments, founders, of course, too, you're wearing a lot of hats. And you need to be able to replicate yourself and replicate, you know, some of the things if you could just make a clone of yourself, and then have that person do the work. I'm sure that's everybody's ideal situation, that doesn't exist. So we can use chat GPT, we can use some of these different AI tools to really help refine what we're already doing and optimize what we're already doing. Because you're going to be facing budgets that are going to be cut, you're going to be facing expanded goals that you know, businesses are going to want from whether you're the founder or the entrepreneur or the one person marketing team, you're going to have certain goals, and you should have certain goals attributed to your marketing. But you're also going to be faced with cut budgets and fewer roles to help with it all. So that's where embracing that conductor of the orchestra mindset is really a game changer. I was told this advice when I was working at void magazine, and I was the editor in chief. And our issue that was coming up was a Jaguars issue. I am a huge Jaguars fan. And I wanted to write there was not one article in that issue that we planned that I did not want to write. And my first year, I think I wrote 80% of the magazine. And if you ever worked in publishing, if you're editor in chief is writing 80% of that magazine, you're doing a good job, you're doing a terrible job as an editor, I should say. So you should really be empowering your team to, you know, do their role and cover their topic the best that they can, because that's what they're passionate about. And you as the editor should be that puppet master behind the scenes, or the conductor of the orchestra. My boss told me at the time, he's like, look, we need you to be more of the conductor of the orchestra and not try to play every instrument. And I think that that is the biggest problem that entrepreneurs and founders and one person marketing teams constantly struggle with, is trying to do all the things when you can start using some of these tools, like chat GPT, like otter.ai, there's a couple other ones that are out there that exist that I'm kind of blanking on. But if you follow any of this, all of these things are just evolving rather quickly. But figuring out what's the most important thing that you need to get done in your role? What are the goals are around that thing that you need to get done? And then how did these tools and how did the software and processes fit into your process? How did these different tools fit into that? Can IT Optimize any part of that process for you? Can you automate any part of that process and one important caveat that just because you add AI, and automation into your different processes, does it mean it's a set it and forget it, it's a set it and manage it occasionally type aspect, because I have Zapier integrations that set up a different automations, one of them stopped firing the other day, now I have to go back in and I have to fix whatever was was going wrong with that zap, so that it continues to work properly a lot of these different tools, you have to have the expectation that you are going to be managing it at some point and doing it on a regular basis to make sure that those automations are still functioning in the way that you ideally want them to function. So do yourself a favor, embrace the conductor mindset with your marketing, figure out those different goals, figure out how your marketing fits into those different goals. And then the process is for each of them and where software plays a role. Because you also don't want because of budgets, you also don't want to be spending a ton on software, if it's not going to, at the end of the day serve you well, in helping you get your job done more efficiently and faster. And with greater ROI. I mean that that's really the goal of everything that we do, in trying to generate brand awareness for our companies is to generate ROI from it. So use these tools to your advantage. And really, it's been an incredible I think, so far 2023 starting out, and marketing and hearing from different subject matter experts and in not just the the freight world, but outside of the freight world too. And bringing all of those different inspirations together so that it can better formulate your own plan. Because not every piece of advice that I give you, you're going to use, nor should you use it. And not every piece of advice or tool that I hear about I'm going to use. But I am hoping that you understand that I am giving you expertise based on the experience of what I'm hearing for everybody else, and what I try myself, and then communicating that to you guys in to you all. So hopefully you found this episode helpful. As far as the roundup is concerned and all that we will be back with another episode next week. But until then my jaguars are in the playoffs. And it's a pretty exciting time. And hopefully we can, you know, go up to Kc and take care of business if we don't, which is kind of expected because they're favored by eight and a half points. Hopefully we can kind of shock the world and keep this going. Because this team has been really special to watch. If you want a good glimpse into great social media content, speaking of which, check out the Jaguars social media team on or just the Jaguars, social media, in general on Twitter and on Instagram. It is incredible watching all of the graphics that they have planned based on special events. And I think that there's a lot of inspiration that we can take in the freight world by looking at how sports teams market their team and their personalities. And they're essentially workers that are working their players are working for the team and how they incorporate all of those things together around big special events, which in the sports world, it's obviously a game but in the freight world, you can use it as an opportunity, you know, to take some of that inspiration of how they handle it, you know, creating show graphics and creating marketing roundups and promo videos and things like that and you know, takeaways and best of clips from their conversations and using all of that for your events that you plan on going to manifest is coming up here soon. That's another conference that there's going to be a ton of content coming out of this conference. And I'm really interested to see how these different companies apply. Roche marketing their company at a major big time conference like this, where the world is essentially your stage and you can use social media as your microphone. So hopefully you found that conversation valuable and insightful. If not, you can yell at me on the various different social media platforms that I'm on, you can find them over on everything is logistics.com. That's where I put a link to the newsletter. If you're not subscribed, please do me a solid and go ahead and hit that link and the everything is logistics.com bio. And then you can see the link to the email newsletter that's right in there. There's also links to my social media in case you want to follow me on another different platform would be lucky to have you and you can yell at me about my terrible opinions or my not so terrible football team. And yeah, you can just connect with me on those different platforms. And that website again is everything is logistics.com. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your attention. I'll see you all real soon and go Jax. I hope you enjoy this episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight, telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. If you liked this episode, do me a favor and sign up for our newsletter. I know what you're probably thinking, oh God, another newsletter. But it's the easiest way to stay updated when new episodes are released. Plus, we drop a lot of gems in that email to help the one person marketing team and folks like yourself who are probably wearing a lot of hats at work. In order to help you navigate this digital world a little bit easier. You could find that email signup link along with our socials and past episodes. Over at everything is logistics.com And until next time, I'm blind and go Jags
