Episode 96 – Q&A with The Sasha Group: The Impact of AI, Content Creation as an Introvert, Where Small Businesses Should Invest $5,000

Welcome to Building While Flying, a Sasha Group podcast where we interview business leaders about how they tackle challenges, stay resilient, and navigate ever-changing skies.

[00:00:12] Joe Quattrone: Welcome back to another episode of Building While Flying. I’m your host, Joe Quattrone, and this week we’re back to the mail bag.

We’re answering questions from across the social media spectrum that have been pointed at The Sasha Group. Let’s go. The first question comes from linked. From Evan Bobrick. Evan, I hope I’m pronouncing your last name correct. Might be Bobrick, but we’ll go with Bobrick. What sort of content would you recommend putting out when you offer a service that isn’t something you can teach your client how to do, nor is it very interesting.

Evan, I’m sure your business is very interesting, but I think that’s also a loaded question. The answer is you can put out whatever you want, right? Take our boss GaryVee, for instance. Him going out and garage sailing across Long Island has nothing to do with his businesses, not Vayner Media, not Gallery Media Group, not The, Sasha, Group, but it tells us a little bit about his personality.

Gives us an insight or a window into what kind of person. Executive ceo, this guy is, and that’s incredibly compelling to people on the other end, right? So people follow him first and foremost because they’re interested in him as a human, what he’s done, what he does. And then if they have a need for a service that we wind up having a company that’s built to fulfill, they wind up.

Doing the requisite searching and becoming familiar with what businesses and services are there for them to take advantage of, right? So when you think about social media and you think about yourself as an executive within it, as long as you are the owner and proprietor of the company, think more about how to get people interested in you.

Before you necessarily always get them interested in your business. And furthermore, Evan, don’t sell yourself short. Of course, we don’t know if your business is interesting or not, but you’re also going based on most likely not having tried to put content out. So why don’t you put a hundred pieces of content out and see how they work?

There might be a ton of people out there that are super interested in your business and what you have to offer, so why not give it a. Let me know how it goes. 

The next question comes to us from Anden Emory, who asks, how do you think AI will impact the world of influencer marketing, especially when it comes to UGC content and ad creation, but specifically through the lens of.

performance marketing, I think it’s gonna have a profound impact. Andon number one, we’re already seeing this in the world of the creator economy, which is a little bit of a broader economy that sits over top of influencers. And we’re seeing this in the sense that some people are going out and they’re subscribing to AI services like, Image creation, copywriting, stuff like that.

And then they’re repackaging it as their own work, and they’re selling it through services like Upwork and Fiverr right? So then they’re taking the vig on top, right? So that obviously, like I’m not gonna sit here and tell people what their ethics should be or what their moral should be, but that’s not necessarily what.

I think is gonna be a strategy for building a sustainable business in the future, specifically given the fact that a lot of these ai software companies are gonna start facing a lot of litigation in the next five years. But furthermore, speaking specifically about performance marketing, I don’t know exactly why you asked the question, but my guess is that you’re really looking for ways to scale your performance within the businesses that you run.

And that might be one brand, it might be multiple brands, but you’re looking as an AI as a way to help scale yourself And I don’t think that’s necessarily something you should be looking at. If you’re looking for AI to help you get unstuck when you’ve got a creative challenge, I think you’re fine, right?

I think that’s exactly what I would be using it for right now. But if you’re using it to figure out how to make you have more time in the day, I would stop right there. Unless you are the CEO of your. You should be getting compensated for making your job harder and more complex and helping scale it further.

So I would be looking at it to a. Kind of help get unstuck, but b, I wouldn’t necessarily be looking for it to do my job better, right? If you can do your job better, fantastic. You should be getting paid for that. This can certainly help you scale, but I’m not sure whether or not it’s gonna be able to help you scale in the way you think it is.

If what you think it is is a way to allow you to do more with less time. For example, let’s talk about chat G P T for. , right? Back in the olden days, if I had a document that I wanted to, get some feedback on, I would just march it two desks down and I would ask a trusted voice within the office space to read my PowerPoint document and gimme some pointers.

Now you can use something like a ChatGPT in replacement of always having a second set of eyes that you. trust ChatGPT and other forms of AI are incredibly sophisticated and might be able to show you a different way of looking at something that can help get you into that mind frame to keep going and keep creating, use it as a testing ground for the outline and the agenda. Not the full thing, not the whole kit and caboodle.

And the next question comes to us from Instagram, from at Join top floor. I’m guessing they’re hinting that we should be joining whatever that top floor is. Anyway, the question. Why aren’t most businesses posting videos on LinkedIn?

I feel like that would be the most efficient way to tell a story. That’s a good question, and I agree. I think it would be a very efficient way for several thousand handfuls of marketers to be telling their stories. The problem is it’s not a broad enough platform, the. To make sense for all brands out there, right?

So while Coca-Cola can certainly be on there talking about their corporate social responsibility initiatives and things that executives across America care about, or executives across the world, I should say the operative term being executives, right? Not everybody in the world is an executive that. Has a LinkedIn account and is constantly digesting information about business and industry and markets, right?

Some people have careers that are more artisanal, that are more crafty, that have nothing to do with networking on a platform like LinkedIn, and they honestly don’t care about the information on it. Some people are spending most of their waking hours on platforms like Instagram and TikTok and that’s it.

They don’t care about anything else, right? So think about it that. It is a very specific audience. It’s a big audience, and it’s relevant, right? People on that platform, on LinkedIn specifically are younger than you might think, right? It’s mostly Gen Z and millennial, and that makes sense, right? These are people that are less established in their careers and are looking to network, right?

So it’s not as much, you know the boomers like you might think it was, or you might have thought it was 15 years ago, but that audience is in a very specific mindset. They’re in a networking and business mindset, so it doesn’t necessarily make sense to story tell in all the ways that you could or that you would elsewhere on that platform as well.

But very good question, and I would follow that up with, if you believe that more marketers should be on the platform but aren’t, take that as an. Invite To go in and exploit a white space for your brand, right? If other brands aren’t there and you think they should be and they’re competitors of yours, take advantage, put content out.

I think it’s a fantastic platform. And now we have one coming in from my favorite name of the day at Knuckleheads. I’m a hundred percent an introvert and in real time, happy without making content. But how can I help others find happiness and peace? That’s a fantastic question, and I say so because that’s probably the number one thing that we have coming through.

Our Event, the 4Ds One of our events that we host with with GaryVee we’ve got a lot of executives that come through and when we talk to them about personal brand or how are they putting content out into the universe, how are they getting seen? This type of a response comes towards us. I’m an introvert.

I don’t have time. I don’t want to post content. I’m too private. I make the same excuses. I am an introvert I am at home. I’m a father, I’m a husband. I don’t have a ton of time. But you know what? In today’s day and age, it’s really important to have a perspective on the way the world’s working, right? A lot of times it’s not up to you.

People are searching. For companies that do exactly what your company does, people are looking for executives and consultants that have experience like what you have, and they don’t always want to be reached the way that you want to reach them, right? 

They want to reach you on their terms, and in many cases, that’s. Leaned back in a more relaxed environment, having content come to them, right? So you have to at least acknowledge that the way the market’s shifting vertical video is here to stay. And that’s a lot different for a lot of people to wrap their heads around than maybe.

15 years ago, back in, 2008 when you could just, post a few links to Twitter and get away with having an opinion on what’s happening in your industry. But

so you probably go out and. Look at the news on some level, whether it’s watching the news on your TV screen or opening up Apple News when you get a notification or Wall Street Journal or reading the paper version of the New York Times on Sundays or whatever your case may be. What you used to do back in 2008 when you were first getting started in your career which is you probably went out and you took an article and you posted it to Twitter.

You gave a little bit of a quote tweet underneath it and said, this is how I feel about this topic, right? So you can do the same thing in 2023, but all you’re gonna have to do is you’re gonna have to take your phone. You’re gonna find that article, you’re gonna screen grab it. You’re gonna run over to TikTok, and you’re gonna use the green screen filter, and you’re gonna put your face on top of that article, and you’re gonna give your 2 cents on that article.

And then you’re gonna post it to TikTok, and then you’re gonna take that TikTok and you’re gonna post it to shorts, and you’re gonna post it to reels and you’re gonna post it all these different places, right? So you’re gonna be able to do what you already do. You’re taking advantage of your current ecosystem.

You’re just putting your spin on it in a modern and contemporary way. The next question comes to us from. Paul P 9 1 1. How can you tell a manager they aren’t manager material based on employee feedback? And I think I’m gonna say a few things that might get me in trouble. So let’s get into it. Number one, you have to be honest with them, right? So it’s not gonna benefit them or you or anybody else on their team. If the first time they find out that they’re not a good manager is when you fire. right?

So you have to sit down. You have to be honest. The second thing you have to do is you have to be empathetic, right? Anytime you have a moment like this in your career where a boss is trying to deliver tough feedback that can develop trauma, right? If you’re not. To accept the feedback. So when you’re a manager, you wanna sit down with them.

I’m not saying you necessarily put your kid gloves on. I’m not even saying give them a shit sandwich. The bad news is surrounded by the good news. What I am telling you is to understand what they’re going through and find anecdotes that help map to what they’re going through. you as their manager probably have several instances where you’ve had to have a conversation with somebody before who maybe.

Isn’t exuding exactly what’s in the job description. And even if you haven’t, which I suspect may be the case since you’re asking a question of somebody like myself what do you have in life that can possibly resonate with this person when you’re delivering this type of feedback? People are looking for those types of words and bits and nuggets of wisdom to let them know that, okay, I have to.

honest with myself, but it is gonna be okay. There are examples. I’m not the worst person ever, right? So make sure you’re delivering that empathy when you deliver the message, but deliver the message, honestly. That’s my advice. 

The next question comes from at Mike Farrell or Ferrell. I’m not sure which one.

As a vsb, if you had 5K to invest in marketing, how would you invest that money? And first and foremost, I don’t know what Vsb is, but I’m assuming you mean very small. . Cool. So if it is a very small business that you’re talking about, find a way to get some content made, right? Whether it’s, you went to the local college and you hired somebody to work as a social media manager for you making some content.

Maybe you go to Upwork or Fiber and you contract out with somebody to make 36 pieces of content for you. Or you take a class that’s gonna teach you how to make content. Content is probably the base level of foundation when it comes to marketing in general, right? You need to get content out of your mind onto a device and onto the internet.

 First things first, and it’s gonna be valuable for so many different reasons. But if that’s the first thing you’re doing in your creating an infrastructure or a framework to get more content on the internet, you’re gonna, in the long run start to see the benefits of how.

Building your brand online are gonna help you moving forward. And this is the reason why I know that you can go out and you can spend that $5,000 on ads, right? And you can just create a handful of ads. You can put them out on Facebook or TikTok or wherever your customer is, and you can sell a few widgets or services, whatever your business is.

But the second you turn off that ad, , your growth goes away, right? You stop making money. So you can always spend some money to make some money, but unless you actually start putting a point of view out and start building brand on the internet, you’re not gonna mean more than what your ad spend is. Now we have one coming from another really cool name at Honorable Oats.

And that’s O N A R A B L E underscore. Pretty cool name. How do you construct a media plan for the year for a brand? And while I would love to pretend that I understand how to write media plans and how to be a fantastic media planner I am not gonna pretend to be that right now. But I do want to tell you that we’ve got a lot of really great experts at our.

A guy named Jason Lumis, some of his other compatriots in our media department put together a lot of great content and we’ve got a few over here on our STORK platform. So I’m gonna make sure that you guys know that exists and recommend that you go check out some of our episodes and I’ll talk to my star pupil, Julia, to see if we can get a couple unlocked for you for free viewership.

If you’re currently not a paid subscriber, go ahead and check ’em out. Maybe you become in. Thanks a lot. The next question we have is from Neha over at Switch Grocery Neha. How are you? She’s a four D’S alumni of ours. We love Switch grocery and the question is scaling the unscalable tips on how to set up amazing customer service.

I’m sure there’s thousand different tactics out there. I’m gonna speak from experience as. overstretched husband and father of three and marking executive that try to go with the easiest possible or the lowest hanging fruit, right? Like how do you really provide a benefit from busy folks that are doing grocery shopping?

And my guess is that a lot of people, despite maybe your inclination to think that they want to talk. Don’t actually want to talk to you. They don’t want to talk to a human, but by a phone or on voice. They don’t wanna wait on hold at all. They want instant gratification. They wanna know that they’re talking to a human but they don’t physically want to hear your voice.

So I would recommend. Really diving into SMS platforms out there. There’s a lot of them that can help in a lot of different ways. But I would investigate that because you can do it, you can set it up in such a way where, you know, things that ordinarily would’ve been a phone call are now coming over to a mobile phone via text somewhere, and you’re starting to loop people into what would’ve.

awkward and uncomfortable conversations over the phone into a much more dynamic, back and forth two-way scenario using an SMS call on on your mobile device. So it might cause you to retrain the way you do things a little bit. You might even have to staff it slightly different, but I think that would provide a very contemporary solution to a lot.

Time starved parents out there. That’s all the questions I have for right now, but there was such an overwhelming response that I think we’re gonna split this into two different episodes. So if I’m wearing the same shirt in episode two, don’t kill me for it. But that’s it for this episode of Building While Flying, and we’ll see you around.