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Every Sports Franchise Needs a Chief Storyteller

Every sports franchise should hire a Chief Storyteller. This point was driven home recently as I re-watched one of my favorite movies, Moneyball. It’s written before about the business and marketing lessons you can learn from watching Moneyball.

If you aren’t familiar with the Moneyball story, at the end of the 2001 season, the Oakland A’s lost its two star players, Johnny Damon, and Jason Giambi, because the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox could offer them more money. GM Billy Beane went to the A’s owner and implored him to please give Beane more money to spend on payroll so he could get better players.  The owner refused, and this left Beane scrambling to figure out how to keep the A’s competitive with far less money to spend than other ballclubs.

This led Beane to meet Peter Brand on a trip to meet with the Cleveland Indians. Brand had developed a system for identifying talented players who were undervalued due to ‘biases’ against them. Such as being ‘too old’, having a ‘funny pitch’, or whatever. Beane was intrigued by Brand’s ideas, so he hired him to be his Assistant GM. Together they began working on building a roster of 25 players who were undervalued, but still talented enough to make the A’s competitive.

As Beane began acquiring his desired players, even his own scouts had never heard of them. The movie shows A’s fans reading the paper prior to the start of the season and asking ‘Who are these bums?’  So obviously, the A’s had a brand awareness problem when it came to their new acquisitions.

And as the season started, the losses piled up. But after the All-Star break, the team started to click.  And they started to win.  A lot.  In fact, in September at the end of the regular season, the A’s actually set the American League record (at the time) for consecutive wins at 20. Here’s a recap of that 20th win, which could have been a movie all in itself:

So I was curious as I was watching Moneyball again, how did the success of the A’s in 2002 affect revenue?

Turns, out, not by much. Revenue for the A’s in 2001 was 90 million, and it increased to 96 million in 2002, an increase of roughly 7%. But in 2003, revenue for the A’s increased to 110 million, or 15%. Since the A’s 20-game win streak didn’t happen until the end of the season, much of its impact on revenue for the year was negated. Yet the excitement for how the 2002 season ended no doubt carried over into excitement for the 2003 season, contributing to the larger boost to revenue for that year.

While the 2002 A’s didn’t have many ‘star’ players, the pursuit of the record for most wins became the ‘story’ that sucked fans in. Unfortunately, not every sports franchise will have record-setting seasons that become stories that sell themselves. This is why sports franchises need to invest in Chief Storytellers.

The Chief Storyteller needs to first tell the story of the players, then tell the story of the fans. First with the players, we all follow our favorite sports teams, and as we do, we develop a fondness for certain players. We appreciate their accomplishments, especially if they overcome setbacks to help lead their team to victory.

Here’s an example.  The 2012 depth chart at RB for Alabama was loaded. The starter was Eddie Lacy, who would go on to have a long NFL career with the Packers. A pair of 5-star RB recruits TJ Yeldon and Kenyan Drake were added to the mix, both of who would also go onto have solid NFL careers. While TJ Yeldon was able to come in and immediately contribute in the 2012 season, Drake didn’t do as well, and was relegated to 3rd and 4th string on the depth chart.

Starter Eddie Lacy opted to go pro at the end of the 2012 season, so that should mean Drake would be due for more carries in 2013. However, in the 2013 recruiting class, Alabama signed the top running back in the nation, Derrick Henry. Drake’s production did increase in 2013, but Yeldon was the clear starter.

As the 2014 season began, Drake was beginning to grow into his role as a true all-purpose back.  Through 5 games in the 2014 season, Drake was averaging over 5 yards a carry, and a staggering 31.8 yards per catch. In the first 5 games, he had 6 touchdowns and averaged 10 yards every time he touched the ball. It looked like Drake was finally going to live up to the 5-star potential that Bama fans had been waiting to see since he signed with the Tide in 2012.

But in that 5th game, tragedy struck. Drake suffered a gruesome leg injury that ended his 2014 season just as it was getting started. At the time, it looked like it may have ended his career as well.

As the 2014 season progressed, Derrick Henry began to blossom. When the 2015 season started, it was obvious that the Alabama running game would be built around the future Heisman winner. Henry had an absolutely monster 2015 season, rushing for over 2,200.  The most amazing thing about Henry was that he never tired. It was not uncommon for Henry to get over 30 carries in a game in 2015.

Which meant Drake’s production as a running back was further limited. In fact, the Bama staff had to move Drake to field kickoffs just to find a way to get him on the field and producing in some way. And even that move didn’t bear fruit, as through his first 18 kickoff returns in 2015, Drake was averaging a very pedestrian 22 yards a return, with 0 TDs.

But all that changed on his last kickoff return of the year:

Just like that, Drake had scored his first, and only kickoff touchdown of his career. And Drake’s touchdown put the National Championship game firmly in Alabama’s control for the first time.

Alabama fans were aware of Drake’s story because we had followed his career. We knew he was a top recruit when he signed with Bama, we saw him finally coming into his own in 2014, before he broke his leg against Ole Miss. We were deflated to see how that might end his career, then elated for him when he scored this touchdown, that ended up being the score that clinched a 16th National Championship for the Crimson Tide.

A Chief Storyteller would be in a position to tell us the stories of our team’s players. If done correctly, it can almost become like a movie for each player. I am focusing on Drake’s story and how he helped Alabama win a National Championship, but there could be a parallel story to be told about how Derrick Henry finally realized his promise in his 2015 Heisman campaign. Or what about QB Jake Coker? He transferred to Alabama after being a backup at Florida State. He came to Alabama in 2014 as the presumed starter, and instead ended up being the backup to Blake Sims, who as the 3rd string running back the year prior. But Coker preserved, eventually won the starting job, and led his team to a National Championship.

So many player stories to tell, and each one helps the fans become more attached to their favorite team. Likewise, a Chief Storyteller could tell stories about the fans. Who are they, how long have they cheered for their favorite team? A Chief Storyteller should work to seek out stories from fans so they can be highlighted. This will help the team identify and connect with its fans the same way the fans connect with the players.

It’s all about using the power of story to build a deeper connection between the team and its fans. Because when you have that deeper connection, success is the only logical result.

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The Case For Accountability

This year, I made a promise to myself to read the Bible every single day. I started in January and am continuing to read scripture daily. It’s been a wonderful experience, and each Saturday I wanted to share some of my thoughts as I have been reading the Bible. I will return back to my business and marketing posts on Monday.

In graduate school I had a marketing instructor named Dr Jobe. What I liked about Dr Jobe was that he had real world experience, and he was happy to help his students prepare for the next stage of their lives and career.

One day after class I was walking to my car and Dr Jobe was parked along the way and he chatted with me about what my plans were after grad school, etc. He was a consultant (this was back when consultants actually consulted with companies), and he said that when he met with a client for the first time, he would talk to them about expectations. He said he would ask them “Are you ok with learning that YOU may be the problem?”

Are you ok with learning that you are accountable for your own behavior? It’s so easy to find the fault in others, but when it comes to us, often we don’t want to admit we have work to do as well. We can often easily find the blame in the actions of others, but not as easily in ourselves.  We are often quick to blame others, and even quicker to offer excuses for our behavior.

One of the overarching themes of the Bible is accountability. We are all accountable for our own actions. And by design, man will sin, it is inevitable. And the Bible is clear, that the wages of sin, is death. This is why Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was necessary. His death claimed our sin. Our sins are a debt that we cannot afford and which we cannot carry into Heaven.

But in allowing Himself to be crucified, Jesus paid our debt for us.  He covered our sin. If we agree to give our life to Jesus, He will pay our debt for us, and we can then go to Heaven.

However, we still have to be accountable for our actions. Especially moreso if we are Christians who have given our lives to Jesus. The writings of Paul to the churches makes this clear: As Christians, we have to be accountable for our actions and our behavior. In fact, our behavior is held to an even higher standard because of the path we have chosen.

How we view this depends on our own perspective. We can see this as a detriment, as if we have more work to do! Or we can view it as a privilege, we have more expected of us, because we are capable of so much more because God is with us.

As I have been reading the Bible, one of the messages I keep going back to is the thought inside my head that ‘this has to lead to a change in behavior’. It’s not enough to simply be inspired by the Bible, I have to apply the teachings to my life, and let it lead to positive change. Whenever I speak at an event, I want to inspire the audience, but more importantly I want to inspire the audience to take action.  It’s one thing to have someone stop me in the hallway and tell me they loved my presentation. That’s very satisfying and humbling. But it’s quite another thing to get an email from someone who heard me talk a year ago, and they wanted to tell me about the changes they have made at their company as a result of what they learned from my presentation.

It’s the difference between being inspired, and being inspired to change. I think Christians have a responsibility to our chosen faith to be accountable for our actions. When we agree to give our lives to Christ, we have received a gift that we cannot possibly repay or deserve. But what we can do, is treasure that gift and be accountable for receiving it. By accepting the gift, we become accountable for it. We take on additional responsibilities. And we should do so willingly and happily.

When Dr. Jobe took time out of his day to talk to me after class, he was stepping into his role as a teacher, as an instructor. He was understanding that his gift came with a level of accountability, and that accountability didn’t end when his class ended. It was with him always, and as a result, he was able to continue to make an impact on his students, even after his ‘official’ work was done.

It’s the same with Christians. We have been given the greatest gift of all. And with that gift, comes amazing accountability that we must demand from ourselves, because it will be demanded of us. We shouldn’t view this as a burden, but instead as an incredible privilege that we willingly accept out of a sense of appreciation for what we have been given.

A second chance.

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Study: User Generated Content is More Effective Than Content From Influencers

User Generated Content

Before your company invests in that new influencer marketing campaign, you should know that you can get better bang for your buck by tapping your current customers for user generated content. That’s the top conclusion from a new survey by Entribe into the drivers of consumer behavior.

You can view the study’s findings here.  Let’s breakdown the results into respondents’ attitudes toward influencers and UGC (User Generated Content):

Influencers:

  • 81% of those surveyed said content from influencers either had no or a negative impact on purchase decision
  • 51% of those surveyed ignore content from influencers
  • 29% of those surveyed hate content from influencers and find this untrustworthy
  • 62% have never purchased a celebrity endorsed product and 40% of those who have made an influencer-endorsed purchase, regret the purchase

UGC (Content created by customers):

  • 86% of those surveyed find brands that use UGC over content from an influencer to be more trustworthy
  • 90% prefer to see content from actual customers
  • 83% are more likely to purchase from brands that use actual customer content
  • 80% prefer a recommendation from a friend or peer versus an influencer recommendation, and 90% of respondents say they have made a purchase based on a peer recommendation

 

We Buy From People We Trust

The common denominator running through all the above data points, is trust. When we see content from an influencer recommending a product, we understand that on some level, they are likely being compensated to create and share that content.  On the other hand, when we see content from a friend or peer recommending a product, we understand that they are likely creating and sharing that content for free, they simply love the product.

An influencer recommends a product because they are paid to do so.  A peer recommends a product because they love the product.

That’s not to say that influencer marketing is worthless, in the right circumstance, it can be quite effective.

But there’s nothing quite like being in a store, and struggling to decide if you should buy Product A or Product B. As you go back in forth in your mind, a woman who is walking by mentions “I have Product B, and I absolutely love it.”

When that happens, we understand what motivated that woman to say something:  She really does love Product B, and she wants to see other people love it like she does. We know that, because we are the same way with the products we love.

We can RELATE to wanting to share the love we have for our favorite products. Most of us aren’t influencers and we can’t relate to being paid by a brand to promote a product that we don’t use.

If you want to create content that converts into sales, leverage UGC. Focus on content from your customers. We buy from people we like, we buy from people we trust. That’s our friends and peers.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Twitter Bringing Back Periscope, Angry Users Crash Reddit, Congress Targets the SEC

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope everyone had a great weekend and you’re ready for a great week! Here’s a few stories I found over the last few days that I think you will find interesting:

 

Everything old is new again? It looks like Twitter is planning on bringing back both Periscope and Vine.  I think the Periscope move in particular will be embraced by livestreamers, and Elon has long been a fan of Vine, so it coming back makes sense given that. It seems like Periscope is the priority for now, with Vine being possible for a reboot later.

It’s interesting that the move to bring back Periscope in part seems to be about developing streaming video-game content similar to Twitch and YouTube Gaming. The liverstream gaming space has been trying to develop a solid competitor to Twitch for years.  Mixer bombed a few years ago, YouTube Gaming has had limited success, and the new kid on the block is Kick.  So far, Twitch is still the 800 pound gorilla in the streaming space, so we’ll see if Elon can put Twitter in a place to compete.

 

Reddit recently announced changes to the pricing of API access for developers, and it’s leading to a widespread ‘strike’ by Redditors who are ‘taking down’ some of the most popular subreddits on the site and making them private. It’s actually leading to site outages.

 

The SEC has been aggressively targeting the crypto industry recently.  Coinbase is the latest exchange in the SEC’s crosshairs, and now it seems the SEC itself is under fire, in particular SEC Chair Gary Gensler.  US Representative Warren Davidson has introduced the SEC Stabilization Act which would restructure the SEC, and in the process fire Gary Gensler. The crypto space is excited about this move and it will be interesting to see what happens here.

There’s a somewhat related and interesting political subplot developing here. The crypto space is dominated by millennials and Gen Zers; voters aged approximately 18-40. That group typically tends to vote democratic, with the more younger end of the range being more likely to vote democrat. But for the most part, so far republican lawmakers have been more receptive to crypto, while democratic lawmakers tend to be more adversarial when it comes to oversight and regulation. If this continues, we could see a shift in voting patterns, at least marginally so.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute. I hope you have a great week, and see you here tomorrow for my next post!

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Following the Science of the Bible: The Parting of the Red Sea

In early January, I committed to reading the Bible every day. Each Saturday, I will be sharing my thoughts and ideas and some of what I’ve learned from reading Scripture. If you enjoy these posts, please check back every Saturday! I will continue to discuss marketing, business and web3 during the week. Thanks for reading!

When I started reading the Bible daily, one of the thoughts in the back of my mind was “What is the scientific evidence for what is written in the Bible?” I would read and consider how a skeptic would react to the Bible, and they would likely dismiss it without some sort of scientific confirmation of the claims presented.

One of the thing that struck me early on was the number of times prophets accurately predicted the coming of Jesus as the Messiah. I knew it was mentioned in the Old Testament, but assumed it was only mentioned once or twice.  It turns out that several prophets predicted that Jesus would come, all hundreds of years before He was born!

I started reading Exodus, which is the 2nd book of the Old Testament, and it tells the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, back to the Promised Land. Part of that journey includes the crossing of the Red Sea, one of the most famous stories of the Bible.  Moses led the Israelites, likely two million of them, to the Red Sea, then Moses parted the Red Sea, so the Israelites could cross (on dry ground), then when the Israelites were safely across, the Red Sea collapsed and closed in to drown the Egyptians who were chasing them.

As I was reading this, I was suddenly moved to stop, and research to see if there is any scientific evidence for the parting of the Red Sea and the crossing by the Israelites.  It turns out, there is!

First, we have to decide what path Moses and the Israelites took to leave Egypt and cross the Red Sea.  Keeping in mind that was estimated to be a group of two million.  The only place in the region that is thought to permit a group of that size is a large beach area in Nuweiba, Egypt, at the Gulf of Aqaba. This is the location where it is believed that the Red Sea parting and crossing took place.

Here’s where it gets interesting: The modern name for the beach is Nuweiba, but its full name in ancient times was Nuwayba’ al Muzayyinah.  The translation for Nuwayba’ al Muzayyonah is “Waters of Moses Opening”!

In the late 70s, archaeologist Ron Wyatt did an expedition in this region, trying to find the Red Sea crossing point. His research also led him to believe that the point at which Moses led the Israelites across the Red Sea was at the beach in Nuweiba. According to the Bible, the Egyptians chased Moses and the Israelites to the beach with thousands of soldiers, horses and chariots. So Wyatt was looking for remains of the soldiers, horses and chariots.

It turns out, he found all three at the crossing point! He found human bones as well as the bones of horses. And the biggest discovery of all, he found chariot wheels with a particular hub and spoke design that was used at the period when Moses is said to have parted the Red Sea.  Additionally, a separate expedition by another archaeologist later confirmed that there were also chariot wheels at the bottom of the crossing in Saudi Arabia, across from the beach at Nuweiba.

This website, Evidence For the Bible, has a treasure trove of information on the Red Sea parting and crossing.  Also, here’s a video from their site which goes into much greater detail of the expeditions into the sites. including some of the video that Ron Wyatt shot on the sea floor during his first expedition to the site.

Isn’t this fascinating? Please watch the video as it also contains a very interesting theory on the true location of Mount Sinai, which is the mountain where God delivered the Ten Commandments to Moses.

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Apple’s Vision Pro Reveal Could Signal the Coming Integration of AI Into AR/VR

If there’s one space where the technology hasn’t yet caught the promise, it’s Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR).  The promise is there, but the delivery, especially in terms of hardware, is lacking. The main focus has been delivering AR/VR experiences via headsets that are clunky at best, and can easily cause disorientation and headaches at worst.

Nevertheless, Apple announced that it is getting in the AR/VR headset game yesterday at its Worldwide Developers Conference with the introduction of Vision Pro.

The price tag immediately jumps out at you: $3,500.00.  And it won’t be available till early next year. But it’s an Apple product, so it will sell amazingly well, I am sure.  And one limitation of other headsets has been addressed; the weight of the Vision Pro is roughly a pound. That’s lighter than competitors, but even a pound of weight on your head will wear you out after a while.

Still, the introduction of the Vision Pro will encourage competitors to up their game as well. And I think the huge $3,500 price tag could be a boon for the space, as it will give competitors more runway in developing their own headset. Instead of a headset, what about a pair of AR/VR glasses that weighs only 6 ounces and costs $899 instead of $3500? The beefy price tag of the Vision Pro, and early 2024 release date, gives competitors more options. And that should ultimately benefit consumers.

So How Could Artificial Intelligence Fit Into AR/VR?

A few weeks ago on Twitter, I spotted a developer with a very interesting application. If you have used ChatGPT before, you may have noticed that you can tell it to give you an answer ‘in the style of’ a particular person or character. You can ask ChatGPT to answer a question for you, and it will.  Then you could ask ChatGPT to answer that same question, but ‘answer as a drunken pirate’ and it will.

The developer I saw on Twitter had taken this idea and incorporated it to have ChatGPT output its answers as if it were Steve Jobs. Someone left a comment saying they could see the potential of this, perhaps you could add other people to this, so you could have a virtual conversation with maybe family members. The developer remarked that this idea was exactly what he had in mind, he explained that his father had died at a young age, and he was incorporating his father’s persona into ChatGPT in order to have a ‘virtual conversation’ with his father now that he is an adult. This type of implementation could be seen as very cool or very scary, depending on your point of view.

Nevertheless, this idea of incorporating a real person’s persona via AI and outputting their responses is interesting to explore. If you add in the delivery of the persona via an AR/VR headset, the possibilities are endless:

  • A field service worker could have his boss ‘on site’ with him via AI in his AR/VR headset so he can assist the worker in diagnosing a problem with a field unit and walk the worker through how to fix it.
  • A teenager could watch a Taylor Swift concert on her birthday, and in between songs, Taylor stops to sing her Happy Birthday!
  • A marketer could join a workshop on AI where the presenter can stop the presentation to answer questions from the marketer as the material is being covered.
  • A family could watch a movie where the actor can explain more info about how a scene was shot or the director can talk about the plot as the movie is happening, and answer questions that the viewer may have.

The idea would be to take the customized interaction you have in ChatGPT, and move them to the AR/VR world via a visual component such as a persona, similar to a hologram. The benefits of AI would be that the persona of an actor or performer or subject matter expert would be able to respond to the viewer individually, giving them a customized response, if not have an actual ‘conversation’ with them.

The possibilities are endless. think back to this scene from Minority Report:

Here, the ‘ads’ are basically holograms that have scanned the shoppers’ retina to identify who they are, and access their purchase history. Then they could offer customized ads based on what they had already bought. This is pretty limited, a seamless integration of AI with AR/VR could lead to the ads engaging with the shopper in a back and forth in order to provide a truly customized experience.

Long-term, I think AI will have a massive impact on AR and VR, both at the consumer and brand level. I do think the technology needs to mature a bit more before the true potential of this collaboration can be realized. But in another 5-10 years, the AI/AR/VR experience could be truly immersive and truly transformational.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Spaces Leans Into Politics, Meta’s Twitter App is Closer, Apple Gets Branded Likes

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope you are ready to have an amazing week. The news cycle is a bit quiet right now for business and marketing, as we all await Apple’s annual developers conference later today. There are some big rumors about a new VR headset from Apple, and I will likely be covering that a bit in a post later this week.  For now, here’s some stories that have caught my eye over the last week:

 

Oh good, Twitter is leaning into politics again. A couple of weeks after hosting Gov DeSantis’ announcement of running for President on a Twitter Space, now Elon is going to host another Presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. That Space will happen later today if you are interested in attending. The DeSantis Space was massively popular, it had almost 700,000 attendees at one point. If the RFK Jr Space proves to be successful, I think Elon will go all-in on courting more candidates and political figures to have their own Spaces.

And in case you were wondering…President Trump’s exclusive contract with Truth Social ended on June 1st, and his Twitter profile has since been verified.

 

Meta unveils a new logo for it’s new app that it wants to replace Twitter. The app is being called Barcelona internally. The only timeline we have been given for release is sometime this Summer, so it could be anytime between now and September.

 

So Twitter is now rolling out branded Likes.  If you click Like on a tweet with the #WWDC23 hashtag, you get a customized Like animation.  Which is simply the Like being purple for a split second from what I can tell.  I’m a bit surprised that it took Twitter this long to offer a branded engagement option like this. We’ll see how this plays out, but I could see this being a nice money-maker for Twitter with brands, at least until the novelty wears off.

 

As I said, pretty light fare this week.  I’ll be curious to see what Apple announces at #WWDC23, and may have an update on the announcements in a post later this week.  I will try to get that post out tomorrow, Weds at the latest.  Hope you have a wonderfully productive week!

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Let Your Courage Be the Master of Your Fear

In January, I decided to start reading the Bible.  Every day. And it’s been an amazing experience, and I will be sharing some takeaways from my reading here every Saturday.

Growing up, most kids have a favorite superhero they are drawn to. For me, it was also Batman and Spiderman. I know, a lot of kids love Superman.  Who doesn’t want to fly and have super strength?

But for me, it was always Spidey and The Dark Knight. And for the same reason; I could relate to them.

First, you had mild-mannered Peter Parker. The nerd in school that got bullied, till one day he was exposed to a radioactive spider and developed the ability to climb walls like a spider and had super-human strength. Ok, I couldn’t relate to any of that, but he also was able to use his brain and create web-shooters and the super strong and sticky substance that would become his signature webbing.

Then look at Batman. He had NO super-powers, unless you count being obsessive complusive as a superpower. He was a ‘normal’ guy that due to the murder of his parents, became obsessed with fighting crime. So he trained relentlessly. He became a master of hand to hand combat. He developed his detective skills till he was on par with the best sleuths in the world. Yeah, he was insanely rich and could buy any toy he wanted.  But the point was, in theory….anyone could be Batman.

That made him relatable. Superman could fly around the world at the speed of light.  That was cool, but made him completely unrelatable to me. But Batman, Batman showed what was possible.  Probably? No, but possible.  And that made him appealing.

I’ve always been drawn to the idea of reframing a negative as a positive.  Or finding potential in a place that doesn’t seem likely. It’s one of the reasons why I wanted to write Think Like a Rock Star, I wanted to help businesses think differently about their customers. Don’t think of them as a burden or just a number. Understand that your customers can be, the best drivers of your business. You just have to tap into and release their potential.  Which starts by understanding that this potential exists.

“So Mack, what in the blessed moon does this have to do with the Bible???”

Glad you asked.

Last week I wrote about how the Bible encourages faith from Christians as a way to destroy worry. I think that for many of us, worry and a fear of taking risks can go hand in hand. For years I would tell others “I need to know that when I do THIS, that THIS will happen. When I find that, I can devote all my energy into THIS in order to get THAT.”

I finally realized that was just a fancy way of saying “I don’t like to take risks”.

When I started reading the Bible, I believed that God would be in line with this thinking. I assumed that the Bible would teach that we shouldn’t take risks, that we should hand the problem over to God and let Him take the risks for us.

Instead, the Bible teaches the opposite. It repeatedly says that Christians should live courageously, and view doing so as a tribute to God:

Joshua 1: 9 : “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

 

Additionally, I found a passage in I believe one of the letters Paul wrote to one of the churches (I am kicking myself for not marking it because now I can’t find the exact verses), but he was imploring the people of this church to be courageous. He went on to say that as Christians, we should live courageously, so that our behavior can be an example for others to follow.

In my mind, this has totally reframed risk-taking for me. Before, I viewed being risk adverse as being smart.  You can’t lose what you don’t put on the table.

But in God’s eyes, taking risks is a sign of trust. And in much the same way that worry and faith cannot exist in the same space, I guess you could say that fear and courage cannot exist in the same space either. Or at least, courage will be the master of fear.

God doesn’t want us to be fearful because fearful behavior is distrustful behavior.  He wants us to take risks, because that shows that we trust that God will give us the wisdom to choose the right path and then we need to have the faith to walk it.

 

I wanted to say thank you SO much for the positive reaction to last week’s post on Your Faith is a Thief. I received positive comments here and in private and even on social media. I’m very happy to see that. I know that posts about the Bible on a blog devoted to marketing and business isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I have been thrilled with the response the first post has gotten. Thank you so much, if you enjoy these posts where I share what I am learning from reading the Bible, please check back here every Saturday for a new one!

 

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The Promise (and Peril) of Artificial Intelligence for Content Creators

Artificial intelligence for content creators

Artificial intelligence is arguably the hottest growth area of business this year and could be for the rest of the decade. In early 2023, Microsoft announced a $10 Billion investment in ChatGPT creator OpenAI. Google followed a month later with a $300 Million investment in AI startup Anthropic, giving them a 10% stake in the company. So big tech’s big bucks are flowing to artificial intelligence right now, and that will sustain its growth path, at least for the foreseeable future. As you might guess, artificial intelligence for content creators will hold great promise as well.

If you haven’t already, you should familiarize yourself with these tools. ChatGPT is the most popular, and I’ve been using it since December of 2022. You can experiment with it yourself here.

At first blush, Artificial Intelligence seems like a godsend for content creators. It has the potential to address many of the most pressing problems that content creators have:

  • Ideation. This is big for me, I have always struggled with coming up with enough ideas for new content.
  • Editing. My process to editing goes like this: Publish the post, then immediately proofread it. With AI, you can have your post proofread for you quickly and easily, and have it edited in pretty much any style you choose.
  • SEO, AI can easily give you tips to improve the search engine performance and rankings for your content.
  • Visual enhancements.  AI can suggest appropriate visual components.
  • Headline writing tweaks.  AI can write your headlines for you! Many content creators and especially bloggers struggle with writing compelling headlines.

 

So as you can see, when used correctly, artificial intelligence can greatly aid content creators. But there are some potential drawbacks to consider as well.

AI Should Enhance Your Content Creation, it Shouldn’t Replace it

The best way to look at Artificial Intelligence is as a tool you can use to improve an existing output, not as a tool that creates the content for you.

Let’s look at two scenarios to illustrate the difference:

First, let’s say you have agreed to cook dinner for friends. Since you aren’t much of a cook, you decided to go with something quick and easy, spaghetti with marinara. For the marinara, you decided to choose Rao’s Homemade Marinara (which is actually quite good), but you want to pass it off as being your own homemade concoction.

So your friends arrive, but it seems Michael invited his friend Paolo to join the group, and of course Paolo would just so happen to be a world-class chef. So when your friends begin dinner, they compliment you on the spaghetti and sauce, which you claim you made yourself. Paolo compliments it as well, adds it tastes remarkably close to Rao’s that can be bought from the shelf, and asks for your recipe.  Oops.  This would be an example of having AI do the work for you, and how that can create problems.

Now let’s look at the second scenario. In this scenario, you are still making dinner for your friends, still making spaghetti, but in this example you can actually cook! And you have gotten quite good at making homemade marinara, as your friends will attest. So your friends arrive a bit early for dinner, and again, Michael invites Paolo along to dinner. When you learn that Paolo is a world-class chef, you invite him to sample your marinara as you are preparing it. He marvels at the taste, you thank him and add that you think it needs some more ‘heat’, but you don’t want to make it spicy. Paolo tastes it again and then suggests you add a pinch of black pepper. You do, and perfection! Your marinara has the exact taste of ‘heat’ you were looking for! In this example, AI, er….Paolo, took an already good homemade marinara sauce, and made it better.  The AI enhanced your work and improved the final product.

Additionally, the information given by AI isn’t always accurate. And that can quickly cause problems:

Also, the sources of information that AI tools pull from, especially visuals such as photos, may include copyrighted material, which can create additional issues:

Also, there’s the concern over spreading misinformation that’s been generated by AI:

 

So how should you use AI as a content creator?

Simply put, AI should be used to enhance content that YOU create. These tools can be quite valuable for content creators, if used correctly. What you don’t want to happen is let the AI create the content, then you tweak it. You should create the content, then use AI as a tool to help edit, enhance and improve YOUR work.

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Your Faith is a Thief

Disclaimer: This post will be about the Bible. Earlier this year, I started reading the Bible daily, and I want to start sharing some of my thoughts and takeaways here each Saturday. If this isn’t a topic you are interested in, I understand completely, and hope to see you back here on Monday when Monday’s Marketing Minute returns.  If you do enjoy this post, I will be covering similar topics every Saturday from now on.  Thanks for reading!

So, now that the fine print is out of the way: In January I made a decision to start reading the Bible every day. I had never read the Bible cover to cover, I’d read bits and pieces over the years, often during my sporadic church attendance, but there were many books that I had never even touched.

So I decided to remedy that in January. I started out by reading Genesis, then immediately went to Revelation (which was probably not a smart idea). I then went back and read Exodus, then moved to the New Testament and read it all the way through.  I’ve just restarted reading Genesis again for the 2nd time.

I had some pretty big misconceptions about what the Bible is about.  If you haven’t read the Bible before, I don’t want to do spoilers, but it’s an amazing account of the entire world. I was expecting to be all but lectured to, and shown how far from the ideal Christian I fall. I assumed the Bible was basically a collection of case studies of the most amazing Christians who lived nearly sin-free lives, and that would be the ideal that I was expected to shoot for.

I could not have been more wrong. The Bible does indeed profile many of the Kings, Prophets and leaders that shaped Christianity. It does indeed give you Christian ideals to strive for. But the Bible makes it very clear that these leaders of Christianity are also VERY human and as such, they are VERY flawed. I was honestly stunned at some of the sinful behavior that these pillars of the Christian religion engaged in.  But these people also did amazing things for their God. The overarching theme of the Bible seems to be that God will forgive those that come to Him and accept Him and ask for forgiveness for their sins.

If you have put off reading the Bible because you are afraid that you will learn how ‘bad’ or sinful you are in comparison to ‘good’ Christians, let me just say that you may have some of the same misconceptions about the Bible that I did.  If you decide to read the Bible, I think you will be as pleasantly surprised as I have been so far.

Now, let me turn to what I want to talk about today. One of the themes that the Bible keeps hitting on is the need for all Christians to have faith in God. First in the Old Testament the need to act in faith was emphasized.  Then when I started reading the New Testament, Jesus constantly taught His followers to act in faith. People would constantly come to Jesus and ask Him to heal them, to remove their afflictions. He would ask them if they had faith that He could do this, and when they said they believed, He would heal them.  In one story, a Roman soldier came to Jesus and asked Him to heal someone. Jesus told the soldier to lead Him to this person. The soldier told Jesus that it wasn’t necessary for Him to follow the soldier home, Jesus could heal the person by simply wishing it into existence. Jesus marveled at the soldier’s faith, and told him to go home, that his companion had been healed.

Now as I was reading the Bible and saw how this point of having faith was repeated over and over again, a thought occurred to me. I thought, I can see how a cynic could read this and think “Well this is pretty self-serving, isn’t it? Of course God wants us to be faithful to Him! This is just God wanting people to worship Him for His glory!”

Which, of course, is correct. But that’s not the only reason why God stresses the need for faith. In fact, I don’t think it’s even the main reason why.

As I read on in the New Testament, I came to Christ’s famous Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew Chapter 6, Jesus talks about why we should not worry:

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[e]?

I love these verses so much! And chapter 6 of Matthew closes with verse 34: “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

And as I was mentally digesting these verses I began to see the connection between faith and worry.  At that moment, the following thought popped into my head: “Worry and faith cannot exist in the same space.”

And there it was! God stresses faith from us because our faith destroys worry! Think of the damage that we do to ourselves by worrying about our lives. About our job, or family, or possessions. We worry about something that MIGHT happen.  Or that might NOT happen.

How much of it is necessary? Is ANY of this worry necessary?

Worry is the fear and dread of something that MIGHT happen. Faith is the belief that something WILL happen.

God tells us to avoid worry because He wants us to put our trust in Him to provide for us, but also because He knows the damage that worry causes us. He doesn’t want that for us.

As I’ve been reading the Bible, there have been numerous ‘lightbulb’ moments for me, but this was one of the biggest and I just had to share it with you. It totally helps me reframe how I view faith and why I need to eliminate worry.  It’s why I wrote ‘Faith is a thief’ as the title of this post. Faith steals your ability to worry!

If you want to start reading the Bible, here’s a fantastic reference I have been using that I think you will enjoy. The Bible Project has created animated videos that explain every book of the Bible, Old and New Testament. Each video is around 8-10 minutes, so they are really short. I like to watch the video for a book, then read the book.  Watching the video first really helps me get a sense of what the book is about, and it makes it much easier to read.  Here’s their video for Genesis. These are so good I binge-watched the entire Old Testament in just a couple of days!  I hope you will enjoy them as well.

Thanks for reading, if you enjoy this post, I will be sharing more of my thoughts on the Bible every Saturday. Have a wonderful weekend!