Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
S3 Ep12: Keith Lauver on AI, Ella, and the Entrepreneurial Rollercoaster
34 Plays19 days ago
In this episode of the Dial It In podcast, hosts Dave and Trygve interview Keith Lauver, the founder of the AI startup Ella. The conversation revolves around how AI is transforming industries, particularly through tools like Ella, designed for high-resolution marketing. The episode highlights Ella's ability to co-create, coach, and critique, making it a valuable companion for marketers. Keith shares his journey as a serial entrepreneur, offering insights into resilience, learning from failures, and staying curious. The discussion also covers the importance of a clear brand strategy and understanding the ideal customer profile. Keith emphasizes the need for effective, precise marketing over quantity, and how Ella helps achieve that. The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to explore Ella and leverage AI to enhance their marketing efforts.
Connect with Keith and Ella
Atomic Elevator
LinkedIn
…
Dial It In Podcast is where we gathered our favorite people together to share their advice on how to drive revenue, through storytelling and without the boring sales jargon. Our primary focus is marketing and sales for manufacturing and B2B service businesses, but we’ll cover topics across the entire spectrum of business. This isn’t a deep, naval-gazing show… we like to have lively chats that are fun, and full of useful insights. Brought to you by BizzyWeb.
Links:
Website: dialitinpodcast.com
BizzyWeb site: bizzyweb.com
Connect with Dave Meyer
Connect with Trygve Olsen
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Humorous Mishap
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome to Dial It In, a podcast where we talk with fascinating people about marketing, sales, process improvements, and tricks that they use to grow their businesses. Join me, Dave Meyer, and Trigby Olson of FizzyWeb as we bring you interviews on how the best in their fields are dialing it in for their organizations. Let's ring up another episode.
00:00:30
Speaker
All right. Well, I think we're ready to start our podcast today and I have a, I'm not ready. Okay. You need to do a little bit more research. I've been reading about AI and how it's going to change the world and replace my job. so ah just And just, I don't feel very funny
Introducing Keith Laver and Ella
00:00:48
Speaker
today. So what I've done is I've brought, I brought an AI chat prompt here. I'm just going to have all my witty and funny stuff done by the AI robot today. Well, we'll make help any way we can get it. All right. So hold up hold on.
00:01:03
Speaker
Thanks, Dave. Excited to be here and ready to dive into today's episode. Let's make it a great one. Make sure you read it in a friendly tone and enthusiastically. You're not supposed to read the background part, Trigby. You got to start over. Now we're not over. All right. Let me work on this. Okay. but you You work on that and why don't we get to our guests? Tell us who we're talking to today.
00:01:25
Speaker
Our guest is Keith Laver. He's a seasoned entrepreneur and the visionary founder of Ella, which is one of our holiday gifts to but our listing audience this holiday season. It's an innovative AI startup. So Keith's career spans multiple ventures and he has developed a reputation for his entrepreneurial spirit and his commitment to transforming big ideas into successful businesses. So his latest project, Ella,
00:01:53
Speaker
combines his passion for technology with a mission to support dreams and empower people through AI. Keith is known for his practical insights, bold approach, and being an above average dancer, and he shares hard-earned lessons on what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur in today's fast evolving landscape. I threw in a little extra there so you know it was me and not the computer.
00:02:17
Speaker
Oh, very good. Very good. That's actually super coincidental because we have a brand new sponsor today. Oh, great. So I should probably do our sponsor read before we get to Keith. Today's episode is brought to you by Ella, your AI marketing elevator built by CMOs for CMOs, a dynamic group of seasoned marketing professionals united to form a passionate collective.
00:02:41
Speaker
aimed at empowering one another and the brands they serve with top tier marketing solutions. As they develop their offerings, the evolving opportunities in AI inspired the birth of Ella, an innovative marketing elevator crafted for marketers, by marketers, embodying their collective expertise and wisdom. Visit Ella at atomicelevator.com.
00:03:05
Speaker
Which is so weird because our founder is also the, Oh my. Our guest today is the founder of Elmo's team. How are you? I've just been waiting. but First of all, correct something very important, which is I am a below average the answer. Oh my. See the chat prompt got that wrong.
00:03:24
Speaker
as AI tools can do. Yes. Keith, it's delightful to have you
Keith's Background and Entrepreneurial Spirit
00:03:29
Speaker
with us. I think in the past couple of months, we've had a chance to work with your tool Ella and to get to know you a little bit. Fun fact for all of those Yellowstone fans, you are actually very close to the park in Montana, correct? Northeast corner.
00:03:45
Speaker
Beartooth Highway starts in our little mountain village, and we have a ski area, fly fishing, and amazing restaurants. So everybody's taking a visit. We love it. That's super cool. And I'm assuming you know where the train station is then? Take it every day to work. All right. Perfect. You said you were going to take the train station, Dave? I promised, but I don't know if it's going to take a while.
00:04:11
Speaker
Okay. Welcome. He never takes me anywhere. Beautiful day and we'll try in the new year to get you past. So Keith, one of the funnest things that I've come to know about you is that you're a not even a serial entrepreneur, a quintessential entrepreneur. And like but that's one of the reasons I was excited to have you with because it seems like you've always got something new and exciting in the other and that you're working and cooking on new business ideas and processes. And the tool that we're working with Ella is a new layer of all the AI that everybody's talking about.
00:04:48
Speaker
So can you tell us a little bit about what Ella actually does?
Ella's Marketing Precision and Co-Creation Approach
00:04:52
Speaker
Yeah, we've taken a different approach with Ella. Maybe shouldby you set this up in an even more powerful way than I could have hoped for by giving us crap.
00:05:05
Speaker
right Most AI is about quantity. Most people who are using it are trying to create more stuff. And as people, we don't need more things. As receivers of information from brands, we don't need more noise. And as those stewarding brand stories, we don't need to turn up the volume. We think that the better solution is to be more precise, to be more clear. We call it high-resolution marketing, and that's at the core what it is that Ella is doing, providing a higher resolution so messages break through that clutter. It's not about more, it's about more effective.
00:05:52
Speaker
I think the large problem that I have with AI is I think the universal creative problem is I am convinced that ah one of the scariest things in the world is a blank piece of paper and and be told to create. What are you going to create with that? Are you going to write an important document? Are you going to make a paper airplane? Are you going to turn it into a house? Are you going to burn it for fire? Somebody says create and they give you something blank. and It becomes a challenge. and i think Most people's frustration with AI on the whole is in that same sort of psychological bet.
00:06:29
Speaker
ah if You have that blinking cursor and you can ask it anything, but what are you supposed to do? I very purposefully did the introduction of the way that I did because so many people are fumbling with the beginning of it, were asking questions, having to refine questions. I spent 20 minutes, and I'm decent with it yesterday, trying to do an image creation of an animated a thing of Dave and I for a client, and it took 20 minutes. So I think what you tied into
00:07:06
Speaker
I think is the first value proposition for Ella, Keith, is it's asking the specific guided questions in order to get you a very specific guided result. I probably could use Ella if I wanted to have an animated picture of a fish wearing MC Hammer pants, but that's not its original purpose. it really what's What's really the throughput if i of what Ella can do for me?
00:07:34
Speaker
yeah I want to just build, if I could, for a moment on what you're getting at with respect to how to even use this tool. And let's just be honest with ourselves. I think we're all discovering how best to use AI, right? And different people in different roles may find different benefits that come from it. But what we've said is we don't see a future where people need to become prompt engineers, which is part of what you're getting at. How do I?
00:08:01
Speaker
frame this in exactly the right way so that I get exactly the right outcome. That's a ah whole subspecialty. It's almost like learning how to program a computer, for goodness sake. And there are people that want to do that and I i encourage them and support them um and we'll cheer them all on. But it all is for everybody else.
00:08:21
Speaker
That was for the people that just want to solve the creative problem that you described there, which is, how do I do better work? Ella's for what we're calling the curious. but The people that are saying, how could I get this started? How could I make this better? and Ella has at her core been trained to respond to the curious, is to help build a better profile of a customer, help build a better campaign. And the curious coach in Ella will come back and say, do you really want that? Are you sure you want that image that you were just prompting? And Ella will perhaps suggest some alternatives
Defining Ideal Customer Profiles
00:09:05
Speaker
for you along the way. So Ella is designed at the core to help you do better work. She's not a place for you to learn prompt engineering.
00:09:13
Speaker
One of the things that I get a lot in my day job at BusyWeb is pushback when nice when we start talking about something that you mentioned, which is that ideal customer profile. And people say, well I know what my customers want. Why do I need you to tell me? So let before we get into the value of how Ella makes it quicker, can you talk a little bit about, and Dave, feel free and weigh in here, what's the purpose of defining that ideal customer profile?
00:09:43
Speaker
believe that the art of telling story, the art of grabbing attention, the art of giving value to people and inviting them along journeys when we pull them into the stories of products that can make lives better, easier, or faster, all of that storytelling is really rooted in fundamental principle. So this pencil has been known since the beginning of time, for goodness sake. But what's happened, I believe at least, is we've gotten away from them as we get focused on a blinky light. Oh, let's create another digital ad that looks like this, or let's find another social post that um is gonna be like somebody else's social post. And so the entire premise of Ella is not to chase something new,
00:10:32
Speaker
rather to clear the clutter in the foundation of what was old and true. and That sounds a little bit interesting for an AI tool. right Here we're using the very newest technology to get us back to basics, but yeah that's critical. and so To your point, one of those basics is not describing a customer from the perspective of what are the demographics but rather the core is what's the problem that you're really solving for somebody? What's the pain that they really have? And I will say as somebody who has been an entrepreneur as long as I have, the biggest mistake I made across the majority of companies I had was thinking I knew.
00:11:23
Speaker
the answer to who my customer was and what their problem was because I inverted it. I said, your problem is the opposite of my solution. So therefore, you must need what I have. right And I just assumed everybody's problem was the inverse of my solution. That's not the case. And so Ella helps bring clarity to self-deception that we might have as a help.
AI in Strategic Marketing Planning
00:11:52
Speaker
And I think there's a lot of power to having outsiders wait in a safe way to, oh, I wonder if that's really the problem that somebody has. And having that framework it is to me was where the big light bulb went off for me because I've used a bunch of other AI tools in my past and still do, of course. But the interesting part about LF for me is it comes pre-programmed as a CMO, right ah essentially. So it's asking all of those smart questions and you've got all of the prompting that you would have had to do and spend hours doing in order to get it to think right.
00:12:35
Speaker
Then you've got all of that pre-programmed into the system so that you're starting at, like you said, Keith, best practices and the core tenets of marketing. So coming up with ICPs or customer profiles.
00:12:50
Speaker
and coming up with what are you trying to actually accomplish, what is success for your customers, and then helping you get tactical after the brands, the feeling, the tone, the personalities of who you're trying to reach.
00:13:08
Speaker
It's more like Jarvis and Tony Stark where Jarvis knows everything about you and is telling you, okay, well there's a 28% chance that you're actually going to hit who you're trying to reach unless we narrow it down more. So let's keep talking. And the tool actually does that. Here was my experience.
00:13:27
Speaker
the availability of that kind of thinking, the frameworks to do thoughtful analysis of customers, the frameworks to do clarifying positioning, the frameworks to build a full brand guide. That's stuff that agencies have been building for decades. right The big agencies charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for that. I was on a call with somebody an hour ago,
00:13:55
Speaker
who was describing a $530,000 branding project that they had just paid for. The results of which were a very detailed PDF with a website that was an additional $130,000 that didn't even resonate with a core customer.
00:14:18
Speaker
Ouch. It wasn't working. let's Let's just stop for a second there in your narrative, Keith. And I just want to say to anybody out there who's listening who has $530,000 for a branding project and then has another $130,000 for a website that doesn't resonate with the kind of the customer. I'd really encourage you to reach out to me immediately at trigvie at busy web operators are standing by. Please keep.
00:14:40
Speaker
I think that's, but what you're getting at is the core where it's, whether it's ego, in my case, I'll confess to you that I spent over $100,000 on a logo when I raised $4 million dollars for a new startup because I felt like that's what I was supposed to do because other people had told me and frankly, professional marketers were telling me this is what I needed. I needed a new logo.
00:15:09
Speaker
And I trusted that they were charismatic, believable, and had a track record. But I think it's, can I swear on this podcast? Please don't. You'll get bleeped. He's just swearing and he gets persnickety. We go all the way up to shocks. Can I say BS? Sure. Yes. I think it's a bunch of BS, right? Yeah.
00:15:30
Speaker
so but What I was being given was a bill of goods that fits somebody's project management budget or an account manager's quota. What I was sold was an opportunity for a creative director to win an award, I wasn't actually being sold what was going to be effective. And I think that's part of the fundamental problem that we're trying to solve is to shrink that down, right? To shrink down these processes so that they can be done very quickly and still at a level of quality. So the brands do need to be developed, but we probably don't need to spend $500,000 on them.
00:16:15
Speaker
and Ella can come in and shrink that down and accelerate that process so that companies can think strategically without spending six figures on their branding so it can become more effective and break through that clutter. I think when people realize that they need to reevaluate their brand. there In their entrepreneurial journey, they either like you, they've massively overspent on the front end, or they've bootstrapped the business to the extent that now they can't quite figure out why they can't make one. They're in a position where they have to start asking those deep questions about what does your brand mean to you,
00:16:57
Speaker
And it's hard because you don't know because you've had it two inches in front of your face the whole time. And I think there's a cross purposes issue that there's having your brand clearly identified is of critical importance to the overall success of your business. However.
00:17:17
Speaker
As you mentioned, Keith, if this there's that cliche of a branding project that it's going to take 18 months.
Narrowing Marketing Focus for Effectiveness
00:17:23
Speaker
And the throughput of it is you have a rounded end as opposed to a serif end, which is a funky font talk for those of you giving support home. It doesn't always make sense. And so.
00:17:37
Speaker
In creating that guide rails, it's a great place to start with trying to redevelop the overall marketing strategy. And that's, I think where Ella really shines to start with is that coaching aspect.
00:17:51
Speaker
So we've gone from just having wide open spaces and sometimes, and and and we get that all the time as people say, who are you selling to? We're selling everyone. No, if you're not food, love, or warmth, dear not everybody needs your product. And I suppose technically there are parts of Nevada you don't even, it's really just down to food and worth. Okay. So who are you really going to sell to? Who's really going to take benefit of your your product or your service?
00:18:19
Speaker
That's where you need to clearly enunciate. And that's where that ideal customer profile really comes into play is because there's a converse effect too is who you want to sell to. You also tells you who you shouldn't sell to the people who aren't sick.
00:18:33
Speaker
One of the hardest things that I had to face as an entrepreneur is exactly what you're saying. tricky I wanted everyone to be the customer. I wanted to think that my market needed to be bigger and therefore I was trying to say all things to all people. That's sloppy marketing.
00:18:52
Speaker
That's wasteful marketing. And frankly, most companies can't even afford that marketing to talk to everybody about everything all the time. There are opportunities and those opportunities we think are powered by tools like Ella to really magnify to shrink again, not just the process, but the customer down. I'm not going to say all the way to a universe of one, but one of the most amazing things that we found about Ella is we can train her on 10 different customer types that a business has.
00:19:33
Speaker
I love that. and I think it's important as we look at what brand can do and what strategy can do to tease into a little bit more of what some of the deliverables of Ella are. and I've used Ella now for a few dozen clients. and As I've gone through the three core things that you do with Ella, there's a strategy builder, a planning side to Ella.
00:20:00
Speaker
and walking people through all the way from clarifying a positioning statement and you can hoover up the website into the tool so that it'll give you, okay, here's what I've got and help me clarify what I am based on what you found by me copying this in. right As you go through all of those other steps, and so there's ideal customer profiles, competitive analysis, brand identity product guides, market conditions, headwinds and tailwinds, which is really an eye-opener for a lot of our clients. Is there one spot when you're working with clients or guiding people through with Ella that seems to really open their eyes and they all of a sudden get the power of the tool?
00:20:45
Speaker
There is the framework that Alex Osterwalder created with something he called Value Proposition Design and a framework called Value Proposition Canvas has been profoundly impactful for me as a storyteller, but also for the clients that are using Ella. And the principle is he encourages us all to think about three things. One, what is the job?
00:21:14
Speaker
that our product or service is doing on behalf of the customer that we're solving something for. What is the job? The second is what is the pain that they're experiencing because part of that job needs to connect to relief.
00:21:30
Speaker
we relieve pain. And the second is opportunity the third is gain creator. What is the gain that somebody is seeking and therefore part of our job needs to be to create gain. So in essence, the job is described as resolving or eliminating pain and creating gain and probably something unique to the particular person who has this. So that's an abstract concept.
Ella as a Marketing Trainer
00:21:57
Speaker
When you take that, we all nod our heads and say, yeah, that makes sense. My my company solves a problem. I do a job. I relieve some pain and I create some gain.
00:22:07
Speaker
But what often we struggle with as people is seen clearly from another's point of view, how they're seeing it. The job that, for example, I had a customer tell me that Ella was doing for them as I was learning and teaching on our own value proposition, Canvas, was Ella makes my team better.
00:22:32
Speaker
I said, what do you mean? She said she told a story of somebody on their team that had no marketing training, has never been schooled in the disciplines of all these frameworks and was able to sit down. She's a brilliant ah account manager, but she's able to sit down now and understand more deeply the clients.
00:22:52
Speaker
business because of Ella. She's able to do better marketing because of Ella. She's being upskilled because Ella is essentially her coach and her teacher because she's interconnecting these frameworks. And so I hadn't thought about Ella as a trainer. I thought about Ella as a strategist. I thought about Ella as a campaign planner. I thought about Ella as a researcher or an account manager, or even a creative director. Those are all jobs that Ella's been trained to do. I hadn't thought about Ella as a trainer.
00:23:21
Speaker
And what she said is, oh my gosh, Elle is the best trainer I could ever ask for. And I said, tell me more. And she followed it up with that receiver, the the student, if you will, that employee is able to learn in a much safer environment and in a hands-on way. There's no judgment and they're free to do it themselves. I never thought about that as a benefit. So there's insight that come when we consider jobs and pains and gains.
00:23:49
Speaker
I think what the last thing you just said is so immensely critical to the entire experience is there's no judgment. if you you Okay. So in the overall storytelling, we've gotten to the point in the narrative where the entrepreneur understands that they really need to double down on their brand. And they're looking at hiring a downtown firm in one of those downtown places with elevated ceilings, of exposed duct work, and guys wearing with Van Dyke mustaches and talking about things you don't really understand, or there's a computer prompt and the computer prompt, it's so much more comforting. Dave, I wanted to ask you a question. You listed off the four or five things. Where'd you get that list from? I was actually looking inside of Hella for that and based off of the experience that I've had with it. So the tool.
00:24:39
Speaker
that i And we have some going through this and experiencing it for our clients. One of the things that you just talked about, Keith, is being able to set what you're asking Ella to do or how you're asking Ella to do it. And I think this is a relatively new function, but being able to ask Ella to be either a coach or a critic or a co-creator inside of your responses as if you're just noodling something and brainstorming or tell me if I'm crazy conversations, you can literally have that and load the information in.
00:25:14
Speaker
I think, Dave, you're getting at a core misunderstanding, and it's really the starting place of so many people with tools like ChatGPT or even Claude, where we're looking at it to replace something that we're already doing. Be like Google or be a copywriter for me. And so the best way I can describe this, I have the privilege on Fridays of teaching an entrepreneur class at our local high school.
00:25:39
Speaker
And the kids, when we were thinking about AI and introducing this year, Ella, into the curriculum, the first thing their brains went to was, Ella can do my work. Ella can do my homework. Great. I can just sit back and Ella does it. And we're like, not the way to use Ella. First point is you co-create with Ella. And in fact, we changed it so that they don't turn in work product that they do with Ella, but rather they have to turn in their entire conversation with Ella.
00:26:10
Speaker
They have to demonstrate that they're interacting, challenging, because Ella, while she's been trained by marketers for marketing, while she has hundreds of different frameworks and tools inside her, and her knowledge is rich and she's wise, still doesn't know everything you do. You're to co-create.
00:26:30
Speaker
with her. And so that insight shifted, in fact, as part of why we now have three different modes that we encourage people to try in Ella. One is co-create. She's not a homework doer. Don't use her to write your marketing plan. That's not what Ella's job is. Don't use her to create a persona. That's not what Ella's job is. She's intended to co-create with you a clear picture of who your customer is or a clear brief or a campaign that you do. The second is that coach and the third is the crypto.
00:27:01
Speaker
Tell me more about the critic. Back to that ah point you made, Trigby, about safety right and having a safe environment. I'll tell you, my experience with her as a critic is we're going to be raising some capital for Atomic Elevator. We think it's time to accelerate what we're doing. And in order to do that, I was creating a deck.
00:27:24
Speaker
I have raised $35 million dollars for other businesses that I have started. I've been through this show before, and my team, for the most part, hasn't. And so I realized that I was actually, as I was processing the journey I went through over the last 10 days to work on this business plan, I didn't even want to share with them.
00:27:48
Speaker
an early draft because I didn't want them to judge my early draft. I didn't want to be ashamed of my early draft. So I used Ella ah along the process where I knew very much what I was trying to say and how I was trying to say it, but I would go in and upload a version of my slides into Ella and I told her who my ideal customer was, in this case, an investor who ah believes in cleaning up waste, an investor who understands the entrepreneur's journey and the fact that they should have access to the same big marketing agency stuff, but at a smaller scale, like, well, busy web offers. And I was able to send that over to Ella and say, Ella, can you look this over? Is this clear? Is this aligned? Is this cohesive? Is this compelling?
00:28:40
Speaker
And I went through six different drafts on a Saturday and got Ella to a place where I finally was able to share the deck with my team yesterday. And the response from one of my team members was, that's amazing. How did you do that as a first draft? I'm like, I think you know the answer. The answer is it wasn't a first draft. It was probably my seventh draft. I just did them really rapidly with expertise using Ella as a critic. And it was a safer place for me to do that.
00:29:12
Speaker
Keith, one of the things that we're trying to do with this season of Dial It In is tap into kind of the idea of so you wanna.
Keith's Entrepreneurial Journey and Growth
00:29:22
Speaker
And one of the reasons I was excited to chat with you is that you are a serial entrepreneur. And if we changed our focus for a couple of minutes into so you wanna be a serial entrepreneur, can you tell me a little bit about your history and what brought you to this point?
00:29:39
Speaker
Do I get to first answer the question? the front of so you want to The question that I heard in my mind at least was, what would you tell somebody? So you want to be an entrepreneur? Make sure you love roller coasters. It's up, it's down, it winds, it turns, there's G-forces. You may throw up.
00:30:02
Speaker
what it's going to be an awesome ride. And if it's why you're here on this planet, go for it. I'm here in service to something bigger. I am here as a steward of talents that I've been given and out of that has come five or now company number six ideas. And I haven't done them particularly well in all cases, but every time I've tried to get better. And so for me, the journey has been about learning how to learn.
00:30:31
Speaker
embracing my curious and ultimately being comfortable with something that could be characterized and is often described as failure, the F word. We can't say that F word on this podcast, right? Yeah, sure.
00:30:46
Speaker
at Fender. Let's go there, right? I have been through failure to the point where I had bankruptcy. I had to be on food stamps. I was borrowing money from my kids who were getting cash from grandma that they thought was going to buy them a toy or candy and was using it for toothpaste and toilet paper.
00:31:09
Speaker
And that was just a decade ago. So I had seen all sides of this and I have never been more full of joy. I have no regrets whatsoever. I have things I would have done differently, but that's different than regrets around it. So my journey's been a theme park. I always think of that the old line from the Men in Black movie where Will Smith says to Tommy Lee Jones, hey, is it worth it? And Tommy Lee Jones' response is, oh yeah, if you're strong enough.
00:31:40
Speaker
I would build on that and say if you want to be strong enough, um because I think what entrepreneurship has done for me is strengthened my character, strengthened my grit, strengthened me as an individual. It's also significantly humbled me. I was very cocky early days as a business guy. I thought I knew it all.
00:32:04
Speaker
and the world likes to teach us lessons. and Thankfully, I got a second and a third and a fourth and a fifth chance to learn those. You mentioned a couple of things that you would have done differently. What's one of the things that people can take away from as a life lesson of something you which you wish you didn't know now that you didn't know then? Well, one of those lessons has become, I think, the only tattoo I would even ever consider getting.
00:32:33
Speaker
And it is going to be an equation because I grew up a computer nerd, and I think very analytically. But the equation is 100 slash zero. And what I mean by this is the two variables that are represented. The first is commitment, and the second is attachment.
00:32:55
Speaker
And in my early years as an entrepreneur, I was 100% committed to the thing that I was trying to build, the idea, the business, the customer in some regards, and I was also 100% attached to it.
00:33:12
Speaker
which meant that my identity came from it. It meant that I had to, at all costs, find a way to make this succeed, even if it meant compromising integrity and, for example, allowing existing investors to essentially wash out friends and family who were the first believers in what I was doing. And so that equation of 100-100 doesn't work, right? 100% committed and 100% attached creates all kinds of messiness. There are people out there that operate that way, but that wasn't part of my journey. I then shifted into a phase where I was 50-50. I tried being half in and half attached.
00:33:59
Speaker
And that was about 10 years of my entrepreneurial journey. I wasn't really dedicated. I wasn't really giving it my all, but it was also not really attached because I knew that wasn't good. So I just dialed it those back. I've also tried the 0% and 100% attached and that but was a very short season. I don't even want to do this.
00:34:17
Speaker
But I feel like I have to, and that was an obligation-based equation. And what I figured out is the beauty of life just looms. The colors get magnified when I can be at 100 zero. I'm 100% in service to this idea of helping businesses do better marketing. I'm 100% committed to helping people like you offer better services to those businesses. That's my why.
00:34:46
Speaker
what happens is not mine. So I'm 100% committed, 0% attached. I love that. And the weighing that I've experienced you, Keith, in our brief relationship so far is that you very much are 100% joy centric. And so as you do that, and I would imagine that this goes into the culture of the organizations that you work with, but can you share a little bit about how you share that joy or that ethos, that 100 zero across your team?
00:35:26
Speaker
Yeah, one of the things that we do as we operate in a systematic way, we're big believers in EOS and traction, for example, and we have their standard L10 meeting where there's an opportunity to share what in that format is called good news. We've adjusted that a little bit to gratitude.
00:35:45
Speaker
And one of the things that we start every meeting with is sharing something we're grateful for. And it can be business or personal or both. But what we've found is when we start from imposture of gratitude, it's really hard not to find joy.
00:36:02
Speaker
That just blew my mind a little. We're also on an EOS system and I think we should start to immediately. I will tell you my experience with Keith's drive. So ah about a month ago, a conference that I couldn't go to the whole thing and Dave couldn't go to the whole thing. So we decided to spend a ticket. So Dave went the first day and then I went the second day. And so he Dave texted me at the end of the first day and says, your badge is with somebody named Keith.
00:36:29
Speaker
at Atomic Elevator. Go find him and he'll give it to you. Okay, great. So I walk in and I shit shimmy by the registration. Oh, I'm fine. I gotta go see Keith. So I go out and see Keith. He's like, Oh my God, you tricked me? Oh, let me tell you about this. I haven't seen Ella for a long time. And he gave me a demo and I was so entranced by it. We spent probably 20 minutes together. I was like, Oh, wow, totally. Thanks for the time. And I walked away and I didn't even ask him for the book.
00:36:55
Speaker
ah And I had to be, oh wait, no, i I also need my badge. So he really is that genuine little guy that he really is just wanting to help people and really excited about what he's doing. So it's infectious to be around and it's cool to see somebody who has learned the kind of lessons you have in your choosing happiness because you can choose to not be happy and you can choose to be grouchy and you can choose to have an ego and you're very personally not being that guy.
00:37:23
Speaker
It's so easy for all of us to fall into that victim mindset, right? That things are happening to us. I've had so many things, like I was fired from a business that I had started and raised all this capital. i It was three days before Christmas in a downtown steakhouse in Minneapolis, and I still to this day have such PTSD. I won't go into that particular steakhouse.
00:37:47
Speaker
right it was emotionally devastating it was a business that i started i raise the money for and a board member took me out to dinner and said we decided we're gonna hire somebody else to run the company inside for you to move on. I was a founder i was a ceo and.
00:38:04
Speaker
very easy to fall into victim mindset. And I think, to be honest, for years, I probably carried that, right? Not only shame associated with that, because I felt like I wasn't enough, but also a judgment from others that they must have felt towards me for failing at this job that I got fired from.
Embracing Opportunities with Ella
00:38:24
Speaker
I just think that's a lie.
00:38:26
Speaker
I just think that's a thing that we need to reframe. Things don't happen to us. They happen for us. And when we go at it with that, wow, okay. So I have a new opportunity. Okay. So I have a blank slate. Okay. So I get to recreate myself. There's such freedom in embracing that. Instead of getting caught up in that victim-based mindset. So I try to rid myself of that, and it's a process I go through daily to cleanse that kind of thinking. I want to circle back to talking about AI and talking about Ella. But but before we do that, I want to just close the chapter and say I recognize that what you're sharing is deeply personal.
00:39:14
Speaker
And thank you for allowing us to see that and be a part of knowing and learning from that. That's not a small thing that you just did for us, for me and for Dave and for our audience that needs to be acknowledged that, and that's ah deserving of things. All right. So now let's get back to giving you crap. I want you to hold your hands up like this, hands off the keyboard. So we know you're not cheating. What is Ella's ideal customer profile? Ooh, I love this one. and It's the curious person. I'm going to just zero in on that word, that single word, curious, because there are people that I'm going to use this word cautiously, but for clarity, I will stay lazy, that want a tool to do their job. That is not our question.
00:40:04
Speaker
There are people who will call them egoic. They're the ones at the other side who think they know it all. Ella is not a tool for you. So if you don't want to do your work or you think you know everything, there are lots of other tools and lots of other companies, and I wish you the very best in your journey as you discover what it is that you're here for on this planet.
00:40:35
Speaker
At the core, we're in service to the curious class. Those that ah do better that are always asking, how can I think more clearly? How can I increase effectiveness? How can I better myself? What can I learn today? What am I grateful for? So our customer is somebody who is imminently curious about how to reach more people and wildly passionate about their own product or service. And it needs to be in the hands of more.
00:41:05
Speaker
and Ella can help that out. I could add one more thing to that from my experience using Ella. You want to be collaborative because you're not only curious, but you're really trying to get people or to get Ella as a tool to interact with you like a companion or someone that you're working with. so it's drumming up ideas, help me verify this, give me my blind spots and you know collaborating. So I agree 100%. I think this expands all the way into all AI.
00:41:38
Speaker
If you think that this is going to replace you having to work or think, you're using it the wrong way. If you're using it to double down and to augment and use it like the super suit in Avatar, right, where the dude clamp clamps in and all of a sudden he's super strong and he can throw things around, that's the kind of thing that you're gonna be able to do where you can interact and connect with people. This has been amazing, Keith. Can you help us?
00:42:06
Speaker
round up and I want to make sure that you've got enough time and the opportunity to give us a good call to action at the end of this. But help us round up. If you could give all of our audience one thing about either Ella or about business, what do you want us to take away today?
00:42:28
Speaker
High resolution marketing is effective. High resolution marketing can change trajectories. High resolution marketing is in service to people with high quality products and services. And high resolution marketing used to be wildly expensive.
00:42:53
Speaker
and high resolution marketing is now available by augmenting, by putting on that super suit that you just described there. So we're offering a tool that increases the resolution of your picture.
00:43:08
Speaker
And we would love to invite others in to discover if they too are curious what that looks like or what that might mean for them, whether they're a professional marketer, an agency, a solopreneur, a fractional person, or a marketing team. If they're curious about what higher resolution might look like, I'd love for them to come check out Ella.
00:43:36
Speaker
and it's a I think to to me, I've tried to tease this out a little. I talked about the blank page being so scary, saying what's great about Ella and why I think people really need to take the opportunity to look at the website, even take a tour if you have the opportunity is just the idea that there's guide rails around really effective marketing.
00:44:02
Speaker
And part of that is understanding a certain cluster of information and making sure that you have a good handle on that cluster of information. A lot of times people don't even know what that and what ah information might be. And so using a tool like Ella, which there's no judgment, it's faster than a blank page, gets you to who productive growth faster than having to ask yourself the question, what do we do next? And that's, I think where a lot of the magic really lies.
00:44:38
Speaker
Beautiful to have that played back. Thank you for playing that back. We have struggled to describe her because we also are close to her. we For a period, we're calling her an assistant. And what we've now come to is, Dave, just yesterday, we settled on the word companion. So it was fun for you to use that today. Companion is what she can be, a companion in that process. and So thank you for giving me the opportunity to share more and I would encourage people to put their hands on her, bring her onto the team, let her join for a season. We offer a complimentary trial so you can just see what that feels like and what it looks like.
00:45:17
Speaker
Keith, how do people take advantage of that free trial if they're interested in taking a look at kicking the tires? Is this right to use my radio voice? Please do. Yes, yes. Please visit www.atomicelevator.com and click on the free trial. Is that perfect? you just Take two on that?
00:45:37
Speaker
Awesome. And Keith, where can people find you if they want to follow and learn more or connect with you personally? LinkedIn is a great place. Just look up that last name L-A-U-V-E-R and you'll find me Keith Lauber at LinkedIn. what Dave, any final thoughts as we're wrapping up?
00:45:54
Speaker
Yeah, the AI thing is not going away and people love talking about it, people love prognosticating, but the core of trying something and interacting with people and actually using it with actual thoughts is something that people are just getting used to now. So if you're into or exploring this AI stuff, take Keith's advice to heart and really bring your brain to AI and use it to collaborate and help. And it's going to help you massively improve, speed up, and deepen the quality of what you do. And I just can't say enough great things about Keith and Atomic Elevator, so please check them out.
00:46:42
Speaker
like Cool. and Yeah, I agree. I think the the challenge with, I think i'm as I've been trying to understand AI and capture it and get it to make my life faster, I think I've compiled a ah variable stable of robots that I really don't know how to use yet and I don't have the time to really outlay it. And I think the great thing about what L I can offer isn't that it's just another robot. It's a robot that has specific purposes for specific specific needs for specific people, which I think is rare in the industry because then I think if you fit that mold and you're those people, then it's a huge difference maker. and It is the cliche of AI as a huge shift difference maker because it's only for it's only for the people that it's for, which is really amazing.
00:47:29
Speaker
so Keith, thank you so much. Dave, thank you so much. Once again, this has been an episode of Dial It In, produced by Nicole Fairclough and Andy Witowski. Apologies to Tony Kornheiser. We will also try to do better the next time.