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S3 Summer Edition - Keith Lauver from Ella
12 Plays11 days ago
In this episode of Dial It In, the hosts recap their favorite episodes and reintroduce Keith Lauver, the optimistic and empathetic founder of Ella. Lauver's company has created an AI tool named Ella, designed to improve marketing effectiveness using bots and large language models (LLMs). The conversation covers how Ella enhances marketing strategies by emphasizing high-resolution marketing, which focuses on clarity and precision rather than quantity. Keith shares insights on the development and application of Ella, including the tool's ability to act as a coach, critic, and co-creator. The discussion also delves into Keith's journey as a serial entrepreneur, his lessons learned, and the emotional ups and downs of building businesses. Later on, Keith elaborates on the importance of having a curious, collaborative mindset when using AI tools. If you're looking to elevate your marketing efforts, this episode offers valuable lessons and introduces a powerful tool to help achieve that goal.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Dial It In' Podcast
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome to dial it in a podcast where we talk to fascinating people about marketing, sales, process improvements and tricks that they use to grow their businesses. Join me, Dave Meyer and Trigby Olson of Busyweb as we bring you interviews on how the best in their fields are dialing it in for their organizations.
00:00:26
Speaker
Let's ring up another episode.
Summer Series Highlights with Keith Lauver
00:00:30
Speaker
Welcome to our dial it in summer series. We are Recapping all of our favorite episodes and today I'd love to reintroduce you to Keith Lauver. Keith is an endlessly optimistic and empathetic guy and his company has created a unique tool with Ella.
Enhancing Brand Voice with AI and Ella
00:00:45
Speaker
This is a great overview on where AI is going and how to use bots and LLMs to connect with your audience and maintain your brand voice in a better, more concise way. If you're looking to elevate your marketing and maintain a higher resolution of quantity and quality of content,
00:01:03
Speaker
Check out Ella and check out this podcast. Enjoy the show.
00:01:07
Speaker
All right. Well, I think we're ready to start our podcast today and I have a, um I'm not ready. sure and 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.
00:01:22
Speaker
and So I just, I don't feel very funny today. So what I've done is I've brought an AI chat prompt here. I'm just going to have all my witty and funny stuff done by the AI robot today.
00:01:33
Speaker
Great. We'll take help any way we can get it. All right. So hold up Hold on.
00:01:39
Speaker
Thanks, Dave. Excited to be here and ready to dive in 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.
00:01:51
Speaker
You got start over. No, we're not. but 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.
Keith Lauver's Entrepreneurial Insights
00:02:01
Speaker
Our guest is Keith Lauver. He's a seasoned entrepreneur and the visionary founder of Ella, which is one of our holiday gifts to our listing audience this holiday season.
00:02:13
Speaker
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.
00:02:27
Speaker
So his latest project, Ella, 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.
00:02:50
Speaker
I threw in a little extra there. So, you know, it was me and not the computer. Oh, very good. and Very good. That's actually super coincidental because we have a brand new sponsor today. Oh, great.
00:03:01
Speaker
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 aimed at empowering one another and the brands they serve with top tier marketing solutions.
00:03:23
Speaker
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.
00:03:36
Speaker
Visit Ella at AtomicElevator.com.
00:03:42
Speaker
Which is so weird because our founder is also the, my our guest today is the founder of LL. How are you? I've just been waiting. but First of all, correct something very important, which is I am a below average dancer.
00:03:56
Speaker
Oh my. See, the chat prompt got that wrong. as AI tools can do. Yes. Keith, it's delightful to have you with us. Thanks. 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.
00:04:13
Speaker
Fun fact for all of those Yellowstone fans, you are actually very close to the park in Montana, correct? Northeast corner of Beartooth Highway starts in our little mountain village and we have a ski area, fly fishing and amazing restaurants. So everybody should go visit. We love it.
00:04:31
Speaker
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.
00:04:41
Speaker
You said you were going to take the train station, Dave. I promised, but it's going to take a while. Okay. perfect's Welcome. He never takes me anywhere. Beautiful day and we'll try in the new year to get you past.
00:04:55
Speaker
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 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 oven 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.
00:05:24
Speaker
So can you tell us a little bit about what Ella actually does?
High-Resolution Marketing with Ella
00:05:28
Speaker
Yeah, we've taken a different approach with Ella. Maybe Trigby, you set this up in an even more powerful way than I could have hoped for by giving us crap.
00:05:41
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.
00:05:54
Speaker
As receivers of information from brands, we don't need more noise. And as those people stewarding brand stories, we don't need to turn up the volume.
00:06:07
Speaker
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 Elle is doing, providing a higher resolution. So messages break through that clutter.
00:06:23
Speaker
It's not about more, it's about more effective.
Challenges and Creativity in AI Marketing
00:06:28
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.
00:06:42
Speaker
So what are you going to create with it? 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.
00:06:53
Speaker
It becomes a challenge. And I think... Most people's frustration with AI on the whole is in that same sort of psychological. But if you have that blinking cursor and you can ask it anything, but what are you supposed to ask?
00:07:11
Speaker
I very purposefully did the introduction of the way that I did because. So many people are fumbling with the be beginning of it. We're asking questions, having to refine questions.
00:07:25
Speaker
I spent 20 minutes and I'm decent with it yesterday, trying to do an image creation of and and animated a thing of Dave and i for a client and it took 20 minutes.
00:07:37
Speaker
So I think what you tied into, 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.
00:07:54
Speaker
If I want, 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 real what's What's really the throughput if i of what Ella can do for me?
Guided Marketing Strategies with Ella
00:08:10
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?
00:08:23
Speaker
Sure. 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 find frame this in exactly the right way so that I get exactly the right outcome.
00:08:43
Speaker
That's a 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 and we'll cheer them all on, but it was for everybody else.
00:08:58
Speaker
Ell for the people that just want to solve the creative problem that you described there, which is how do I do better work? Ell is for what we're calling the curious, right? The people that are saying, how could I get this started? How could I make this better?
00:09:17
Speaker
And Ella has at her core been trained to respond to the curious to help build a better profile of a customer, help build a better campaign.
00:09:29
Speaker
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 for you along the way. So Ella is designed at the core to help you do better work.
00:09:45
Speaker
She's not a place for you to learn prompt engineering. 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.
00:10:01
Speaker
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, you talk a little bit about, and Dave, feel free to weigh in here, what's the purpose of defining that ideal customer profile?
00:10:19
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,
00:10:36
Speaker
All of that storytelling is really rooted in fundamental principles. Those principles 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.
00:10:53
Speaker
create another digital ad that looks like this, or let's bind another social post that um is going to be like somebody else's social post. And so the entire premise of Ella is not to chase something new, but rather to clear the clutter in the foundation of what was old and true.
00:11:14
Speaker
And that sounds a little bit interesting. for AI tool right here, we're using the very newest technology to get us back to basics, but 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?
00:11:37
Speaker
But rather the core is what's the problem that you're really solving for somebody? Right. 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.
00:12:00
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.
00:12:10
Speaker
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 person.
00:12:28
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 ah 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.
00:13:05
Speaker
and spend hours doing in order to get it to think right. 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.
00:13:26
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 brand, the feeling, the tone, the personalities of who you're trying to reach.
00:13:44
Speaker
It's more like Jarvis and Tony Stark where Jarvis knows everything about you and is telling you, okay, 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.
00:13:59
Speaker
And the tool actually does that. Here was my experience. 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?
00:14:24
Speaker
The big agencies charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for that. I was on a call with somebody an hour ago. who was describing $530,000 branding project that they had just paid for The results of which were ah very detailed PDF with a website that was an additional $130,000 that didn't even resonate with a core customer.
00:14:54
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 trigvyatbusyweb. Operators are standing by. Please keep on think that's, but what you're getting
Branding Critique and Strategic Approaches
00:15:19
Speaker
at is the core where it's, whether it's ego, in my case, I'll confess to you that I spent over a hundred thousand dollars 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 it.
00:15:44
Speaker
a new logo 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 believe he's swearing and he gets persnickety we go all the way up to can i say bs sure yes yes i think it's a bunch of bs right yeah the Mo what I was being given was a bill of goods that fits somebody's project management budget or an account manager's quota.
00:16:20
Speaker
When 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
00:16:52
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.
00:17:06
Speaker
I think when people realize that they need to reevaluate their brand. They're 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.
00:17:25
Speaker
And they're in a position where they have to start asking those deep questions about what does your brand mean to you? 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,
00:17:53
Speaker
As you mentioned, Keith, this there's that cliche of a branding project that it's going to take 18 months and the throughput of it is you you have a rounded end as opposed to a serif and just a funky font talk for those of you keeping score at home.
00:18:10
Speaker
It doesn't always make sense. And so. 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.
00:18:27
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, you're not, everybody needs your product.
00:18:43
Speaker
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?
00:18:55
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.
00:19:07
Speaker
The people who aren't... so 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.
00:19:22
Speaker
And therefore, I was trying to say all things to all people. That's sloppy marketing. That's wasteful marketing. And frankly, most companies can't even afford that marketing to talk to everybody about everything all the time.
00:19:38
Speaker
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.
00:19:54
Speaker
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.
00:20:09
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.
00:20:24
Speaker
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, and 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?
00:20:56
Speaker
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.
00:21:09
Speaker
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?
Using the Value Proposition Canvas
00:21:21
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.
00:21:39
Speaker
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 that our product or service is doing on behalf of the customer that we're solving something for?
00:21:56
Speaker
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. We relieve pain.
00:22:08
Speaker
And the second is, excuse me, 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.
00:22:33
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. But what often we struggle with as people is seeing clearly from another's point of view, how they're seeing it.
00:22:53
Speaker
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.
00:23:08
Speaker
I said, 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 account manager, but she's able to sit down now and understand more deeply the client's business because of Ella. She's able to do better marketing because of Ella. She's being upskilled because Ella's essentially her coach and her teacher because she's interconnecting these frameworks. And so I hadn't thought about Ella as a trainer.
00:23:44
Speaker
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.
00:23:57
Speaker
And what she said is, oh my gosh, Ella's the best trainer I could ever ask for. 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.
00:24:14
Speaker
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.
00:24:25
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, 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.
00:25:00
Speaker
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 Ella for that and based off of the experience that I've had with it.
00:25:12
Speaker
So the tool that I, and as I'm 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.
00:25:27
Speaker
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 recent 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.
00:25:50
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.
00:26:15
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.
00:26:27
Speaker
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.
00:26:46
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.
00:27:04
Speaker
You're to co-create. 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 and Ella. One is co-create.
00:27:17
Speaker
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.
00:27:33
Speaker
The second is that coach. And the third is the crypto.
00:27:37
Speaker
Tell me more about the critic.
00:27:40
Speaker
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.
00:27:57
Speaker
And in order to do that, I was creating a deck. 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.
00:28:24
Speaker
an early draft because I didn't want them to judge my early draft. Right. 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.
00:28:40
Speaker
But I would go in and upload a version of my slides and Ella and I told her who my ideal customer was in this case, an investor who 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 what BusyWeb offers. And I was able to send that over to Ella and say, Ella, can you look this over? Is this clear?
00:29:10
Speaker
Is this aligned? Is this cohesive? Is this compelling? 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 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.
00:29:37
Speaker
And 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. 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.
00:29:58
Speaker
And one of the reasons I was excited to chat with you is that you are a serial
The Rollercoaster of Entrepreneurship
00:30:02
Speaker
entrepreneur. And if we changed our focus for a couple of minutes into So You Wanna Be a Serial Entrepreneur,
00:30:11
Speaker
Can you tell me a little bit about your history and what brought you to this point? 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 a yeah entrepreneur?
00:30:26
Speaker
Yes. Say, make sure you love roller coasters.
00:30:31
Speaker
It's up, it's down, it winds, it turns, there's G forces. You may throw up. what it's going to be awesome ride. And if it's why you're here on this planet, go for it.
00:30:43
Speaker
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 i ideas.
00:30:55
Speaker
And ah 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.
00:31:07
Speaker
embracing my curious and ultimately being comfortable with something that could be characterized and is often described as failure.
00:31:18
Speaker
The F word. We can't say that f word on this podcast, right? Yeah. Sure. Right. and fan Let's go there. Right. I have been through failure to the point where I had bankruptcy.
00:31:30
Speaker
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.
00:31:45
Speaker
And that was just a decade ago. So I have seen all sides of this and i have never been more full of joy. i have no regrets whatsoever.
00:31:56
Speaker
I have things I would have done differently, but that's different than regrets around it. So my journey has been theme park. I mean, 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?
00:32:11
Speaker
And Tommy Lee Jones' response is, oh yeah, if you're strong enough. 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.
00:32:33
Speaker
It's also significantly humbled me. I was very cocky early days as a business guy. I thought I knew it all. 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.
00:32:49
Speaker
You mentioned a couple of things that you would have done differently. What's one of the things that people can take away from you as a life lesson of something you which you wish you didn't know now that you
Balanced Dedication in Business Ventures
00:32:59
Speaker
didn't know then? and Well, one of those lessons ah has become, i think the only tattoo I would even ever consider getting.
00:33:09
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.
00:33:31
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.
00:33:46
Speaker
And I was also 100% attached to it, 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.
00:34:11
Speaker
And so that... equation of 100, 100 doesn't work, right? 100% committed and 100% attached creates all kinds of messiness.
00:34:22
Speaker
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.
00:34:35
Speaker
And that was about 10 years of my entrepreneurial journey. 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.
00:34:46
Speaker
I've also tried the 0% and a hundred percent attached. And that but was a very short season. i don't even want to do this. but I feel like I have to. And that was an obligation based equation.
00:34:58
Speaker
And what I figured out is the beauty of life just blooms. The colors get magnified when I can be at a hundred zero. I'm a hundred percent in service to this idea of helping businesses do better marketing.
00:35:14
Speaker
I'm a hundred percent committed to helping people like you offer better services to those businesses. That's my why. What happens is not mine.
00:35:26
Speaker
So a hundred percent could committed to zero percent attached. I love that. And the Wayne that I've experienced you Keith in our brief relationship so far is that you very much are 100% joy centric.
00:35:44
Speaker
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?
00:36:02
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.
00:36:21
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 found is when we start from posture of gratitude, it's really hard not to find joy.
00:36:38
Speaker
Perfect. 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 joy. So about a month ago, conference that I couldn't go to the whole thing and Dave couldn't go to the whole thing. So we decided to take it.
00:36:56
Speaker
So Dave went the first day and then I went the second day. And so he, Dave texted at the end of the first day. it says, your badge is with somebody named Keith at Atomic Elevator.
00:37:07
Speaker
ah Go find him and he'll give it to you. Okay, great. So I walk in and I shit shimmy by the registration. Oh, no, I'm fine. I got to go see Keith. So I got up and see Keith. He's oh my God, you're tricky. Oh, let me tell you about this.
00:37:19
Speaker
And I've 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. was like, oh wow, totally. Thanks for the time. And I walked away and I didn't even ask him for the patch.
00:37:32
Speaker
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 and you're 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 purposefully not being that guy.
00:37:59
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.
00:38:12
Speaker
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.
00:38:23
Speaker
Right. It was emotionally devastating. It was a business that I started. I raised the money for, and a board member took me out to dinner and said, we've decided we're going to hire somebody else to run the company.
00:38:34
Speaker
And it's time for you to move on. I was a founder. I was a CEO. And. 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've felt towards me for failing at this job that I got fired from.
00:39:00
Speaker
i just think that's a lie. I just think that's 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.
00:39:12
Speaker
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 space.
00:39:27
Speaker
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 and thank you for allowing us to see that and be a part of knowing and learning from that.
00:39:57
Speaker
That's not a small thing that you just did for us, for me and for Dave and for our audience that needs to acknowledge that and that's deserving of thanks. all right. So now let's get back to giving you crap. I want you hold your hands up like this, hands off the keyboard. So we know you're not cheating.
00:40:11
Speaker
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.
00:40:34
Speaker
that want a tool to do their job. That is not our customer. There are people who will call them egoic.
00:40:47
Speaker
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 you're here for on this planet.
00:41:11
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?
00:41:27
Speaker
So our customer is somebody who is imminently curious about how to reach more people and wildly passionate ah about their own product or service. And it needs to be in the hands of more.
00:41:41
Speaker
And Ella can help that happen. 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.
00:42:15
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.
00:42:33
Speaker
That's the kind of thing that you're going to be able to do where you can interact and connect with people. This has been amazing, Keith. Can you help us... Roundup, and i want to make sure that you've got ah enough time and the opportunity to give us a good call to action at the end of this, but help us roundup.
00:42:54
Speaker
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? High resolution marketing is effective.
00:43:10
Speaker
High resolution marketing can change trajectories. High resolution marketing is in service to people with high quality products and services.
00:43:22
Speaker
And High resolution marketing used to be wildly expensive and high resolution marketing is now available by augmenting, by putting on that super suit that you just described
Exploring Ella for Strategic Marketing Effectiveness
00:43:37
Speaker
there. So we're offering a tool that increases the resolution of your picture.
00:43:44
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, solopreneur, a fractional person, or ah marketing team.
00:44:03
Speaker
If they're curious about what higher resolution might look like, I'd love for them to come check out Ella.
00:44:12
Speaker
I it's a, I think to to me, I've tried to tease this out a little as I think I talked about the blank page being so scary. I think 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.
00:44:38
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. 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 productive growth faster than having to ask yourself the question, what do we do next?
00:45:10
Speaker
And that's, I think, where a lot of the magic really lies. 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.
00:45:26
Speaker
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 it 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 as season.
00:45:48
Speaker
We offer a complimentary trial you can just see what that feels like and what it looks like. Keith, how do people take advantage of that free trial if they're interested in taking a look at kicking the tires? Is this ready to use my radio voice?
00:46:00
Speaker
Please do. Please, yes. Please visit www.atomakelevator.com and click on the free trial button. Is that perfect? Did you just take two on that?
00:46:13
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.
00:46:26
Speaker
Wow. Dave, any final thoughts as we're wrapping up? 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
00:47:00
Speaker
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.
00:47:12
Speaker
And I just can't say enough great things about Keith and Atomic Elevator. So please check them out. like Cool. and Yeah, I agree. I think the the challenge was, 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,
00:47:37
Speaker
The great thing about what Ella 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 that has a huge shift difference maker because it's only for it it it's only for the people that it's for, which is really amazing.
00:48:05
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 Andy Wachowski. Apologies to Tony Kornheiser. We will also try to do better the next time.