Unpacking the Realities of AI in Content Creation with Addison Best KDS: 131

I sat down with Addison Best to discuss the Realities of AI in Content Creation.

00:00 Sending random rants, reconnecting with authenticity. China.
05:31 Embracing ignorance, shifting perspective, and embracing fun.
09:13 Balancing organic and paid traffic for brand.
11:49 Challenges with apps integration, user demands, burnout.
15:38 Frustration with big companies and their rules.
17:23 Generic ebook platform with AI and marketing features.
22:43 Seeking genuine connections, not just building tools.
23:53 Favor real connections over forced opt-ins.
29:14 Long journey to clarity and productivity.
32:46 Custom GPT creation for sales page writing.
33:34 Task manager helps stay on track, API potential.
38:28 AI tool not useful, unclear beneficial use case.
42:15 Draft article based on conversations, structure content.
44:29 Focus on actionable, personalized content for improvement.
49:51 Simplify your website strategy, focus on writing.
51:10 Newcomers face overwhelming and confusing landscape.
53:54 Big platforms need better customer support. Thanks!

Kim [00:00:00]:
Hey there. It’s Kim Doyal, and welcome to my show where digital marketing meets real stories, experiences, and strategies. You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at what’s working and not working in my business, as well as other experts who show up and share their stories. As much as I love talking about tangible marketing principles and tactics, we’ll dig a little deeper with mindset and explore what’s required to create a business you love on your terms that also supports your life. I wanna help you understand the why behind the how. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or just dipping your toes in, remember that marketing is a journey, and the goal is to enjoy it. My desire is to guide you on your journey and remind you that no matter what life throws at you, you’ve got this. Hey.

Kim [00:00:44]:
What’s going on, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Kim Doyal Show. It’s been a while since I’ve done a I was gonna say live interview, but it’s live for us. So we’ll go ahead and run with that. And I’m excited because I think this conversation is gonna go in directions that neither of us are really aware of, but it’s gonna be really fun. My guest today is Addison Best. So first of all, Addison, thank you so much for being here.

Addison [00:01:06]:
Well, thank you for having me, Kim. It’s I think we talked about a little bit before this started. I haven’t spoken to anybody in, I feel like, a decade. I used to have an English learning podcast with my brother, but that was all audio. Now, I’m just looking in my camera, and I feel like a deer in headlights, and I’m just kind of like, oh, wait. This is how I look? And I’m kind of freaked out, but I’m gonna try to calm down and carry on, I guess.

Kim [00:01:30]:
Yeah. Well, you know what’s funny is it’s almost like because I wanna do the eye contact thing, I’m like, well, I’ll just go ahead and look at the camera and not worry about seeing myself or whatever. But, yeah. No. This is gonna be fun because first of all, for a little backstory about, you know, Addison had reached out to me. And this just goes to show you guys in the fall, and I was not getting the notifications from Gravity Forms. So it was like, oh my god. I’ve missed all these but before we get into a lot of the meat of what we wanna talk about, which we’re gonna kinda go down this AI and and the impact it has on content and email, I love the backstory, Addison.

Kim [00:02:12]:
So if you could share your backstory with listeners, that would be great.

Addison [00:02:14]:
Well, it’s funny. Yeah. I’ve been sending Kim, random emails that are kinda rants recently, so I didn’t even know if she was getting it or she thought this guy’s a bit nuts or whatever she was thinking. But I do it anyway because I’m trying to get back to my roots and being authentic and just having fun with different people and thinking and hoping that maybe they feel the same kind of thing. Specifically, my backstory, I guess, was in 2003 or so, I graduated university in Canada, and I went to visit my older brother in China, and I ended up staying for 14 years. That’s the short end of the story. And then, of course, I got into a bunch of digital marketing and things since being there, and now a couple decades later, here I am.

Kim [00:02:57]:
Okay. So I just have to unpack a couple things. First of all, can you speak fluent Chinese now, I’m assuming?

Addison [00:03:02]:
I wouldn’t say fluent. I lived in Shanghai, but, of course, you need to speak at a certain level to get by, and nobody like, taxi drivers, which you take everywhere, don’t speak English and stuff like that. You have to my wife is Chinese. I moved back to Canada 5 years ago or so. And, of course, I have to speak to some level of Chinese. And, yeah. And but I think also if I knew I was gonna be there for 14 years, I would have learned it even more. It was almost like I kept extending my stay for 14 years, and somehow I ended up staying for 14 years.

Addison [00:03:39]:
You know what I mean? It wasn’t a plan, if that makes any sense.

Kim [00:03:43]:
No. It totally does. Well, you know, after almost 2 years in Costa Rica, I am not fluent in Spanish, but I’ve decided to move back. And I’m, like, girl, come on. And the the tough thing there is that everybody not everybody, but most people speak English. And then, of course, you have Google Translate now. So you can speak to, you know, people that you need to. But, anyways, god, what incredible experience though.

Kim [00:04:05]:
I I just you got into digital marketing then and at in the early stages. Right? So it looked really different when you were getting started compared to now. And I always tell people, I’m like, on one hand, I feel like it was easier because there wasn’t as much competition. On the other hand, to get up and running, you can do it quickly today. So I don’t know. What are your thoughts on having been through that, a, in a foreign country, and, b, just this whole, like, let’s just see where this takes us.

Addison [00:04:33]:
Well, yeah, as I said, I was in China. I didn’t really know what I was gonna do. The 1st venture I did in digital marketing was create an English learning podcast with my brother in China. Part of the reason we did that, there was a super popular one, for Chinese learning in our city in Shanghai. And we just thought, Oh, wait, why don’t we do that? We went even to their studio, we saw what equipment they had and we’re like, whatever, we can buy a few microphones and just put up a podcast. And then of course you think, once you have a podcast, you’re going to make a website and try to monetize it in some way after that. And so we just kind of dove into it, not thinking about it, which was great, I think, and a good attitude to have. I learned a lot, I think, from doing that, and I actually, to be honest, I’m trying to get back more in that mentality now, So, you know, looking back what I did, I actually think I was on the right track in a lot of ways.

Kim [00:05:31]:
Well, we talked a little bit before, so and and this is something that is super near and dear to my heart, and that is just kinda ignorance is bliss, but also not being so concerned about, you know, anything external. You just put it out there and you publish and you see what works, you know. So if you could talk a little bit about what’s brought you back to that place of why do I care so much now? Like, you know, and shifting back because honestly, I think with where with where everything is today, there’s so many you know, this is what you need for a brand. This is what you should do on this channel. This is what you should on that channel. I think people are just sick of it. Like, there is a little bit of there’s market maturity so people can like, people can see a launch coming a mile away, right, versus, like, just genuinely connecting and and going back to roots and and having fun and testing stuff out. So, I just would love for you to go a little bit deeper into your own thoughts and realization of where’d that guy go?

Addison [00:06:29]:
Well, yeah. I had mentioned that a little bit before the show, and I just, went on YouTube. We had a an English learning podcast, so at that time, there wasn’t even really YouTube. So that was a video that I saw later, But it was entitled Saturday Night Drinks, and I just I had a vodka Red Bull with my brother on a couch, and we talked about some English learning material for slang spoken English. And, I mean, obviously, I didn’t give a shit about what people thought. It didn’t even make any sense, but I read the comments, and they were amazing. People loved it. And then I think now the vanilla stuff I’m, like, putting out there, and I’m thinking, why am I doing that? And certainly, nobody cares about it if you have go down too far in that mentality.

Addison [00:07:12]:
But at the same time, when you get older and, certainly, you have more of a professional, maybe a brand, you might kind of revert back and think, oh, now I have I can’t say this and I have to act in a certain way. But I think that’s where shit, to be honest. And that’s why I wanna get back into being a real person and having a real following, if if I can. We’ll see. Maybe I’m a dinosaur, and I’m just gonna, like, fall on my face. Like, I don’t care. That’s the thing now either, and I’m not gonna pretend like I do.

Kim [00:07:41]:
Leo, dinosaur. I think I’m probably about 10 years older than you. Sorry to interrupt. There might be a bit of a delay here, but I feel like people are craving that though, Addison. I think people are, you know, it’s like, we’re when it comes down to it, and I keep quoting doctor Seuss, but it’s like, no one is youer than you. And, like, we are the only differentiator. Especially with AI, like, you know, you can create massive amounts of of content and it’s a race to the bottom. So if you wanna differentiate yourself, then, of course, you need to be uniquely yourself.

Kim [00:08:13]:
Right?

Addison [00:08:14]:
Exactly. And what I realized, I like the simplicity, as you mentioned before back then as well, there weren’t so many tools, there weren’t all these social media platforms. You could build a simple HTML website or like a simple WordPress one. We had a simple email box collector. We made partnerships with real people, and we were collecting hundreds of emails a day from all opt ins. And, like, I made my own email server, and I just kinda went with it. We were sending out hundreds of thousands of emails to people. And it was that kind of mentality, well, what’s wrong with that? And the answer is nothing.

Addison [00:08:52]:
I mean, that’s it’s pretty good. If if you just have a simple strategy building, collecting emails, emailing that group, selling them something else, and then giving them the content that they want as well, and then reaching out to people and making partnerships. And if that’s all you do, I mean, you don’t really have to do much else, and there’s nothing to think about.

Kim [00:09:13]:
Well, completely, especially today where you look at, you know, organic social, it’s like, I don’t wanna spend that much time to master a specific platform. At the same time, like, it’s still I mean, my brand’s been around for a while now, so it’s it’s still obviously drives traffic. But a perfect scenario for me would be creating content. And then I have no problem with paid traffic, like getting a really solid paid traffic strategy down. And I just get to create and connect with people I like, And then the traffic engine is running, you know, like, Oh God, I do not want to spend all day mastering Twitter templates or X or whatever the hell he’s calling it. So okay. I wanna pivot to some of the the content that we wanna get into. But before we do that, I would love to hear just one of the things with the backstory piece that I think is fascinating is the pivots and and kind of trajectory.

Kim [00:10:07]:
So I would love to hear kind of your journey. Like you sent me some dates and steps along the way, because it wasn’t just, oh, I just launched this, this English, you know, learning channel podcast, you know, and that blew up. It was you you definitely had some, you know, your own path there. So if you could share a little bit about that, that’d be awesome.

Addison [00:10:24]:
Right. So it’s not like I’ve only done that. That was my 1st start into internet marketing and just doing stuff online. Since then, I’ve done a lot of consulting and, you know, working on different startups even and just different projects. One of the things, I own a health supplement brand. I sell physical products. I sell 1,000,000 of dollars a year in that. And even 8 years ago or so in China, kind of at the end of my time there, I started making Shopify apps with a friend, and we had about 8 apps.

Addison [00:10:58]:
And they started getting a bit of traction, but then, you know, through some personal issues, and some other reasons, we ended that. And I’m kinda going back into a similar thing, which was LeadSlide was created then, and that’s my I made an AI ebook creator software marketing funnel platform recently, and I kinda wanna go back and do the things I was doing then, but do it in a way that makes sense for 2024 as opposed to 2016. And I learned a lot from doing that and I made a lot of mistakes, so basically I wanted to not do those anymore hopefully.

Kim [00:11:40]:
Yeah. Okay. Well, not to to get super personal, but, like, what would you do differently. Right? And and what does it mean to do things differently today?

Addison [00:11:49]:
Well, I’ll give you an example. We had, I think 8 apps, and again, I like collecting emails, so part of the reason some of them were freemium, we collected a lot of emails every day, we didn’t have to pay a lot for advertising, and that was amazing. And we started doing too many integrations with the platform. And so what happens when you do that is themes and other things start breaking, and then your apps don’t work anymore, and then you create a bunch of headaches. So it sounds like a good idea to listen to your users and give them whatever they want, but what ends what ends up happening, especially in a small team, is you got shitty software and nobody wants it, and then you’re just like, why am I even bother doing this anymore? And then on a personal level, my business partner was going through a divorce, and I was getting ready I was busy with other projects and moving back to Canada at that point, so it’s just kind of fizzled out, and that’s the main reason what happened. But I mean, nothing earth shattering that happened, but it’s just like, I don’t want a simple solution now. I don’t want to waste my time dealing with all this horseshit either. So, like, I’m trying to go back to, like and that’s what I was saying.

Addison [00:13:01]:
The English learning strategy was simple. We collected a lot of emails. We sent emails. We made partnerships, and we made a podcast. That’s all we did, and it kinda worked. So

Kim [00:13:13]:
Well, it’s it’s funny I just

Addison [00:13:14]:
to that. Yeah.

Kim [00:13:16]:
People, I was just gonna say I have a kind of a mini mastermind with some friends, and I emailed them yesterday. I’m like, alright, you guys. I said my focus on on on simplifying. I wanna simplify, meaning whether just because I’ve created it doesn’t mean it. Mean I need to keep selling it. I don’t need to use this tool. Do I need that tool? Whatever. Just because and maybe it’s a stage of life for me, but I’m like, I want more free time.

Kim [00:13:37]:
I want what I’m doing to afford me more free time as well as it’s a whole lot easier to grow 1 or 2 things versus 10 or 15 with focus. Right?

Addison [00:13:49]:
Absolutely. It gets confusing. You start, thinking about, you know, why am I not doing this? And then you look at your week, and it’s like, did I even make anything? I didn’t even make any content this week. I didn’t produce anything. I didn’t collect any emails, but you felt like you were busy the whole week. You can have that. You can just feel, like, anxiety and feel feel terrible the whole week, and it’s like, wait a minute, it’s Friday, and did I do anything? The answer is often no, I think.

Kim [00:14:18]:
Mhmm.

Addison [00:14:19]:
And I don’t wanna be caught in that trap and just feeling kind of just, I don’t know, residual guilt and like angst and like, why am I not doing this? I just don’t want to feel that way, and that’s partly why I want to simplify it as well. It’s not necessarily to make the most money. It’s like, I don’t wanna shoot myself in the head at the end of the week.

Kim [00:14:38]:
Yeah. Well and the other thing is that that feeling then, all of a sudden, when you look at the end of the week and you’re like, I didn’t produce anything or, you know, you took care of stuff, it’s like then I start feeling like I’m behind. And I don’t want that. I’m I’m not. You’re you’re never done in this space. There’s always gonna be more to do. And I don’t wanna feel like, oh my god. Now now I’ve got it.

Kim [00:14:58]:
I have to work this weekend to get this done because I didn’t do this. And I don’t know. Like, part of why I love what I do is because I can take the dog for a walk in the afternoon or, you know, when I’m in a warmer climate, I can go hang out in the pool and read a book for a little bit, like walk. I those are the things that I wanna do. And so it’s it’s I’ve always said this. There’s a big difference between productivity and activity. And activity can take over pretty quickly if you’re not super diligent about your time. You know, so I totally got that.

Addison [00:15:27]:
No, absolutely. And and I find sometimes you focus, or I I focus sometimes too much about pleasing algorithms and things that I don’t wanna be pleasing, and I don’t give a shit

Kim [00:15:38]:
what

Addison [00:15:38]:
Google thinks, and I don’t think what care what Amazon thinks. Sometimes you end up sometimes it’s working well and you think this is great and then something shitty happens, like you lose all your traffic randomly overnight with SEO or something like that, and you get so stressed. So at least if you’re building an email list and partnerships, you’re not gonna lose that part of your business, you know, and you can keep some level of sanity, and that’s part of it. And I think that part seems to be getting worse in my feeling and just dealing with big companies and they’re always changing the rules and like changing things like, Now you gotta pay for this and that, and this doesn’t work, and you have to act this way. You’re not allowed to say this or that. And it’s like, sorry guys, I’m gonna do it anyways. So just, I’m tired of listening to it. And so that’s part of it.

Kim [00:16:28]:
I totally agree. Yeah. Well, it’s like I’ve kind of been ranty about I don’t know. When I was a WordPress chick, WordPress content was very easy to rank for. It was like 2008 to 18 or what. And it was like, it was, it wasn’t, I didn’t even try. And I was able to get pulled on page 1 of certain things, but it was like, the last thing I wanna do is keyword research. I’m just gonna tell you that right now.

Kim [00:16:49]:
And it’s like and then when I found myself feeling like I needed to write content or create content based on keywords or appeasing, you know, search search engines or using certain types of templates on on this platform because that’s what someone else did. It’s like all creativity went out the window and I was like, I don’t want to do this. It’s not fun. I’m not enjoying it. So, before we get in, I know I keep saying this before, but so lead slide, tell me why you decided to launch this and go a little bit more in detail, if you don’t mind, as to what it is and maybe who it’s for.

Addison [00:17:23]:
Okay. So currently it’s a very generic platform, I’d say. It has an ebook creator, which you can use AI tools and, like, it’s basically ChatGPT API to help you write the ebook. Now I’m hoping people won’t use it in that way, it’s more to give suggestions and make an ebook easily, but it also has a marketing funnel aspect where you can make a landing page, make an email pop up, and send an email without other third party tools. So essentially, you can build an ebook and market it to your audience and collect emails without needing anything else. And that’s what it is currently, but it’s very generic, so I need I’m just starting it. So, like, basically, I want beta testers, and then I’m gonna build specific stuff. Like for Shopify for example, it’ll be more catered to products and people that sell physical stuff.

Addison [00:18:21]:
WordPress, I just made, I launched a plugin. It’ll be more well, it’ll be more depending on what people want, I guess, and what they’re doing with their business. So we’ll see what it is. Essentially essentially, I’m making it super cheap at the moment. I’m admitting it’s not done. It’s $9 a month at the moment. It’s an arbitrary price if you want to sign up. I’ll actually work with you and try to make you more stuff, And my consulting would be a lot more than that, so it’s probably a good deal if you have any interest and you’re not using something similar.

Addison [00:18:54]:
Yeah.

Kim [00:18:55]:
Well, I I think it’s great and which this is an awesome pivot, and it’s just leadslide.com. Correct? So that way anybody listening and, of course, I’ll have the link in the show notes.

Addison [00:19:04]:
No, exactly. And what what I also want to do, and I just with my brother, I’m doing a bunch of stuff again. I did English learning before. My brother and I just launched a course on Udemy for prompt engineering. I’m getting more into AI and just exploring what it can do. I wanna do just a bunch of new stuff and trying different platforms again in 2024. Do I know what I’m doing exactly? A 100%, I do not, and I’ll see what where that takes me. And I think LeadSlide will eventually learn into more, courses, and I also feel there’ll be an element of collaboration.

Addison [00:19:43]:
I could see, for example, like, you build courses. Is that correct?

Kim [00:19:47]:
Mhmm.

Addison [00:19:47]:
Yeah. Well, I could see more doing collaboration and collaborative courses with people, building kind of not sharing lists exactly, but maybe I could put it on a funnel on your website and we exchange it somehow and create content together. I I see there being more of collaboration in the future with all this AI stuff happening, and I wanna make real connections with real people and doing I don’t know exactly, I’m not exactly there yet, but I feel some things going on these podcasts, I’m guessing, talking to more people. I’ll eventually have more ideas of what it’ll end up being. But I think when you have a base platform, if you have a page builder, you have, you know, an email collecting tool, you have an ebook creator, you can, you know, turn it into something more specific, based on that, and that’s what I’m excited about. So we have a generic thing at the moment, and now we’re gonna turn it into something cool. Do I know what that’ll be? No. I don’t.

Addison [00:20:47]:
So that’s that’s that’s where I’m at.

Kim [00:20:50]:
Which is, makes it way more fun. And as you were talking about the collaboration piece, I don’t know what your thoughts are on this. And I have a friend that is a email marketing ninja. He does all the segmentation, Jason Resnick. And and it so we talk about email and stuff. I kinda tend to focus more on the content of email. But when you’re talking about collaboration, what I love about that is because we both have very strong opinions about all these sorry. It’s so dry here.

Kim [00:21:19]:
Who would have thought? I just forgot California could be this dry. But, that all these referral programs personally, and I’ll just go on the record, I think they’re crap. I don’t think they serve the creators in any way other than it’s like the email vanity metric. And or if if you’re looking at look. I wanna grow like a newsletter as a media company, and I just want sponsorships, who are just paying attention to just numbers. Where at a certain point, it it’s not gonna work either because they’re gonna expect more of a return on their investment. Just because you have a big list, you know, doesn’t mean anything. But it’s to me, these referral programs, like, initially when they started out and they were, say, at the bottom of an email, and it’s like you could earn rewards for sharing.

Kim [00:22:03]:
And that was just you sharing directly to your audience and with your subscribers maybe. But these, like, hey. Thanks for opting in. Here’s 10 more things. Select yes. It’s like there’s no context. There’s no relationship building. And even the best follow-up sequence, there’s no initial connection at the point of saying yes.

Kim [00:22:24]:
So they’re I don’t care how good your emails are. They might just be like, oh, what is this? I forgot. Or, you know, there there there’s no reason for them to opt in other than they were shoved your newsletter or email list in their face. So the fact that you’re thinking in terms of genuine connections and collaborations, I couldn’t agree more.

Addison [00:22:43]:
Yeah. And it’s hard to know exactly how that’ll work. I just know that it is too generic at the moment. And I know and I’ve felt, one of the things I did with my English learning website a long time ago is I actually put, it was hard to put an email box in your website a long time ago actually, so a lot of people had a website and I’m like, I know they get a lot of traffic, and I’m like, how about I put my box on your website, and I’ll give you an affiliate link? So I made an actual deal like that. So I still think there’s opportunities for that kind of thing and real connections. Again and I I think and as you said, affiliate programs and referrals are way too generic, and I don’t I think there’s some way to collaborate, and I think the key is for me to actually connect with real people, and then I can turn it basically, with what it means to do that. I’m not just gonna build a tool. Basically, I’ll build it for myself, at least I’ll use it, and I’ll be the user, maybe only 1 user at worst.

Addison [00:23:50]:
So maybe I’ll go down that direction.

Kim [00:23:53]:
Yeah. But I I just all I you know, I think the point is just that I think that getting back to your point of real people, real connections, and actual collaborations. Like, I would rather send a solo email for somebody whose newsletter I love and recommend and have a connection to their content than forcing a bunch of opt ins after somebody opts in on my stuff. It just feels like, I don’t know. I don’t know what money grab is quite the, quite the right word, but there’s this like, oh, this works blindly. And I’m like, what happens? Your subscribers go up, down, up, down, up, down. Because I pay attention to who leaves. It’s either people from, like, a 2017 import when I was WordPress checked or it’s 90% or the referral network.

Kim [00:24:39]:
So, you know, food for thought. Let’s pivot into AI because I am super excited about this conversation. And let’s just see where it goes, Addison, because I know you’re talking about kind of the impact of AI on content and email, so let’s just let’s just see where this goes. What are your thoughts?

Addison [00:24:58]:
Okay. Well, first of all, I’ve been getting so much spam recently, and it they’re supposed to it’s obviously AI driven emails and collecting them, and they’re trying to be clever. It’s like, oh, hey, username. Oh, no. I’m just joking. I’m a real person and I saw your business. Hey, your business. And LeadSlide, you know, you’re doing great stuff over there.

Addison [00:25:20]:
And it’s like, that’s not, you know, that’s not a that’s not gonna help you’re not gonna build a connection with that kind of

Kim [00:25:28]:
Mhmm.

Addison [00:25:28]:
Intro email, and there’s more and more of that, and it’s better than it used to be, but it’s it’s not obviously, it wasn’t a real contact. For example, like, I contacted you directly, and I sent you some weird follow ups. But very related. You knew I was a real person by doing that. And I think you need to. So I think for me, AI, I could see in that context being more of it shows you who to contact. It shows, like, oh, you can contact Kim Doyle. She does this and this.

Addison [00:25:56]:
And I could at least write an email based on that and saying, I wanna go on your show or whatever. I think I’d get much better response if I at least thought about who you were as a person and how to, like, I could read it for a minute. You know what I mean? Like, had some sort of interaction. I feel like it’s like a used car salesman, almost like it’s like if I said, oh, Kim. Oh, my mom’s name is Kim. And then I just went into a rant about something. It gets, like, it’s just so ridiculous. And I find it’s that cheesy, almost a lot of it.

Addison [00:26:26]:
But that’s just for the outreach part.

Kim [00:26:28]:
With the outreach, it’s funny because I can’t I’ve got I get pitched for, oh, like, podcast people who pitch for a a speaker. Right? And they’re like, oh, I love what you’re doing, and I loved this episode. I’m like, you dropped a link in. Like, so there is still humans that that behave as robots also, but, you know, there there’s, and I I think that a piece of that is AI will be generating, you know, more templated type emails to begin with. So it’s like, they may it may be a person What about the the creation piece? What are your thoughts on that?

Addison [00:27:10]:
Right. Okay. For like SEO or something, I’m seeing a lot of people like, Oh, create 300 WordPress articles with a single click. I mean, okay, great, you made these shitty articles in a niche, and I guess maybe you can get some traffic with them. I think ultimately it’s gonna go down to 0. Even back in 2008, I had a website called Speak Fluent English, and it was it was one of those classic niche sites where you collect, you write in your 3 word, niche, URL. You write, like, how to speak English fluently and all this stuff. And we had relevant content in an email collector, but, we got slapped in Google massively.

Addison [00:27:54]:
We were collecting hundreds of emails a day down to 0 because, in all honesty, it was fairly spammy, and I think that it’ll be that all over again to a larger extent. So I think if you’re creating generic crap, which really AI is, it copies work and makes it very vanilla, which is I think it’s good for, setting up, like, templates of what you should write and headings and giving you ideas, but to actually write everything and create everything, I don’t well, I certainly don’t think it’s there at this point. And once it becomes that, I don’t I don’t think I’ll be creating any content anyways. It doesn’t really matter.

Kim [00:28:36]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, it it’s interesting because I’ve tested some of those article things, and it was like, I wasn’t I jumped into Jasper early on, which it’s so much just AI in general is so much better. I just use Chet, GPT. I have some other tools, but, you know, I’ve tested some of those and I’m like, how are these any of these gonna stay in business? Because it’s such garbage formatted keyword stuff, like, it’s weird to me. And so the sad thing is it’s like you have people because there’s people starting every day. Right? Like, starting side hustles and wanting to get going every day. And, of of course, you know, the joke that marketers ruin everything.

Kim [00:29:14]:
It’s like this hype of using easy, fast, quick, whatever. Like, none of this. I’m 16 years into this, and I feel like I finally am really clear on what I wanna do, you know? So it’s kind of like, you know, it’s it’s sad because it preys on people who don’t have the skill set just yet. And then I think there are people that just think it’s a fast pass to cash also, you know. So but what what’s a bummer to me that people miss is I’m like, if you take the time to work with these things I mean, like, I could be working on one thing and 3 hours later with chat g p t, I’ve created all this stuff because it’s contextual. And for me, it’s not content I publish, but it’s marketing or frameworks or getting clarity about an idea. And then I go back and forth. I call it chatty.

Kim [00:30:04]:
And so we just go back and forth, and I I use things like good morning because it’s fun for me, and I want it to be fun. But, you know, that’s where I think the magic can happen with some of this stuff. And then you take it out and say, how would I say that? Or, you know, sometimes it’s kinda like waiting to edit something for 24 hours, then go back and look at what you’ve created. And does this sound like you or does it resonate with you? What however that looks. So, know, what are your thoughts on using it from that perspective?

Addison [00:30:32]:
Oh, a 100%. And I do it for making templates, even saying, like, give me 5 relevant links, or or what do you think about this article? You can feed it in and just say, like, do you am I missing anything? And sometimes the ideas are terrible, but, like, they might, oh, like, I didn’t think about that, and treat it like, you know, like an assistant or a person. I I I use it more as a tool like Photoshop or something like that. I think it’s one. It could help you with 1, solving 1 part of the problem. One thing that I’m loving it for personally is because I’m kind of a coding dabbler too, and I have a software business. So that is where it’s very helpful for in getting better every day. So not the content part.

Addison [00:31:15]:
So the AI, so you’ll be able to build more tools faster. And that part that part of it, to me, is interesting. And that’s how I’ll be using it more. The content And that’s how I’ll be using it more. The content creation will be I mean, that’ll be an ongoing thing of, you know, helping you write stuff, setting it up, and getting it to edit some certain things, and giving you suggestions, but not, of course, creating everything. And that’s the content creation part is the danger of just blindly letting it write everything because obviously it’s just copying everything too. It’s not, they’re not unique thoughts, and a lot of times they don’t even make any sense to be honest, but Well,

Kim [00:32:04]:
no, they don’t, or, you know, like ChatGpt is infamous for, like, phrase, colon, phrase, and it’s like, that’s a horrible headline. But I like to use it for the, like I was saying, like, really digging into an idea that I have to flesh it out. And sometimes I’ll start with, this is what I want to accomplish. What do you need from me to help you give me these results? And then it’s like target audience, all these things. So that’s all me. That’s all my context that I have to feed it, but it’s helping me refine an idea, you know. And I’ve started playing around with custom GPTs. And the one thing I regret not doing with the first one, there’s this, 12 point sales page framework by David Fry.

Kim [00:32:46]:
It’s a PDF on the Internet. And that’s kind of my guide when I write sales pages, so I thought I’m gonna see if I can do a custom GPT with this. And what was fascinating was what Chat GPT needed from me in order to create the custom GPT. And I was like, god, I should have copied because it was all my original context. Right? So I’m like, I should have copied and paid what I was inputting to get the output I wanted and stuff. So I really I treated 1 as a as a I don’t know, kind of like this learning assistant and refinement of ideas, but you know, the coding piece of it, like, I’m not a coder, but I do love no code tools. So I think there’s some really unique ideas when you can come up with something that solves a problem. And can you create a solution with it for your audience?

Addison [00:33:34]:
No. Exactly. And for me, what I like it for is it can, almost act like a project manager and keep you on task, like these are the steps to do this and this and this and maybe actually complete something. So it’ll force you to do it if you do those steps, and then you can say, I’m on step 1. Now what do I do? You know, they will show you how to do it. So it keeps me on task and getting things done, which is what I like, especially if you’re working remotely or by yourself a lot of times, I think it’s a good thing to have, and that that part can be very useful. The API version of it is neat too if you’ve ever used the personas and, like, you can build get them talking to each other, and I think you’ll start seeing a lot more of that in the future where you can actually get them to write things in different perspectives or do whatever, and each kind of role will be different for the AI bots doing it, and that makes a better result if you can use that. And ChatGBT natively doesn’t have that, so you have to be I think at this point, you kinda have to be a bit of a coder to do that if you go on, like, GitHub, but you can use some of the tools with the API.

Addison [00:34:47]:
But to be honest, like, they’re kind of expensive because they keep talking to each other, draining all the bandwidth of it.

Kim [00:34:53]:
Oh, yeah.

Addison [00:34:53]:
It’s like, oh, I just spent $50 and, like, I built something kind of that doesn’t really work. But, you know, you have to, let it do that. It’s interesting what it can do, but it’s not I don’t think it’s quite there yet for for using it in that way.

Kim [00:35:09]:
But it’s a little bit nuts when you look at how much better in, like, 6 months everything has gotten already. Like, it is I mean, look look, like, you’d look at the, you know, all the AI generated images last fall versus today, and it’s like, what? How quickly? Right? It is it’s all shifting, but, and it, it seems to me, which it’s so funny because just when I think, well, how is this this tool or this app or whatever gonna integrate AI? They come up with a u a use case for it. And it seems like everything just has AI built into it. And, you know, so to a certain point, that starts getting a little bit overwhelming too. Like, when we were talking about simplifying stuff, you know, like, I don’t know. Like, I use Rank Math in my WordPress site, and I’m like, oh, for the love of God, I don’t need rank math AI because all of my content podcasts, email, it’s me. I write that all out. I don’t ever use it for just content, but it’s like, can I turn this off? I don’t want even wanna see it like, or don’t grade my SEO, which again, I take that with a grain of salt because I didn’t use your AI tool.

Kim [00:36:15]:
Some of that kind of stuff. I don’t know. What are your thoughts about so many of these tools and platforms automatically incorporating AI? Do you think it’s necessary? Do you think, you know, I don’t know. What are your thoughts?

Addison [00:36:27]:
Well, I think a lot of peep, I think a lot of companies are doing it because they know they have to. So they’re just saying AI blank, we do this, and it’s not really for a user endpoint. And I think Mhmm. Especially for big companies, like, they’ll have a chatbot on their website, and it doesn’t answer the question you’re looking for ever, but it’s just, like, they were required to put 1 on in the website, especially for, like, airline tickets or something because, obviously, they don’t have like, if you’re a coder, you’re not excited to work at an airline company. I feel like if you’re a shitty coder, you’re just like, I’ll get a job at at an airline agents or company or whatever, but, like, if you build a tool for them, it’s not very good. It it can barely, you know, tell you what your reservation number is, and then it’s like, oh, do you wanna speak to a live agent eventually? It’s like, of course, I do. So I think if you’re doing it in that way, I mean, it’s garbage, obviously, and I don’t even know I don’t even know who wrote half of these tools because they’re just they’re awful. So I think they could be good, but I don’t know, you know, if who’s doing them and, like, it really depends on the use case.

Addison [00:37:40]:
I’m worried about that as a lot of agents. I find them not really replacing people at this point, and they’re just not answering the questions that they need to be doing. I’m not I got I feel like I kinda forgot what you’re talking about, actually.

Kim [00:37:55]:
Well, I well, I just no. I mean, you I totally get that. And it’s funny cause I was actually on, I found this other, social media, generator. Right? Like, you put in your website and it pulls content and it’s probably the best thing I’ve seen so far for that type of stuff. But my there was a there was a question about, like, you could set a schedule and I’m like, you guys have 1 schedule option. And I’m not posting to every platform at the same time every day. Like this is ridiculous. So I went into, they have a chatbot and it literally says, this is a person, not a bot.

Kim [00:38:28]:
Oh, well, we’ll be with you later. We’ll be with you later. I’m like, could you just give me the support email? You know, so on one hand, it’s like this AI tool, but yet even that was was not useful. So I I just think it’s interesting where you see things that come out and there is, if you want to add AI, that might be the next pricing tier. So it seems to also be a feature, that they’re adding on, you know, and sometimes I’m like, what, why is there AI in this? It’s not necessary. But because to your point, I think we were talking about use cases. Right? It’s like they haven’t gotten clear on an actual beneficial use case for the end user, but they wanna say they have access.

Addison [00:39:09]:
Well, yeah. So we’re we’re getting a lot of that. I think there’s a lot of cool stuff, coming out too, and it is daunting because you don’t you wanna try all of it and none of it. And then again, coming back to my point is, like, what did I do this week? It’s like it let’s at least do create some content and maybe weave it weave AI into what I’m doing as opposed to worrying about the AI. Let’s, like, maybe spend some time just, like, watching videos on AI and not actually using the tool until I I feel like I really need to for some reason.

Kim [00:39:41]:
You know

Addison [00:39:41]:
what I mean? Like, let’s let’s think of a need first as opposed to this is awesome. Like, and then you use it and you’re always disappointed. That’s what I find too. Like the promo videos for AI is amazing. And then you use the tool and think, to be honest, this is worse than the content I’m already producing. If it’s worse than what you’re already doing but faster, that’s not really a good tool. Right? Like, that’s not the purpose of it. If it helps you create good stuff faster, that’s great.

Addison [00:40:09]:
If it’s garbage, but, like, you can do 10 times as much, is is that good? And the answer, of course, is no. It’s not good at all. And I think that’s what happens a lot of times.

Kim [00:40:19]:
Yeah. Well and I do that too. There’s because, you know, I share tools in my newsletter and so it’s like I’m always looking and curating and I kinda have a little process. Have my coffee in the morning. I’m going through stuff, and I’m looking. Because even all the AI newsletters, say, most of them feel just like carbon copies of the other one. Same format, same everything. But so unless I have a definitive use for it, which was the social media one, because that’s just a bane of my existence, I think, is repurposing my own content.

Kim [00:40:47]:
But the social media one, I was super impressed. And then there’s another one that does presentations called gamma. App. And I’m just like, holy blows me away. And so those 2 are the only that I’ve spent time in. I’ll come across them. And, and then you look at stuff too. Like there’s a lot of video tools that’ll take and like repurpose this, but now Riverside has got that built in also.

Kim [00:41:10]:
So that’s where I’m getting excited is the stuff that I’m already using. If they’re going to help me eliminate something else and, and make something that I’m doing quicker, you know, like I was paying for something else and I’m like, Oh, I can get rid of that because I can use this. So in those cases, I think it’s super helpful, but yeah, it’s, it can be a huge distraction of course, then you have all these YouTube channels, like here’s how to make money with AI. Like we saw the onslaught, you know, right. When everything came out of prompt packs. And I’m like, this is so unhelpful. Nobody needs a 1,000 prompts across the board, but you made $29 off somebody, so good on you.

Addison [00:41:43]:
Absolutely. Yeah, no, it’s hard to know what to use it for. I agree. Repurposing, I think, like if you have an article, obviously ChatGPT and DALL E could make an image and make, turn that into a headline and basically make a post for your Facebook or whatever. That makes sense in that use case because you’re really just using what you already have. Or even this podcast is somehow, let’s say, it this, like, Riverside transcribes our podcast, right, right now?

Kim [00:42:14]:
Mhmm.

Addison [00:42:15]:
So after that, could you make an article or, like, draft me an article based on our conversations and organize it? Because obviously, when you’re having and that could help you do it. I see it being used in that way, so actually using what you did and then reframing it in different ways. And I like, for me in LeadSlide, I could see using in the future once, you have a few, marketing funnels going that are somewhat successful. It could say, like, oh, we’ve actually created you a template that you should use in this, and we think you’ll increase your conversion rates or something like this. It’ll give you suggestions based on what you did, and I think that would be useful. It’s almost like it it does the analytics for you, and I think it could. And it’s not like you have to listen to it, but it could be suggested, like, campaigns to actually run. And like, Oh, do you wanna run a retargeting ad campaign with this? Oh, I didn’t think about that.

Addison [00:43:34]:
You know, your products are selling this way, And I think it can suggest, like, stuff to do without you having to do it yourself. And I think with, like, analytics and everything can get super complicated, like, way over overly complicated, so I think that would be a good use case as well.

Kim [00:43:53]:
So with something like so let’s take lead slide and with with, and I know this was, like, talking about possible use cases. But in terms of, like, suggestions coming back from that. So basically, you’re saying you’ll you’ll it’ll pull in data. Here’s this funnel. This is where this funnel exists. And so based on current traffic, it’ll make suggestions. Like, is that kind of what you’re visualizing in terms of like, it could make suggestions of, you know, try this social campaign on Twitter for this, or this carousel on LinkedIn, or this Facebook ad campaign. Is that kinda what you mean?

Addison [00:44:29]:
For sure. It’s like these things are these, this is the content that is converting better on your site. Why don’t you create more of that? It seems like you’re going off on a tangent and just, like, stay present it in a very easy to read way. So I think it could do that, and I think it will do that eventually. And it’s hard to know exactly what or even maybe, you know, you did this and you made this content, maybe you wanna reach out to Kim Doyle or you wanna reach out to these people and give you 5 suggestions as opposed to, like, spamming a 1000000 people. Maybe it’s like a few people that, you know, you might wanna contact or something like that. I think it could be used in that way. That’s how I would use it personally and would like it to be more personal and more of, like, clear action items that I can do without having to do a 1,000,000 things or knowing a bunch of code, which it seems like most people don’t want to learn to code anymore because especially now it’s going in a direction that you’re not going to need to probably in, like, 10 years anyway.

Kim [00:45:35]:
Yeah.

Addison [00:45:36]:
It’s hard to know. And, and I think my background, like, 20 years in WordPress and different stuff, you kind of were forced to know more, I think, before. And I think it’s getting less and less and less and less. So I think if, if you can do that automatically, that would be great.

Kim [00:45:52]:
You know, it’s really interesting, with, when I look at the, the different tools and whatnot that I’m using, and like even, so I’m about to launch a new theme for my side and it’s Cadence, which I love. And they just rolled out Cadence AI. I’d already started working on it. But I mean, with the click of a button, you’ve got this beautiful theme with your brand colors, your voice, the photos that pulls in. And, obviously, most people are not gonna use it out of the out of the shoot. Right? But it’s like, when I think back the 1st time I installed WordPress, I kid you not, I had the WordPress for Dummies book. Not a coder. Right? And I was like, what the heck? This was before, like, the one click installs with most of the hosts.

Kim [00:46:31]:
I’m like, what is a root folder? What the hell is a root for I’d like go get my neighbor who is in tech, and I’m like, can you please help me? I have no idea what how do I know what a root folder is? You know? And it was so challenging versus versus today. But, you know, with with the different tools and whatnot, like, do you have any tools that are okay. So you use it a lot for code. And like everything you’re saying with LeadSlide, like, I don’t I don’t know something else that is doing that uniquely either. And especially when you think about all of the funnel building platforms, like unless they’re working on it behind the scenes, I haven’t seen that well,

Addison [00:47:08]:
yeah, as I said, they’re Well, no, but as I said right now it’s not doing all that. This is it’s generic, but on purpose, so you can build it for a specific reason, But I’m saying that’s why I wanna do it that way because once you have that base, it’s like, can I build some real stuff to actually make some money so I don’t have to do it myself? Or it can at least aid me in a direction to do that for my business. And once I can do it for myself, of course, I would love to other people using it. And the more data you get, of course, then it’ll suggest more ideas based on that. I’m just saying that I think that’ll be happening anyway where if I do it or not, I think it’s just obvious it it will exist. So whoever does it doesn’t really matter. There will be more of that. But also, what the risk is for me is, like, I don’t wanna have that a platform when it’s only advertisements, which keep increasing in costs.

Addison [00:48:02]:
I I wanna do that for email and have it all in 1 platform that I can build a simple strategy, and just do that in an easy way. But again, that’s more of a personal preference. I think everyone, you know, there’s so many different ways to run a business online, but in general, I find the simpler ones are the ones I like and I gravitate towards, and it just makes me feel better. I mean, partly now it’s like I’m doing some projects just because, like, I wanna do them, and I think I’d like it. I’d feel better about myself if I did them. Do I think it’s the best strategy for money? Maybe not. Do I think, I could have sanity? Yes, I do. Can I build a life doing it that way? Yes, I do.

Addison [00:48:46]:
So it’s kind of a different perspective. I’ve always bootstrapped my businesses as well, no funding, and so it’s a different way of running it. And if you’re designing your life more and doing it that way, so I think anybody who has, like, this type of business like I do and probably you do, you’re designing a life as much as you are designing a business. You know, it’s kind of altogether.

Kim [00:49:07]:
Ideally, like, the life part comes first. That’s where I’m at at this stage in my life. And so, you know, I was listening to a podcast interview with Noah Kagan. He’s got a book out. And, like, he asked this question, what’s your freedom number? And like, really, like, what what do you want your life to look like? And and what do you need financially to do that? And it is true. Like simplifying things makes it so much easier to to get rid of all this extraneous stuff, you know. And you start thinking about, like it it’s fascinating to me because we have all these companies, email service providers or, you know, ClickFunnels, you know, GoHealth, all these different big tools and stuff. And, like, I had a call with a gal last week even, and she was wanting to start to write.

Kim [00:49:51]:
And and when she told me what her objectives were, I’m like, I think WordPress is overkill. I’m like, start writing on Medium and set up a ghost site, like, quickly. It’s, you know, like, WordPress, even though it’s gotten way easier than it was, but I’m like, there’s a different learning curve. And if your objective is not to build out a site with all of this stuff that you just want to write, start writing on medium because that’s where readers are. You can deal with canonical URLs and publish on your own site, but I’m like, keep it simple. So I feel like there’s a lot of people that have been in the space. I should say that, or in internet marketing, their creators, whatever that are leaning towards simplifying because they realize it’s like all of a sudden are you familiar with Vanessa Lau? Have you ever heard of her? She so just I just watched to her. She shut her business down a year ago and she was she I think she got to, like, 8,000,000 or something with, you know, and just it it took on this monstrous life of its own.

Kim [00:50:46]:
And she’s like, I wasn’t myself. I was overwhelmed. I wasn’t enjoying my life and not even, or, you know, maybe she’s 30 now. But you know, it’s very easy to get caught up in needing to do more, have more, be more. And I feel that people that have had a smidge of that are like, for what? For what? You end up creating a job for yourself. So the simplicity angle that you’re coming from, Addison, I think is huge. I think it’s gonna resonate with a lot of people.

Addison [00:51:10]:
I hope so. There come, and we’ll see what happens. But I think it’s also again when you have a few decades of experience under your belt, I think if you came into the game now and you didn’t know what to do, it’d be very overwhelming and confusing because there’s so many things and so many theories and, you know, just I don’t even know I I I mean, it’s hard to even know what I would think. I just know it would be very difficult because as you said, you started off with, like, the WordPress chick too, right, and got traffic just by putting something up there. And you could do that. Or back then, you just do it. Right? And it was there, and that was the cool part. But if you if you did that now and you didn’t with that strategy, it wouldn’t work at all.

Addison [00:51:52]:
You know what I mean? Being the WordPress chick in 2024 for you, like, a version of you that was brought up, you know, now wouldn’t work in the same way if you did it in the same, in exactly the same strategy. But having said that, I don’t think you’re gonna be on TikTok and be doing dances and stuff like this either. Are you, Kim? Like, that’s my guess.

Kim [00:52:13]:
No. It well, completely. And the funny thing is, like, I’ve repurposed stuff on TikTok, but even TikTok will show you I believe their algorithm is like, we’re gonna show we’re gonna show your stuff based on what you watch. And I’m like, well, that’s horseshit because I like watching a ton of things. Right? And honestly, I think my most viewed video on TikTok, because it’s mostly repurposed stuff, was of me driving through a river in Costa Rica. It’s called the monkey trail, and it’s a path to the shortest path to get to Liberia airport. And I I I felt it was that’s probably the I’m like, what does that do to my business? Nothing other than sharing, you know, so to your point, you’re right. I’m like, I know what I wanna do and I’m just gonna stick, you know, stick to my wheelhouse.

Kim [00:52:57]:
But, yeah, I could talk to you all day, Addison. Where is. This has been a blast. Where is the best place for people to connect with you, and find out more about LeadSlide?

Addison [00:53:06]:
Well, you can go to leadslide dot com, and I think there’s a contact form there, and just shoot me an email or sign up. It’s a free trial, and but you can actually contact me. It’s funny, A few people recently signed up, and I tried to say, I’m literally the founder. I’m emailing you directly. This is not a bot. Please let me know what you think. And no one ever replies because they think they think it’s a bot. You know what I mean? But if I do that, we literally don’t have the email even in place yet.

Addison [00:53:33]:
This is me. If I’m contacting you, that means it’s a direct mail at this point. So if you do that, you’ll get real engagement, and I think that would be the difference between signing up for, you know, one of the more established marketing platforms. You’ll actually be talking to me if you want to. I don’t know if that’s a positive, but if it is, feel free to do so.

Kim [00:53:54]:
Well, how about the fact that even some of the big platforms, you’re like, you know, good luck actually getting support with some sometimes it blows me away. I’m like, how much money do you make and you cannot nail your support? Come on guys. You know? But what do I know? Anyways, this has been a blast, Addison. Thank you for your patience, and I really appreciate you reaching out. I I miss this, you know, this piece when I think back to what blew up my brand, blew up, you know, not like it was viral. But the WordPress shake, it was the connections. It was absolutely a 100% the connections and the relationships. And so, I love that that’s a huge focus for you.

Kim [00:54:28]:
So thank you. I I really appreciate your time today.

Addison [00:54:30]:
Thanks a lot, Kim. It was a great time to be here.