Episode 256 with Anika Jackson: Navigating Human Connection and AI Innovation

AI tools are a hot topic right now, so I am excited to share this episode of the Ready Yet?! Podcast with guest Anika Jackson, a multifaceted podcaster, consultant, and educator at USC Annenberg. Listen in as she shares her journey from a club promoter in Kansas City to her dynamic roles in marketing, PR, and AI consultancy. We also dive into how AI tools can be used effectively in small businesses, emphasizing the importance of human connection and brand authenticity. Annika also shares her thoughts on the evolving landscape of AI, practical steps for small business owners, and how staying true to your brand's essence can drive success. 

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Transcript

Episode 256 with Anika Jackson: Navigating Human Connection and AI Innovation

Transcribed by Descript

Erin Marcus: All right. Welcome. Welcome to this episode of the Ready Yet Podcast. My guest today, Annika Jackson and I, we were just chatting and I can't wait to get into this because something happened today that I love my snarky, sarcastic self , but I also know that's not the way to move through the world. And I can't wait to get your take on it with AI tools and all that.

Erin Marcus: But before we get into that, I can't wait to tell you this. I saved it.

Erin Marcus: For the live show. Why don't you tell everyone real quick, though, who you are and what you do and all the cool things. 

Anika Jackson: Okay. Hello, everyone. And by the way, I love the snarkiness and sarcasm. That is part of your authentic brand. I do it to entertain myself. 

Erin Marcus: It is what it is. My brother does it. My father does it.

Erin Marcus: It's genetic. I can't. 

Anika Jackson: I presently. A full time podcaster consultant. I do a lot of workshops on brand positioning, marketing, podcasting, AI. And I teach grad school at USC Annenberg in digital medium management and PR and advertising. So I wear a lot of hats. Somebody though recently told me that I am an innovator.

Anika Jackson: I was like, yes, let's go with that word instead of ADHD, creative, mix. I started out. In Kansas in a very long time ago, we'll just as a club promoter promoting DJs starting when I was in high school and throwing events. We called them raves. They were not brave in the big city sense, but in kind of the smaller Kansas City.

Anika Jackson: Smaller town, smaller city vibe and that parlayed into move to Chicago, working for KBR, KBA marketing on nightlife promotions for Camel and Smirnoff and working on Audi and working in nightclubs. And I really moved, that's what I moved up there for, got tired of the weather. And oh, 

Erin Marcus: Tell me there's nothing worse because right.

Erin Marcus: This is my world. Nothing worse than nightclubs in Chicago in the winter because you don't bring your coat and then you have 

Anika Jackson: to 

Erin Marcus: wait 

Anika Jackson: for valet. Or I was going around and whatever I was going to wear to work at the club that night to other bars. to talk about Smirnoff or Camel because that's when everybody's slow.

Anika Jackson: That's 

Erin Marcus: what we did. 

Anika Jackson: And yeah, when you're young, you can be cold for a little bit, but I woke up and went, I made 16, 000 last year. I can't stay up until four in the morning. I need to have a career. So I moved to LA where I also still worked for KBA marketing, promoted into Hollywood, but started working in magazine publishing and that was also warmer.

Anika Jackson: It was also warmer. Yes. And magazines were my area of expertise for several years, launch marketing publications, everything from dance music magazine called revolution to official X Box magazine when X Box launched. And then I started working on my own agencies and being an entrepreneur in many other spaces.

Anika Jackson: But I always loved the communication connection. And so when I moved. Move back from San Francisco to LA. Then I moved to Houston for eight years and I moved back to LA for my third time. I'm like, you're like a hundred years old, I 

Erin Marcus: had many lives. 

Anika Jackson: And so at that point I said, I really just want to be in the calm space.

Anika Jackson: This is what I love doing right before the pandemic started getting a lot of clients, started an agency, ended up. I've had a couple of twists and turns the last couple of years, and that's what's led me to be here, podcasting, teaching grad school, which I absolutely love, and then being able to figure out curriculums for universities, but also how to best coach people through something that we both love, brand brand positioning, brand strategy through podcasting, and then now the newest part is AI tools, because that's something a lot of small businesses don't know how to use effectively.

Erin Marcus: Yeah. And you talked about being an innovator. The one thing I'll tell you and I say this because people have pointed it out to me because I'm also have this crazy background of all over the place. There's themes. If you really look at it, there's themes. One of the best things someone told me is you're not a procrastinator, you're a percolator.

Erin Marcus: That made me feel much better about myself. I'm using that. Because I'm never late. My, I always meet deadlines and my work is quality. So I'm not procrastinating. I'm percolating. So I love that. But you're, one of your themes. It's marketing, but it's really connection. And that's real, right? Everything you talked about, whether it was in the club back in the day, or whether it's branding workshops and teaching students how to do this, it's really about human connection, 100%.

Erin Marcus: So there, there's that strong theme. So if we jump into this AI conversation, and how does AI fit? I think to me, the biggest don't, one of the biggest don'ts that I see is AI is not a tool that is meant to replace. Thank you. And connection. A 

Anika Jackson: hundred percent. It is not. I want to hear your story. The funniest thing I think is that a lot of people use bots, chatbots, et cetera, on LinkedIn, which I love LinkedIn for connection.

Anika Jackson: I make a lot of amazing connections there. Yes. Bye. If you are connecting with me and then your chatbot or whatever is saying the next thing is the sales pitch. No, that is not human connection. That's not a, that's not a connection. That's not a clan journey. That's not. Nothing. Yeah. And the saddest thing though, is somebody reached out to me who I hadn't spoken to for a while.

Anika Jackson: And I emailed back and said, I think your chat bot doesn't realize that we've already been, talking. And I know you, I knew her like she was in a band, but a friend of mine, like way back over 20 years ago. And And she's Oh no, that was me. That was just me, not paying attention.

Anika Jackson: I'm like, are you sure? And if it was, then that shows you don't remember who I am. And it's almost even worse. 

Erin Marcus: I used a, it's, I don't know if it's, I don't know what it is. Cause I don't know the right words for any of it. Someone else did it for me. And I did for a short period of time, had an auto thing going on LinkedIn with a search criteria.

Erin Marcus: It was two questions, though. It was literally Hello, I'd love to connect. And how is the business world treating you? And that was it. And it led to amazing conversations. Nice. Let it do the boring, repetitive, you only get 20 percent response, so you want to bang your head against the wall because it makes you crazy.

Erin Marcus: Let it do that. But it was literally just two questions, and I will tell you, that took the heavy, icky part I hated, and let me play in the space I love. Yes. And I met amazing people. 

Anika Jackson: And that's what AI should do. It should take away the work that we aren't best at and that we don't love doing, and it should give us more creative freedom and license to be in the strategy zone, make the actual human connections, like for me, I love being able to look at my work MailChimp and see the analytics and the results.

Anika Jackson: And that is all machine learning and AI. Yep. People don't realize everything we do. If you buy stuff off of Amazon, or if you listen to the Spotify algorithm or Netflix or any video on demand service, or you use Siri or Alexa, that is all AI backed. 

Erin Marcus: Which is fine. We, my podcast, we now can do in the podcast production process between the show, getting the first draft, we don't use it, but we get a draft of the description and the title, and we are able to highlight things and make reels.

Erin Marcus: In about an hour, puts the end in the front and the dynamic commercial is amazing. That feature is fantastic and it takes about an hour what used to take six or seven. Exactly. But it's never for creation. 

Anika Jackson: It's not for creation and it doesn't replace. I still, but that afforded me to hire an admin to help me with my podcast that I can grow it so that I can also make it a better.

Anika Jackson: business, not just a hobby and streamline systems and processes, but I still have the person behind it who's making sure everything's moving and that we're getting stuff back to our guests in a timely fashion. And that, I, and I think it's still get better at it, but it's still it's a time saver and you don't use every single, edit but that's the best use is.

Anika Jackson: If you're stuck on a client campaign and you have some ideas, you can put in, please create 10 taglines based on this profile. Yes. And then you pick and choose some of the words and some of them are thrown out immediately. Or, I wrote this paragraph, it just doesn't sound as polished, rewrite this paragraph for me.

Anika Jackson: And what would you say? But, that's, those are the best use cases. We have 

Erin Marcus: a lot more. Oh my god, we just, so I'm doing an event in July. And I just recently wrote, like a couple weeks ago, I wrote the landing page for it. And it was okay. I, never write your own stuff. It, never write your own stuff. It's so brittle, right?

Erin Marcus: But I wrote it. And, My 7 Eleven team put it in AI and asked for a more emotionally compelling version of it. Oh. It was like screaming. It was almost over. There was a couple interesting phrases. I'm like, oh, yeah. And so we put those in there, but oh my God, it was so like, it was so funny. I'm like, I would never you mentioned earlier my snarkiness as part of the brand, like it was so off brand.

Erin Marcus: That was, it was so off brand that it, we laughed. It was, it took two seconds, but I got to tell you what happened. So I went to a small business expo. We are recording this in May of 2024. I went to a small business expo in downtown Chicago in either June or July of 2023. And we know going to that, your name is on a list.

Erin Marcus: So this is the text I got at nine Oh four this morning. Okay, Erin, this is the like, this is awesome. This is likely the last time you'll hear from me for about two weeks or so. I want to give you some time and see if I can get a hold of you then just in case you're in a better spot or are less busy. Now, I will save you, this is the text message that this person has sent me.

Anika Jackson: Oh my 

Erin Marcus: gosh. I don't know what they do. I don't know who they are. But this is, I went in June or July of 2023 and the text message process didn't start until April 16th of 2024. And now this person has sent me a dozen text messages that I've never replied to. And I'm a big fan of I guiltily don't unsubscribe because I want them like, and it's not really helping anybody because it's giving them false data.

Erin Marcus: But the line of this is likely the last time you'll hear from me for about two weeks or so. 

Anika Jackson: Yeah, 

Erin Marcus: that's, and all I could think about is I had a lot of responses two weeks. Oh, yay! Oh, can't wait. How do we make this permanent? And you know that somebody thought it was a good idea to program a text message a day every other day for 30 days a year after an expo.

Erin Marcus: What what are we doing? 

Anika Jackson: No, I've tried using an automatic response. In my meta, like I think it was specifically on my Facebook and I think it was just like, Hey, send us your email address so we can get in touch and schedule a meeting. But not everybody who comments, DM people who commented, but not everybody who comments needs to be somebody I need to set up a meeting with.

Anika Jackson: Some of them are just random people. Who I know from life or family. 

Erin Marcus: It took me years to get my father and my uncle and my aunt to stop being the first person to comment on my business posts. Like I know you're being supportive, but you have the same letter and it looks weird.

Anika Jackson: That is hilarious. Yeah. So there are ways to make AI better, but you have to be specific. The more specific you can be about the prompts, right? What tone of voice? What kind of, are you informal or informal in the way that you speak? There are little things that you put in to, to create better output.

Anika Jackson: And if 

Erin Marcus: someone hasn't 

Anika Jackson: responded to you. Yeah. 

Erin Marcus: Then just. For 9, 10, 11 efforts. Then that's true. They're not they're, not answering is the answer. 

Anika Jackson: Exactly. 

Erin Marcus: And I get, I do get empathetic because I know we're all just trying out there making it, trying to make it work. But somebody's teaching somebody that this is a good idea.

Anika Jackson: It's every disruptive technology, right? There is going to be a lot of people come to market and say that they have the best thing. And. It's a continuous thing. There are always going to be people who do that because they make money off of those people. Or maybe they had success for themselves but that's not necessarily replicable.

Anika Jackson: And so it can be really hard to figure out what, how to dig through and figure out what tools to use or not use. My recommendations are AppSumo has a lot of AI tools, so you can go through and see oh, this might be one and it's so inexpensive, right? This might be one I could test or this one. You're paying a one time fee under a hundred bucks.

Anika Jackson: So if you end up You just said the key word, past. Yes. Yes. So you can test them and see if any of them are valuable and if you're not going to break the bank. But every AI expert that I speak to says to go with the big companies, the ones that are spending lots of money that are proven open AI, you can, for chat GPT, there are closed ways to close it and create a closed infrastructure just for your brand Sora, right?

Anika Jackson: Mid journey, Dolly. These are companies that are putting out really great output that is used. It's not. Foolproof. It still needs human interaction intervention. But they're getting better and better. And I think a lot more companies are starting to create those ecosystems of here's one that will really speak in your brand voice.

Anika Jackson: I'm actually testing something out for my podcast where I have all the brand assets in the ecosystem. So that makes it much easier. That's going to increase my process efficiency even more.

Erin Marcus: I think another, what do you think about this? Because I know this branding background. I think one of the challenges a lot of small business or entrepreneurs have is they don't have, they're trying to do this, but they don't have a solid foundation to come from. They don't have their, they're not dialed in enough.

Erin Marcus: And so it sounds even, I call it, nobody does the work before going to work. They go, they know they need clients, so they go out to the networking event, but they don't know what they do, how to talk about, they don't, they haven't done the work. The heavy lift, the, it's brutal to sit there and think about your ideal client nobody loves doing, this is not why they went in the business.

Erin Marcus: And they're approaching their AI tools with the same shaky 

Anika Jackson: foundation. And that's why so many things sound exactly the same and the same adjectives are used in posts and prompts and yeah, it's It doesn't matter if you're starting a podcast, if you're starting a business, whatever you're doing.

Anika Jackson: Cause like when I had my PR agency, the number of clients who came and said, I have a website, I have a logo. I'm like, hold on. But what's your brand? What are you trying to share? What's your message? What is your vision for the future? And you might want to tweak this and this. And sometimes they did and sometimes they didn't, sometimes they didn't even have a logo or they wanted to jump from what their brand was to this other place.

Anika Jackson: I'm like, here's a pathway to do that. But you can't just make that leap. You have to make it seem like a very seamless, natural transition. And I just, yeah, we're preaching to the choir. If you don't start with brand first, then nothing is going to work. It's not going to be on a strong foundation.

Anika Jackson: So where 

Erin Marcus: does somebody. I actually want to dial this in a specific circumstance because I know a lot of, I work with a lot of people who we call it going from me to we, they're at the point in their business where they're moving from a very DIY, I built this one step at a time, the only way we can write, like we get it, you get to a point where it's working, but your entire business looks like a patchwork quilt.

Erin Marcus: What? How do you get, so it's not like beginner stage, but it's time to become that business owner. Where do they go first? What's the most, I call it, prioritize their dominoes. 

Anika Jackson: I know from, it's always, I think one of the things you have to think about is, If you were not in the business today with a person who's coming in to work with you, be able to do everything that you do, or enough, because there are businesses I've talked to people who are very, have one guy who Craig Andrews, dear friend now who's on my podcast, who was in a coma from COVID, but his company was able to run because his people knew exactly what to do, that's a beautiful story, but that is not a very common story.

Anika Jackson: That's not the goal, right? But especially for somebody like me who always wants to just be creating, I need to have good implementers and organizers and production folks. So I need to have really strong SOPs of let's actually systemize this and let's make sure that whoever's doing it knows you go from here to here to here.

Anika Jackson: Or if we have this kind of client, here's the onboarding process or, and these are the first things that we do with a client. And this is how much time it might take. And having stuff standardized is so important and it just makes life easier. I know there are some tools in AI that can do that.

Anika Jackson: I haven't used any of those. So yet I still think that's let the human do it first. And then, 

Erin Marcus: and I think going back to, What we said about coming from a shaky foundation, if you don't have your brand dialed in, I tell people your brand is, my definition of a brand is, how do you want people to feel after they've interacted with you?

Erin Marcus: That's my simple, that's my sentence version. That doesn't apply to marketing. That applies to marketing and client fulfillment, right? It applies to everything. If you want to become this business owner and have other people do things for you, if they don't know how people are supposed to feel after engaging with your company, how are they supposed to 

Anika Jackson: do 

Erin Marcus: their 

Anika Jackson: job?

Anika Jackson: Exactly. Exactly. You have to have a lot of buy in. You have to make sure that you have people who are just. in it with you, right? You want to be there and who have the same, maybe they might not have all of the excitement, but they have close to the same level of excitement. 

Erin Marcus: No one's going to be as excited about that.

Erin Marcus: That's a Gary V thing, right? Nobody is going to be as excited about your business as you are. And that's totally fine. They shouldn't be. They, they shouldn't be. So I have to ask, this is a more personal journey because I think a lot of people go through this. How did you, because you have this, you switched, but you also switched locations.

Erin Marcus: What was your, how did you know what to do next? Oh, 

Anika Jackson: geez. Yeah. How did I know what to do next? I knew when I moved back to LA after that, I was going to stay in the magazine world for a little bit longer, but that I really wanted to move into PR, which I had not been a focus, I'd mostly been experiential and B2B and B2C marketing.

Anika Jackson: So when I left that job, I started an agency with a friend who was a PR person. This is back when we had to fax over, press, type it up, fax it over, call and make sure that they got it. Been there. Yeah. So it was and then we ended up doing a lot of kind of full production, experiential, all of the things, all the marketing arms for our clients, plus PR.

Anika Jackson: Then I ended up having my daughter spend a little time away. At that point, got really involved in nonprofit. And so it was an easy jump for me when I got divorced, down the road to say, I could work for a nonprofit. I've been a volunteer, but I've also known, I've understood how to structure different parts.

Anika Jackson: So that was my first job back in the real world, was working for a nonprofit, but at the same time, I'd already been building a company. And ended up deciding to leave to go full force into my own business. One, actually before that even, I didn't know, but I think sometimes opportunities just present themselves.

Anika Jackson: And somebody who worked for a company called Union and Fifth, which no longer exists, unfortunately, but it was designer resale online. But you designate a charity for the money to go to when your clothing sells. So not a little bit different model. And so Houston is a very philanthropic city. I was involved in a lot of nonprofits And fashion and art and all of those scenes there.

Anika Jackson: So she said, I really need somebody in Houston to represent us, help us connect to these women who have these amazing wardrobes, who want to donate them to charities and to the charities. So we started doing events and promotions and YouTube channel and a lot of social media posts and live events to bring people together in that world.

Anika Jackson: And that. was a springboard to then me starting a social club in Houston that then became an a store with an incubator for small businesses who want to pop up, they were all full time jobs, but they wanted to test their 

Erin Marcus: Yeah. And so what I'm hearing and it sounds nuts, right? It sounds nuts.

Erin Marcus: But it, which is amazing. I absolutely love it because the themes that I'm watching, the thing that I think you did so amazingly, whether it was in purpose and it sounds like it wasn't even intentional and it's just intuitive, right? So many people are, they have an external goal. 

Erin Marcus: And they think that you're right.

Erin Marcus: And that's the thing, right? And I think it's so much. I just recorded a video about this right before we came on here about how do you want to live? What's driving you? What is your desire? And what is your intention? And how, when you take that and what you did was partner it with skill set, your life becomes an unfolding.

Erin Marcus: Yes. Oh, I love that word. And I'm finding people who have done that or are now embracing that, and it seems like such a more not that there aren't challenges, but it seems like it's such a better journey than it. Not setting goals and not reaching them. 

Anika Jackson: I feel like the people who set goals, they go into corporate, they start their own company, but all they do is grind when they get to the top, like they get to that goal.

Anika Jackson: They're not happy. They're not satisfied because they didn't follow this other path. This other path might take longer to monetization, or especially if you do things like during the pandemic, you hire too many people, we all make it, it has to take longer. 

Erin Marcus: I 

Anika Jackson: think it's just, you never know. But, and for me now, I didn't think when I had a radio show in Houston that was also on Facebook Live.

Anika Jackson: Then I moved back to LA, two clients had me start podcasts for them. They didn't have budgets to sustain and they didn't really have time to pour into the marketing and doing everything effectively. So I started, my partner's just start your own. I'm an editor. I'm in the, he's in the industry. So he's just.

Anika Jackson: Just do your own. You're, you love pop talking and it's going back to that word. You said connection. And that's something that has really helped and served me through all of the different cities I've been in is being able to form connections really quickly with people and then help other people form connections and get involved.

Anika Jackson: And that's really, I think my entire, my personal brand ethos, my purpose is to create and celebrate and amplify people, help them make those connections and create collaborative opportunities. and find their voices where they might think that they don't have one. Whether that's by being on a podcast or feeling really comfortable with what they want to pursue and knowing how to speak to a future employer or start their own business, whatever that looks like.

Anika Jackson: It's different for everybody. 

Erin Marcus: So what are you seeing as in schools? Yeah, because my lack of Children and so my observation comes from just what I see there. They haven't. We now have two generations who haven't been taught this. The connection first, and I, my younger clients are often looking for a process in their business to make money that never requires them to talk to another human being.

Erin Marcus: The one that made me laugh was Domino's? No, Little Caesars. I don't know if you have it. Little Caesars, pizza. Yeah. You get two pizzas. Pizza. My brother and I basically. Gen X here, my new favorite t shirt is, it says, Gen X, raised on hose water and neglect. Totally, right?

Erin Marcus: That's key. So I remember they came out with a commercial and I think it was it might have been pandemic related or whatever, where their entire premise was, you can go like you have to pick up their pizza because they're so cheap. They can't even afford delivery driver. This is we used to make 4 for two pizzas.

Erin Marcus: And you could order on an online app. And then you could pay online and then they would put it in the pickup case and you just go grab it and leave. So I get the efficiency of the business model, but they literally marketed. It, to a generation of people who never want to talk to another human 

Anika Jackson: being, 

Erin Marcus: right?

Erin Marcus: They don't want to call and order a pizza because, God forbid you talk to another human being. 

Anika Jackson: I can say for my grad students, part of the reason they go to USC is the network and the connections they're going to make. Very emphasized. that it doesn't matter what you do. Most of us meet people, whether it's a romantic partner or a friend group or work opportunities through our connections.

Anika Jackson: That's how I got to be a professor. It's how I, why my podcast has grown and why I love doing this. So there's that side of things where the student, they really understand the power of connections. And then my daughter is in high school. She's very different. So she is She wants to be a neuroscientist, she wants to get her PhD, so she has a whole other trajectory planned.

Anika Jackson: So she has a core group of friends, but they're not big on going to all the social activities, and they each have their isms, and they all just understand their quirks and love it, and they have text groups, and sometimes they get together in person, which I wish they would do more often. But also it's nice to have the kid that's not like me that I don't have to worry about.

Erin Marcus: My mother always said she only wished I had a child who was 

Anika Jackson: just like me. You might have gotten one who is not like you like I did. I got the kid who wants to be at home with mom and hang out. But yeah, they, but when she is with people, Even as an introvert, she's very good at making conversation.

Anika Jackson: She is good at shaking people's hands, but mostly for adults more than kids her age. I think she doesn't have as good of a connection to them because she doesn't really care about dating and, Formal and I watch 

Erin Marcus: my nieces. I watch my nieces and my brother and his wife have done a wonder like his kids are great at it and then at the same time, I've been at a dinner with a friend whose daughter was with us.

Erin Marcus: And this was like a 19 year old who couldn't order their own meal. Yeah, wouldn't right. I'm like, Oh, you're not doing your kid any favors by doing this. Yeah. And that they will figure it out, right? Each generation figures out their version. So it's not like they're right and we're wrong or we're wrong and they're right.

Erin Marcus: But they figure it out. We 

Anika Jackson: are babysitting and making full meals for kids, for babies at 10 years old. We were like given so much power and freedom. Yes. Like I would drive my car because I lived in Kansas and was trying to always find something fun to do. We would decide just to drive to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where there was a club that was reversed.

Anika Jackson: It was 18 and over. No, it was, yeah, all ages after midnight for some reason. It was 21 and over before something or 18. It was some weird thing, but we would go dance, go drive to Tulsa, go dancing and then drive home the next morning. Yeah. Like our parents never knew where we were, never knew where we were.

Anika Jackson: There were no, there was no GPS. We didn't have cell phones, 

Erin Marcus: but I was like, I would not wear my shoe. That was the rule. Carry a quarter of a shoe just in case of emergencies. 

Anika Jackson: So you 

Erin Marcus: could 

Anika Jackson: use the 

Erin Marcus: payphone. 

Anika Jackson: So very different. So it is going to be interesting seeing how this, but, and I think that some people are worried that, I know people say, Oh, somebody, they always type on their phones, even assignments.

Anika Jackson: They don't know, they don't have the same skills, right? Typing. 

Erin Marcus: No. I just read this where they don't know how to use a computer. the way that we use a computer because they use a phone. They use phones and tablets and some of them like they didn't know some of the computer skills that we learned in college, not even until college because it wasn't in high school.

Anika Jackson: Yeah, but I think there are more schools that are giving kids Chromebooks and things like that. They're actual computers and they might be Firewalled, but you still have different tools and access to things. And then there are a lot of, if you're going to be creative, my daughter loves to make things like figure out how to make people and art digitally, and she's not going to, she's not using the AI tools, she's just old fashioned way, but I'm like, Oh yeah, she could use those. And, but a good example of AI, would be Canva. It's a really easy tool for people to use and search and create and say, I don't see any images in your stock images or let the right logo. I want this and it'll pop up options.

Anika Jackson: And so it's real, it's really great for that. And that's such an easy system for small business owners to use. That's inexpensive that can create once they have their brand, can create all the brand assets. 

Erin Marcus: Absolutely. So what are you seeing that's next? Have you, I know you've been out at some conferences and things.

Erin Marcus: What do you, the thing that I remember as a kid seeing a commercial on TV that said, imagine driving through the toll booth without slowing down to pay your toll. AT& T is going to bring that to you. And I thought that was the most nuts ludicrous. Idea that was ever out there and and it's been around for ages.

Erin Marcus: Did they roll anything out? What is What do you, where do you see this going from a small business perspective? 

Anika Jackson: I was just in D. C. for the Intuit Small Business Council and we met with legislators and we met with people from the SBA. And what's interesting is they already are aware there's a gang of four who are All about helping get everybody understanding what AI is.

Anika Jackson: First of all, because we know most of our legislators are very old. But on their teams, right? They have an expert who is there now they're AI expert or the tech expert. So they did a series of nine listening sessions throughout the fall and early spring. So fall 2023, spring 2024, that were education platforms to help people understand that using AI tools.

Anika Jackson: So what we advocated for last week was the fact that small businesses need access to tools. So that means from the SBA perspective, SBA needs to understand how to use AI tools so that they can help small businesses understand this. And also funding for infrastructure. So 7a funding is normally like brick and mortar, but now it needs to also be digital infrastructure so that we can afford to pay for and invest in tools, whether it's a computer that's fast enough to run all the different programs or whatever that case may be.

Anika Jackson: And then rolling out curriculum to small businesses and people through the American job centers. So there are a lot of things that we threw out and a couple of them are in, are baked into Senate bills right now. So we'll see what happens, but it's not going to go away. People need to stop being scared and embrace that we've already been using AI for so long.

Anika Jackson: And there are great use cases for it. People that we just need to fine tune so that people don't get sick of all of the it. Bad marketing messages. And the market will figure a lot of that out. It does. I 

Erin Marcus: did it so easily and I'm having so much more fun with it. Facebook and LinkedIn were never my favorites anyway.

Erin Marcus: I don't know why they're, I don't have anything together. I just never did a great job at it. And I didn't want to sound like everybody else. It's been a thing since my childhood is I never wanted to feel like everybody else. So how easy is it to not look like everybody else? I just put all my videos on YouTube.

Erin Marcus: I changed my long form content to YouTube videos because there's no AI. It's just me talking like I know Hollywood can do deep face, but I can't. I know I can't do deep face. So that's just me 15, 10, 20 minutes, whatever it is. And so I think the marketplace, you're never gonna. The people at the top of their game are always going to be needed to press the button and create the standard 100%.

Erin Marcus: It's never going to, that's always going to be there. 

Anika Jackson: And I do feel like they're rolling it out slowly. I'm excited. I interviewed Kevin's race, who founded. He has a patent that is the original personal assistant that Siri and Alexa are based on. And he said that what he built into that in the 80s, they're not even using all that capability.

Anika Jackson: So there's a lot more. So I feel like this is the slow rollout to get people comfortable. And then they'll be like, and we invented this many decades ago. And now we're going to give this to you because now you're comfortable. He also said that in the future, movies complete movies will be made.

Anika Jackson: With AI, you won't even need actors or sets or all of the below the line people. So I think there's going to be a big shift in some industries, a big change in the jobs, but I think it's going to create other jobs, including for ourselves. There's always going to be need for small business. That's not going to go away.

Anika Jackson: Just we can be more efficient with our money so that we can then, when we hire people, hire strategists or people who are going to implement and do other things. 

Erin Marcus: And we see that over and over again. I have been, I've met a lot of people recently, and I don't even know how I got there, but I met a lot of people recently in the entertainment industry.

Erin Marcus: And they're all very frustrated, exactly like you said, because they've lost a lot of jobs because of the strike. First there was COVID, then there was a strike, and now they have no job to go back to because of the AI tools. And I get it, from a personal, individual standpoint, that's brutal. But we've seen this over and over again.

Erin Marcus: In other industries, when Zillow came out, and now you didn't need your realtor to find you a house, but you did need them to interpret information for you, right? And Uber and Lyft replaced taxis because of what people hated about the taxi industry. Like the evol you can rail against the evolution, or you can adjust and make yourself needed in a different way.

Anika Jackson: Exactly. 

Erin Marcus: Yeah. And it's exciting. It's sci fi and the, it's everything we grew up. It's the Jetsons. It's everything we grew up with. Self 

Anika Jackson: driving cars. 

Erin Marcus: Yeah. I want my flying car. 

Anika Jackson: Yes. I just want to be, I just want to like teleport so that I don't have to go on planes for that long. 

Erin Marcus: 100%. Yeah.

Erin Marcus: That's my brutal. Totally. Totally. So if people want to continue this conversation with you, learn more about what you're doing what's the best way for them to find you? 

Anika Jackson: My website is yourbrandamplified. com. Everything's on there. The podcast, more about me, I believe there's a button or link to connect with me.

Anika Jackson: And then from there you can find me on all the socials, all the things. So yourbrandamplified. 

Erin Marcus: com. Simple. I always know when I'm talking to a marketing person because you give one simple call to action. This is the difference. If you take nothing away from this conversation, one easy to remember, simple call to action.

Erin Marcus: Your brand, Amplify. com. Love it. Thank you for hanging out with me today. You're so awesome. I love talking to you and we can always just reminisce about Excalibur back in the day. Exactly. Exactly. It's so much fun. Thank you.