Benjamin Ard00:55 — Welcome back to another episode of Content to Close. Today I'm joined by Matt. Matt, welcome to the show.
Matt Zelasko01:00 — Thanks for having me, man.
Benjamin Ard01:01 — Yeah, now I'm excited. I think this is going to be a fun conversation. I think it's a conversation that people need to hear and I don't know how easy it'll be for people to hear, but I think it's something that people need to hear. But before we dive in, Matt, let's get to know your background, work history, all that fun stuff. Let's the audience get to know you.
Matt Zelasko01:21 — Yeah, man. Really appreciate you having me on here. I think it will be a little less painful than you're expecting based on our kind of back and forth. I think I may have been in kind of a mood about something while you were emailing me. So we'll get to that in a moment. But, you know, I'm Matt. I am on LinkedIn, better known as the Tom DeLong of RevOps. I've been in kind of the agency, marketing agency, rev-op space for longer than I'd like to admit. I have a lot of opinions on a lot of different things. I'm very willing to be proven wrong because I think that's how we all grow and we all learn. And I also think that, you know, far too many people take themselves far too seriously. It's okay to take the work seriously. Nothing that says that you can't have a little bit of fun while you work, while you do things. So, that's me in a nutshell.
Benjamin Ard02:13 — I love it. I love it. And where are you at now? What do you guys do? All that kind of fun stuff.
Matt Zelasko02:18 — So I run an agency called Radish. We are kind of a growth partner. We do a lot of different things for a lot of different people. But I don't believe in kind of like the vertical niche. I do believe in the horizontal of that for an agency. So ultimately, we like to say that we help folks do more rad shit, you know, we're kind of hell bent on helping customers grow, you know, take their next step in their growth. So that's that's what we're looking to do.
Benjamin Ard02:50 — And I have seen a lot of websites in my day. If anyone listening wants to see a website done really, really well, that is bold and fresh and just refreshingly cool. Check out the website. We'll link to it in the show notes. So I'm excited to dive in, Matt. What we're going to talk about is the disconnect between the AI silver bullet promise and the reality of what AI actually delivers. And how revenue is actually generated. So the AI silver bullet kind of starting there. What, what do you think about this traditional playbook of revenue generation and is AI actually disrupting that? Is it not like what, did the AI silver bullet term come from as we were kind of emailing back and forth?
Matt Zelasko03:35 — When we talk about kind of like the traditional revenue playbook or content playbook, I've been thinking about it a lot over the last two and half, three years. Like there's nothing worse than meeting with a client and finding that they still want to do like the gated ebook or the you know, whatever, and take months to develop it and then to have nobody read it. Like that playbook worked in what? 2014, 2013, up until, you know, it's been a while, 2018 even, right? But I think it's a case of diminishing returns. In fact, I don't think that. I know that. I watch it, right? Like we've literally stopped
Benjamin Ard04:01 — Spend a minute.
Matt Zelasko04:18 — Like, promoting the fact that we do content, we have content writers, we have copywriters, we have great people, but you know, two things are kind of happening there. People are asking for it less because they're using AI to generate whatever, whether it's slop or whether, you know, whether it's good. I've seen both, right? But I think that they're realizing that they don't need to spend months and months and months, but I think the problem that I have with of like the AI silver bullet and where this conversation started was they're just taking what they used to do and using a technology to continue to do the exact same thing. And also kind of like falsely attributing like their lack of engagement to the fact that AI is taking away from it. Like they're not searching for us on Google anymore. Like people are, right? Like LLMs aren't taking away that much right like the what was happening was it's saturated like we are at the peak amount of content that people need right now for the next few years like that playbook just isn't effective anymore and people are both blaming it on AI and also utilizing AI as the solution for it. And I think that that's wrong and kind of silly.
Benjamin Ard05:27 — I love it. So when it comes to the actual playbook to generate revenue, what is the ideal placement for AI in that process? How should companies be utilizing it? Is it in the ideation stage? Is it in the execution stage? Does it even have a role? I'm curious, like, as is your experience seeing, you know, a lot of different businesses come through trying to generate revenue, what playbook is working and how can AI appropriately be used in that playbook?
Matt Zelasko05:55 — I don't know that anybody should listen to me on this, you know? Good guess to have, right?
Benjamin Ard06:01 — The best answers come from people who usually say that right before they give an answer.
Matt Zelasko06:06 — Now I think I may disappoint you. No. I don't think that AI is without its use anywhere, right? I use it, right? And for me, it's more about maximizing my time that I can spend on things that are valuable to revenue generation. So I can only really speak for myself and what I see with our clients and that. I utilize it for things that don't need my time in my writing policies, right? Like for like data security policy, you know, and then taking it to somebody who can proofread it, right? And say, okay, yeah, that's good. Like I utilize it to maximize efficiency, essentially. I think that there is a lot of potential for it. I've utilized it to help me create like a content strategy, right? Where you're talking to it and, and, and, and helping yourself ask the questions you don't know to ask. Like that's, that's genuinely where I've gotten the most, use out of it. The most, impact that it's made on me is being able to say, in my prompt, like, hey, I want to do this. What else do you need from me? Right. And I think that that's the difference. I think it's, you know, instead of prompt engineering or something, whatever people are calling it, it's more like context engineering. Like, like what else do you need? Because otherwise it's, going to spit out a bunch of stuff and be very confident and say, here you go. And I mean, if, like, if you're in if you're in sales and you're not a subject matter expert, right. And you're trying to generate revenue and you're you've been given a tool that can, you know, query the all of human knowledge. Are you gonna know that that's right or wrong for your exact context? I don't know, right? I know I don't, you know. But I think that there's like, it's less about where it fits into revenue generation and how it helps you spend more time on revenue generation.
Benjamin Ard08:06 — I love that. I love that. And I love that you're talking about taking away the responsibilities of things that don't require expertise. And what I loved is I was doing my homework before this episode. You, again, I mentioned the website at the very beginning. You're an agency and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you pride yourself on being really creative, thinking outside of the box, providing really cool opportunities for your clients. And doing things just like you said, rad stuff, like this incredible stuff that allows people to really market in a very fun and authentic way. Feels like with artificial intelligence, there's more and more of that that's needed because there is more noise. There is more content to be read. We have hit this apex of content consumption. How do you feel like creativity and AI work together? Now, obviously a lot of times people don't think those two things jive very well, but I would be remiss if I didn't ask you along this vein, because again, I get this strong sense from the agency. You guys do really creative work. I'd love to kind of hear how AI works in that or doesn't work in that creative process.
Matt Zelasko09:16 — So I think I'm gonna disappoint you a little bit and say that it's kind of more of the same from what I was just, you know, like it's helping you be more efficient, you know, like even in a creative space or in a creative role, which I mean, I am not in a creative role necessarily, right? Maybe strategically creative, but not like, I'm not a designer, I can't do that. I'm not an art director or creative director. Like I can't do that. I'm more like Rick Rubin. I know it when I you know, like I like what I know and I know what I like and I can identify it. But I think it certainly enables creative people to spend more time on creative pursuits. It also, I mean, you know, years ago I was a copywriter, right? And I need a tagline for XYZ, right? My first process or my, like the first thing I would do, which is open my notebook and just start writing taglines. And I would write 50 to 100 of them, anything that popped in my head, anything at all. That's, I think, something that could be lost if you only went to AI for that, right? Like, hey, I need 50 taglines. Like you miss out on that process, that ideation, I start by writing the worst ideas I can think of because that kind of you out of like that desire to write the smart thing first. Right? Like the, like the fun, you know, like the right one first. However, if you're stuck AI can be your best, best friend. You know, I mean, I, I, I do it all the time. Also creative people can't be on all the time. Genuinely cannot be on all the time. There's a, mean, it's writer's block. It's what, you know, like what creative blocks, I think it could help.
Benjamin Ard10:39 — Mm-hmm.
Matt Zelasko10:58 — There. I've used it to help there. I'm also getting a little older, so like I already have my own process for getting out of stuff like that, but I think it can help in that sense.
Benjamin Ard11:09 — So we all started this conversation really about this concept of the AI silver bullet and how just how, and I loved your answer to that, that this technology is really just perpetuating a lot of what you're already doing and expecting different results may not be the best approach here. When you hear someone come to you and say, hey, I think I found this technology. Got AI in it. I think it's going to solve all my problems. It can generate all this revenue, all that kind of stuff. Like what would be your advice? Like, I want you to pretend a listener has just come to you and said, hey, Matt, we have this cool new technology. We think it's going to solve all our problems. What do you think? Like, what would be your advice to that individual? I mean, obviously you don't know what the situation is. I'm really putting you in a weird scenario, but like, what, do you feel like off the cuff? Would be that kind of advice to have people look out for.
Matt Zelasko11:56 — My advice wouldn't necessarily be like wisdom or a one-liner that helps them find the right path with that technology. Would be, let's talk about the problem. Let's make sure you fully understand that problem. Because I think a lot of the time people, and this is a side effect of inbound marketing and all of the content that has been created. They read six, seven blogs written on what they think is their problem. And they get halfway to a solution and then talk to somebody like me or somebody much smarter than me even. Hopefully, and they're like halfway there and they've like kind of lost sight of what the actual pain point is, right? Like they're, they're, they know the symptoms and they're trying to treat that rather than the actual root cause. I would also then say, don't fall into the hype cycle because we've seen this before. Blockchain was going to change all of marketing, right? NFTs were like the, know, like, that was admittedly sillier and much less useful than, than AI. I also encourage people to really fully understand what the product is. In terms of AI, right? Because that's kind of a blanket statement. And 99 % of people that I have encountered who, and I was one of them for a long time, just, I don't jump onto hype cycles because I'm just kind of a jerk like that, right? Like I want people to be wrong for whatever reason, it's just how I am. I like get to know what an LLM is and how it works. The moment you realize how it works, that's when you can unlock its potential. If you just follow the marketing and the sales guy who's, I mean, he's got a wife and kids to feed or, you know, like he's got to put food on the table. He's often going to say things that he doesn't fully understand and kind of say, yeah, I can do that. Right. The moment I understood how an LLM works was the moment I realized that I could use it. Up until that point, was like, nope, this isn't good. This isn't working. It's not that useful because I wasn't prompting it right. Because I wasn't asking it what it needed from me. Because I wasn't giving it enough context. The minute I realized that it was basically speculating and guessing what comes next. I went, all right, I get that. I also think that that's going to help you avoid so many future pain points with it, right? Like when you understand how it works, you understand how to note it, like how to pinpoint when it's wrong, essentially. I also don't think that the word intelligence should be even a part of
Benjamin Ard14:00 — to.
Matt Zelasko14:20 — AI, because it's not intelligent. It's not self aware. Doesn't know the nuances that are required to be intelligent, right? It's, yeah, it's, I guess, and then, and then probably another hour of conversation that I would go down. I would go down that path of more, but you know.
Benjamin Ard14:39 — I love that. Well, I love focusing on the problem. And then I also love like really diving in understanding the technology, especially with AI, because I do think you're spot on where it can feel like a black box and to say, okay, I know what a large language model can do, which means I can understand how it's using the data to do what it's going to do and help the business things of that nature. And so it's kind of a fascinating way to look at it. I like kind of that nuance of saying, hey, let's talk about what an AI does. Let's talk about what a large language model is. Let's see if based off of that definition, you feel like it's really actually going to fill in some gaps that you feel like you have, which I think is really powerful.
Matt Zelasko15:07 — Mm-hmm. And I think it will. I think it may be different gaps. You know, um, just the other day I, you know, I had a prospect and a client asked me two very similar things about, hey, do you, do you do this? Right. It was content writing and, um, a client was asking about, can we have an agent, an AI agent? So, you know, whatever. Write our case studies for us. And I said, do you really want that? Cause like a case study, okay. You know, like maybe a really high level bullet point case study. It's great, but they didn't have the experience. Now, if you designed it and, and, and had it on every single phone call that you had with the client and that, you know, and knew everything. That's powerful, but also it's going to take a lot.
Benjamin Ard15:50 — Yeah.
Matt Zelasko16:03 — To develop that and you're not gonna see a return on that for a year because you need that much context. Let's start doing that. And then I had another, it was a prospect, ask me, do you guys do RFP writing? And I was like, no, like absolutely not. You could train an agent to do that. Absolutely, build an agent for that because RFPs are like, I mean, everybody follows pretty much the same thing. Go do that and have, you know, like, it would take you a couple of weeks, 10 RFPs. It'll write them for you the way you want them written and like you're given the inputs that it needs. You know, don't have to come up with what the inputs are because somebody's giving those to you. So like that's where you use it. So.
Benjamin Ard16:46 — I love it. That's amazing. Well, Matt, as promised, these episodes go by quick. We have run out of time. Thank you so much for the insights today. For anyone looking to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?
Matt Zelasko16:57 — LinkedIn. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, you know, at Matthew Zelasko. You can look up probably the Tom De long of rev ops that that'll, you know, surface me that was something that I created many years ago and I'm kind of stuck with so
Benjamin Ard17:13 — Love it. Well, for anyone listening, scroll down to the show. Now it's regardless of what platform you're listening on. We will link to Matt's LinkedIn profile. Connect there, Matt. Again, I really do appreciate the time and insights today.
Matt Zelasko17:24 — Dude, I really enjoyed the conversation and thanks for having me.
Benjamin Ard17:28 — You bet.
