Transcription – [Fully Managed] Kristal Ellison Ep. 76 – Podcast Highlights and Transcript

Shannon: Hello everyone and welcome to the Fully Managed by Penji Podcast, the podcast where we discuss marketing and business tips to help assist you on your business journey. I’m your host Shannon, Penji’s partnership coordinator, and I’m joined here today with a very special guest, Krystal from 3 Sided Cube.

Thank you so much for coming on with me today.

Krystal: Thank you so much for having me.

Shannon: Of course guys, Krystal is a bundle of joy. We’ve already had such great conversations in the last week that we’ve known each other. Definitely the biggest character I’ve seen through email. I’ve never been able to tell someone’s personality through email. But you have been such a joy. Just immediately upon the first response, I was like, oh my God, it’s gonna be great conversation to have.

Krystal: I feel honored, because whenever I write them, I feel a little bit unhinged, but then I’m like, boring ones. I really wanna put some vibes out there into the world.

Shannon: Yeah, exactly. No, if people are having bad reactions to your emails, then they’re a buzzkill. You’re a joy.

Krystal: It comes down to… sounds down. Exactly.

Shannon: Yeah. I don’t want them on the podcast if they’re gonna be grumpy. Well, could you please tell us a little bit about yourself? Tell us about your work at Three-Sided Cube and kind of what led you to this point in your life?

About Krystal and Three-Sided Cube

Krystal: For sure. So I’m Krystal Ellison. I’m the marketing manager at Three-Sided Cube and we are a software agency that builds custom software solutions over in the UK. And our whole mission and ethos and motto is, all the stuff that we’re building is for good. So we are an agency and all the clients that we partner with, like the American Red Cross, Lush, the UN, are all for digital solutions to fix some of the world’s biggest problems.

And we get to be the ones to build those solutions, which is super freaking cool. And also, I work on the marketing team, so I just get to shout about and yell about really cool things that my team is doing. So I’m not selling like cigarettes to babies or anything. And that’s really good.

Krystal’s Career Journey

And I would definitely say my journey is not… In the early two thousands, I went to fashion school because I loved fashion and my G pans and all my tacky trends, I was cutting edge. So I went to fashion school and I wanted to be a buyer. And that was my career for seven or eight years. And it was not creative and it was not fun. And it was really a lot of spreadsheets. And the industry is not that cool and the people aren’t, they’re just, they’re cool people. But it just was not a good space to be.

And I ended up moving over to the UK and having my daughter, so I had a four year break from working in the career force and working as a mom or a mom. She calls me a mom and tells me, she’s like, “I’m making us water,” and I’m like, I’ll give you whatever your daughter wants.

I had my daughter and was home with her for four years and it hit a point where she was starting school and I had that horrible dreaded gap in my resume. And I was starting to think about what to do and go back to the workforce and I didn’t wanna hit fashion again, but I do love writing and I love that marketing angle and that selling and being agile, nimble, and if it’s something that I really love, it’s so easy to put my whole self into it.

How Krystal Joined Three-Sided Cube

And like kind of a kismet situation. One of my best friends who’s the COO at Three-Sided Cube just messaged me out of the blue and was like, “Hey, our office manager is going out of town for two weeks. Do you wanna just come in? Order lunches, check out the office, answer phones and earn some extra money.” And I was like, “Sure, for sure.”

And I think the night before and the morning of, I was thinking of every excuse in the world to not go, because it was so far out of my comfort zone. Like tech, I can barely operate my iPhone. I was like, what can I bring to this workforce? I haven’t contributed in years. I was definitely pretty freaking scared and I walked through the doors of this agency and it’s like any tech startup that you can imagine. We had the foosball and the pool and the beer cooler in the corner, and it’s so bright and all the people, I mean, everyone here is a fetus. So everyone’s really happy and the second I walked in, I kind of made a vow to myself that I was like, they’re never freaking getting rid of me. This is awesome. The culture was just like as soon as you came in, you felt it.

So I did my two weeks and I stuck by my vow, so I just kind of made myself as indispensable as possible and did whatever I could and I got a contract on the operations team. So I got to be on the culture arm of it. So I was like the party at Cube and I got to order the fun lunches and plan the fun parties, the weird quirky things we did to bond with each other. And that was very well suited for me.

Navigating COVID and Career Growth

But then Covid hit, so the party was dead. Everyone’s gone. There is no office to speak of because we’re all on lockdown. And I just assumed that I’m done. So I thought, here I go again, what’s gonna happen? I mean also the world was crazy.

Shannon: Yeah, it was like everything was on fire. Yes.

Krystal: So I just kind of re-ignited that vow and I was like, they’re not freaking getting rid of me. So I became friendly with the old head of marketing and just made myself like invaluable to her. Like, what do you need? I can help with case studies, I can do blogs, what have we got here? And I just kind of like a little worm or a gnat just kept offering and offering and joined the marketing team as an assistant.

And then eventually, she was such a good manager where she scared the crap out of me and pushed me out of my comfort zone continually. But more and more I took on running our webinars and running all of our activities and all of our content and our in-real-life events.

And each step was really scary for this little old mom back in the workforce, but each one was really exciting and great. And then eventually I became the marketing manager and I still get to do all that fun stuff. I’m a little bit less scared of all that stuff now. ‘Cause you’re not gonna do a good job unless you have a little bit of fear.

Discussion on Non-Linear Career Paths in Marketing

Shannon: Yeah. No, that’s part of it. And that’s where I am now. That sounds like such a beautiful journey. I love the journey—it’s not a journey if it’s linear, you know? I think that I really like hearing people’s story about how they got into marketing. ‘Cause I feel like nine out of ten times, it’s never linear. It’s always something that people happen into almost, and it just works for them.

And it’s really nice to see someone with your personality in this position too, because I think it’s a great person to see in a marketing position because I think that this kind of gusto is the best person for marketing ’cause they’re excited about different things and like learning more. And the fact that you were able to kind of climb your way here and it wasn’t even what you intended to do from the start is kind of incredible to me.

Krystal: Totally. Yeah. It’s really cool just how it’s happened in the most unexpected way and I think just… It’s so cheesy but this doesn’t feel like work, but obviously there’s those days where I’m pissed off at my boss or I’m furious or these meetings suck or whatever. Like there are hard days. It genuinely doesn’t feel like work when you’re in the zone and you really do believe it and the mission is like when working for purpose-led stuff, it doesn’t feel like that hard of a stretch to just passionately push what we’re doing because it’s freaking cool.

The “Tech for Good” Mission

Shannon: Yeah, that’s something that’s really amazing. I also really enjoyed looking into your agency. It’s kind of amazing the work that you do. I haven’t seen many agencies with this kind of niche of doing good. I think that because a lot of agencies are created to make money and money first, I think that it’s really nice to see this kind of change of pace.

It’s not something that you see often and it’s really great because that’s something that we really value at Penji too. We have a Penji for Good program that we kind of founded ourselves on, which is providing our services for a dollar a month for nonprofits.

Krystal: That’s cool.

Shannon: Yeah. It’s awesome. It’s something that made me feel really good about going into the corporate world, with this job specifically, because I was like, I’m not someone that ever saw myself in the corporate world. I’ve always worked with nonprofits and I went to school for politics, but I never wanted to get involved in politics. It was literally just to learn about the ins and outs of that kind of stuff.

But it felt good going into this knowing that they care about and value this kind of thing because I didn’t think that there was a space in the corporate world for doing good, if that makes sense. I was very pessimistic about it for sure. So it’s really good to see that you guys do that as well, because I never see that.

Krystal: Totally. And that’s also the evolution of Cube too. We’re about to turn 16, little sweet 16.

Shannon: Congratulations! Huge for a tech startup.

Krystal: But that was not Tech for Good in the early days. For the first probably six years, it was kind of like tech for money. Like we need to keep this agency open and it makes sense. And we had this young force and apps were all really new and it was really exciting.

And then it slowly kind of rose to the top, where we got an app to build for visually impaired people and to assist them, and then the team was really excited. Even though it was stressful and all the things about shipping tech products are really freaking gnarly, it became the common thing that we then got another for-good project.

And then it became the point where we were, I think it was before the Red Cross or maybe when we got the Red Cross emergency app to alert people to save their lives. The C-suite and directors talked to the team and kind of were able to see that the team really came together and were really passionate, and those really hard days trying to hit a deadline and not doing it, or a pissed off client, were a lot better when they were really believing what they’re building.

So that was a shift and it’s really cool for an organization to be able to not just see the bottom line or focus on that and to be able to pivot based on what the people inside helping them make money are doing. And that is gonna bring everyone together and make them enjoy the process of working more. It seems like they’re just kind of throwing out the rule book of how businesses are run.

The Value of Doing Meaningful Work

Shannon: No, it’s really nice to like what you do, not only the job that you have, but what you’re doing it for because you know, you could make an incredible campaign for a company that is kicking dogs, you know? They give you millions of dollars, but…

Krystal: And dogs being kicked. So…

Shannon: But are you gonna be able to sleep at night? You know, you could be really proud of your work. You could be like, “Oh my God, I made this amazing campaign for kicking dogs.” But you’re not gonna tell people that at parties because they’re gonna hate you. And you know, you should hate yourself maybe a little bit. I know money’s money, but maybe you shouldn’t make a campaign…

Krystal: Sell out a little bit.

Shannon: You know, maybe you just got out of college. Maybe you need to do a campaign or two about kicking dogs, you know.

Krystal: Fine, I dunno.

Shannon: But yeah, it’s definitely nice to be able to support, to enjoy what you do, but then also support what you’re doing it for. And I think that that’s very difficult to do in the corporate world. And it’s really nice to see that. It almost feels like you guys are pioneering this kind of space. ‘Cause again, I haven’t seen it. I don’t know if you’re probably not the first of your kind. I don’t know. But it’s really great to see that because that means that there might be more.

Krystal: It feels like it’s becoming, I mean, I’ve been at Cube for five years now, so it does feel like the momentum and this—not just Three-Sided Cube, there are other awesome organizations out there—but like the tides are turning and businesses are seeing that they can operate in a way that doesn’t make them pieces of shit. So then you have happy employees that are loyal and then your turnover’s less and you’re spending less and it just is so mutually beneficial to just be good.

Shannon: Yeah, exactly. And it’s, I understand the whole, you know, coming up of a startup agency, you have to make money where you can, and that makes perfect sense, but when you’re at a point where you’re making enough money, why not do some good? Even if that’s not your main focus, it just adds up to me. It not only looks good and people don’t think you’re just the average old agency, which I’m sure so many agencies care about their image. That’s literally the point. But, you know, they should do it because it’s just good.

But that’s not always the incentive for some people. And I get that. I try to take myself out of my empathy brain and put myself in my corporate brain. But it is something that I feel that a lot of agencies have the ability to do in their cycle, and they just don’t because they make less money by doing that. They see that they make less money or whatever, but I think that there’s a lot of ways that it can actually make you more money. And I think that people don’t see that.

There’s fundraisers, there’s different people that donate to these causes ’cause they care about them. People see that you do this kind of stuff and they wanna get involved with you because they’re like, “Oh, these people are good people that care and they’re not just looking out to make a buck or whatever.” And I think that’s I hope that changes more in the agency world.

Krystal: And then it’s a knock-on effect too. ‘Cause then when we are trying to get new clients in, ’cause we do, we have to keep the doors open and the lights on. So we need to have our leads coming in and we need our brand awareness out there. But it is such a knock-on effect to be like, look at this, the proof is in the pudding and we’re not building these horrible apps. Aforementioned terrible thing in the world. But all this great stuff and you can add to that. And the proof is in the pudding that we’ve done it. So come climb aboard the for-good train. Woo.

Marketing Strategies and Trends

Shannon: So how do you, when you’re creating these campaigns and you are showcasing your work, how do you make sure that they’re on trend? What is the kind of process that you go through to make sure that these are well received?

Krystal: I mean, I feel like I do have the luxury in this role because it’s so multifaceted where I’m sitting at Three-Sided Cube. So if I wanna be on trend and Apple has just released their new iPhone and their new OS updates, we have some of our really awesome, engaging QB men that are building the apps that know all the tech nerdy stuff that I can drag onto our podcast to talk about. And it’s so hot right now and has all the keywords and it’s right there to talk about right at my fingertips.

And then also the for-good stuff. So the work our clients are doing, I think that we don’t climb aboard big media trends. But for like fresh or things happening in the tech world, and then in for-good news, I’m trying to think of an example of when we would do that or like awareness days or like “this blood donation” or “this hurricane just happened” and we can show like, look at these people and these lives saved and changed and affected. We can have our finger on the pulse of what we’re up to to talk about into the outer world a lot more.

Shannon: That’s really great. Yeah. Especially because you’re doing all this work, you have those connections to be able to… That’s really lovely.

The Igniting Change Podcast

So speaking of the podcast, I never get to talk about podcasts on the podcast ’cause most people just are coming on and don’t have their own. But could you tell me a little more about the Igniting Change podcast series, like when did it start? And I know we discussed this a little bit earlier, I was gonna ask what the most difficult part of that is. And maybe it’s the tech side of things. I feel that very much so, but and then your favorite part as well.

Krystal: Okay, so the Igniting Change podcast. I know it’s a podcast within a podcast. It’s like some inception. It’s very meta. We have just launched season six. And yesterday I found out we won an award for season five.

Shannon: Oh, congratulations.

Krystal: Thank you. And I mean, putting it together from start to finish is a freaking massive labor of love. There are so many elements that go into every little bit of it.

We, I’m trying to think when we started, I think it was 2021 off the back of Covid, we started doing our webinars just as a way to reach out to people, have a monthly series where our CEO stood up and we had topical tech trends or humanitarian sector things or environmental, and invited a panel onto our webinar of experts to have conversations about it.

And we just kind of, in marketing meetings, were trying to figure out how to grow this wonderful marketing circular economy. So we have this webinar, we have downloadable gated content. We have the stuff we’re talking about. And the idea of podcast kept coming up, and it kept coming up because it feels like “Oh, everybody and their mama has a podcast.”

But the more that we really talked about it and looked at it, it’s so valuable for a business to have. And like I said, that circular economy for marketing is that we then brought the arm of the Igniting Change podcast in, and it was similar to the webinar. It was a reason to kind of get in front of the people that we are so inspired by—the Greenpeaces, the Amnesty Internationals—that we’d be just freaking psyched on life if they reached out to us to build a technical solution.

But also so that we can learn from these incredible people that, while we build the tech for good, they’re using it in real use case, life scenarios, humanitarian crises. It’s really inspiring to hear every single one. And with that, we’re able to have guests on panel, on the webinar and then have them join the podcast and it just became this really great way to have our ecosystem grow and have these conversations and be collaborative and also transparent.

It felt like a really nice way to kind of pull back the curtain, see the Wizard of Oz. And we are learning from these organizations that have been doing what they’ve been doing for years and they’re learning from us. So it has been, I feel really cheesy talking about it, but it is really cool. It is a lot of tech stuff. So there are times when I’m sat at the recording and I’m like, that sounds…

But yeah, so it’s been going on six seasons now. It just keeps getting better and better and every single episode, and the whole theme around it is just our guests and the organizations being, they’re using technology to drive incredible social change. So it’s a pretty straightforward format. We have the same three questions we ask, and as you know, so many other conversations will disseminate from that.

And yeah, I think it has just kind of proven itself season after season and we’ve had a few rebrands of it. And it has been really awesome, from a marketing person, just to have another excuse to talk. It’s that brand awareness. It’s that solidifying that we know our stuff. We’re passionate, we care.

When we have guests on from organizations or charities or NGOs or whatever, we’ll donate to their cause as a thank you because they’ve given up their precious time to lend it to our podcast. And yeah, but I mean, like we were talking about earlier, I think having been running it for almost three years now, the scariest part is the tech angle of it is terrifying because the systems now and the platforms that record podcast podcasts are so intuitive.

So if you’re thinking about doing a podcast for your business, do it. ‘Cause there are some, we just moved over to a really great one. I don’t know if I’m allowed to name drop it.

Shannon: Yeah. You’re allowed to, of course.

Krystal: Riverside FM is like bomb.com. So it does all, not all of it for you, but it does all the good stuff for you. And I totally lost my train of thought.

Shannon: No, you’re fine. Your least favorite and favorite part, you just said your least.

Podcast Production Challenges and Rewards

Krystal: So least favorite. The reason we move platforms is because the most stressful part is the tech issues. It is, you never know what you’re gonna get faced with, people are joining with all sorts of different software, hardware. And with different degrees of technology comfort. So they don’t know how to get their headphones set up, which I didn’t know how to do earlier. Horrifying.

And yeah. And then when you’re in there, after all the briefing calls and their precious time is ticking and you’re just staring at each other or they can’t log on, or there’s these different things and they expect you to troubleshoot them through that. And I’m like, sir, I don’t know.

It always works out in the end, or if a file gets corrupted and stuff, there are bits and pieces that happen, but I think it’s really helpful for me to have friendly open communication with the guests from the get-go. So when things do go badly, I am able to just own it and be like, “This sucks. I’m so sorry. This did us dirty.” Or “I’ll troubleshoot, and I’ll figure this out for next time and we’ll get you back on.”

So there are times where it just is a wash or we can manage a way around it and it does work. And then I think the best part is probably the evolution of it is when you first are reaching out to people to get onto the podcast, to make up a whole season and they start to respond to you. And then you’re kind of warming up the conversations and they’re a little bit nervous and you’re getting them all scheduled in and you’re briefing them and trying to get to know each other and just get this synergy pretty quick.

Like you can’t really get to know each other that quickly and then it gets recorded and then this beautiful… And they’re not as nervous when they record it. And then you just get to sit there like a little creeper. I love recording ’cause I don’t do the hosting like you do ’cause I’m too shy obviously. But yeah.

And yeah, so I get to be a fly on the wall and then we get it and we get to dissect it and edit it and then put it out in the world. And that evolution, it feels like you just birth a little podcast baby.

Shannon: No, it’s so nice. I completely understand. It’s also really nice to talk to people that are doing good about doing good. And it’s so heartwarming. I’ve cried on one before, like really bad cried, like ugly-cried on one.

I remember messaging my boss afterwards and being like, “I cried on one of the podcasts.” He’s like, “Good content.”

Krystal: That’s true.

Shannon: It’s like, I wasn’t, this was not purposeful. Like I’m embarrassed.

But it’s really lovely and it’s nice that you get to see the evolution from start to finish. I completely resonate with that idea. It’s all of it is me. So it’s insane. I don’t do editing. That’s the one thing I don’t do. I send it to our editing team. They’re so unbelievably awesome. They make me look—

Krystal: This is top drawer.

Shannon: I love them. I love them so much. They’re so helpful. And sometimes I give them such little information to go off of and they just run with it. And they’re absolutely so incredible. Especially the earlier ones when I had no idea what I was doing and they were just so helpful. But it’s really nice to have a really good team to be able to work with, to work through everything from start to finish. It’s such a beautiful metamorphosis. It’s so nice.

Krystal: And there’s a bond there. Like, there are people, the ecosystem, and after that process is done, they’re part of Cube and they’re part… I can reach out or we’ll do other things and check in. I’m going to see Wicked in London in a couple days with one of the guests we had on a few seasons ago. You just start talking and they’re just humans and yeah, it’s really cool connecting.

Shannon: That’s so sweet. I loved, I saw it a while ago, like when I was a Girl Scout, I think, which was long ago.

Krystal: I’ve never met her in real life, so it’s like a little bit like, not catfishy, because I know her, but…

Shannon: Oh, that’s so sweet though. I really like that. And I wish we did more. Maybe I’ll talk to my bosses about that, but I wish we did more in-person things since we went fully remote. We haven’t been doing as many of those. I do really like to get on the phone with people though. It’s nice that we’re doing that and we are incorporating that more in our day-to-day. And the podcast obviously, but it’s nice to be able to…

Krystal: I think it just is people in a room are way more engaging to watch when they’re just vibing off each other, but we too, so we’ve done a few in-real-life ones, but they do do a lot better.

Shannon: I completely agree. Yeah. We used to do them in our office for our podcast called Philly Made. We have three podcasts. Well, four actually. I misspoke. You do all of… I only do three.

But we have another one specifically based out of Philadelphia for Philadelphia businesses and agencies. And that one’s been fun, but we did that in person originally and it was really, it was a lot, but the production… We’re not there yet with the tech side of things. So it is very helpful to be able to do it through this. It’s a lot more editing and a lot more attention to detail when we’re doing things in person. So it’s a lot more work, but it also is a lot nicer to be able to see someone and shake their hand and chat with them in person. It is really nice. But I do have to wear pants for those, so…

Krystal: And I feel like there is a lot of like, because people on the team or whatever will Slack me, like “The Diary of the CEO”… “We need to do it like this episode.” And it’s so easy to doubt yourself, to look at this production value of these massive podcasts and feel like we’re doing it wrong or what do we do? But I have to remind myself that is a whole team dedicated, sitting there pushing a button under the table to get the snippets in real life.

So yeah, just give yourself space and grace. It’s such a learning curve, from when I started to where we are now. And I’m sure you can attest to that too, it’s you learn on the go. Trial by fire is the best way and you’ll just iterate and make it kick ass and take names.

Shannon: 100%. I write my reels down as I’m going during the podcast, a piece of paper in front of me.

Krystal: There’s platforms that, like in Riverside FM, you can push the button and it grabs it for you.

Shannon: Nice. That’s really helpful actually. But maybe I’ll push… I did definitely get a recommendation of that from an editor, but I think it was like not, I think this one. I don’t know why we ended up with this one.

Krystal: There’s so many great ones. And they’re gonna offer different things and the bells and whistles, and as AI is happening, there’s gonna be so many more components available to just capture your stuff a lot easier.

Discussion on AI and Marketing

Shannon: Speaking of AI… Wow. You just perfectly segued into my next question. Thank you. How do you think AI… Okay. I am very wary of AI. I was, for a really long time, I didn’t even use ChatGPT until like the other week. I’m very freaked out about technology taking over. I don’t think I’m a conspiracy theorist on anything, I don’t think that they’re gonna take our livelihoods away. I think I’m more worried about something thinking for me because I’m afraid that my brain will not work as well in the future if I’m not constantly thinking out solutions for things by myself. But how do you think that AI is the most helpful with your job?

The reason I started using it was because I realized that I should, because it is helpful with things that are tedious and I don’t need to do myself. But I’m curious about how you think it’s been helpful to you.

Krystal: And there is that piece that we had talked about on the brief, it’s like the Idiocracy thing where it does feel like, “Here you go, human.” Gets it out without thought or heart or care into it. I think that is totally valid because there are ethical concerns. AI is deeply flawed, but I also think people are overselling it. What it can actually do is like a little assistant in my pocket.

I would say. It’s not, I mean, maybe it’s gonna take my job and I’m being cocky. In a year, I’ll be crying “AI took my job.” But I just, I have an assistant and it’s giving me like another presence on the marketing force to validate what I’m writing. We know that it spits out cheerleader jargon garbage. But AI can only do what it knows and human brains can go way beyond that.

I was listening to a podcast by Will.I.Am who has a podcast that he does with an AI co-host and it’s super cool. And someone, the co-host and him were talking and he was like, “Human, don’t be freaked out. Embrace it.” It kind of feels to me like a little bit of a technical pioneering revolution of like refusing to use email when that was launched. I mean, I’m not dating myself that much. I remember when I was around after email, but a lot of boomers were like, “I’m not gonna use this, office memos.”

I think that if you refuse to use it, you’re crippling yourself a bit. Just help yourself and give yourself capacity. I really use it. I’m on a four-day working week contract now, and my workload hasn’t shifted, so I get three-day weekends every week to be with my daughter and chillax and come back refreshed and rested and feeling creative.

And yeah, it has just given me space. I have a blog or we have a report that we’re gonna launch or a podcast to be recorded. I need a summary and it assists me to validate what I’ve already done and take the workload off a little bit. Or I’ve done this and I think, how do I elevate it? And you know how the brain gets bleary once you’ve been in something in the campaign and you’re just like, “I am gonna vomit if I think about this anymore.” So I can plug some of it in and be like, “What are 10 ways that I can elevate this?” And it’ll give me 10 options, just spit it out.

But with my human brain, I’ll never take exactly what AI spits out. I Frankenstein AI. I’ll just take bits and components and then be like, “Oh wait, but then if I did that…” And it’s really elevated what I am able to do and made me not be as granular, doing the little things, to focus on the bigger things that you’re just losing that passion for, feeling stressed out, and it’s given me some breathing space.

I do feel like I’m not being paid by AI or Open AI. But for what it is, I think I’m able to use it in marketing across all my activities. Or like I went on a road trip to Scotland. This is not business related or marketing, but I went on a road trip to Scotland last month and my 9-year-old was flipping out in the car. We’re driving through the Highlands, I’m blasting my backpack music and I’m like, “Shut up man. I wanna get these vibes. Just chill.” And she’s getting so upset.

And I was like, we just saw the Loch Ness, let’s have ChatGPT write a story. So me and her are just sitting there playing prompts about “Layla’s at the Loch Ness and she’s going back in time” and it’s weaving this fantastic tale. And she’s sitting there reading and she’s so engaged.

I think when you give yourself space to play… because everyone’s nervous, they’re not an expert. I barely know what the hell I’m doing. I promise you. But just give yourself time to play with it and incorporate it into “I have these five ingredients in my fridge. What the hell can I make for dinner?” Play with it in your life and when you have time to even think about it at work, don’t see it as a project or this list on your to-do list to check off like “learn AI.” Just as and when do it and it’s really helpful.

Shannon: No, I really do think it’s incredibly helpful, especially for grunt work. The recipe thing got me, when I was like, “Oh, you can just put in whatever ingredients in your house” because I’m constantly trying to be creative with minimal ingredients because I don’t like to waste. So if I have a couple things left or something in my fridge, I’m always trying to make the best out of it. I’m like, “Oh my God. And I remember seeing that and being like, okay, maybe I should try. So nice. And my daughter has like sensory stuff. So I, I’ve done that to be like, my daughter is nine and she has sensory food texture issues.

Like, well, this is what we have, what can, what we’ll address this. And it gives you the things behind, I ask for links to, to just to, because you have to validate like. AI hallucinations are like a hundred percent, like is fallible for sure.

Krystal: That’s awesome. I was, I had a super, I had so many sensory issues as a kid. I can’t even with food specifically. That’s so nice. I wish my parents were able to use something like that. I mean, it is lazier, so I guess it’s the Idiocracy thing.

Shannon: No, it’s awesome. No, it’s awesome because my parents were the group creative ways. Anyway. If it was easy, then maybe they would have anyways just sitting me at the table saying, eat your broccoli.

Krystal: Yeah, you’re not. Or that old like nineties or not nineties ’cause you’re a baby. Like I’m sure early 2000 like that. Like you’re not getting out of the table until you eat. Like,

Shannon: oh

Krystal: yeah, that was me. So, yeah. So

Shannon: that’s really incredible. Do you think you’re gonna like adopt it more or incorporate it more in your day to day? Like, do you see how you can do it?

Krystal: I actually do incorporate it into my day-to-day normally not for lifestyle reasons, I suppose. I think I’m not there yet. I am scared. Um, I dunno if it’s scared more like. Yeah, exactly. But um, it’s really helpful with the podcast because for show notes I create like three main points or whatever, and I was typing those out. I was going through every video and typing them out myself and I was like, oh my God. Finding it’s hours and hours.

Shannon: Oh yeah. It takes so long.

Krystal: Especially with like a backlog of how many podcasts we have right now, which is insane. I. My boss was like, use cha tea. I don’t know what you’re like, because he uses it for everything. And I, I guess I just, I one I thought you had to pay for it, which I guess to a certain extent you might have to if you’re getting like a plan or something. Yeah. But I didn’t know that. Um, and yeah, and it just, it, there was no limit. I used it all day. Sometimes I, for a second, I was using it for over 20. In one day and there was no limit to it. And I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. And, and I would read through them and they were usually completely grammatically correct, maybe like something, a problem here and there. But other than that, it’s such an incredible, it’s such an incredibly helpful tool.

And I’m actually a little mad at myself for being so hesitant for a second because it’s, it’s not hard to use either. I think I was also worried about that because as we’ve already talked about, uh, tech savvy. Not me. Not me at all. I barely know how to use my phone. I, I built my desktop and that took, it’s, it could take like two days. Like I’ve looked this up, like it could take two days. For someone to build a desktop. It took me six months all wrong. And I’m fire.

Shannon: Oh yeah. And someone will try to talk to me about it, like the parts and stuff, and I’m like, don’t remember. You can look at my Amazon wishlist. Like, I, I have no idea what I bought. I, I can’t, they’re all letters and numbers and I don’t, I didn’t conceptualize them like only for the moment. And they’ve all left my brain since then.

Krystal: Totally. But you did it so you could brag about it forever. Is really cool.

Shannon: Yeah, it is cool. And I do be proud of like that because it’s easier I think, to be aite or be a hater like AI or I’m freaked out this, it’s. It’s better, not better, but you should be proud of like just doing it in a way that works for you because you wanna think and you wanna use your brain and you like, are wary of it. And that is the best attitude to have around it, I think.

Krystal: Like not Yeah, trusted. Like there’s, I, there’s been points in my journey with it where like there’s a podcast episode that I sat in and I recorded so I know the conversation and I’ll be like, all right, she GBT and I was trying to have it do it with a couple different episodes to amalgamate into like a, a remix episode. And it just was completely making up quote and it was making up themes and I was like, you did me dirty. Like it, there’s only so much it can do. So like appreciate that for what it does and yeah, like it needs a human touch.

Shannon: I think that was a really lovely note to end on as we are out of time. That was perfect. It was very wholesome and yeah, guys, uh, try using ai, you know, maybe just, uh, have realistic expectations for it.

Krystal: Yeah, totally. And I think that’s, well, thank you so much for coming on. This was absolutely lovely. I, I don’t think a conversation has flowed more authentically than this, uh, ever. I, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Shannon: Oh, I don’t think it was, seriously, it didn’t even feel like I was like recording. Yeah. It was like 36 minutes. I thought it was like 10. It was result. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Krystal: And everyone at home, please don’t forget to like and subscribe. See more amazing stories like this one. Thank you so much and I hope you have a lovely what day.

Shannon: Thank you.

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