Ep 270 Karissa Breen - Why Real Storytellers Still Win in the AI Era

Transcript of Ep 270 Karissa Breen - Why Real Storytellers Still Win in the AI Era
Host Eric Wright, guest Karissa Breen
Timestamps match the published episode. This transcript and its speaker labels were generated automatically and may include small errors.

[00:00:13] Eric Wright: So, this is cool because I've been waiting for this moment for a while, I'm so blessed and lucky to share a microphone today with Karissa, and, you are somebody who I've taken in a ton of your content, which is so refreshing to be a content consumer that I actually love your content. Like I usually see stuff and I see people talking to you know in our media world and I see a lot of the same and I see a lot of the generic. What I really have appreciated in getting to meet you and chat offline and and now online is you have a really fantastic approach to how you treat your client experience as well as your audience experience. So for folks that are brand, brand new to you Carissa, if you want to give a quick intro intro, and where can we find you? We can find you in a lot of places, but what's the best place to find you online?

[00:01:14] Karissa Breen: Well, thanks, Eric. It's different to be on the other side of the microphone, so forgive me if I start the day. But, yeah, I called up at AWS, AWS Summit in Vegas last year, and then we just started, we hit it off straight away because you've got very similar background, you come from a tech background and media, etc. And then we've had a couple of chats since then. . very similar passion to approaching the space differently. But really to give you a very quick rendition, I come from a cyber background myself in terms of I was a practitioner by trade. And so I saw a gap in the market a couple of years after or even before I was in cyber. actually I was doing more tech related roll, like a PMO sort of role in the field of like banking and banking. So then once I found a real passion in cyber, I moved into that, did a bunch of roles, then I moved into more boutique consulting, and then something really I would say stood out to me, which was people were often saying in the market, and to give you a timeline, this has probably gone back about 2016, so around 10 years ago, 2017, I quit my job because I thought, you know, I don't know if I want to work for somebody anymore. I definitely have that entrepreneurial bone in my body, and the thing that was really missing in the So all these big conferences or even smaller conferences that I attend, they'd say, oh, you know, we need awareness. When I looked around, I was like, well, I don't really know if people are communicating and driving the narrative slash storytelling in the way that I believe needs to be done. And then the other side of that was technical people saying, help me, KB, I'm awkward, socially inept, you're better at telling my story about what I about what I do better. And so what I developed back then Eric, which I still own today, is a content agency with a podcast attached. the podcast grew, and then we saw a gap in 2020 to build the media company, so KBI.media, and then in November 2023, we unveiled it. Now I'm in the US, I've been here coming up nine months as a day of this recording, and it's been great. So that's a little bit of a story, I didn't start in traditional media, but I think if I had, perhaps I wouldn't have have looked through the lens that I have today, and I'm always looking at purely through that practitioner lens, like what is it that people really want to know at the end of the day.

[00:04:01] Eric Wright: Yeah, Yeah, by your accent is obviously you're from Canada like me, so you've been about the world.

[00:04:08] Karissa Breen: Exactly.

[00:04:09] Eric Wright: What I find is always interesting too is that people from outside of the US have a very different view of the US because we have an outside of the US view, and if you only live in this world, it's very easy to get consumed by the arrogance of North American media, like in that we are it, and even when I talk with, when I was working at the job I had before, I was with GTM Delta, like I was working with IBM and with other companies before, and even just going to talk with people about any technology, you have to really think about what is the true context of their matter, what matters to them, and if you're going to a place in London, the last thing you want to mention is JPMC Citibank, it's like no, you want Santander, you want to talk about Barclays, it's very easy for people to get stuck in this, the US bubble, and not think outside of it, and especially coming out of where you're originally from, there's a very different go to market motion, there's a very different media style, the whole APAC APAJ, the way that things are working in channels, people that are from here and never go anywhere else, I don't find have the same ability to think like really broadly about the audience being more than just 30 to 30 living in the US.

[00:05:48] Karissa Breen: Yeah, and look, sometimes people will say that's a negative, but then I do see it as a positive, so I'm Australian, if you couldn't tell, and one thing I probably observe being here is obviously it's definitely the right environment to grow, but one thing that's difficult about Australia, because it's so small and to give context around that there because it's so small and to what it's so small and to give context around that there's about 26 million people that live across the entire country is big it's big it's slightly smaller than the United States, it's slightly smaller than the United States, but it's But it's small in terms of population and what that does is the market is more concentrated. It's smaller. Everybody knows everyone. You have to really perform. It's not like the US where it's like, oh, well, I'll probably never see that Eric dude again because it's so. So what it teaches you is you need to be a high performer in order to do well there. You do need to have a sustained level of momentum to keep that going and to stay at that level because people just don't – it's quite a reserved market. People just – when you start a business, they aren't like, oh, yeah, we can help you out. They're like, no, show me. me and then show me and continue to show me before maybe I'll do something for you. It's a very different approach here. So then I would say people that are doing the leapfrog from Australia into the United States that they are very good and other entrepreneurs that are working in this environment. In this landscape, they're very top of the game, so whilst I I do used to think that all-, people are overlooking me because I'm this Australian woman and I'm out of sight out of mind different time zone on the other side of the world, I do think it's given me a very strong foundation foundation to be very resilient, operate with a level of temerity that I believe perhaps people don't have enough of nowadays.

[00:07:32] Eric Wright: Yeah, when it that became apparent those seconds that we were in sentence together, you know I tend to spot people that are different, you know, in that there's a choice of how they they piece their words and they ask questions and and that's why it was funny like as soon as we chatted in in the booth when we were there at AWS, I immediately went back to my hotel and I probably consumed more of your information than I did of anybody else's I have in quite a while because it really, I thought I wanna go in and understand, you know, it felt like you were just so good at engaging and questioning, you know, like, but most people I know that are in the like influencer space, the first thing that they do when they meet is they talk about what they've done. And instead, what you talked about was what your clients are doing and what you're doing to help them. And it was never positioned as this is the Carissa show and my clients happen to be on it. It was like, there's a pattern of speech that people don't look for and it was just so patently. obvious to me, I even had to like pull you towards what you did and you always would pull it back to well, I'm here supporting clients and I've worked with, you know, like you you really had a just your passion for what you did to be resulting better for else for other people more than yourself was it matters to me, and that's what I think more people need to do because the biggest problem I see in our influencer space is that people grow an audience audience and that's like you and I came out through that like we built an audience, we were blogging, we were doing different things, we do a podcast and then all of a sudden they get this point where they go, oh okay now I am the proxy, you know, okay cool then that's really what it is, but then at some points a lot of people in that position also start to think that they are the audience and it's like no, no, no, no you are the cohort representation of your audience and you have to represent both the client and the audience, but instead we find the more popular they become and the more visible they become, the more they focus on themselves as this the main character syndrome and it's tough.

[00:10:18] Karissa Breen: Really kind of you, I didn't actually notice that I was doing that. I think that is probably being an an Australian, so what I've noticed as well, Americans are very good at saying these are the things I've done, Aussies you're fine won't do that, I think it's it's just in our DNA, but that has challenges too because people can be a little bit cynical from Australia, there's this thing called tall poppy syndrome, they don't like a. A poppy growing taller and they'll cut you down, so I think there's good and bad in both, but for me it's always about how do I continuously question, evolve, upgrade, reinvent what we're doing to make sure that people continuously find that value in what I'm doing or else I shouldn't be doing it at the end of the day and I don't know if enough people probably hold that mirror up and think is what I'm doing actually helping anyone at all and I feel like I'm constantly in this mindset whether it's with my team myself to be like well how do we get better and I think it's that's when you do succeed because you're constantly challenging and you have a long way to go, but I think it comes back to the core of why do I do this, why do I care,

[00:11:37] Eric Wright: why should anyone else care. Yeah, I always, I love the book Legacy, it's about the New Zealand All Blacks and there's a lot of sort of the going through the their drive and how their ethos of the team is and I it mapped so much to how I like to operate and the one thing I always said is I called it never above it never below it and yes whatever the thing is I never feel it's not my job or I never asked somebody to do something that I wouldn't do myself and if you totally use that respect in how you ask questions and how you ask for help it changes things for me like I think it's just so much more important because I I can be more like a player coach that I can as I'm bringing somebody in and like that's why the podcast and and when I do you know interviews people often say like oh are we gonna plan it out we're gonna read do a rehearsal interview I'm like no no no here's where this is how we're gonna do it and you know this is the process we're gonna go through and like this is the stuff we're gonna talk about you know and you just want to relax them and the first thing you do is just like okay let's just get them to calm down and and again part of it is like getting them to share a little bit of themselves so they feel comfortable so that they can have a better experience on on microphone so that they naturally produce a better better outcome from the result rather than you know it's not about the camera I mean the cameras help certainly I've you you you use some fantastic gear but truthfully I could give you an iPhone and put you against CBS and I would watch your content over there's every time like that's it's not just the camera that does it hope they're not listening to that pop yeah it's That's right, exactly. We're always hoping to be on a CBS affiliate.

[00:13:31] Karissa Breen: Yeah, true, true. Well, I think that's what's really changing in this space. Because, to be honest, Eric, I think a lot of people are in that boat. And I think a lot of people are choosing not to. right exactly we're uh we're uh we're always hoping to be on a CBS affiliate yeah it's true true that's what's really changing in the space because to be honest Eric I think a lot of people are in that boat and I think a lot of

[00:13:49] Eric Wright: it excites me every day yeah one is you know we we saw the most recent stuff about you know like tbpn who was an online media you know team and they were doing a little podcast well not a little podcast it's a great podcast but they had really good access to a lot of silicon valley ai folks and so they grew a really really strong popularity very rapidly and then they get acquired by open ai and people looked at they're like why is open ai paying so for this interview like well they tapped into something that was very important they understood the audience so they used a streaming type of way that they run the the program it wasn't just you know we're going to come in and ask one interview and then we're in and out it was like how do we stay online for four hours and we're going to chunk it up so they they really approached how their consumers because they focus on ai developers and a very developer-centric audience and a lot of those folks are watching twitch more than they're watching anything else and you the same thing like given that you you saw that you know you could go on other programs you could likely get a job job at any agency any news firm but it's like your audience because you are your audience that that's the most important thing i think that you are critical of your own content in the same way that your audience is and you've retained that which is like i said that's the the fact that you don't become self-aware that you're the main character no that's that's what you need to keep and you've done it and most people don't you know and that's i think why tbpn is is an example of and there's lots of other media companies that are big big joints you know and we've seen they get these big, crazy shows and they take over half the show floor and that's great but they're not really consistent you know and they're maybe they're more executive focused maybe like but the practitioner audience it no one is targeting it well and i think that's such a this is i'm with you and that this is a gap that even though there's a lot of stuff out there it's almost accidental that it's doing well and i wanted to like my goal was always to find the science behavior heuristics that make this stuff work and then as a result i get to have a whole bunch of

[00:16:16] Karissa Breen: interviews and learn a lot from a lot of people so it's like a free education acquisition you know when i saw that what and i want to make this first would be because people are saying like oh but notebook lm will take over podcasting and i'm like no it won't it's not going to know certain words phraseology vernacular like things slang that we'd say in australia or in the us that people would say it won won't be able to pick it up it won't be able to phrase it in a way it'll it sounds quite robotic and yes we can say i'm getting better and all that but again at the end of the day people build affinity to hosts that's why if we look at media the history you've and all these other really great daytime hosts they did that for so many years because people were sitting in their lounge room watching these people day in day out and whilst things have changed people still have that i would say connection to those hosts and so open ai acquiring this tech podcast really sent a message that open ai who has. of leading the change in the AI space with l.m. etc. and they still thought we've got to acquire this podcast because they understand and the importance of eyeballs attention, having a human that people are attached to. So I think that, again, it probably debunks a lot of people that are like, oh, but, you know, K.B., Eric, you're a little bit replaced by Notebook LLM. I disagree with that, so I think that that was a very good testament to the industry that one of the biggest AI companies in the world, if not the biggest. biggest, they have even thought, well, we really need to acquire this podcast because that's going to add a lot of credibility to what we're trying to do.

[00:18:28] Eric Wright: Yeah, there is so much because there's something that's in the moment. There's something that and just even the way that we think about things, even with all the information in the world that an LLM has access to, it will never, it may get good questions, but it won't understand what happens just now. Like, I'm sort of weirdly fanatical about some of the stuff that I watch and I listen for and a lot of our non-verbals. So there's no way that it would detect how comfortable you are with certain questions. And knowing that even though your verbal cadence may not change, that watching where your eyes point could change how you're addressing the answer. And it doesn't do that. And yes, but that's very it's like it's like enterprise sales, just like the whole thing. People are saying, oh, everything's going to be PLG, it's going to be product led. Everything's just going to sell itself. Like, you let me know how that goes, because I'll see you in six months when you find that that is not the case. Even if the product is great, you still need some level of push. It's not always pull.

[00:19:45] Karissa Breen: Yeah, totally agree. And I think that whilst the whole AI space definitely will change up on the publishing front, there's still other things like social media, personality led media, podcast, YouTubers. ark, short form content, those things are heavily relevant. So I think the media or modern media, yes, is changing, but it's not going away anyway. People don't watch daytime television talk shows anymore. Has media died since then? No, no, it hasn't. It's fundamentally changed. So I think that, again, if we look at history at one hundred percent repeats itself, it's just that you and I don't-t have the insight what's going to happen in five years and then look back on what we're saying to be like, well, it was going to work out that way. So I think that it's just early days. But with that comes a lot of opportunities. But what I can tell you, seeing a lot of people just surrender their sword to be like, oh, well, it's over now. I taken over and I'm seeing a lot of journeys being displaced, especially in Asia Pacific market, but here in the United States as well. But again, vendors, tech companies, they got to tell their story somewhere.

[00:20:59] Eric Wright: Yeah, and it can't be the same thing. That's the one thing that people don't understand is that it looks great because he can just type in a prompt. And look, there's fantastic innovation that's happened. I'm not going to say that it's not good, what are you going to do? And I'm not going to say that I use these tools myself. I've built products alongside these tools. I've built content, you know, but I focus on how I build things differently than most people. Because if you're a founder and you need to generate 10 blog posts, when you tell Claude to crap out 10 blog. blog posts, it's going to look fantastic to you because you're a CEO and all you care about is getting revenue and sales. So you're thinking about that while you're getting getting rid of this task that has to get done. So, of course, it seems fantastic. It's the same way that when somebody brings you an extra napkin at the table, when you look like you got some juice on your chin, they're your savior. And so that moment of like, this is the greatest thing ever. But it wasn't really, it was just that you needed the help at the moment. And so it was fantastic. But the other thing that I get with people with AIs, very simply, you think it's great at all the stuff that you don't do, but you know it's shit at what you. And so you have to think to yourself, hmm, perhaps it's because I don't do the other things well, that it looks like it does them well. And in fact, it's average at everything. And average is not good. I mean, average is OK, but average isn't 10X, 100X returns. Average, you can't run a company on average. You can't come up with innovation on average.

[00:22:48] Karissa Breen: No, definitely. And you're right. And one thing that's interesting is you'll see the same sort of syntax in an ever-evolving digital threat, you know, in an AI era and like those sort of things. And straight away, people see that, they catch it. And what do they do? They don't read it. So then what does that mean?

[00:23:06] Eric Wright: They just tune out immediately.

[00:23:08] Karissa Breen: They tune out. So yeah, whilst to your point, the CEO can go, OK, we're going to fire all these content media journalists, whatever. But then it's like it's going to do a disservice at some point because they're like, well, I don't want to read AI stuff anymore. I'm over that because because I'm fatigued. I'm seeing the same stuff being regurgitated. I want something new. So it's almost like have we overended on the AI stuff. Yes, it's probably the answer because it's new-ish in terms to how mainstream is. But now I think the pendulum is going to swing back. It always does with anything that's new. It swings heavily to one way, then it might go back the other, and it'll come and land in the middle. Whilst to your point, AI is very good at recapping certain things. I go to a lot of conferences. I'm talking to a lot of people. It's very hard for me to remember every single thing about that specific company. So if I can leverage AI to do a little bit of the heavy lifting, sure. But I don't just put my feet up and kick back, is what we say in Australia. I'm actually still like, okay, now that I've got all this fundamental understanding and knowledge, I can build on that. And then to your point, if you don't come and you haven't done a lot of media or you're not from a journalism background, your questions will still end up very generic. And I think that that shows in a lot of interviews that when I'm going to conferences and I'm sitting beside someone that's asking very generic questions, you can't really replace the experience. People can challenge and say, hey, Eric, I don't like what you said, or hey, KB, that didn't go right. But they can't question your answer in this space. And I think that is something that really shows because when we're writing media interviews, for example, we can go out and ask people certain things and they'll give you a little sentence. But you and I are having this discussion, so if I didn't have any experience in this space, it would show. You'd know. Yeah.

[00:24:54] Eric Wright: Yeah, and that's the ironically enough Ironically enough, why I ended up having my podcast become longer over time is because I started to notice a pattern that everybody that if I would have a guess that was coming on and I would listen to some of their other podcasts, they were on just to get a sense of where they're strong, what stuff they're used to talking about and I would listen to two or three just quickly from like just to get snapshots and then I realized they're all like 20 to 30-minute podcasts and they get asked the same five questions every time and it's like you end up just replaying the same conversation. the same amount of time. You don't really get past the talking points. You know, it's how is the company? What's coming up? How has the last year been like, okay, that's eight minutes. You know, just the introductions and the outros. That's three minutes per. So now you're immediately, that's a 30 minute podcast with three questions and nothing that's learned on the fly. But what I found every time was that around 20 to 30 minutes, they start to, like, slow down with their answers a bit more and they start to think a bit more differently. And then if you learn and listen to the first part and then develop a question that comes because of what you just learned and you ask that. Yes. And it immediately, you can even hear it. It's audible sometimes. They go, huh, that's a good question, you know, and I'm like, all right, that now the podcast is starting because we're on brand new ideas and you're really exploring their process and their whole like how they think. And that's what I want to share. I don't want to just, I don't want to, same as blogging, , I don't want to write a press release. We don't write press releases for people. They're written for search engines and for people that write press, like PR, PR is not press releases. No more than a podcaster is their questions. Yeah, you're right.

[00:27:01] Karissa Breen: And it sounds very clinical. It sounds very contrived. And sometimes I do find people like, oh, we're just going to stick to the questions. I'm like, well, there's only five questions that I've given you a top line view on. So no, there's a 40 minute interview and I'm going to follow you and see where you go. And actually bring in my knowledge from the last 400 interviews I've done and my own experience and all of that. So I think it's something that does show in when you're writing these interviews versus, you know, when I'm at a large conference and you're sitting beside a business journalist, the questions are very generic, but maybe they're writing for a very generic audience, but they're not writing for my audience. So I think that you've just got to find your specialism and then stick with it. I think too many people try to chop and change, try to be someone they're not, or they don't have enough about the space. And I think as well that it's hard. If you're like, hey, B, go out and write about h. Horticulture. I mean, could I get through it? Sure. but I wouldn't be some pro expert that goes and research this stuff on the weekend and has gone all over the world for this. It would show. And I think that people notice that as well.

[00:28:16] Eric Wright: Yeah, you can't quite fact check. And that's part of what we do is that we're not here to be a repeat of somebody's message. We're here to capture a message that excites us, which in turn unlocks, like we are marketers for our own experience. And that's what the whole goal of this is. Like new media as it stands today is about being audience centric, audience obsessed. And that's why I built a product for my content that we do. I didn't build a writing tool because no one needs a writing tool. There's a thousand of them. What they needed was a reviewing tool. So I've built this like incredible whole scaffolding around taking the content that gets created, whether it's AI or human or whatever combination of it, And I can run it through a very tight reader experience. And so I built a tool that sort of handles that. And then ultimately it always goes past these eyes. Nothing leaves with my my name on it or my customer's name on it that doesn't doesn't get read by these eyes word for word. Even my video media person, she's like, Hey, I've got our, here's like 20 social media posts for the next couple of weeks. And I looked at them and I started to see, immediately see the pattern like, Oh, it's not this, it's this. It's not this, it's this. You know, arrow, arrow, arrow. We see the pattern. I'm like, I love that you're using the tool to automate a lot of this stuff. But would you read this tweet? Like just stop for a second and literally read it word for word real slow. And you can tell they get uncomfortable. And it's like, so if you wouldn'ts really read this to the end, would you, would- Why would anyone else? Would you write it? You know, like are you proud to write it? And like, I don't care that it

[00:30:20] Karissa Breen: yeah of course and that's the thing I was talking to someone the other day and then you know how to your point they sent me this YouTube link and they're What do you think music kaby? I'm like, oh it sounds pretty good. And like yeah, that's the thing. It's a hundred percent AI produced but it sounds So people listen to it. But to your point when it's not good, people hate it.

[00:30:41] Eric Wright: Yeah. It's like user experience. Great user experience is invisible. Bad user experience is obvious. Like, when something just works and it, but it's like there's something there. It's like as a musician, of course, I get this all the time. Like, there are dissonant chords. So there's like natural intervals at which notes sound very friendly. They sound like major chords. You know, everybody's happy. And then you go to minor chords and they're a little different. It's a little darker. And yet like even we use phrases like this like it's darker. It's more like it can be more sinister and like there's an emotion that gets created by certain certain combinations of tones. So that's why when you, you're looking at an in, or like a research report and a client engagement when you're guiding them them on what they should be doing for their earned, media and for their whole media, you're looking at it as an orchestra. . That's multiple things that make the final thing. Yes. But it's not just like I got a random oboe player and I got a random heart player and a couple of random percussionists and each are great. We'll just toss them into a room and obviously greatness will come a come out and it's like, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, there's a coordination. There's an understanding of the relationship between them. That's why when you interview people, you're doing it because you're thinking beyond the moment I'm asking you this question right now, and what's next if I get, if this goes yes or no, then what's the follow up that I have that matters to my reader, to my listener, to my consumer and maintaining that strength and understand the emotion that gets created, not just the words.

[00:32:32] Karissa Breen: Yes, of course. That's true, you're 100% right. And I don't know if enough people are doing that, unfortunately.

[00:32:41] Eric Wright: I'm glad they're not. keeps the world busy for us. So what's got you the most excited, despite the amount of AI noise?

[00:32:57] Karissa Breen: Oh, okay. I love this question. I would say what excites me about AI is there's a point in time in media where there's opportunities for boutique modern media firms, companies like ours to dislodge very large media players and that is a reality. It's a reality because you've got companies like New York Times that are heavily trying We're like, no, we're going to open source. We're going to democratize it. We're not going to say, oh, you know, Eric's read 10 articles. . You need to sign up. No, because going back to the behavior of how people consume that content, they get annoyed. They don't want to give their email away because we're not in the early 2000. So I think. very perhaps antiquated way of media companies that are trying to give content for free, to try to get something back. Whereas what, nah, forget it. But now, if we zoom out and look at how a client in this space, I don't know, maybe it's a leader that works in banking and finance here in the US is wanting to know something. Probably eight times out of 10, they're to go to some LLM, Claude, chat, GBT, whatever they use to ask a question, to get a synthesized version of that answer. So does it replace all the? No, but it's a very good starting point. And so I think how do you get the citations? Well, I believe that Muckrack came out the report. So Muckrack is a PR listening tool you're probably aware of. They came out with a report which pretty much says that third party media sites like ours, for example, are the biggest contributors for vendors, et cetera, coming up as a synthesized reference media when people are looking this stuff up. So what does that mean? That means companies like ours got a hell of a lot more important than before. So one, dislodging mainstream media, because these big players, big boys, whatever you wanna call them, they have been complacent, they haven't evolved, They relied on the same model, now they are heavily being disrupted and they are being disrupted. They probably thought who cares about a little trade media site, well now the game is changing. So I think they are scrambling to try to keep their revenue, keep all their nice comfy offices etc. But you know, they're getting rid of people, left, right and center. We're seeing that a lot of people being displaced, not redeployed. And now vendors are starting to in the last few months., Eric. I'm getting a lot of calls from vendors, big VPs, marketing, CMO people saying we need to get on board with how we leverage GEO effectively, because this is now where SEO was 20 plus years ago. So the smart vendors will succeed. The slow ones, who knows, because if you're not coming up when someone who is your client that you want to sell your stuff to, that is a massive problem, problem for you.

[00:36:16] Eric Wright: And especially now that we don't know what search in chat will really look like in two years or even if it will work like the idea of like interstitial ads ads coming up in ads coming up in chats. I don't think it'll actually succeed because there's so much programmatic use of this stuff that's greater than like, so on the, to our audience, it's not as much about the ads, but to the broader consumer, like B2C markets will be very AI ad centric That is, those are the people that are going to Google. They're going to Google and getting AI results. So they're going to Claude and they're going to chat GPT. And people say, like you say, do you use AI? Like, yeah, yeah, I use chat GPT. Like that is ubiquitous. It's like, these are, these are Kleenexes. They actually are Kleenexes, but like they're technically, if it wasn't Kleenex brand, brand association.

[00:37:26] Karissa Breen: True. True. Yes. And the other day, is it gonna get to a point where no one's talking in KBI media? Maybe game because even if you go on Google you're right Gemini's there at the top anyway so you're like oh well I don't need to click on anything because I've already sort of conceptually got my answer but then if you're asking in a question you're gonna see a little KBI dot media reference come up then then they're gonna push down into west side so what what will happen and then when I'm speaking to a marketing person like oh what's your website traffic well that doesn't matter Margaret because what matters is the dwell time because it's not about high traffic anymore. That to me is ephemeral and irrelevant. What's relevant now is well I've asked a question X clients asked then it's seeing KBI media is the reference that client has been clicked onto that because it is a a very well-structured article to get more information. So again, it's not going to be all it's going to replace, but it's a very good starting point for people to do discovery on certain things, or to ask a very high level question that they then. that they then want to do a lot more deep-dive into, but that's where they're going to start. So what does that mean, overall? It does mean that your web traffic 100% has gone down, and there was a guy, Richard Steenen, he is a independent analyst at IT Harvard, you probably know him. I interviewed him, and he said the last 12 months, he tracked all the vendors. They lost in terms of web traffic. I believe it was 20 percent over that year. So it's happening to vendors. It's happening to media companies, happening to everyone. So we're all in the same boat. So therefore, the way in which PR marketing people have to look at this really about that dwell time, and is their site coming up when so and so asks a question? If it's not, that is dangerous territory in my opinion.

[00:39:24] Eric Wright: . Yeah, I like to think of it as, and actually, like you you just sparked an incredible thought in me about it goes far beyond the first query. This is what people we get so wrapped in this idea that like, how do we get show up on the first page of Google? That used to be the thing people would ask me like, I need to make sure that we show up on the first page of Google. But then that's great. And now, and then what? So that you can. And like, what's the so that you can from that you can get people to go to your website. So that you can get them to say and consume more than one piece of content. So that you can get them to engage with a CTA. And ultimately, so that you can move them down the funnel into the pipeline, through the pipeline, and turn them into customers and keep them as customers. The search doesn't stop, when they take the meeting, the search is continuous. And if And if we can teach our clients, because I know likely you do the same thing that I do, where I teach them how I rank so that they can rank. authoritative source and if we can teach our clients because I know likely you do the same thing that I do where I Teach them how I rank so that they can rank I'm like take this media do it this way and I'll help you, you know Like it's part obviously part of the service that we do but like I can look and say you've got to believe me I can show you the metrics that we can post a blog we can post an interview and Three days later. You're seeing chat GPT inbound organic Yes. I know we can do this, but what happens? They take that first meeting and now they go, hey, let's the senior systems engineer, the senior cybersecurity, you know, SOC analyst is going, hey, I need to check out a little bit more. And they do another query and they will get a KBI media hit and they're going to go fantastic. And then they go, all right, cool. So you, because you're a continuous pathway to that potential client, and even after they become a customer, they are still a client, they're still going to go and search. They don't go to your manual. They don't go to docs dot whatever the hell your product is called dot com. They go to Google. How does whatever the hell product do this? And if your docs aren't good, if your other This is a continuous thing. And if you're going to hire somebody to make you good at this thing, do you hire somebody that runs the local run club or do you hire an Olympic coach? You're an Olympic coach, right? Like, go to the people that we can produce results repeatedly because of decades of experience. And then they can focus on producing the thing and we can help them to find the story where they don't know what it is yet or And our passion in loving the way they tell it, like, that's what I love. I'm not here because I want to hear my own voice. I'm here because I want to learn. Trust me, I've got an awful voice.

[00:42:37] Karissa Breen: I wouldn't go that far, but everyone hates their own voice. And I think that, again, had the citation really works is even if you're a vendor that had all this content, still not necessarily going to pull from that is going to pull from external credible sites. And so, therefore, trade media got a massive resurgence in importance in the market, even more so than a mainstream play, because mainstream, they are not going to cover the same in-depth content that you take trades media will. So I think that, if anything, sure, people want vanity. I've been in Forbes and this and that. I get that. But it's not going to do much beyond the vanity check. No one that I know, Eric, that's buying this stuff is looking at Forbes to think what X vendor said. They're going to podcasts like yours, to mine, to others to really understand and listen to what these people are saying. So therefore, I find that a very flawed model. I also think it's very old school and very naive. If a CMO is talking to me like that, I'm like, well, you're not going to think beyond what's happening now because you can't see beyond something that used to happen. And that's the other thing that I hear from people all about 20 years ago, people really need to out of that headspace about what happened 20 years ago because past and we're here in the present and I think that that's something people need to be moved beyond that now in terms of their strategy and if they're not then they will start to fall behind.

[00:44:15] Eric Wright: Right, yeah and that's but it's so it's so fun to it's fun to find the story and I think that's really what we want is the same way like we want curiosity like we want to create curiosity and the way that you create curiosity is by finding people who are curious like Like speak with other curious people, don't speak with people who you hand them the questions and then they ask you the questions. If the interview begins by you giving them what you want to be asked, I don't understand why people don't see that as a problem. Why would I go to a captive audience? And worse than a captive audience, I'm almost paying them to, that's why the whole thing of earned me and all this stuff. The metrics drive me nuts, because people say, sorry, I'm going on a rant, and I'm over-talking on this. I'm using up all good conversation time, and I'm proud of you.

[00:45:10] Karissa Breen: I love a rant, please, I'm listening, I'm investing.

[00:45:13] Eric Wright: Everybody says, how many impressions will we get? How many whatever? I'm like, does your sales team use this as an asset when they do a post-meeting followup? That's the only metric that matters. If you go to your best enterprise sales rep, and I'm talking the person, that will order custom colored M&Ms and send them a graduation gift for their kids when they graduate university. You find a relationship seller that understands how to really move the business and ask them, what are the metrics that you use? Do you think they're going to know what Google? ? I know what will make me care about what we can do for them. And I'm going to get in front of them. And whether it's an article, a blog, an interview, and when you can hand somebody something and that salesperson says, this is such a great way to tell the story. I'm going to send this to a bunch of clients or prospects like that. That's what I want to do. I'm not a great writer. I'm no better than anybody else. I've just written a lot. I'm not a good runner. I've just run many, many thousands of kilometers. So I wouldn't say that I'm I understand running, you know, but I'm not trying to be the best runner. I'm not trying to be the elite runner. I'm just I'm a really good runner. And I've done a lot of running. So I know how it works. And that's what I that's when we look at what you and some of our handful of our peers are trying to tackle this problem. And while we're doing it, we are proving the model continuously. And it goes beyond this because you do your analysis. You do ends. You're not looking to make the client look good. You're looking to make the client matter to the reader. Which happens to be looking good, but is that what matters?

[00:47:07] Karissa Breen: It looks good when you ask a question that perhaps they don't get asked and they answer it well. What happens is. What happens is Eric. It can rattle the PR people. A good PR person gets it. Want to find the angle, they get how I operate recently. There was a big global vendor and they don't predominantly operate in the security space, but they have, of course, the tech vendor. They have a global size. Anyway, to share this, this really rattled me because it is a 40 minute interview and they're like, well, we don't think he was ready for the 40 minutes. I'm like, well, your PR team came to me. They know it's a 40 minute interview. I do give top line sort of questions, but again, it's a back and forwards like this. So it sounds conversational. We're going to get a best outcome. And they say, we don't really want you to publish it. Now. But the part that gets me is like, well, what do you think was going to happen when these are the requirements? I've been doing this for a while and it's not a live interview. So if there is a couple of things we can show, you know, I'm collaborative. I'm not just all about how I've got the interview and I don't care about your opinion. That's right.

[00:48:22] Eric Wright: Mine now. Exactly.

[00:48:24] Karissa Breen: And so I was super shocked in the response to that. Well, if you're a global size, though, surely you're getting asked these sort of questions by your customers and this shouldn't be a surprise. So, I mean, this was recent, to give an example. And I was annoyed. So right now I won't be sharing the name, but they are a very well known big company and they are not in the good books with me because I think that that was poor form. was poor form and there's a lot less podcasters nowadays person should have been prepared or they should have known that if they weren't prepared for 40 minute interview don't bother entering the arena at all yeah and that's a it's

[00:49:06] Eric Wright: it's a tough gig I worked with somebody who's she was fantastic at PR and she joined my team when I was at Turbonomic and and I was funny because she had she had worked with at Cisco before we're to feel the places. Katerina, she was fantastic. was fantastic. And what was wild was she came out of that big corporate like where you're basically hand holding an executive, moving them from room to room, telling them what they're going to say, describing what the interviewer is, what to focus on. Making sure there's ties straight. Like she's used to having to almost just like be an assistant for these people, which is a terrible thing. Like you've got such a talent. Don't waste it. Just moving people between meeting rooms to tell them to answer the same five questions five times over. And she she would come when I was speaking and she was like, OK, I'm going to be doing a media shot, you know, or some kind of a media hit with somebody. And I would say something and I could see her eyes would go wide. Because I know like I'm probably I'm going to be a little bit looser with how I but I know where I can come back. I like I know where I got a little edgy. You know, I've been quoted with some funny quotes a few times. So but in the end, she's like, I wouldn't have wanted you to say that, but we actually got quoted. And it actually got picked up. Yes, because like it was like because what it is, it's natural speech, it's natural excitement, you know, and maybe we will say things now. Obviously, you can't mess with numbers. you can't mess with numbers, you can't lie, you can't whatever. But like just the whole thing that it wasn't the perfectly guided answer that we were hoping. Like, these are the people that write press releases as if they're going to be read by humans. No one even gets through the first goddamn sentence today, comma. Like the longest run on sentences in the world are featured in press releases. There's like seven paragraphs and four periods. Like it's wild how badly written they are. But because it was an extension of teletype press releases used to be like that today. Today, you know before they rip it out of the thing and it's garbage, it's useless, it's unreadable.

[00:51:30] Karissa Breen: Totally. And I think that I do see it. I do see it changing because again, like if someone's so like these are the guardrails, you have to answer like this. It just comes across not good. So it does a disservice to the person, to the company, to people's overall impression of that company. that company. So if you're the top dog and you can't answer this person's questions, what does that say to everyone else as it cascades throughout the organization? So whilst I need to move beyond it's a conversation and like anyone walks away from a podcast or a keynote and said I should have said that thing I'm probably going to do that right after this. I always say to people whatever comes up in your mind that you talk about in that moment is probably the best thing because it's authentic, it's real, you care about it, You're looking at things probably from introspect. So I think that's just the best approach and it's not going to ever be perfect. perfect and if we're ever trying to chase this oh but I had all these 50 dot points at the PR person told me to do it's not gonna come across natural and I think organic and that's the thing that we want to avoid in these podcasts it's not about hey I need to have ever your answer it's about well what do you know as a heavy hitter in the space that you can part on to other people that have taken the time to listen to this but if If you You're just trying to do the very PR speak that is not going to get people on board And people are going to be really off that particular company because buyers are smarter. They're getting called by vendors all the time is more vendors than ever now. So having a good personality that's knowledgeable. You don't have to be the smartest person in the room, but demonstrating that through your own experiences. And then when the person challenges you or ask you a difficult question, you can think through it. That's going to demonstrate that person really thought about what KB was asking. And I like the response. That's where I think people really need to go when it comes to podcasting. Again, don't see enough of it.

[00:53:33] Eric Wright: don't see enough of it. the one thing as well, talking about metrics, like the idea of like where analysts and outbound media come together, you dance in both worlds. Let's talk about what is the wholeness of your your world because it's not just coming from the podcasting side. There's way more that's behind this that also feeds how the podcast is produced. But there's a lot of other adjacencies and other things that you you do as a team. So let I want to run a bit more through I'm going to talk about you because you don't talk about you. So I'm going to ask you about you. What is KBI media? Let's talk about it.

[00:54:21] Karissa Breen: Well, I would say we're a specialized modern media company. So we do all the things we do podcast So we've got our own podcast that we run internally that are ours, but then we also produce podcasts for clients We do a lot of publishing. We do a lot of event activations and coverage we do a lot of filming and we're very big on social media in terms of pushing those stories out in terms of a distribution model and I would say I'm leading at the coal face as the media personality and so That's pretty much what we do. We spend a lot of our day Making sure that are we getting to your earlier point hitting that story finding that message being different Not just perhaps just being a run-of-the-mill. We're just going to deploy all of this sort of stuff Having a very different tone. So I would say people would say I'm no-nonsense Maybe that's my Australian way and a bit of my Italian background coming out But people want answers people are time poor nowadays people aren't going to listen through frivolous chitchat So for me, I do a very tight ship on my podcast. I do generally ask relatively difficult questions from what I'm being told, but then I think that that's the tone in which we have across the DNA of what we do in terms of the content then as well. So we just try

[00:55:41] Eric Wright: How do you stay fresh yourself because this is one of the biggest problems is we're spending so much time creating media but to be a great creator, I'll say the best writers are great readers. What's your consumption diet and how have you adjusted your sort of consumption as you've scaled your outbound and the amount of work you're doing?

[00:56:06] Karissa Breen: That's a good question and I think, yes, you're right. Looking at different forms of content, not necessarily in a space. So I'll look at how a sports journalist is approaching sports. How are people that write about celebrities? What do they do? How about people who are really in the medical field, how do they do it? I think looking across different industries, seeing what they're doing to maybe draw inspiration and engendering that into the work that we do here, I think it also opens your mind up. I don't know every answer. We're not doing everything perfectly either. There's so many things at the moment that we're looking to change and we're.re upgrading and they were reinventing. So I think constantly having that mindset of things will change and they will evolve and I'm okay with that, but I think looking at how other people are doing things. I don't know, independent TikTokers, well, what are they talking about? Maybe that's something that I can start doing myself, commentating on the industry. So I think that I've got a lot of ideas very hell-bent though on operationalizing those ideas before I start a new one. So I'm not just like oh, I'm just gonna be sad scatting do all these different things. Let's implement it Let's trial it test it. Let's run it if it's not good. We'll stop it Maybe we'll start something else and I think the whole experimentation in media is what's exciting as well because things change. Maybe things we used to do today don't work today or maybe it's a little bit passe at the moment. We're in the middle of upgrading our podcast because we're like, oh, we think that these things we could work on to make it better for people. That's what we're doing. So I think having that growth mindset is really, really important. And that's where I think Eric as well, some of the other traditional players have not hit the mark.

[00:57:52] Eric Wright: Yeah. And I think that's part of it is that you have to be a student to be a teacher. And the idea that you just suddenly, you know enough and then that's it. You've got the playbook. You're like, no, that's not the case because whatever editing technique, whatever interview technique, and you also have to know the industry to know what questions to. What questions not to ask, because I often, you know, I've done some really weird interviews as far as like people that got to me, I'm like, I've spoke with people are doing like experimentation. I had some, you know, I've had people on who were, you know, soap opera stars who also had a side, you know, a side business, which is a massive or amazing business. Like I've talked about everything, sex therapists and relationship therapists. And what to follow your style is like, I had to watch where they were before and understand who not have exactly the right audience, but if I can become interested enough to ask a question that matters to me, that's not written down, but that's partly why I don't write down questions because if it doesn't matter to be asked or it doesn't come to me to be worth asking, then it. It's like if I have five questions coming in and I forget the four, but we ask 10 questions because we're talking and it's naturally organically going that way, that's a win. Is it bad interviewing? maybe because I didn't organize myself in advance. So I'm a bit more freewheeling than most people like to be. But that is about continuous experimentation, continuously listening as much to the industry as you speak into the industry. Yes Yes. And using every interview makes the next interview better. Don't treat them like they're repeated, don't treat them like it's just just an hour of your day. It's like, because you can say like, Oh, now I think I've seen a pattern. Like

[01:00:24] Karissa Breen: internal PR folks, social teams, marketing teams, content teams and then external agencies, external media agencies, content, PR. So if you look at a traditional agency, their job for a vendor is to get media coverage. So they will come and hustle you, me, whoever to get a media interview. Then what we do, we run the interview, we will give them the assets back that they should publish on their social channels. Most people do not do it. We give it to them on a silver plate, follow them up, I don't know, I went to Jane and Jeff and who knows, it's just gone into the back hole. But then it's like, okay, well, are we going to keep going to try to flog a dead horse? No, because we got other things to do. So I've asked, what's the point in a PR person if you're not going to draw the blood from the stone? That meaning you get the asset that we and other people supply you, you post it out on your social media from the company, or from the person that did the interview. And then if you want to be really crafty, you could do link-paid media in terms of LinkedIn advertising. You could run it as an external campaign from a sales point of view. There's heaps of things that you can really do with it. Not enough people do it. I've I've been asking why some people do do it. I mean, we don't have every person that people are trying to sell to in our audience. We add to it, we don't replace it. So I. So I think that the fact that people aren't doing just a bare minimum that cost you zero dollars. That's what definitely perplexes me.

[01:01:57] Eric Wright: Yeah, it's it's just like it's like getting an amazing pair of shoes and then just putting them in the closet and saving them for the perfect run. And never using them. Why would you do that?

[01:02:12] Karissa Breen: Why would you do it? So it's like, oh, but we've got other well, then don't do PR scale down your PR people. Then what's the point for me when so when we do this podcast, you you better be sure that we'll be posting it everywhere because it's an external media thing that I'm doing coming on your show. We benefit, you benefit, I personally benefit. Why aren't companies doing that? So it's kind of like getting your money and then just putting it into a fire other way and then people are but the budgets, the budgets is like, yeah, you could save money and not do these other silly things that you think are valid when doing this, which cost you zero dollars, which is actually going to move the proverbial needle for you. To me, it gets me. I don't know why. Yes, I understand. Oh, but we're busy. So is everyone. But if you can't commit, like I said, operationalizing doing something like PR, getting all the assets and having some sort of strategy to me, there's no and having some sort of strategy, to me there's no point in doing it in the first place. Stop doing it.

[01:03:14] Eric Wright: When the fact that you give guidance for what to do post record, which is such a difference between nobody's doing this. You are the rarity among people. I do it a bit, not even enough myself, but I've done it before, like somebody will come back to like, Hey, this is cool, it's a great interview. And I did like very well cut interviews, kind of like what I did at the AWS event. And so I'm doing all these different things. And then I hand them this like three to five minute. piece of media. And I'll get here. Here's how I would use these. And that's great. But then it just lands in their email and then they forget to put it or they put it on the website. But I so I try and say like, look, here's what you should do. Create a landing page, put in a blog, cross reference it, make sure there's meta, put it on I give them all the original assets to only here's the full interview, the full everything. Use it. I don't put my logo on it. Unlogoed assets. I take the shorts and I give them the full raw shorts here, use these, fire them up. I said, I will never I don't copy your name. It's it doesn't matter if it's so it's easy. I want more people to consume this because I'm proud of what we discussed. And you put it out there and you show it to them and they're like, oh, wow, this is great. And, you know, like, oh, they're not going to do all the things I just told them because they're like surprised by the list. Like that means that you are overwhelmed and likely this is going to fall by the wayside. And then what happens? And we go to them and say, hey, do you want to do an actual whatever, longer engagement or something like that? And they go, well, we didn't really get much value out of the last asset. And I'm like, well, how did you use it? You did well.

[01:04:48] Karissa Breen: And like Bailey used it.

[01:04:52] Eric Wright: Yeah. You know, don't blame me because you bought an overpriced thing not knowing that you didn't need it, you know, like it's. And it's not that it's overpriced. It's like if. If you had this thing, you said, I'm going to buy this, whatever it is, the first thing you choose, how do I activate it? How do I turn it into a value? It doesn't automatically generate value. It's when we give them guidance. Here it is like. And I tell people, look, seriously, just go to chat, GPT and type in. How do I take this and make it'll give you a publishing schedule?

[01:05:24] Karissa Breen: Like just yeah. Yeah, they don't. And that's the point that I'm really shocked about to get more bang for your buck, because everyone's like, oh, the budget to this. Well, you're going to get more if you do it this way. And I also think being an entrepreneur, you know, I want blood from a stone, too. I get it. So I teach people, tell them, say you do it. But at the end of the day, Eric, I can't hold them accountable to the thing that they don't want to do- do that's on them as long as we tell them this is the best outcome then we have grounds to say well you didn't do the additional things that we told you that are heavily beneficial that cost zero dollars some people do get it but a

[01:06:06] Eric Wright: lot don't yeah it wave right now people that everybody's becoming a content creator you know and And of course it's accessible, like you can take this phone, and I can generate incredible media with it. Like so visibly, it's fantastic. And they could maybe just dump it off on somebody on Upwork, or they could upload it to an AI tool. tool and it'll dump out the shorts and that's great. But it's like. It's the camera quality is fantastic and the sound quality is good. OK, good, you nailed that. But was the story there? Yes, and that's that's what you do. That's you know, we're we're storytellers because we want we want to hear a story. I don't want to be told stats and speeds and feeds and client X, you know, dropped their cost by 13 percent in a three month period. That's great. But how? Why? What is the like what what what did the person that did this? What could they do now? Because they you freed them up from another thing. Like how do we reuse that budget? I want to act like their product marketer. Yes, I want to and I get mad when I don't Yes, I want to and I get mad when I don't want to listen to something that I listen that I've created. Like if I create something and I don't and I'm not excited to get it in the world. Like I just feel like I'm disappointed and then I sell that. That's why I don't charge for the podcast. Ironically enough, for most for the most part, I I do most of the podcast for free because, you you know, I include it as part of what we do in, you know, in engagements. But the podcast itself is just like a way that I can keep my own brand strong. And but the downside, too, I tell people, I said, if you don't use the assets the way that I tell you to use them, I am going to own your SEO because I am really freaking good at SEO. And so the moment that I put up your article on like my media site, Tech Forward, guess who's going to. To be taking all your traffic if you don't use. I'm giving you the asset. I'm giving you the way to use it. If you don't follow these instructions, I'm going to be your landing page. But I'm going to send them back to you. I'm not trying to steal the traffic. I'm trying to raise the third party validation. But it's a game they don't understand.

[01:08:35] Karissa Breen: Yes, this definitely troubles me a lot in the space, but I've just thought, well, if you don't want to do it, then you're not serious about it enough. So when you're serious, you'll come back and you'll ask it. Like I said, some people do do it. A lot don't. It's just to me it's an easy win.

[01:08:51] Eric Wright: Yeah, yeah. Well, the good news is there's a lot of opportunity now. Like I as as frightened as I am about the competition in the space, I also know that will outlive the trends.

[01:09:06] Karissa Breen: Yes.

[01:09:07] Eric Wright: And because if you're built on fundamentals, if you're built on curiosity, if you're built on customer obsession and if you're built on passion.

[01:09:22] Karissa Breen: Totally.

[01:09:22] Eric Wright: You can't be stopped.

[01:09:24] Karissa Breen: No, and I was listening to something the other day. They said you'll find a way or you'll find an excuse. So I'm always about finding a way, not an excuse. There we go.

[01:09:34] Eric Wright: Well, it shows in your work. So, thank you so much for this and for folks that do want to get connected to you. Of course, we'll we'll have links. You can go over to KBI media, which is really I love the layout to again. It's always that tricky thing of doing physical layouts for websites. it's for websites. I love seeing like stuff that like it just is very people oriented and I love seeing faces and quotes. Like it's just you get a real snapshot and it makes you want to click in, which is really, really cool. So great job on the on the visual, uh, with your storytelling.

[01:10:14] Karissa Breen: No, thank you, Eric. I really appreciate you having me. And I'm sure my team will be very happy with that. They're embarking on a new version of the site. So I'll definitely be sure to feed that back to them.

[01:10:23] Eric Wright: Yeah, it's the there's nothing worse to it. It's just like everything we talked about before. Like, is it right? Well, it's right now, you know? And I've done that for like, this is the greatest site I've ever seen. Seen. I remember going there was like a company site. I was like, we should do our site this way. Here's really great visual elements. And then we said, oh, we can't meet this week. Let's do it next week. So the next week I went to use that website. They totally changed the whole website. I was like, oh, my God, the perfect website. It's not perfect because they got rid of it. Oh, no. And I thought to myself, I'm like, OK, well, I know what elements I was after. But that just shows you that it's a point in time. It is temporal. But in that same way. There's if you ask the right questions in a storytelling way, it takes time out of it.

[01:11:09] Karissa Breen: Exactly.

[01:11:11] Eric Wright: So it's good. All right. Well,, Karissa, thank you so much.

[01:11:13] Karissa Breen: Thank you so much, Eric. I really appreciate it.

[01:11:16] Eric Wright: Yeah.