when you wrap yourself around the
cloak of data, it becomes a warm,
fuzzy kind of blanket and, uh, you
should base your decisions from it.
But you should also remember that
you have a gut and intuition.
Welcome to Connect to Market.
I'm Casey Cheshire.
Join the conversation with the
marketing leaders driving the
fastest growing B2B brands.
We're sponsored by Ringmaster,
building B2B podcasts and communities
to reconnect you with your audience
cool.
We're doing this thing.
Let's do it.
Let's do it right.
We're about to get started on
a really cool conversation.
I'm excited to introduce my guest today.
awesome.
He is a seasoned marketing leader,
thought leader, a marketing thought
leader, all the like, all of the above.
Circle that bullet on the test.
He is all the above.
He's also in the CTM community.
You've probably bumped into
him on breakout sessions,
he was also a former radio host, so if
he sounds better and more articulate
than I do on this pod, you'll know why.
More experience.
But he is leading programs, and
they are generating mentions.
He is showing up in magic quadrants,
and if that has been something
you've been dying to do, this
is the guy to learn it from.
CMO of Openstream.ai, David Stark.
Welcome to the show, sir.
Thank you very much, Casey,
for that introduction.
I'm gonna have to, um, really
work hard to live up to the
expectations that you set here.
To ask our first question, I
need to enlist the help this
giant blue foam finger right here
Well, it's,
you
he's n- he's number one.
what is the number one thing
that marketers need to do in
order to connect to their market?
Yeah.
It's gonna sound so crazy and basic,
but we have to remember as marketers,
and particularly in this day and age.
You know, how's that sounding?
Old right away.
In this day and age.
You know, back in my day, we didn't know.
Right?
You have to remember that
there's a human being on the
other side of the glass, right?
And we as marketers get wrapped around
the axle easily in, in, in like a
heartbeat of like, oh, it's our buyer,
it's our persona, it's this, it's that.
Yeah, that's all true, but at the end of
the day, there's a living, breathing human
being on the other side of the glass.
And if you really start to think about
what you do for a living, you're trying
to connect with that person, right?
And, uh, the good news is, uh, we're
all human beings, so you can very
easily empathize with that person,
or you should be able to try to
empathize with the person on the
other side of the glass and try to
figure out what is their pain, right?
And, and I don't think it matters if
you're in the B2B space, where I've
spent most of my universe in, or if
you're in the B2C space or someplace in
between, in the B2B2B2C, whatever world
that you wanna come up with, right?
All those things exist.
You know, somebody out there is going,
"It's my world. Thank you for the
shout-out." Um, but the reality is there's
somebody trying to solve a problem, right?
Um, and so yeah, that's my number one
thing, Casey, is remember there's a human
being on the other side of the glass
Why do you suppose we forget about that?
Why do you-- H- how, how
did we get away from that?
Was it 'cause we stopped drinking
bourbon with them in like "Mad Men" days?
Or like, what how did we
lose the humanity side?
I think that's potentially part of it.
I, I, I don't think I can
completely wash that away.
Uh, and there is some romance to
being able to go out and hang out
with people and then, uh, you know,
commiserating with them and kind of
reading the non-verbal cues that they're
giving off and seeing how they're
networking and how they're ebbing
and, ebbing and flowing kind of thing.
Um, but how did we get away from it?
I, I think it's te- you know,
some of it is MarTech, right?
MarTech has been an up-and-coming
thing, digital transformations,
you know, operationalizing your
business, et cetera, et cetera.
Data.
Uh, we are, uh, you know,
crazy with data, right?
So it's pretty easy to crawl into your
marketer's, uh, foxhole and, uh, just
stare at the data, and then you get
into this situation where you're, um,
dealing with, uh, executives or team
members, colleagues, other partners
in crime in sales or wherever, and
you're just trying to justify your
existence and the validity of your great
idea because you're showing the data.
Now, again, I'm not gonna
say data's a bad thing.
I'm, I'm a huge fan.
But when you wrap yourself around
the cloak of data, it becomes a warm,
fuzzy kind of blanket and, uh, you
should base your decisions from it.
But you should also remember that
you have a gut and intuition.
Um, and I, I think with AI, uh,
which we can also get into if
you, if you so choose, Casey,
Oh, yeah
and, and, and with the, uh, with A- AI now
being more of a prevalent capability in
everyone's toolkit, um, the challenge is
remembering the humanity that's out there.
So you have to actually talk to people.
One, one thing I always tell, uh,
young marketers, uh, um, is, you know,
carry a bag at some point in time.
In other words, be a salesperson, right?
If you have a chance in your
career, uh, to change gears and
be on a quota, it will change your
perspective on a lot of things.
Um, and you will really find out what
it takes to, uh, establish a rapport
and a relationship with somebody.
Absolutely.
As someone who has-- Part of carrying
a bag is that you carry the pressure
of that bag, which is you gotta go out
there, sell a deal, and bring it home,
and if you don't, you get paid less than
the person cleaning the office, right?
So,
Yeah.
You know, it's like you-- or
less than everybody, you know,
less than the barista downstairs.
You're gonna get paid nothing
if you can't bring it home.
So there's some pressure, especially
if you got families and stuff.
So yeah, it's almost like this empathy.
You get that empathy that you want for a
customer, but you get that for sales who
is like your other customer, you know?
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, you are s- you're
constantly selling a- as a marketer.
You're constantly selling yourself.
You're selling your concepts.
Uh, I don't mean selling yourself
like I sold my soul to the,
you know, corporate devil.
Maybe you did.
I don't know.
But some of us m- have, I mean.
But the, um, the reality is
you are constantly selling.
You're listening more importantly.
And, and that's probably part of what
we've-- what some people have lost in the
trans- in, in the, uh, evolution of the
marketing career paths and the different
specializations that exist is, um, you
forget to just stop, look, and listen.
Um, and that's true for what
product or service it is that
you're trying to get out there, and
again, remembering the person on
the other glass is saying things.
Listen to them.
Um, it's also true for, um, you
know, your career trajectory and,
uh, any, uh, internal politics that
you may be, uh, encountering and
bureaucracy and things like that.
Um, it's in working with those
other, uh, colleagues to tell them
that you're right, but not overtly
telling it, like shoving it in their
face like, "I'm right, you're wrong.
Look how smart I am.
I'm a, I'm a big, shiny marketer, and
you're not." What you're not doing
many-- in many cases, and certainly
I was very guilty of this early in my
career, and perhaps some of my colleagues
today would say the same thing, but
I'd like to think I've learned over
the years, is that you have to know
when to turn on your ears and really
listen to what they're trying to convey.
So like circling back around the
human being side of it, do you have
any experiences that you recall,
any, any stories of, of where
did connect that human side and
it just led to results that, you
know, no survey, anonymous.digital
type thing would've done?
yeah, there's probably
a couple of examples.
I'll, I'll go a little bit
into my way back machine just
'cause it's a more fun example.
Um, you know, years ago when I was with
a company called IBM, there was a, um…
We, we were working with business partners
during the height of the dot-com boom.
And for those of you maybe a little,
uh, younger with less gray hair on, on
the roof kind of thing, um, that was
really when Google was born, right?
And a number of different companies
were, were born and, and so forth.
So there was a lot of excitement
and money and new capabilities, and
everyone was trying to figure out, do
you say www dot something anymore, or
do I have to say HT- We-- There was
a lot of learning, let's just say.
Yeah
and, uh, we were working with
the business partner community
and trying to get people excited.
So we were partnering with a particular
business partner and trying to figure
out, how do we get people to, uh,
engage with both of our businesses
and generate opportunities, right?
This is classic marketing stuff.
Like, I need to generate
leads for my sales teams.
Yeah
so what we did was a, a face-to-face
event, um, where we built it up as a
teaser, as I will tease it out to you now.
So, uh, so we physically sent mail to
people, uh, as a way to break through
the noise of email at, at the time,
um, which is also something I would
recommend people, people reconsider.
Like, how do you break through the noise?
Well, surprise them with
something shiny in the mail.
Um,
Yeah
so we first sent them a, uh, a mysterious
invitation from IBM and this company.
Then a week later, we sent them a,
uh, a key, like a, a blank car key.
And then a couple of weeks later,
we sent them a die-cast metal,
uh, vehicle, a race car, right?
And that included the final invitation,
which is, we'd like you to come join us
at this, uh, uh, Richard Petty Driving
School on, for a, for a racetrack, right?
Now, because it was IBM and this partner
was also pretty well-to-do, we were
able to afford something like this.
But the, uh, the point is, we were trying
to introduce something that was unique
Hmm
and, and interesting to these people that
might engage with them at a different
level than other organizations had.
So
Right
we, brought all these, uh, prospects
out to this racetrack where they were
promised that they would get to drive
race cars at speed for, like, the day.
But part of the, you know, the
hook was you have to show up, you
have to go through the, not only
the training for the vehicle, and
we drive people around the track.
And I'm, I'm sitting there as, as
a young man at the time, watching
these executives, these very crusty
old guys s-start, start to transform
into little boys again, right?
Everybody's getting so, so excited
about the potential to drive one
of these crazy cars that most
people had only seen on TV, right?
And, uh, so then we brought them into
our presentation room, and we walked them
through the entire, uh, presentation,
the communication, and shared with
them what we were trying to do.
Then everybody got a chance to drive, uh,
the vehicles, and every one of those guys
and gals came out of those vehicles with
a smile on their face from ear to ear.
Hmm
And y- And, and so just that level of
human connection, taking them out of the
day-to-day grind of their business and
the pressures they were under, reminding
them that we're all in this kind of
together and we can have fun, uh- And
that you can trust us to have fun with
you while delivering the business value
that we promised you we would deliver to
you, uh, ultimately generated something
like, uh, $10 million worth of leads or
something crazy like that at the time.
And, and I really only think that
that was possible because we lifted
people up out of their world.
We asked them to spend an entire day
with us doing something really fun.
I mean, 90% of that day was having
fun and bonding with each other and,
you know, schmoozing and all that.
And, uh, you know, very little of it
was the business portion, but they all
knew that they were there at our…
A- as a guest because, you know, we were
hoping to make some money with them.
And, uh, again, we did
generate opportunities and,
uh, leads and it was great.
It was just a lot of fun.
It's funny how sometimes the, the
best sources and the best channels
can be the most fun because they're--
it's that human connection fun.
Mm-hmm.
know, just, and it…
You know what's funny?
And it also, the value of it continues
on afterward, because I'm sure you
brought back so many, you know,
intentionally or not, just customer
stories and the voice of the customer.
You just sort of took
that mantle on yourself
Those are, those are memories that
you've, uh, unique moments in time that
you've established with these folks.
You can establish a
rapport and a relationship.
Uh, anytime in the future, I, I know
that when, you know, the salespeople
would follow up with the, the
prospects and be like, "Hey, remember
we drove those cars together?"
It wasn't like, "Oh, hey, remember when
you gave me your business card at the
trade show? And I'm just following up
because you stopped by my booth." Right?
It's totally different.
And I, and I think we run
into that trap as well.
Again, remembering there's a human
on the other side of the glass.
Like, uh, companies will execute, uh,
webinars and things like that, right?
Right
the webinars sometimes
are really, really dry.
Like, I regularly attend competitor
and non-competitor webinars just
so I can see what people are doing
that's kind of cool and interesting.
Yep
people get very geeked out about what
they're talking about, what excites them.
Like, the companies are like, "My
product is great and you should totally
listen to my awesome presentation
on why my product is great."
Is that really something that you
think is gonna be unique and engaging
to those prospects as they're getting
solicited mercilessly by 100 other
webinar opportunities just probably
for that week or for that month?
Yeah
have to work hard to
break out of the noise.
Um, some of that comes to the panelists
or the webinar presentors, right?
Uh, uh, is that a word now?
It is a word now.
I'm gonna make it a word.
It is now.
Hey, this podcast is nothing but
truth, so help us God, right?
So like
Well, I did not know that.
Let me write that down.
Uh, that's excellent.
Um, s- so you have to remember
that you have to make it
interesting and entertaining.
Um, so if you're gonna present really
dry, boring stuff like this, you're
not gonna get any of that enthusiasm.
That might, might really be possible.
Um, if you're not excited about your
product or service, how are you gonna
emotionally engage with somebody on
the other side of the glass, right?
Yeah
a- and people forget, again,
you also have to provide a
certain amount of entertainment
value in everything that you do
Well, you know, that kind of leads me
to my next question, which is the famous
question, the famous framework question.
If you had to build a connect-to-market
strategy from scratch, have no budget for
ads, what would be your top three moves in
order to get in front of and build trust
with your ideal buyers, your ideal humans
I think the first recommendation I'd
have for myself in that situation would
be to step back and, and to listen.
Um, part of that listening is
listening internally to your new
colleagues, your new partners in crime.
Like, what are you encountering?
What's worked for you?
What hasn't worked?
Like, one of the, uh, the golden rules
is typically don't break it, right?
In the beginning, don't break it.
You don't know… You might be
really smart and really great, but
the reality is you don't know what
the frick you're talking about in
the beginning in that business.
As, as, as well-studied as you may
be on the topic, on the company, the
relationships you may have with the
people that brought you in, all those
things, the reality is you just don't
know until you're sitting in the seat.
Um, so listen internally as you are
turning your listening microphone onto
the audience that you believe that
this company, this team, this product,
this service is trying to address.
Yeah
do you know about them?
What are they actually doing?
Um, you know, what are they saying
when you're not there telling
them what to understand at,
you know, 3:00 in the morning?
So listen to your colleagues,
your partners in crime internally.
Listen to the customers and the prospects
and that ICP, um, your, your ideal
target market, and figure out what it is
that they're encountering in the world.
Um, there's a few ways to interpret that.
Uh, one is what they're encountering
in terms of the problems that
they're trying to solve for.
The other is the perception of you
as a valid solution or not versus the
reality of they might not even be able
to spell your company name, right?
Um, and that will immediately give you
some actions, some, some information
to work with, which is, "Oh my gosh,
they don't know how to spell my name.
Oh my gosh, I have a lousy reputation,"
or, "I have a great reputation."
Uh, companies are-- We, we have our
own… Internally I've listened,
and they say, "Well, these are our
named competitors," but the reality
is our customers and prospects are
shopping three other organizations
that we don't regularly target.
You know?
It's one of those moments when you're
new that you're allowed to hold a mirror
up to the business and be like, "Here's
what you really look like." Right?
Um, and what are we gonna do about it?
Now, depending on your role and
your level, sometimes, you know,
you have to be a little judicious
in how you share that truth.
Um, but the reality is you will know it
and will inform what you need to do next.
So, um, regardless of your level
of budget, in this scenario,
you said you have no ad budget.
You have to figure out
how to get out there.
So you could conduct some
primary market research.
"Hey, sales guy, give me your top ten or
top twenty or whatever customers that you
might feel comfortable sharing with me."
A lot of the sales guys won't do that.
Um, but you can ask, um, you know, "I'd
like to find out why people work with
us. What do they like? What don't they
like about us?" That's all free, right?
That's just you spending time on the
phone or over a Zoom call or whatever,
uh, conducting some due diligence.
And, you know, you might need to get some
clearance about what you can and can't
ask, but the reality is you can still
hear a lot just by listening, giving them
Yeah
one or do-- one or two good questions
to prompt people to start talking.
Um, fifteen minutes, you might even
have to-- maybe you lay in a Dunkin'
Donuts coffee coupon or whatever, uh,
but something just to get them talking.
Um, it'd also be ideal if you could
talk to people that chose to no longer
work with you for some reason, or they
no longer buy your product, right?
You'll learn just as much from them,
and they might even be more vocal.
These are things that you can listen to.
Um, if you're working with analyst
teams, um, spend some time talking with
them, introducing yourself, making,
making your rounds, and hearing what
they have to say about you, right?
That you don't know or that other
people haven't heard from before.
Uh, if you're working with a press
team, it's a good opportunity
to engage them, or if you have a
press person on staff, even better.
Or if you are a press person, uh, conduct
some, uh, analysis, uh, of the, the
sentiment that's being shared, the kinds
of articles that are being written about
you, what people are actually saying.
Social media, another rich repository of
information, assuming your business is
wired for sound social media analytics.
There's a lot of great information that
you can gather from the different, uh,
social platforms that are out there.
Um, so you can spend your
time gathering information.
Uh, synthesizing it, trying to prioritize
it in some way, shape, or form.
Um, I think all this is, is, is free.
That's without you pushing
anything net new out there.
Um, the other-- the probably
the third thing I, I'd mention
only because it's, um, just was
make-- it would make sense to do.
You-- I am going to assume you
have a website as a company.
Um, look at the data there, right?
What are people actually doing?
What are your top pages?
Uh, you know, not only volume
and velocity of, of visits and so
forth, but what are-- what kinds of
content are people engaging with?
What are they not engaging with?
Um, how healthy is the patient, right?
And, uh, you might have a really
sick patient that nobody's bothered
to take a look at for a while.
Uh, you might have a patient that has
a ton of potential, but no one has,
uh, started to tweak the, the knobs
and, and, and wheels to optimize
conversions and, uh, just basically
to give that content a, a refresh.
Hey marketing leaders.
It's Amanda here from Ringmaster
B2B, podcasting in today's market.
B2B buying is built on one thing,
trust, and there's no better way to
build that trust than through a podcast
that builds connection at Ringmaster.
We hope you launch and grow shows.
That will amplify your brand
and can help drive real demand.
The best part, we handle all
the heavy lifting so you can
focus on the big picture.
So if you've been thinking about starting
a podcast for your brand or taking your
existing one to the next level, visit
ringmaster.com to chat and book a call.
Curious because, like, we have this AI
thing swooping in and just taking the
world by storm, I love just thinking
about the, gray area in the middle where
they, they, they converge and collide a
little bit.
And, um, and we've talked
a lot about the human side.
Where do you think AI is making
marketing better, and then where
do you see it making it worse?
I think it depends on the day.
Um, but I would say generally speaking,
as a particularly powerful collaborator
for marketers, um, if you've been in a
resource-strapped business or a startup,
um, kind of thing, AI can be a great
way to get some sanity checks on things.
Um, so, and actually I'll, I'll
build off the examples that we
just said, where we're just, we're
really gathering a lot of data.
If you net down what I was sharing,
you, you can gather a lot of
data listening and otherwise.
Um, AI is a great place to kind
of throw it into a blender, right?
And say, "Hey, AI tool," and
again, pick your favorite flavor
of AI ice cream, I don't care.
Uh, and say, "I'd like to sh- uh, tie
together my, my CRM data outputs with
these fields, with the social media
listening, uh, outputs that I've seen
with, uh, analyst sentiment, uh, PR
records and da, da, da, da, da, and give
me so- and here's the definition of my
ICP, and I want you, AI platform, to
give me a synthesized list of prioritized
actions that you recommend based on best
practices over the next 30, 60, 90 days."
Now,
Yeah
long enough or have been a business
person long enough, 'cause I, I actually,
I, I believe that marketers aren't
marketers, we're businesspeople, right?
Uh, and I also firmly believe that
everybody in an organization works for
marketing, whether they admit it or not.
Uh, right?
Because in theory, we're setting the
strategy, the tone, the direction.
We're feeding the machine what it
needs to survive and live, and we're
also that parent that will tell them,
"You've been bad," or, "You've been
doing really good," before, right?
Salespeople's, uh, different teams
like sales are, are mechanisms.
They're catalysts to help you to
achieve your goals as a marketer,
not the other way around.
Yeah
how's that for a bias?
So AI, though, not to
digress too, too much.
No,
AI is a g- so in that scenario, you can
use AI to give you some recommended steps.
You can have AI, uh, help you
to understand the 30, 60, 90-day
plan, uh, to format it into a way
that other people will consume.
But what I was trying to get at before,
before I lose the, the thought, as
I'm known to digress, um, is If you've
been a business person long enough, you
can also smell when it's wrong, right?
AI gave me these generic three
steps or these generic 10 steps.
Or when I look at it even with
my data, it may be-- you may
initially feel it's believable, but
when you really start looking at
the data points it's aggregated,
you're like, "Smells wrong, AI.
You made up some stuff," right?
Or, "This is never gonna work within the
confines of my organization." So it's a
great way to organize your thoughts and
to come up with some hypotheses or to
bounce your own hypotheses against it,
to aggregate multiple data sources that
were never meant to talk to each other.
Uh, it's great at those kinds of things.
And you can tell if the outcomes you're
kinda looking for, maybe not the answers,
but the format in which you'd like to
see the outcome, is generated so that
you can consume it as a business person,
and ultimately, if you're collaborating
with others in your business, to
potentially collaborate with them.
Um, so I think AI is, is
good for that sort of thing.
Um, AI is a good, uh, sanity
check for, uh, information.
Um, again, I, I've found it really
powerful at things like, uh, research.
So we're talking about ICP.
Maybe you're showing up at a business
that doesn't have an ICP defined,
right, uh, at all, at least not
from a marketer's perspective.
Uh, that may- they haven't been
sophisticated enough, maybe they
haven't been big enough, maybe the
talent that was there never bothered.
Maybe nobody cared before.
Maybe nobody ever will care.
But you might care showing up.
So how do you develop that ICP?
Well, you just give it the information.
"Here's, here's my sketch," right?
Uh, "Here's my ICP.
I want it for, you know, companies in
North America that meet this profile,
that are of this size and girth, that
have these kinds of titles in it, uh,
on a Tuesday, and, um, you know, tell
me what these folk-- how many of these
companies are there?" So then I can
develop my, uh, total addressable market,
my serviceable market, my, my TAM, SAM,
and SOM, right, from that information.
And you're starting to get some really
refined data immediately from your
hypotheses, because you need to have
some actionable intelligence in order
to be able to inform the plans that
you need to birth in order to help
your business to achieve its goals.
Um, you can take that TAM, SAM, SOM and
then r-wrap it up against your CRM export.
Uh, a lot of these platforms now,
like, uh, HubSpot, for example,
has native connectors into Claude.
You can say, "Hey, Claude, go s- now
go sniff my, uh, my HubSpot instance
for all the companies that match this.
Hey, Claude, go sniff that and then
tell me about all the different sales
discussions that are tak- how many sales
discussions are taking place recently.
You're not only understanding how many
companies you have already in your
database or identifying a gap that
you have in your database, but then
you can find out are your sales teams
actively engaged or not with these, uh,
people that meet this profile, right?
So you can learn a lot in a very
short period of time with an AI
system as a catalyst to help you
to get from point A to point B.
Whereas in the past, and this
is only going back five years
now from a marketer's lens,
Sure, sure,
years ago, you would have to wait weeks
for that information to come together
if you were lucky, or you'd have to
spend tens of thousands of dollars for a
third party to go do that work for you.
Now you can do it for
20 bucks a month, right?
Uh, the risk of using a public, uh,
system, uh, one of the, uh, tech titans
like, you know, again, Anthropics,
uh, OpenAIs or whomevers, is of
course you have to be careful with
the data that you give it because
it's your data and your data becomes
their data kind of thing, right?
Um, so do be careful that you don't
violate any secret double secret policies
or give away information that you wouldn't
want otherwise shared, even if these
companies say that the data is anonymized,
uh, in some way, shape, or form.
So, uh, hopefully that is informative.
It is, and it really has me thinking my
next question, which is like, who are you?
How do you know these things?
Can you take me back in time
to, like, little you days?
Little you, David growing up.
Do you know he's gonna be a marketing
leader, doing all these things, teaching
us the way on a podcast years later.
Yeah.
It like?
Um, you know, I, I was kind of boring,
uh, in the grand scheme of things.
I, I think one of the more interesting
things that I ever did as, as a
young person that helps me today is
I learned how to play chess early on.
Um, chess is a great, uh, teacher
for helping you to understand the
permutations of a decision, right?
Or what are the-- what are
the nine potential outcomes of
moving my pawn to the next space.
And you can apply that to
business all the time, right?
And so it helps you to, to think clearly,
um, even if I can't speak clearly.
Um, I think just being inquisitive in
general and, and, uh, toying with things.
I was always kind of creative.
Um, you know, never did really
well in school, at least, uh, not
before I got to college, because
everyone was telling me what to do,
and it wasn't what I wanted to do.
Yep
a bit rebellious in that regard.
I think going into school was great
college because there I was able
to, uh… They had a program at the
college that I went to, um, where
you could make up your own major.
Uh, so th-then I decided to combine
marketing and advertising into a, into
a dual-- It was a dual degree, but I
was able to combine those disciplines
and skip over a lot of the basic classes
just to get to, like, the good stuff.
And I initially, when I got out
of school, thought for sure I was
going into the advertising world.
Um, but when I graduated, there
was a recession taking place.
Um, so it was really hard to get a,
a gig, and at the time, I was living
in, uh, just outside of Manhattan.
And, um, you know, that was the days
before LinkedIn and, and emails.
And so you were literally like, you'd
have to create a resume version.
You'd have to physically print it off or
type it out or print it on your, uh, dot
matrix printer, mail it out, and pray
that somebody would open your letter.
Or you'd go, uh, almost literally door to
door and bring your resumes into New York
City for me at that time and kind of go
to different businesses and prospect them.
Um- It turned out that advertising
wasn't gonna be, uh, very fruitful for
me i- at that time in terms of income.
I finally got, like, a job offer.
I was like, "Yay, thank you, job
offer." Um, but it was paying so little
I couldn't have afforded to commute
from where I lived, uh, into New York
City, and my, uh, my parents were not
gonna supplement my income that much.
Right
went to a corporate job, uh, working
for a, uh, a trade publication.
Uh, and that was my first real reality
check as, as a marketer, uh, especially
coming out of coll- coming out of
college, uh, you think that you're
a king or queen of the world, right?
Yes, I know everything.
And then they're like, "Here, go
make some photocopies, man." What?
Me?
Do, do you know who you hired?
Do you know who, who I am?
And like, and like, "We do. Go
make photocopies." Uh, so, uh, but
then you start to, to learn things.
At the time, I was one of the guys at the
bleeding edge of designing stuff, so I was
using, uh, gosh, CorelDRAW at the time.
Bef- this is before,
like, Adobe Illustrator.
school,
man
that was old school.
But I was even older school.
Like, my part, part-time jobs growing
up, summer jobs were, uh, cutting
Rubylith to do color separation
for an old school, uh, newspaper.
It is
I would literally, uh, set type manually.
We'd photographically, photographically
create all the copy for an article, and
we'd paste it with, uh, a wax onto a
board and paste it down there one by one.
We'd hand design ads with tape.
Like, you go into pick your favorite
application, and you say, "Oh, I need a
two-point border." Well, there was a time
where you had to do that with an X-Acto
knife and sticky stuff and create that
two-point border ar-around what you had.
Um, so all those little ste- And
I was also a, uh, photojournalist,
uh, for that publication.
Oh, sounds very il-illustrious
now looking back.
But it's, uh, you know, I was able to
go out and shoot things in the community
and get my work published, so I was
always trying to apply some creativity.
And when I got into the business world,
in that first gig, I would start to-- I
was finally able to start applying some
of that in a more realistic fashion.
And I'd always been exposed to technology
Uh, my dad was a, a pretty, uh,
high muckety-muck in, in a business,
Hmm
and, uh, he always brought-- Like,
he brought home the first compact
computer that I'd ever seen.
It was literally the size of a suitcase
with a small green screen glowing
in the middle of it kind of thing.
And, uh, so I was fortunate that I
always got exposed to technology.
And I decided after my first gig for
work of this forest corporation, I
said, "I wanna be involved in technology
somehow." Uh, so, um, I made some moves,
but before I went there, I went to
work for a conference center company
where I was carrying a bag, right?
And I was-- So I was, I was on commission.
I was trying to drive people
to book training sessions and
whatnot at our conference centers.
Um, I was doing research.
Uh, we called that mapping a business,
so I'd have to understand every in and
out of a business to understand who the
names were in the business unit that were
actually making these decisions while
understanding the environmental concerns
affecting this business and whether or
not they'd be in a moment in time where
they'd need conference center space.
And then I designed for that organization
a, uh, a database because they
were doing everything literally on
business cards and folders and stuff.
So-- And this was the early '90s,
so it really wasn't-- everything
really wasn't taking hold then.
And then I went to go work for a
software company, and, um, things
just started building from there.
And then I was fortunate enough to
get into, uh, IBM a few years later
and spent almost 20 years there
Wow, 20 years at IBM.
IBM also was a great preparation, not
only for, like, the business discipline,
the acumen, and the… A kid from me
coming from a, you know, not an, a
non-Ivy League school, getting to work
there was a world-class education for me.
I appreciated it.
Uh, but it taught me how to
collaborate with others, uh,
how to think outside the box.
And you get smarter if you
work with smarter people.
Like, it's, it's a lot more fun to
learn on the job than it is to, uh,
be the one teaching, I would say.
Mm-hmm.
And when you get to work with people
that did go to Ivy League schools and
people that did hold PhDs and so forth
regularly, I mean, some of that mojo
would rub off on you after a while.
Um, so it was very good.
But, uh, the advice I'd probably give
myself, uh, then, uh, versus the ad-
versus where I am now would, might be, one
is to be even more bold, not with how I
carried my- myself, but in the adventures
that I might be willing to take.
Um, so, you know.
And that's both for personal life
probably and, and professional, right?
You know, you can, you can
afford to take more risks at
different stages of your life.
You should take them.
Take them as agg- as
aggressively as you possibly can.
And everybody does the best
that they can at that time.
Uh, but I think, uh, having a little bit
more faith in myself and my abilities
at that time in my life probably
would've served me well, and taking
just a few, just a few more risks.
I took risks, but I probably could've
been more aggressive about it
Yeah.
think if you told that advice to
your younger self, you would listen
to yourself and take more risks?
Um, it would depend on when I caught me.
Uh, right?
So, so if you were, uh, kinda Marty McFly
in, uh, Back to the Future and with, with,
with Doc and zoomed back and I pulled
up to myself and be like, "Hey, don't go
in there," uh, I don't, I, I don't know
if I would've been smart enough early in
my career to listen to older me, right?
'Cause I would've asked myself,
uh, I would've asked my older
self, "Where did you come from?
And you look terrible." You know?
Like, like, "Where did you come from?
What did you get to do?
What did you achieve?" Because, uh,
another, um, thing that I experienced
that was important for me also in
guiding myself, you know, irrespective
of the possibilities of time travel,
was, uh, very early in my 20s I said
to myself, "Here's how much money I
wanna be making by the time I'm 30,
and here's the, the title that I want."
And every step of my career, once
I decided I wanted to go into the
technology space, was kind of a, a
meandering journey along the way.
You know, what can I pick up?
What can I learn?
Uh, how do I take the next logical step
in the general direction of this, right?
And, uh, that, that served me well.
At least it gave me some sort of a, a
focus and objective, and I, and I beat
my objective, uh, uh, a l- a couple
years before I was 30, which was nice.
Which was nice
Boom.
Just goals and goals and goals.
And so love to… know, what,
what are you up to at OpenStream?
Like, shout out to the OpenStream team.
Should we keep our eye on it?
What's, what's
Yeah, always keep your eye on OpenStream.
Thank you very much for, for that.
You know, OpenStream is a
terrific, uh, a terrific place.
Um, I've been at-- I've had
the good fortune of working
with super smart people, right?
Uh, again, PhDs and rocket scientists
are running around inventing, uh,
you know, the next things that are
possible or hypothesizing about the
next things that are possible in AI.
Uh, you know, when I first started
working, I certainly couldn't say or
understand what the heck, you know,
neuro-symbolic AI meant, uh, or, you
know, the importance of multimodality
or, uh, you know, how conversational
AI can be applied and, and a whole
host of other capabilities and tools.
You know, when generative AI started
to hit the streets, uh, LLMs and,
and so forth, very few of us really
understood that, and I credit all of my
knowledge to, uh, to the great team here.
Um, you know, we combine… Today, what
we're doing is we're combining multi-agent
systems with neuro-symbolic verification.
Uh, so we help to deliver trustworthy,
operationally ready AI outcomes
that experts and customers can
ultimately feel comfortable that
are v-verifiable, explainable,
um, actionable information pieces.
Um, another way to think about what
we're, what we're evolving to become.
So when we were Magic Quadrant, we were
Magic Quadrant for conversational AI.
We were the sole visionaries in the Magic
Quadrant for, for, uh, conversational
AI for two consecutive years, right?
Uh, so that was really exciting.
So that's always gonna be a part of
how OpenStream thinks and operates and,
uh, serves well for us, uh, s-serves
us well architecturally, especially
when we talk about collaboration.
But where we're starting to head now is
into this, uh trust layer kind of thing
for, for an enterprise without giving
away too much of the secret sauce there.
But, um, you know, we work
with, uh, foundation models.
We use neuro-symbolic capabilities.
Uh, we work with any model, not
just founda- frontier models, but
we, uh, we wrap everything up with
a bow, so basically you can really
trust the outcomes of, of a decision.
So a lot of AI is, um, what they
call, uh, probabilistic, right?
Which is these are generative AI, AI
systems, LLMs, which basically means
they're guessing what you want to hear.
They're guessing what the right answer
probably is based on a number of
inputs, but they're guesses, right?
They don't really know
what's right or wrong.
So how do you ensure that what
your AI system internally creates
for you is actually something
that you can trust, right?
We just talked about a few examples
of that throughout my own career and,
and how you need to scrutinize the
information that you give, uh, an AI
platform and that it gives to you.
So we use a symbolic, uh,
reasoning to ground everything
that comes out of the system.
So said i- in a more, uh,
straightforward fashion, you have an
AI system that generates a report.
Maybe it's a 10-page report.
That's a lot of pages, right?
Where is that engine getting
all of that information from?
How much of that is made up?
If you're in a business that makes
multimillion-dollar decisions daily
or hourly, um, either autonomously
or semi-autonomously with a human
in the loop, without a human
in the loop, all those things,
Mm-hmm.
uh, you sure as heck better be sure
that the information in that report is
correct, not just factually correct,
but correct according to your business
rules, your processes, your procedures,
the things your business might have
been doing for 20 years, right?
How do you encapsulate that inside the
body of a of an AI thing and have that
be a repeatable process or repeatable
scalable answer over and over and over
again because, um, you know, if you get
that ans- if one link in the chain is
broken, in the, the truth chain, right?
Uh, th- it, it just, it's like the
old game of, uh, telephone tag, right?
Where,
Yeah
you know, "Hey, uh, what's your favorite
ice cream?" "Vanilla." And by the
time it comes out the other end after
10 other people, it's strawberry.
Well, I don't-- It's not
strawberry, it was vanilla, right?
The same kind of thing can start
to happen in, in, in, uh, in AI.
So we f- we, we focus a lot of our
time, uh, nowadays on helping to ensure
that the systems we built have this
ground truth and that everything is
verifiable and accurate and so forth,
and that you can collaborate with
it, uh, from a conversational end.
So a little bit more of a ramble
probably than is appropriate, but,
um, hopefully that makes some sense.
So should you watch the space?
You should watch the space.
We've been a, we're, we've been a
bleeding edge company for, for a while.
Um, we're constantly innovating.
Uh, our website is about to go
through another change, uh, so that
we can tell that story, that current
narrative even more so, and, um,
we're really excited about the future
Man, I, I am too, and I think
you're wise that you're, you're
grounding systems in, in truth.
You know?
Like it-- You need to build it on a
solid foundation so that the, the really
tough, challenging answers are easy
to do if, or are more l- likely to be
true if one plus one does equal two.
Yeah.
I mean, go figure, right?
Why, why would the math
actually math out like that?
That's crazy, you know?
Uh, but it's so important that
a business, uh, really consider
whether or not the thing that they're
collaborating with is trustworthy.
Do they understand that on the other side
of the glass, the AI does not operate
like a human being at all, and that
most of these systems, uh, the publicly
available engines are, uh, designed
to please you with a pleasing answer?
Um, and if you've ever had an argument
with an AI lately, um, you know,
you'll see something that smells wrong.
You'll be like, "That's wrong." It'll
be like, "Oh, you're right, Casey.
I'm so sorry.
We're not supposed to do that." Right?
Right
and, uh, yeah, I wish I knew
that like 30 minutes ago, man.
Uh, well, you know, you, you know, 30
minutes ago I gave you a plausible answer.
I was conducting research on a company
the other day, and I said-- And I knew
what the answer was, but I wanted to
see what the system would come back.
And I said, you know, "Who's the
CEO at this place?" And it came
back with an answer of a CEO that's
been out of the chair for 24 months.
Jeez
this was, uh, this was
through, uh, Google Gemini.
Pretty, pretty reasonable, reasonably
funded, uh, enterprise, uh, I think.
And, uh, it was fricking wrong, right?
But if I didn't know it was
wrong, I might have believed it
because it sounded plausible.
And so you have to be sure that
you scrutinize the outcomes of AI.
And as a marketer these
days, it's really important.
What you're gonna start to lose over time
as a marketer is access to the old guys
oh, for
the people that have been there
and done that, uh, who can tell you
right away if that smells wrong.
Yeah.
Right?
I mean, you just get a spreadsheet
in front of them, and they'll spend
some time, and they'll be like,
"Oh yeah, that number's wrong.
That calculation's wrong.
How did you come up with that calculation?
Why is that there?
Where did you get that information
from in the first place?"
Yeah
are things that you get through
a, a conversation with somebody
who knows what they're doing.
You are gonna have to get to take
on that skill and assume AI is that
collaborator, but AI only has the
experience that you've taught it.
It only has the instructions and
guidance that you've given it.
Right
it only has whatever its, uh, uh,
i-its, uh, father and, and mother
in, in AI land have given it, right?
But you are responsible for
your decisions and the outcome.
So don't get lazy, right?
You're, you're going-- You can move
faster, and you can make more mistakes
quickly, which I'm a huge believer of.
Fail forward.
But at the end of the day, don't, don't
get so comfortable with AI in the driver's
seat that you trust your life over to it.
It's, it's not ready for that
No.
No, it's not, not ready.
Man, I don't know if you've noticed, we've
had our own Back to the Future time warp.
Like, wow, we have zapped
through time so fast.
I feel like we all have to
automatically book another time, and
we should just, we just, just spend
an hour talking about AI and bots.
You know?
We did the human side today,
Let's do it
you know, let's like, let's totally do it.
So where can people go if
they want to connect with you?
Uh, they can go to, uh, first
they can go to openstream.ai.
Uh, that would be a great place to start
if they want to learn more about our, our
company and our products and services,
and how we might be able to help you.
They can definitely reach
out to me on, on LinkedIn.
Uh, it's, uh, The David A.
Stark, if I remember my trailing,
uh, identity on LinkedIn
All right.
Well, thank you.
Thank you, David.
And, uh, yeah, all the t- all the
tech and the crazy in the worlds,
but, uh, appreciate you being on
and, uh, see you all next time