In this episode, John LaRoy, CEO of Apparel Redefined chats with Lori Highby, founder of Keystone Click. Blending her love of hockey and digital strategy, Lori brings practical insight for apparel entrepreneurs looking to grow their brand and customer base.
Since 2008, Lori and her team at Keystone Click have helped B2B companies—especially manufacturers—develop smart, research-driven marketing plans. As Lori explains, it starts with understanding your ideal customer. “If you’re marketing to everyone,” she says, “you’re marketing to no one.” Defining your niche is the first step to standing out and growing.
The conversation explores how companies can tell their brand story with authenticity, especially in a digital space filled with generic, AI-generated content. Lori emphasizes that your personal story is what sets you apart—and it’s more important now than ever. She suggests beginning with customer interviews and analyzing your past sales to find patterns and refine your message.
The episode also dives into AI for marketing, where Lori shares tips on writing better prompts and how to show up in AI-generated search results. Her key takeaway? Use AI as a tool, not a shortcut—and feed it real, quality insights to get meaningful results.
Key Highlights
• Introduction and Personal Backgrounds 0:00
• Keystone Click’s Mission and Strategic Digital Marketing 2:52
• Challenges and Opportunities in B2B Manufacturing 3:53
• Encouraging Clients to Niche Down 4:53
• The Importance of Content and Brand Storytelling 13:58
• AI in Marketing and Content Creation 24:23
• Custom GPT and Strategic Thinking 27:04
• Final Thoughts and Takeaways 32:46
Transcription
Curt Anderson 00:00
Buddy. Hey, John, Leroy Apparel Redefined. How are you, brother, I’m doing great. Curt, how are you? My goodness gracious, I could not possibly be doing any better. We have a really dear close friend today. Did you how did you get some sleep over the weekend? You get some rest for
John LaRoy 00:15
this one? Or what? Me, yeah, uh, not much, but that’s not much. Well, yeah, I mean, I was, I was excited to finally talk to a fellow pucker. We’ve had a lot of we have rugby, we’ve had tennis, we’ve baseball, and we’ve we’ve somehow missed hockey. But now, yeah, check that box. It
Curt Anderson 00:33
took me about 40 tries, and so I finally did it. This is just for you, dude. So hey, I want to, it’s my honor, my privilege. I want to introduce my dear friend, Lori Highby from Keystone Click. Lori, how are you today?
Lori Highby 00:44
Great. Anytime I can talk hockey is a good day. So
Curt Anderson 00:48
Alright, so let’s just, you know what? Let’s just rip off the band aid. Let’s dive in. So. Lori, how old were you when you started playing hockey?
Lori Highby 00:54
Oh, man, well, I was. I was young, really young, probably like five or six years old. And then my mom took me out of hockey to be a ballet person, and that’s not my jam. So when I was 16 years old, I was working at the ice rink in Milwaukee here, and I started playing hockey again. So from 16 to now is kind of really where the guts of my hockey career have been nice. So
Curt Anderson 01:20
you took a little gap there. So John, how old were you when you started?
John LaRoy 01:24
You got mute. Yeah, started skating at two and a half. And, yeah, I just tried that again with my oldest. But two and a half years ago, just turned five, didn’t work out so well. But now he want, we took a year off, and he’s, he’s, he’s loving it now. So learned with the first one not to push as hard, but the second one is, is getting there. But yeah, it was, it was two and a half. And then really, my friends that I went to school with, John Carroll, you know, plug for for your daughters and my, you know, everyone really likes hockey, but it’s one of those sports. If you don’t start young, it’s really hard to get into. Yeah, you’re essentially learning how to walk, you know, on a different surface. So I think there’s a lot of advantage to getting them started early, especially in this sport, and just learn how to skate. You know, once you learn that, it is like riding a bike, you get on and go, Yeah, for
Lori Highby 02:15
sure. Although, I’d say in the Milwaukee community, there’s a lot of hockey moms that are learning how to play, sure, which is awesome. I love it.
Curt Anderson 02:23
Oh, is there really? There’s a lot of Hockey. Hockey moms are learning how to play hockey, yep,
Lori Highby 02:26
yep. But they got their own, their own league and their own division and everything. It’s fun. That’s awesome. So
Curt Anderson 02:33
I’m a figure skating dad, and so my daughter started skating at five. We weren’t sure what direction she was going to go, and she took the figure skating. So I’ve been to all the learn to skate in every practice. I watch all the hockey practices. So you know, my second home was the skating rink. So I’m right there with you guys. So Lori, let’s dive in. So what we’re going to have a conversation today? We want to talk to small entrepreneurs, lot of the clients that John works with, these amazing, wonderful apparel customers that he’s servicing on a daily basis. Man, we’re just working relentlessly on, how do we stop being the best kept secret? And so we wanted to bring in a powerhouse, just the authority, just share a little bit. I want to start with Keystone Click, founded in 2008 How do you and your incredible, wonderful team at Keystone Click? How do you guys make a world a better place? Talk about what you guys do. Then we’re going to dive into some marketing strategies for our friends
Lori Highby 03:22
here. Yeah, absolutely. So we are a strategic digital marketing agency, and I put the emphasis on strategic because we believe in order to properly market to your customer, you need to understand them. So we start with research. First. We research your ideal customer, we research your competition and your brand and how it’s currently perceived, in order to collect insights, take the data, build a strategic plan, and then we support the full implementation of that nice
Curt Anderson 03:50
okay, so how I low curious minds would love to know. So 2008 I know you and I have done a number of programs together, John, I don’t know about you, but like, things are a little tumultuous in 2008 Why did you pick industrial and you really work with B2B manufacturers, that type of thing. Why did you gravitate towards that market?
Lori Highby 04:07
Yeah, so my my dad was in manufacturing. I grew up visiting a tool and die shop, and, you know, somewhat becoming obsessed with seeing how things are made, and the other two agencies that I worked at prior to starting my own firm, we worked with a lot of manufacturing. I mean, Milwaukee is very blue collar, and there’s a lot of really cool things being made here. And I found, as a marketer, there’s awesome stories that are not being told, and that’s, that’s what my job is, is to really help these manufacturers showcase their strengths and tell that awesome story of the neat things they’re doing to make the world go round.
Curt Anderson 04:46
Awesome. Love it. Okay, so let’s start here. So say our there’s a friend out there who, for whatever reason, maybe you know something, their accidental entrepreneur, maybe took a pivot, took a change, whether it was. And, you know, self inflicted wound, or maybe a job loss, whatever it might be. But they’ve started a new company where they’re selling apparel. Where would you what are some tips that you have as far as I kind of that started that marketing 101, I love what you’re saying about diving into that ICP, that, you know, ideal customer profile. Just share a little bit about why is that so critical for our friends? Yeah,
Lori Highby 05:22
I mean, that’s where I would start, is get clarity on who that ideal customer is, because a parallel especially everyone could be a buyer, but if you’re marketing to everyone, no one’s going to buy from you. So the more that you get, laser focused on what is unique about the offering that you have, and ensuring that that uniqueness is going to be attractive to a very specific audience, the better and easier it is going to be to reel them in.
Curt Anderson 05:49
Yeah, I love that answer. And so how about so I’m kind of put you on the spot here a little bit. So say for our friend, if an entrepreneur, you know, and I’m guilty of this, right? We try to be everything to everybody. You just said it. You become no one. How do you encourage your clients? Maybe, if you if you have a client that’s kind of pushing back a little bit, right? How do you help encourage them to really niche down and focus on, you know, their core audience? I
Lori Highby 06:13
would, well, I’d look at past sales, and are there any trends that you can identify within past sales? At the end of the day, what you’re looking for is, what is that common denominator from people that are buying from you? So there are probably a lot of unique differences that you’re going to find, but there is going to be a common denominator, either a pain that someone had, or some sort of entertainment or educational value that’s of interest to them. But you have to really identify whatever that common theme is, whether it’s resonating with you. As far as this is a new audience I want to get in front of, or from your current customer base. What is that common ground? All right, John, let’s
Curt Anderson 06:49
get you in here. In the game here. What are your you know, you 20 year entrepreneur. You’ve built a wonderful, incredible business. And you know, what tips, advice do you share? As far as you know, trying to help people niche down, or some of the experiences that you’ve had, as far as niching down,
John LaRoy 07:05
yeah, it’s difficult. I mean, like, like Laurie said, especially in our industry, everyone is a customer. I mean, like, unless you’re, you know, selling at a nudist column, everyone’s wearing T shirts, or should be, you know, and decorated apparel. So your target or your service available market is massive, your target market is smaller, but it’s like, what? What are you selling on? And I think in our industry, and a lot of service based industries, there’s three components of that triangle, right? Is it speed? Is it quality, or is it price, right? And it’s difficult to sell on all three. And which of your customers, what is their most important? Are they looking for speed to market? Are you looking for quality? Are they looking for price? And once you identify that, you can kind of identify what you’re going to do to solve that need. And I think anyone in business, you really don’t want to always solve for price, you know? I mean, I think unless you’re Amazon and Walmart and those guys that can really bully everyone downstream and upstream, so they’re still making their margin, it just takes a lot. I mean, it’s really, really difficult to get to that size as a small business owner, right? So you have to be unique, kind of on the other two. And how do you do that? And what do you tell that story? And from my personal experience, like full, full transparency, we never talked about it. We, we kind of exist in that blue collar mentality where Shut up, put your head down, and do your work and don’t tell anybody about your story, because it’s probably not that cool. And two, no one’s supposed to know about you. You make other companies look good, right? And, and COVID kind of flipped all that on its head, you know, is as great as our relationships were with our top customers, our main niche was school and sports. And when there was no school and sports for 75 80% of the country, it really, you know, like, hey, we can do it, but people didn’t know who the hell we were. We didn’t have that digital trust, and that’s something that and Curt and I and his team at B2B have been so phenomenal in building that digital trust, because we can service other markets that are still looking for speed and quality. But we had to first convey that we who we are, what we do, build that trust. So when they land on our LinkedIn, when they land on our web page, they know that we do what we say and we say we do. And we had a really hard time kind of coming into the into the light, as you will, if you will, of talking about what we do and how we do it. And in my head, it was always like, I’ll get to it when it can look like Joe Rogan, you know, and it’s like you see everything in, you know, what you see becomes the expectation. And if the expectation is too big, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s almost paralyzing, right? You have decision paralysis, yeah. And one of the things this guy work out with great guy, but he said, You know, there’s no. There’s nothing that can’t be done, and there’s no goal too big, but if you’re struggling, your first steps probably too big, right? You got to take a smaller first step at getting towards your goal, because if you if your first step is so massive that that chasm that you’re expecting to bridge is unrealistic, and it just may take longer, but you just got to take shorter first steps to get to where you want to be. And that’s kind of what Curt and his team really coached us out of where it doesn’t have to look like Rogan or anywhere near that to start. You just got to do it right, and not to give Nike some some shade there. But it really was that that emphasis, just do it and get out of your own head, right? So, yeah, I mean, I think marketing for people, especially if you get into this thing where you get to talk about yourself, and most of the time, you know, you are brought up talking about being humble, and talking about, you know, not showing off, just let your actions speak for you. And it’s kind of like completely different in this space, especially now in the digital landscape of marketing, where it’s like, no, you do need to talk about yourself and need to be comfortable doing it, but it’s just it’s getting out of your comfort zone and something that’s completely not natural for people like me, and I feel like a lot of small business owners, especially in manufacturing, because it’s so much of a team effort, and it’s like, now I’m the guy that’s standing on the podium, essentially speaking for the entire team. There’s nothing that I can do in my company without a really skilled, talented team up there. But they’re not doing this right, but it’s finding your role, right? What’s your role? What’s my job as the leader and CEO of the company? And what is their role? And just kind of understand and doing your role really well. Sorry, really long yesterday. Yeah.
Curt Anderson 11:55
So that’s Well, I think that’s a perfect segue. So Laurie, let’s say so for our entrepreneur friends, like sage, where John was a few years ago. What is the starting point? What is so we dive into that ICP, go into that buyer persona. How do you help someone like John, who’s like, you know, little humble, hesitant, doesn’t want to tell their story? How do you get, how do you get that story out of people?
Lori Highby 12:16
Yeah, no, that that’s great. Actually, one of the things that we do is we call it a founders interview, either a leadership interview or founders and we’re just asking you a bunch of questions to help you craft that story. We also have a process that we call a brand story strategy, where we’re gathering specific data points and asking very insightful questions that because it’s just a one on one conversation, you’re not blasting out to the world, we can help you craft and really perfect that what’s important, and John kind of alluded to this a little bit, is you have to tell your story, especially with AI. And I’m the biggest AI fan, and you know, you can’t talk to me without AI being brought up. Now, however, there’s this blandness that’s happening because everyone’s doing it, and the beauty of your story is that’s what’s unique to you, and that’s what’s going to attract the right fit clients. The people that are going to resonate with your story are going to want to work with you. So telling your story is more important now than it probably ever has been. You don’t want to fall into what I refer to as a sea of sameness. You sound the same as everyone else is doing the same thing that you’re doing, especially if you’re leaning into AI at all
Curt Anderson 13:27
sea of sameness. And my sister used to always preach, you know what? Closed mouths don’t get fed, right? So how do you avoid the sea of sameness? But we want to. We can’t have closed mouths now. Lori, what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna pull up your website. And I’m doing this for a couple reasons. I want to, I want to, I would love for you to I have just massive respect for you. Had the privilege of working with you for a number of years now, and we always kid around like there’s marketers out there that are the kind of the cobblers kids with no shoes, where they’re like, they’re going to preach marketing, but they don’t like they’re they’re so focused on their clients, they don’t do a great job for themselves. You do an amazing job on your website, creating content. So I’m on your website now. You guys can see my screen correct, yep, yep, yep. And so, just as for our friend out there, who takeaways, we what we would love is I give, let’s give a couple golden nuggets that’s going to help them move the needle. Talk a little bit on, like how I heard a podcast yesterday. Hey, we eat our own dog food, if you will, like you practice what you preach. Go take us. There
Lori Highby 14:26
will you? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the biggest thing is the Resources section right there. We’re constantly sharing insights and education, and not just on our website, but we do webinars, our email marketing, our social media content, and what we’re doing, from that perspective, is we’re educating we’re adding value. Nothing in here is a sales pitch. It’s helping you be better at what you’re doing. So at the end of the day, you can make an intelligent business decision on how to move forward with your business. So I think we’re close to 500 to. You know, pieces of content in in this bucket here, and it’s probably, you know, there’s more to throw out there, because we’ve got YouTube videos, we’ve got podcast episodes, and we’re in the works of, kind of aggregating all of it here. But yeah, there’s, there’s nuggets in all different areas. You can search within the resource section on, you know how to do something. Yeah, our process is really, like I talked about, that. Research is really, really important to understand, but it everything we do. We start with research, because if you’re not, if you’re just going to make an assumption, you’re going to waste time and money, and we don’t want that. So understanding it takes a little bit more time, but you have a better end result at the end of the day. And I think that’s Uber important.
Curt Anderson 15:44
Well, and let’s go another great segue. So John was just mentioning, you know, like, hey, if it’s too big or too far, right? So if somebody’s out there and they they’re on blog zero, and they say, like, Oh, gee, Lori’s at 500 let’s kind of, let’s, let’s reduce the overwhelm, right? Let’s bring them back a little bit and again, like, we just want to kind of get started so now you’ve taken a client through you. You’ve helped them identify that ICP, right, that ideal customer, yep, talk to us a little bit about you do a great job of, like, understanding, like, where, where’s that customer hanging out? Where to Find Them, how to engage with them. Let’s, let’s again. Let’s take that first step for folks,
Lori Highby 16:21
yeah, and that that’s part of that research is really getting inside the head of that ideal customer. And those are the types of questions we have. We do customer interviews to figure out. And you know, not only why did they decide to work with you, but how did they How did they find you, and where what podcasts are they listening to? What social media channels are they hanging out on? But more importantly, what is the challenge or the pain that they have that you’re ultimately the solution for? That’s what’s important to make sure you’re crafting content around that. So when you’re saying, Oh, I’ve got 500 blog posts, and that’s intimidating and overwhelming, the easiest thing to start thinking about, and this is actually more important for AI now than ever is, what are the questions that people are asking and thinking about it from that entire customer journey? Because they don’t just start their journey with the intention to buy they start their journey because they have a challenge of some sort, and they’re trying to solve that problem. So you need to answer those questions in the form of content at the beginning of the customer journey, and create that content in all forms, you know, video blogs, podcasts, newsletters, social media posts. That’s going to help you get found in the search engines and the AI platforms when someone’s searching that challenge. So
Curt Anderson 17:37
as a entrepreneur, yourself, very busy lady, and then you’re on the ice when you’re not solving, helping people grow their businesses. What was the starting point for you? Like, did you start blogging first? Did you start social? Like, what was what? What was your journey like to kind of get things started? I
Lori Highby 17:54
mean, I would say Facebook was at the very early stage. Was it really? Was Facebook, your thing? Was that your journey? Oh, when it started. I mean, that was, I blogging was the first thing I did. Yep, I started on, you know, we had our website, super basic website, and we started blogging. And I would like to share, you know, the power of a blog. And most companies are, you know, they don’t want to do it because it takes time, but they’ll start spending on ads right away. Well, I have blogs that were written over 10 years ago that still drive traffic to our website, so that four or five hours worth of time to craft a something of value has been serving us for multiple years. I mean, how many people can say that about a paid ad? You know, they’re spending money on ads, which is great. I’m not not saying no on that, but it’s worth the time investment to craft quality content, telling your story that’s ultimately, again, going to help solve the problem of your ideal customer, and it’s going to connect with them and show them that you’re the expert. So
Curt Anderson 18:56
let’s go here. John always loves talking about with his apparel. Like, you know your apparel kind of defines your brand promise, right? So while we’re on this page that we’re looking at here for our friends checking this out, talk a little bit about you are a fierce, unapologetic educator. You work at a local university. You and I’ve done multiple webinars together. You’re always doing training. What is in it that you’ve that you have, like, this fierce passion for helping educate as your marketing strategy? Yeah,
Lori Highby 19:26
I think that, especially on the B2B side of things, and they are really big decisions, that big business decisions, that there’s big dollar amounts associated with it, you want someone to feel comfortable with that decision that they’re making, and educating them along the way is going to be a big component of building that trust. You’re proving that you can do the thing that you said you can do. And ultimately, I also believe that the better, the more that you educate someone, the better you get at it. So I think it’s, you know, kind of serving multiple purposes. Yeah. Well,
Curt Anderson 20:00
love it. So John, I want to get you back on stage here. So I love Lori’s mission right here, to navigate, to navigate, educate, to provide fully custom, customizable digital resources for their for clients and their stakeholders. Drop the mic moment right there, Lori. So I absolutely love that, John, your thoughts is what Lori’s describing here. What are your takeaways?
John LaRoy 20:21
It’s a lot. I mean, I think people, they loosely say the word marketing now and don’t realize, like, the breadth of what it means, right? You know, like marketing, as I was just writing down here. It’s like you can get ads following a content, social, updating PR sales to some component of pre qualifying leads to get to the sales team. Like, I think people just say the word marketing now, and they they really fail to understand, like, which, which avenue, if not all, do you pursue, and what has the highest ROI Right? Because it’s just such a crowded space in every industry. Because, you know, in our industry, when you talk about print on demand, about print on demand, like cost per click has has skyrocketed over the past three, four years, and there’s brands that they pay for every one of their customers, and when that cost triples, that that cost, customer acquisition cost is skyrocketed, and unless you’ve really built a good relationship and own the client like they’re just going somewhere else where there’s a different ad in front of them. So yeah, what does your brand say about you? But yeah, and for us kind of just getting into doing some marketing over the past two, three years, and looking at ROI, you would think, with all the tools out there that didn’t exist 10 years ago, it is easier to measure ROI, and it is you could definitely see, like what your spend is versus this in certain areas, but stuff like this, where you’re doing just putting content out there to enhance your image is still a component of, I feel like, your overall marketing strategy, but there’s still not a way like, in my opinion, like to totally measure like a direct ROI. And
Lori Highby 22:07
I agree with that. Actually, the attribution getting a true attribution, I don’t think will ever exist unless we all have microchips and every single activity of our lives is being logged and documented. This is an argument that I’ve had a long time in the measurement side of marketing. You know, it’s great that, yeah, all the digital stuff you can track and measure and prove the ROI, but what happens to that the brand awareness component is so important, I feel a lot of companies are missing the ball on that, because that’s where you’re building the know you, like you, trust you. Components and lots of companies are just I need the sale now, without understanding that 80 to 90% of that journey is on the brand awareness side of things.
John LaRoy 22:55
Yeah, I agree. That’s something I learned a little while ago. But when you have a limited resource, like, where, where do you think you’re getting your most bang for your buck, especially in manufacturing, where you know you have much more overhead than other industries tied up in your most valuable resource, which is your labor, right? And you’re giving capital. Margins are tight. And where, where can you go to have the highest ROI quicker. And what do you think? Like, what? What’s your opinion there? Where, if someone who hasn’t done any marketing, but they’re a successful company, been around for a while, where should they focus first,
Lori Highby 23:32
I would start back at the customer and figure out, where are they hanging out? Okay, you know, does is there some sort of an influencer that already has their attention. Like, is there a podcast that everyone in this industry is listening to, or is, is there a certain social media channel or group that people are hanging out in, you know, figure out, you know, where the that that pond is, that your fish are swimming in, and that’s where you would start positioning yourself as a resource and not aggressively selling. You’re there to support and advocate, and that’s how you start building that brand awareness.
Curt Anderson 24:09
Yeah, absolutely love that. So Lori, let’s go here. So you are a self professed AI junkie, and one thing, and John, great question. And Lori and I just did a program, I think, week ago, two weeks ago, and Lori, I if my recollection, I said, Lori, any takeaways for our friends? And you said, just get started, right? I think wasn’t that. You said, just get started. So just, you know, we’re all, you know, we’re big sports junkies. Sometimes you gotta just lace up the skates, put on the spikes, whatever sport you’re playing, just get on the field. And you need to get a little dirty or, you know, fall on the ice a little bit, but just get started. You’re a self professed AI junkie. And man, it is like when you and I did the webinar two weeks ago. We literally like, whatever we’re talking about today is probably going to be obsolete tomorrow. But just for our friends out there who like, you know, they’re getting golden nuggets right here. What are some AI. Tips that you feel that are relevant as the as of this moment today that we’re talking about AI. Yeah,
Lori Highby 25:05
I mean, one of the things that we’re really having discussions around right now is people are using AI to no different than a search engine, so you need to make sure that you’re showing up in the AI tools as a result. And it’s different than the search engines, which were just a long list of links, you know. Now it’s, you’re having a conversation with the AI platform, so you want to make sure that you are positioned as the expert in the trusted source that’s being, you know, fueling the response in AI. And that’s, it’s very similar to search engine optimization, but it’s a little bit of a different game that you need to play with that.
Curt Anderson 25:46
Yeah, and changing literally daily or by the hour. So what any, any tips strategies, like we’ve talked about buyer personas creating content, any AI tips that any, any hacks that you want to share with anybody that they could take away. There’s
Lori Highby 26:02
so many I know. How do I even begin with that? I mean, at the end of the day, the more information and the quality of the information that’s going into the AI platform, the better quality the output is. We don’t want you don’t just put a generic prompt that says, Write me 10 Facebook posts for my company. You have to really give it quality information. Include the details about your customer persona, point out who your competition is, map out what specific platform you’re going to be writing the content for feed it, the insights about what the biggest challenges are your customer has, and then you’re going to get quality content that comes out of it. The more you give, the better you’re going to get.
Curt Anderson 26:47
Yeah, I absolutely love that. So, you know, just on a side note, John, I want to get you back on stage here. So I was talking with a client a couple weeks ago, and seasoned gentlemen, I’ll say, and we’re sitting here talking, and you guys are way too young to remember this, but there was a I’m, you know, I’m gonna bring up, why would I do this? I’m gonna bring up two sad things. But he was heavily involved with Johnson, and Johnson during during the Tylenol tragedy of Chicago in the early 80s, and I, and that’s like a case study of how to how a company thrived handling a crisis. And he was like, front row seat to this. I talked to him the next week. I’m like, Dude, I’m like, I was so moved by you sharing that story about the Tylenol. He goes, Well, I got one better. He goes the company that he was at, they were doing a trade show in Manhattan at the Javits Center on 911 and he went on to tell me the whole story. So I’m talking with the CEO A few days later. I’m like, did you know John did this with Tylenol? Did you know John did this for 911 and you’re like, you know what? We’re gonna take those and we’re gonna turn them into blog posts. Because, like, that’s telling our story in this, you know, from 40 years ago. And so anyway, I love what you’re you’re sharing, John your thoughts on AI marketing, all those brilliance, these gems that Lori’s dropping. What are your thoughts. I’m just
John LaRoy 28:01
curious. Like when you talk about how your foundation of what you do starts with research, right? How, how close or how far you guys are experts at prompting it, though, but like when you perform your research before ChatGPT to now, like, you’re, you got ChatGPT, click, deep research, and you’re, you’re coming up with stuff like, are you finding that’s accurate? Are there big gaps, it’s missing, or is it, is it kind of like there’s not enough out there, maybe about your company or your customer profile?
Lori Highby 28:32
Well, we still do a lot of the manual research, meaning, like I said, we talked about the founders interview, to really understand their perspective. And we do the phone calls with customers still, but we take that and we leverage the AI information that’s collected too, to kind of compare and contrast anything that’s generated from Ai. I still 100% say you have to validate that information. You cannot just trust it immediately.
John LaRoy 29:02
Yeah, as well. I mean, it really has become, I mean, in my industry, right? You know, graphic designers, they were probably the first one that got the most spooked, right, you know, and it wasn’t even that good. And now, with iteration 4.2 or three, or whatever we are, and then all the mid journey stuff, I specifically have people on my team that now look at it the way I was hoping they would, where it’s a time saver, right? You know, it’s like, you get writer’s block, and it’s like, I got 83 people asking me for, hey, what’s your idea for this family reunion? And it’s like, that would literally take hours. And now it’s like, Hey, here’s 10 minutes, really good prompt. You go, decide what you think is a good starting point, right, and then get me to the finish line. Yeah. It really has become a really ubiquitous tool in my daily work. You know, work cycle and what I do, and I continue to find ways. 90s where, you know, for example, just on a manufacturing floor, like, Hey, we’re having problems with this color match. You know, when we’re putting a base coat and we’re not getting this and it’s like, we would call the manufacturer before the manufacturer would call, like, the mixing system company, and like, all these different loops to see whose finger gets pointed at and who’s got who’s doing it wrong. Put that stuff in a chat GPT, and it’s like, it comes up with three different scenarios to try to get closer to this. PMS value. And really, like, oh my gosh, you know. And I’m just kind of like, imparting that onto our mid level and our leadership team, yeah, you know? Hey, you don’t always need to go down the old ways to find out answers, right? You know, like, again, still validate it, but here’s a tool that everyone has that, let’s use this as a starting point, rather than something that would take maybe three or four weeks, and we’ll revisit to it eventually. But now it’s like, no, you can, you can at least get a pathway to a solution instantly, where before you might need to talk to the vendor rep and all this type of stuff, and it would take weeks, and now it’s, you know, seconds. Yeah,
Lori Highby 31:09
I love that. I’ve been, we’ve been doing that for a lot of web development type challenges that we experience as well. Another thing that I’ve, I’ve done recently, is I built a custom GPT to think like me, so that when my team has a challenge, they can go there first, and then it’s going to help them solve that problem, to ultimately save me a little bit of time, but hopefully help them. I’m teaching them to think strategically through the process too. I’m not just giving them the answer. So I built the GPT that way, and it’s been, it’s been really kind of cool. That’s
Curt Anderson 31:39
cool. That is absolutely brilliant. Lori, so I will close out, because I know we’re at time for anybody out there that is not familiar with the what is a custom GPT? Can you just explain that is absolutely brilliant. Gosh, I love that idea. Sure.
Lori Highby 31:55
So basically, whenever you’re using, well, it’s chat GPT you usually want to define the role and the action or the context and kind of really give it the insights. And that’s talked about is really the more you give, the better the outcome. And if you find you’re kind of repeating some of those components, or there’s very specific scenarios, such as, think like Lori here, you can create a custom GPT where you’re defining the role and the context and all that in advance, and it just kind of stores it in one little bucket. And then you can trigger chats for efficiency sake from that same bucket. So
Curt Anderson 32:33
I was reading an article by kind of like an AI guru the other day, and in his comment, he said, It’s as exciting as AI is. It’s scary. Lori, exciting, scary. How do you feel about AI, both
Lori Highby 32:46
and exhausting. It’s exciting. It’s scary and exhausting because it’s happening and moving faster than anybody. Nobody can keep up with it.
Curt Anderson 32:55
It’s just absolutely wild. So all right, John, we’re going to wind down thoughts, takeaways, parting thoughts that, what do you want to share? Just Man, what a what a master class here with Lori. What are your thoughts?
John LaRoy 33:05
No, it’s outstanding. I mean, I guess in all the areas of marketing that we call marketing, like, what is your what is your expertise? What do you like to do the most? And where do you feel that you’re really helping your clients?
Lori Highby 33:18
Oh, wow, that’s a great, great question. I mean, it’s I think the unique differentiator that I bring to the table is that we’re looking at the entire picture of the digital ecosystem, instead of just looking at one specific lane or channel, because these channels are constantly changing. The demands and expectations of the customer is constantly changing. So you got to make sure that all these moving parts are working together to achieve the bigger picture goal.
John LaRoy 33:44
Yeah, for sure, they’re all important.
Curt Anderson 33:46
Drop the mic on that one. So Lori, we’re going to wind down. We’re going to close out. So all right, the quote over your shoulder says, who has, who dropped that famous quote right there behind you?
Lori Highby 33:59
That would be Wayne Gretzky,
Curt Anderson 34:00
yes, that’s right, Mr. Famous Wayne Gretzky, so Alright, so if who’s your favorite team of all time, who’s your favorite team Chicago, Blackhawks or Blackhawks? All right? That a girl. So Lori, I want to thank you, appreciate you, applaud you. Just I my respect, admiration for you. Just off the charts. It’s always privilege for us. Thank you for sharing your expertise. We’re going to put your website, your LinkedIn, all the stuff in the show notes we’ve got. You have a wonderful podcast called the broadcast for manufacturers, and you do it with two dear friends. We just had one of your co hosts on the show two weeks ago. So I want to thank you for taking the time to share with us and for our friends out there. Check out Lori, check out Keystone Click and reach out to her and stop by visit John while you’re at it, too. So thank you guys. Bye.