71: Romance Meets ROI: How AI Made Them a Power Couple- with Susan & Scot Westwater

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You want to learn more about your host? Make sure to listen to episode one.

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[00:00:42] Erin Courtenay: Aw, and you look so cute! I'm so glad that you're my Galentine!

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[00:00:51] Erin Courtenay: Yes. Yes. Tomorrow, it's so cute, our community does like ice skating parties at parks around town. Oh, fun. And it just so happens that our favorite ice skating park that's really close to us is the one that's hosting on Valentine's Day tomorrow.

So it's just like music and disco lights and, you know, ice skating's always romantic. So.

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So streaming type movie, that, that'll be what we're doing.

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[00:02:06] Kris Harrington: That's awesome. I will say that I just learned what Galentine's Day is because everybody's talking about Galentine's Day, and I'm like, what's Galentine's? I didn't know. So for the purpose of our listeners who are like me, I, you know, it's a, I guess it comes from Parks and Recreation and Amy Poehler or her character, Leslie had come up with it. And it's celebrated on February 13th. So today, and it's, it's for friends, for female friends to get together, gals. I did not know that before.

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[00:02:43] Kris Harrington: Yes. That's what I learned.

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[00:02:46] Kris Harrington: I didn't want to lose everybody while we were talking about it in case they truly were like me where I'm like, what are people talking about when they talk about Galentine's?

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By combining Susan's customer experience expertise with Scot's tech savvy, they help manufacturing leaders find more qualified OEM leads and close deals faster. The result, significantly reduced development cycles and marketing challenges turned into competitive advantages. No jargon, no empty promises, just measurable business growth.

Scot and Susan, welcome to the show.

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[00:04:08] Lori Highby: Thanks for being our guinea pigs. Live streaming. Makes sense to have the tech gurus on.

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[00:04:25] Lori Highby: All right, well, let's dive in. So 18 years of marriage, congratulations. And eight years of running a business together. You know, I, I feel like this is a no, no do type of territory for a number of couples. How does this partnership work? How does it influence what you're doing specifically for manufacturers and helping them succeed?

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And then I, I mean, and it comes down to what is a good working relationship, what's a good marriage is communication and, and, and honesty. I think we've learned a lot about not letting things fester. And the thing is too, is because of that honesty. And having a bit of that yin and yang of the different ways of almost sometimes, sometimes I'm the head, sometimes he's the heart, sometimes vice versa. It helps us be able to look at things from a multi faceted view, just like one perspective driving the boat, you know, driving the boat.

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[00:05:45] Susan Westwater: Yeah, there you go.

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[00:05:55] Lori Highby: Oh yeah, I get that. We just moved.

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[00:06:04] Lori Highby: I love that. Yeah. I just moved. We're office went fully remote. My husband works from home too, but he's downstairs and I'm upstairs and we just kind of, it's a good balance.

We can meet up for lunch.

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[00:06:30] Erin Courtenay: That's good for, that's good for the doggie, some exercise, isn't that right? Isn't that right? So I'm just going to back up a little bit because AI made you a power couple. That's amazing. Because it's a huge subject, and if it brought you together, first of all, I'd love to know like what your secret is, so you shared something, but we could get in that in a different show, but tell us more about how AI made you a power couple. What is it about aI?

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Like, that just was crazy. Like, I was a picture guy. She was a English major. The fact that I even thought that I could write a book would have been laughable. But here we are, right? So the technology has also enabled us. to do things that we wouldn't necessarily have been able to do before. So our first book, we actually helped speak it into existence.

Yeah, I'm not a classically trained writer. So it was more about talking it out and actually getting kind of that first draft. And it was a bad first draft, but it was really getting it out on page. So we actually had something to react to and then to work with. So, like, we've really used the technology as much as we can to help bolster our process, make ourselves more efficient, and also allow us to have our own complementary skill sets that we can work off of.

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Are we fools if we don't both? And we both were both like, if I have that feeling and you have that feeling. We should just do this together. I mean, it's one thing when you're an entrepreneur and you start off on your own and then you have your safety net. It's quite another when you put the whole household out on the, on the field.

And, but what it's done is it's definitely put us together where we've had learned, you know, you can't just be quiet about the communication, like I said, of, of voicing those things. I think if anything, AI is also challenged to say we're not a hype couple, like we're just not big into like, Oh, that's like the fancy, shiny new thing. That has also allowed us to sort of sound that off of each other and I brought us together saying, Hey, this is what I believe. These are the commitments that this is the vision. How do we stay at that? And how do you keep that prioritization? Because, you know, obviously, when it's your 9 to 5 doesn't stop at 5 and especially as an entrepreneur, but even as this together as a couple, so our son gets exposed to a ton of AI conversations. And then we start to see, see how that's showing out. So there's lots of ways that AI just has found its way to kind of, you know, wiggle its way into our lives. And then from that same respect kind of tie us even closer together of saying, are we going to double down on this or no, that's, that's, that's just a bunch of smoke and kind of being able to bounce that off of each other. I would definitely say that that's something that AI has pushed us for. And then over time now, it's definitely been sort of, if there's something I don't understand, I have someone I can ask and vice versa for him as well.

Do you see it this way or do I, you know, am I getting this right? So that's been, that's been a really nice part of it. You know, that makes it all like, I'm going to like sunshine and roses all the time. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. So.

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And like, Kris is so good about bringing up ways that manufacturers need to like, really think about integrate AI and. Yeah. Kris, can you tell us more about your thoughts on manufacturing and AI and maybe get these guys advice?

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[00:12:13] Scot Westwater: The easiest way I could say to avoid the hype is ignore it. Quite honestly. there's so much noise that's going on. And truthfully if there is just like open Open AI is doing a bunch of stuff and you keep hearing noise out of that. You see that Google's got Gemini stuff.

The reality is everything that they're talking about is going to impact like R& D. Like your, your business intelligence level things, like it's PhD level thinking is what you're basically getting out of some of these more advanced models. The reality is you can actually do a ton of optimization and workflow fixes with all of the technology that exists right now.

So like, I was kind of like joking, but kind of not like a lot of this hype is really just noise and it's not relevant to the manufacturing audience at all. And what we like to do is actually say, let's start with your business challenges. Let's actually go back to the basics and say, is it a lead gen challenge that you have? Are you having a retention issue? Is there a quality control issue? Let's start with kind of the basics and let's uncover what are the true challenges that the organization has. Then let's look at what technologies fit the bill. And sometimes we don't even need to get to artificial intelligence right up front.

Maybe a lot of time, actually, a lot of times it's coordinating and structuring the data in such a way where you can actually use it in AI systems in the future. You can also start to make intelligent business decisions because you have all the data centralized. You can start to get those insights in a more automated way.

So like my, my honest opinion is for a lot of the things that we see in the news and you know, the, the debates going on between Elon and Sam and all that stuff, it's really just noise, and it's not super relevant to this audience. Yes, if you're in it and you're like building models, it's really important to understand, but for the general business audience, it's just like knowing how to use the internet for a business context versus knowing how to code a website. It's like the same kind of concept, but because it's all coming from the technology side, you keep hearing, well, you need to know how to train a model. You need to be a data scientist. You need to be a linguist. You need to have all of these expertise. The reality is no, Google needs that expertise. OpenAI needs that expertise and they're building the tools that business will be able to use to be more efficient and also reinforce all of their business, business goals and objectives.

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So it's, let's put that, that as much hate to say, this is gonna be terrible, pragmatic way of thinking about it of that technology, because technology for technology sake is just, we've seen that not prove out. So, we need to be responsible. We know that not everyone gets to start with a million dollars. I don't even know who does anymore is then let's think about then what is a meaningful way that we can use technology to help either reduce costs or make things easier to work with. And I am also famous for saying, you know, wizards are for Hogwarts, right? It shouldn't be magic. It's something that makes sense in logic.

And then from there, you can understand that you can champion it better, by the way, as well, if you have a better understanding. But by no mean does that mean you need to go get a certificate and get an I. S. degree. That's not going to be helpful in the sense, in the long run, it's more of how do I use these technologies plug into them so that they can help me deliver against that bigger picture? So it is a combination of tools, right? It's tiny little things from, we've heard examples of, hey, it makes me, I can schedule meetings that much faster for my leads. Because I can use as a situation that will look at all the calendars and give me the, so it takes instead of five, 10 minutes, it's only like a minute for me to figure out the best time to meet with my prospect, all the way through something larger of how do I use computer vision to make sure that I can do an improved QA process that I'm able to make sure that on the floor we're able to do better management of inventory.

And those types of things we're scheduling, even being able to do those types of things that are very practical but incredibly impactful. And that's where it comes to finding where those, you know, nickels, dimes, quarters are to that way, then make things just run more efficiently, but also more basically more cost efficiently.

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[00:17:06] Scot Westwater: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that keeps coming up every time we talk to manufacturing clients is the overwhelm of documentation that they have to manage and also sift through.

So being able to just simply either type something in or have it automatically give you the certification that you need as part of the PO process, like having those types of automations built so someone doesn't actually physically have to go down track, you know, through, you know, a database of thousands of documents sometimes to actually find that information, but also potentially even making that self service.

So if a customer needs it, they don't necessarily have to call in or send an email. They could literally ask a chat bot, a conversational assistant, whatever, and get direct access to the documentation they need, which again complete the task, go on with your day. That's ultimately what we're trying to do.

So that's a really great use case. There's certainly no shortage of things you can do on the sales enablement side from, you know, lead identification to lead scoring, to nurturing those leads. And you can do some automation with that nurturing as well to make your sales team more efficient. So they can focus on closing deals versus all of the setup and the admin and entering into the CRMs and all the stuff that takes a lot of time. Those are all things that you can start to either automate. Or even like research, like you're looking up a new prospect, you haven't talked to him before, you want to understand, get a dossier out.

You can do something in a very automated way and have within three minutes a complete profile with here's their social stuff. Here's all of their business, you know, information and basically have better conversations because you're better prepared. You don't have to spend extra hours finding that information, but it's literally that two to three minutes of extra intelligence gives you that much more to talk about.

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And we can say, we can prepare, I mean, everything from SOP capture of pulling that and how do we extract that information from our workforce that we already have? And then how do I make that accessible? So is that through conversational thoughts that never see the light of day outside the walls of your organization.

So that's fine, but it's something that's accessible so that if I have someone who is, say, maybe not brand new, but still working, finding their way out, they have this easy reference and ways to get that information that they need so that they're following what they're supposed to be and following that protocol and have it at their fingertips or at their voice tips to ask those questions.

So that way then you're able to give them the support and make them feel like a truly valued employee so that then they stay because they're not frustrated.

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[00:20:08] Scot Westwater: Yep. Yep.

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[00:20:39] Scot Westwater: Well, and it's such a critical aspect of it since we do have a retiring workforce and that institutional knowledge is walking out the door. So like this is a way where we can capture it and actually use it for future training. Be able to ask questions to like a virtual employee.

So if you're in that person's new position or that old position's role, you can actually find out directly from them how they did stuff. Especially if there's little nuances and things like that with the machinery. Like that's just stuff that never gets passed down. So it really enhances training. It helps really with retention because then everyone knows how to perform the job to the best possible, you know, X standpoint. So, but yeah, so like we're big proponents of like, how can we shave off some of the tasks that we have on a daily basis to maybe not have to spend as much time pulling reports, but actually doing the analysis. Like that's the fun part of the job.

So like, but pulling the reports are horrible. So like, if we can have that done in an automated way, it saves me time. It allows me to focus on more useful and strategic initiatives and ultimately it makes us all more productive. So we don't want to replace people. We, the jobs will change. Like it'll change what we end up doing just because it's going to allow us to be more thinking and more strategic.

So just by nature of that, we're going to change our jobs, but it shouldn't make us lose our jobs. It should bolster our opportunities, quite frankly.

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Therefore, let's just find it though, that we're able to give you every piece of relevant information that you need. It's about facilitating, not replacing, and sometimes it will feel like that just because it's like we have a smaller workforce. So we need to get really smart about those things that we can use and use a machine to backfill, but it is not about with an intention of trying to because there is a reason why humans do the things they do. And so and a robot can't mean artificial intelligence is about the simulation of those things. It's not about the actual. Therefore we need a human in the loop.

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But like you said, start, start small and simple just to kind of dip your toe in the water with, you know, scheduling meetings. You know, let's leverage a tool, play with it, solve one problem and then maybe a little bigger problem and whatnot. But one of the things you mentioned, you've talked a lot about automating, and I'm really curious and I have my opinions on this, but what are your opinions on AI versus automation?

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So like there's platforms that exist where you can actually create virtual employees. Give them very specific tasks, and then they can hand that task off to the next virtual employee, does its thing, and so you could actually have research done by one, have someone pull the insights, you know, for another one, and then actually have a third one create a final report, and then you can actually select which language model it's using so that it's, we're using the best one for data analysis. We're using the best one for copywriting. We're using the best one to actually pull it all together. So like, there are ways that you can kind of get the benefit of the agentic stuff without really going super deep into the programming side. And again, it starts, it's kind of like what we're hearing on, you know, X and certainly at conferences that we speak at.

Agentic is the new buzzword. If generative was the big buzzword last year, agentic is definitely the buzzword of this year. But ultimately we're getting to a place where we're going to have agents that will be able to start to do some of these things more autonomously, and having things happen in the background, and then you'll see the results of the work. And that's ultimately where we're seeing a ton of time savings because we do have agents that we can work with to basically bolster our team, quite honestly.

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It's a repeatable, simple process, and this is where then we're allowing for a lot more complexities of being to adjust based off of basically situational awareness. And by awareness, I mean, there's factors that come within there. I don't ever want to imply, like, these systems are so smart that they can completely go off on their own.

I mean, that, that is the world of AGI. And there are things that do that. But as far as what's accessible today in an affordable level that you're not running a governmental program that is closer to that idea of the idea of a narrow task based AI. And I think that's where then that comes into the idea of is this automation or is this artificial intelligence? The two things come together. That's when we have perfection.

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So I'm curious if there's gonna be like a new term that's like the marriage of the two together at some point.

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[00:27:02] Susan Westwater: They're amazing at building the things they do, but the worse that you are. Like it is sometimes a different language.

Sure. Sure. I always feel like I have to remind them that I love them. So.

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So I think when you look at areas like sales enablement, that is an area where you can start using AI applications and get some results, which help make you start thinking about other areas of your business that you can start applying it to. And I really liked that you had said something to the effect of, you know, ask, what do you do three times a day?

You know, I think that's another easy place where people can pick up ROI because if you can show that efficiency, look, we're really doing this activity three times a day and not just one person, but eight people are doing this. So, now if we can save them time here, and I, I think when you solve a problem like that very easily, you start to think about other places you can apply things.

So, yeah, great. Yeah. Great. All right. Well, is this the time of the show where we move to our segment? I just learned.

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And there's, there's no rules to this. It can be anything from we've heard third grade science facts too we've talked a lot about AI and food and all bizarre types of things. So why don't we start with Erin? Finish the sentence. I just learned that.

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That didn't really literally that way. But the language of flowers, this is a Victorian concept from the Victorian era. And so you would convey a message to another person, your beloved, perhaps vis a vis the flowers that you were to give them. I think roses meant love. Pretty sure. I don't know all the flowers, have not committed that to memory, but I thought that was lovely.

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[00:29:36] Kris Harrington: And isn't there like a statement of giving somebody their flowers? When, you know, when they've done something really well or you're celebrating, right?

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Yeah, that's probably, it's funny how we hang on to those things. I love that about language. What about you, Kris? You learn anything?

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We, there's a lot of information about him, but he just wrote a new book that came out earlier this month that is about his life. It's called Source Code and My Beginnings or something to but I just had learned that he has a new book. And I have really enjoyed as I've gotten older reading memoirs, especially about very interesting people in their life.

So I'm, I'm excited to pick that one up. So.

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And now he's getting word out. I suppose he's thinking she might come back around. I could spend far too much time on this. Maybe after you read it, you can tell me what you think is going to happen.

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[00:31:14] Erin Courtenay: No, he did an interview and he was like that, I really screwed that one up or something and I was like,

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[00:31:24] Kris Harrington: Yeah, Lori, how about you? What did you just learn?

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[00:32:00] Kris Harrington: So do you have to eat it while it's still frozen?

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[00:32:07] Erin Courtenay: But it is smoothie.

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[00:32:11] Kris Harrington: Smoothie is what I was thinking too. Sure, yeah. But I was thinking, you know, if you let it thaw out, did you just lose all the value? Or should, yeah.

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[00:32:21] Kris Harrington: I always thought that too. I was interesting.

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[00:32:39] Kris Harrington: You've heard it here. You've heard it here.

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[00:32:44] Scot Westwater: Well, mine aren't nearly as fun as yours. Mine's a little bit more fact based, but we just learned that our book was a finalist for the Barry Award from the marketing foundation. And so we're one of the top three books that they recognize this year for impact and innovation. So that's super humbling and very exciting for us.

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[00:33:09] Susan Westwater: Great. And Susan. So mine isn't nearly as fact based, but, I was also doom scrolling, I guess it would be the best way of calling it. But I learned today I learned that Harrison Ford actually had a writer in his contract for the new Hulk movie that they are not allowed to show any outtakes of him as he was informing the CGI of him as Hulk because he is just, he's like, it's ridiculous, and no. And to know that and as established of an actor as he is still is like, you know what, there are certain moments where I am gonna look a fool. That he has that rider in there and that kind of made me feel a little better about even knowing that I guess we all feel like we're doing, when we do certain things we look stupid.

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[00:34:03] Lori Highby: It is, we'll renegotiate your contract later.

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[00:34:12] Lori Highby: No, no, no. That's great. I mean, I appreciate any little nugget that says like, people that are big celebrities whatever are actually real human beings just like all of us. Yeah, absolutely. That is a nice, humble reminder for all of us.

All right. So this was super fun. If our listeners and viewers were interested in connecting with either of you two, what's the best way that they can reach you?

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So those are the two best places to find us.

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[00:35:28] Susan Westwater: Yeah. And of course we have a website, pragmatic. digital, and there you can find some of our writings. We have our blogs and just learn a little bit more about our general approach. And there's obviously a contact form because again, we wouldn't be very good marketers if you didn't have ways to connect with us on every touch point.

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And you know, since we're streaming this to LinkedIn and hopefully you're tagged in it properly and folks can connect with you, but when we publish the podcast episode, we'll definitely include all of your contact information in our show notes. Thank you so much for, for being our guinea pigs and going live with us today.

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[00:36:08] Lori Highby: It was a lot of fun. All right, that's all we have today. This is three broads wrapping up. We want you to go out there and make something awesome.

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[00:36:25] Announcer: This wraps up today's broadcast. If you're looking to shake up the status quo at your organization, or just want to connect with these broads, visit mfgbroadcast. com. Contact Lori Highby for your strategic digital marketing initiatives. Contact Kris Harrington for OEM and aftermarket digital solutions.

And contact Erin Courtenay for web based solutions for your complex business problems. We've got a great offer specifically for our listeners. You can find more information about the offers and your hosts at mfgbroadcasts. com.