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you're listening to the pr wind down podcast the show for public relations professionals who are ready to see real change in the pr industry we are your hosts APA white and Laura Schuler let's get ready to wind down Laura do you want to ask me how I've been that's one of my my flaws I don't I rarely ask people how they are funny because I always start like the every podcast like Laura how are you in my head I don't know it was really funny to just like flip the script onto you April yeah where are you that was so genuine I have been a little bit under the weather so I have been on the couch being as lazy as possible which turns out is actually quite fun it's kind of sad it takes me being sick to like it's like getting a day off school right kind of yeah although it was all weekend too so it doesn't quite count I watched what did I watch I watched love hard which I normally this is how sick I was that I was just like Netflix get me a comedy cool whatever it is yes right it was like play and so at first I'm like this is gonna be so dumb because it's basically about this chick who gets catfished because she's a columnist that writes about dating horror stories and then you know gets we're still off her feet by this guy that she's been chatting with online and goes to surprise him for Christmas and discovers that he used his best friend's photo right and then craziness ensues I thought it was to be kind of cheesy or dumb it was actually really cute oh really yeah like I actually recommend it and I'm a little bit what's it called again uh love hard excuse I also watched Love Drunk in Ibiza which I also thought would be terrible but was actually quite entertaining wow you really are watching I'm telling you I'm telling you I just I just settled in and was like I don't care how bad they are I'm really sick and they're not that bad okay anyways baseball and Judge Judy so yeah they were actually I'm the Jeffrey Dahmer series that was all I've watched I was like I couldn't watch anything dark I kept trying to you know something oh I wanted to watch Deb versus heard or whatever the Netflix series is about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard but oh I think I need something that makes me happy and not this is not it did you watch the Wham documentary not yet oh that will make you happy what's it called again the Wham documentary I don't know it's literally called that okay I'll just look at it I mean it's pretty new okay cool and I have Katya in the waiting rooms it's like all right timing I'll let her in so our guest today is Katya Allison she is the host of Let's Talk marketing the podcast and also an expert marketing consultant and she's here today to talk about her new podcast recent Trends on marketing Communications and the future of branding thank you so much I'm very excited to be here we are so excited I first want to hear about this brand new podcast what inspired it I know you told me a little bit behind the scenes before our listeners give us the full story so I had previously hosted a podcast for a company that I was with and we had done it for a couple of years and then they decided to not move forward with a podcast and what I realized is shoot I really like it I really like it and I love being able to talk about marketing it is something that I get asked at family functions when you're out and about like new businesses people are always asking about things and I think in the world of marketing there is so much to learn and have to keep up that I thought I may as well bring that conversation to the Forefront now this podcast dives into any strategy across all of marketing disciplines it's not about an industry it's really just taking one subject and being able to dive deep but also being able to tell the marketer's story of the marketer that I'm interviewing because I think most people don't think of themselves as marketers but if you ask them what was your first marketing job and then what's your current marketing job to be able to see like that journey of oh I started in college doing the promotions and events and now I'm in PR there are a ton of people that start in PR as well too and then navigate their way through that so being able to uncover those stories being able to highlight strategies and Diving deep is ultimately where this came to be and I always say as long as the listeners walk away with one Insight that they can use or talk about at a cocktail party because I like to drop those little nuggets in there as well too I think like check it's done and I have so much fun doing it so cool I love that what are some of the trends that you've been super excited about lately where you think things are going so I am obsessed with AI right now which anyone in marketing who who isn't and I'm obsessed to the point where I'm starting to create just kind of like this pool of content that I'm going to eventually post out where I can do the learning of the AI for marketers because I think that's the tough thing too when it comes to AI you have to be able to dive deep into it and the question consistently comes up like is AI going to take marketing jobs away I definitely have an opinion about that I think that we can use it to our advantage people will never go away you have to be able to leverage that to maximize what it is that you're doing so that you can really dive into the creative part if there are things that like AI can help assist you in marry them both and then become a super prompter right like that's going to be now a qualification that you're going to see on resumes that you're going to see on LinkedIn I feel like I am a prompt writer and that means something because it's not just you know write me a Blog on AI for instance right that's going to spit out something very general and that doesn't really provide even an SEO value to it it's the prompter behind that that is going to be able to craft the right prompt to get something that does rank from an SEO perspective right so I think you have to be able to work hand in hand very passionate about like the content creation like I think my next thing is diving into the design aspect of AI right like so it's diving into like mid-journey or designer both AI tools but the prompting is very different for both it's my current Obsession and I think like you know and yeah understanding when to use it and when not to use it yeah it's so funny you say that the design piece my first introduction of that was a friend of mine who's an I.T future forward kind of guy and he's like did you know about this platform where you can describe the dream you had last night and it will recreate it for you and I was like that is insane what that's he's like that I have to know about this you have to you have to do it you have to do it right now do it right now like did you do it it's hard to say for me is remembering my dream right all of the little details of it some of them may be a little scary I mean move over Bloom house like that's it would be amazing I don't know this sort of creeps me out but it's it to me I think it's so amazing I was talking to a content creator that I follow and she had the most beautiful like front porch decoration it was around like the Fourth of July or some patriotic holiday of one or the other right and I commented on her post and I was like oh my God I'm obsessed with your front porch she immediately called me and she's like I have to tell you right now that's not my house I generated that picture in mid-journey and I'm like you're kidding me she's like no and the amount of people that were responding and engaging with that particular post was insane I was like well I feel like I've seen her house but I obviously don't know the details of it it had enough similarities and it was just an inspiration post which I thought was so fascinating she's like no I went in there and I dove in and started creating all these pictures and she posted that one as an inspiration picture and it legit looks like her house it was insane I'm a little bit creeped out a little bit I remember I'm like I can't decide what percentage I'm impressed and what percentage I'm creeped out I feel like the right answer is 70 30. and I don't know if one press 30. or you're okay with the 70 but like it's it's really a mixed bag but I think 70 30 is the right I think it's the right split it does make you think I had a conversation today and I wasn't on camera and they're like no I you're probably just an AI generated person and I just thought that that was the funniest thing I feel like it definitely has the potential to go there but I do enough work in AI where I can tell if something's written by AI or not right I have a question we've talked about this a little bit before I have used the open AI but information is only as new as 2021 I learned shortly after I started using it so I just a few days ago and only very once or twice cursory started using Bing Ai and Bard which is the Google do you do you know like what's better or worse or the difference or why you would use one over the other well I don't know that I could say definitively what is better or worse but I definitely have an opinion about it I don't think that there's yeah I don't think that there's one that's going to master it all I think that you have to be a master of all of them and know when to use them for what to use them for I think a lot of times yeah chat GPT is limited but you can also give it a website to take a look at you can also you know train it to get to know you a little bit better as well too and I think being a master of what's out there and knowing which ones you can go to for what is really going to give you like that upper hand like I know not to go to chat GPT for the most current relevant information like for that that's a research thing right and I can prompt it and knowing that if I wanted to do research I'm back dating that kind of research but that will at least help guide and narrow down my research my human research that I'm going to do like and that's why I say it's it's an assistant not a not a casual right right I've asked to do a couple things so I'm like this is malarkey I'm using that word yes I was like write a bio for Laura Schooler and they put stuff in there that was a lie and I was like where did you even come up with that but what I found in the little bit that I've used all of these is that the chat GPT I kind of liked it better than the other two so far and I want the chat gbt to become updated into you know today's date the other two the answers from a PR you know standpoint like doing some PR research or PR ideas I didn't love the way they answered me as much as I liked chat EBT but at gbt is not up to date so well see and to me it sounds like you're asking it for questions that you could also just search in Google for right which that will surface it up I think it's a really great tool for extracting things from like a transcript right like it's really great for that for a top level research really fantastic being able to summarize something fantastic for that or even giving you like a list of questions I'm not an advocate for using chat jpt for it to come up with questions for your podcast because I think that that has to be very organic but I do think for a guest that maybe is in an area that I don't maybe know a ton of I would ask chat GPT well let's take product marketing for example I know enough about product marketing but I want to be able to come up with some really relevant questions like I I would prompt chat GPT right and say okay you are an experienced marketer in digital marketing this is your area of expertise you understand go to market plans but you want a better understanding of the role of product marketing for B2B companies right like that's an incredibly extensive prompt that you put in there and then it's going to give me a summary of what it is and this is also how I use chat GPT as well too is I don't know if I just don't understand technology local language as much like I have to really be able to absorb it so oftentimes when it gives me that response I'll say you know I don't quite understand this or can you explain it in an analogy and I can even tell it what type of analogy right like as a as a parent can you give it to me as like an analogy that a parent would understand a parent of a two-year-old would understand right and then it's giving me an analogy that can really help me break it down and totally understand that's a cool way of asking yeah that's a cool way of using that I have thought of yeah that makes a lot of sense this is a bit of a curveball a story that Laura found that we are going to talk about a little bit later on the podcast after we lose you but I'm so curious about your thoughts on it so there is an article about you know should the use of AI impact what you're billing clients right so if it's making you faster at your job do you still build them for the same amount of time if you're an hourly consultant and as a person listening to the podcast how do you account for AI making you faster at things that normally you would have charged double for so I definitely have an opinion on this and like I knew you would I knew you would okay but I know she can handle it I have an opinion about everything um I don't know I would first of all like I like to do my Consulting contracts in one of two ways one is the retainer right and then the other is Project face and the pro I like project face because I know exactly how much time I'm dedicating they know exactly what to expect and how I get to that to me doesn't matter I think for the retainer clients it's really hard for people to see value from like Consulting from that perspective right yeah you know how much time are you spending on XYZ so but that's really great for people who don't know what it is that they want but they know that they want someone to just kind of be there so it's really great for that yeah I think when it comes to leveraging you know chat GPT or any AI to make you faster faster doesn't mean that you would pay less it just means I'm gonna get to it I can do more for you so that's to me is the way that I explain it it just means that something that would have you know taken me one to two weeks to research let's say something takes me two weeks to research because I have to be able to do interviews and I also have to do my own research and I have to you know come up with questions and do all of these different things is now cut in half that's a week that means that I can get to the next project or the next part of the project sooner so that they are getting what it is that they've asked for sooner rather than later yeah so to me it's not that I'm trying to charge more for that there are certain things that take a little bit more time but it allows me to be a lot more creative and really dive into the strategy because it's I use it as such an admin yeah that makes sense very cool I'm so glad I asked this is a this is a Choose Your Own Adventure two-part question is there something that we didn't ask you yet that you wish we had something you're passionate about you want to talk about or something you want to ask us I would say I kind of want to throw that question back at you in regards to the AI and charging more and having that conversation since I'm not going to be part of the conversation I kind of want to sneak peek as to what your thoughts are on it that's very interesting well we have purposely as an agency gotten away from billable hours that we share with clients I I know a lot of people are doing that and sometimes when we're up against a competitor who is leading with that it's like oh well they're giving us 35 hours a week or whatever so how many hours are we getting for that retainer it's like what like that's not how this works right so we've gotten away from that on purpose however as a former freelancer I think it is a confounding question because you do want to work more efficiently with your clients you do want to use the tools that are out there not do things old school way just for the sake of it to charge more right but also I have found as I got older that I get faster and faster and faster at things so you know I can probably write a press release I'm afraid to say this out loud but like 30 minutes you know yeah a junior person or me as a junior person it might have taken me two or three hours right and it's like I just have all the formulas on my head I already know what I'm looking for I know I need a quote that's roughly like this I know that the structure is going to be here like like and then done in general I even as a freelancer kind of tried to make it be like okay well press releases generally take about an hour or two what you know whatever like is that okay with you does that work through the budget and then if you're faster than that then you're faster than that and you never know even if you write it in the blink of an eye it may come back with very heavy edits because somebody in the house has a totally different take on whatever you know so so it just gives you like buffer too right of how much time it's going to take you to to complete something so yeah because it is true there there is an over and under when it comes to any work that you're doing and ultimately when you're a consultant they're paying for your time and your expertise but mainly your expertise in something so the fact that I've been a marketer for 14 plus years I know what to your point I can be efficient in and you have to be able to be the expert in your space and being the expert also means being the expert in the tools in your space as well too and that is part of it that is part of it and to me that's also I think why I've I have really Dove straight into AI because I'm like this is obviously not going away I don't want to be a step behind and if I'm not digging in and figuring out the best way to use this for myself and then for my customers then when I go to the next brands that I work for I'm also taking all of that expertise to them and that's going to make them better as well yeah right the older you get it the more experienced you get the better you are the faster you can do things I mean you can shortcut stuff I mean immeasurably so should you be getting paid a lot less because of that no you should in fact be getting paid more because of that yeah so so I agree I agree like that totally yeah that is true like I'm being penalized because I'm doing my job better right now I'm being more efficient and more accurate for you I'm only getting paid for 12 minutes and then like the junior person who had to go around the world and back and it took them two weeks is getting paid like you know thousands of dollars while I made 37.50 I made 37.50 yeah it doesn't make sense so you say okay well then just make your hourly rates a lot higher but if you say to a client yeah I bill 750 an hour I mean you know their head will explode so that's why it's been a discussion before AI so now how does AI maybe finally help us get to it resolution or something because it's a challenge somebody myself who sometimes builds retainer sometimes by the hour sometimes by the project you know well and I also think it probably happens a ton more like you said from a PR perspective because how do you also quantify relationship building which is a must in PR to be really good at it you have to be able to build your network but how do you articulate that down to like a billable like hey no I you know went to this thing and I met this person I built my network so that when this person reaches out and I've got a story for them like you know I have or if there's a crisis it's not going to be as bad because I already have a friendship with the person the other thing I've noticed and this is this sounds crazy like 101. the imperativeness is that a word the let's make one essays they do I do a lot better in math than verbal it was just a joke about this but building media lists is so important I've seen how important it is not only that Junior people aren't sending other people on some wild goose chase that's never going to amount to anything yeah but staying on top especially now with the people who are moving because they're moving every week and if you can get to somebody like right when they move to a new job you are so much more likely to get a story right away because they haven't been bombarded by 10 000 PR people yet and it works for me over and over again and the reason why I tell you this is because as a senior consultant working with agencies for the latter Junior people who are you know they don't know there's so many nuances about list building and I like flying I'm like you need to put you know Mike Smith on this list and they're like Wahoo what I'm like put Mike Smith on the list and then the next thing you know Mike Smith becomes our best friend and writes three stories about us within three months how do you put a value on on that but it changed the nature of the client's uh trajectory in the media now I totally agree in two minutes and this is why like the time question is so interesting like you you are really paying for expertise if everybody could do it then there wouldn't be a need that you're filling right but I think not everybody can do it not everybody can one build the relationships you know build your networks and know exactly what it does to like keep in touch but more importantly I think especially from a PR perspective it's connecting the dots right you're picking up on all of those things and like all of a sudden Mike Smith yeah sure you had a conversation with Mike Smith about Ai and this person is now doing it wait hold on just a second I I now have a story that we can build around like let's do this we talked about our last podcast that has come out and I even quoted I think myself [Laughter] a true genius quote the peer people like what did I say were your memory your historian your dot connectors all of those things and so how do you put a price on that it's not about time it's something else okay so with that where can people find you and where can they find your podcast so both can be found on LinkedIn there's business page for let's talk marketing podcast I am on obviously LinkedIn as well too look up Katya Allison the podcast drops every Tuesday um Spotify Apple wherever you listen to your podcasts is where you can find that and then definitely tell everybody reach out I always connect with people and it is all about Connections and networking and you know us working together it was such a pleasure having you on thank you so much and we look forward to chatting with you again hopefully soon interesting discussion about AI with Katya and yeah that it led to how AI is going to make Consultants faster so are they going to build for less time when that's how they make their money right and so there was an article in axios that addressed that and I think we covered a lot of it during our discussion but there was another article that also sort of wrapped into this that I thought would be an interesting add-on in work life if you're familiar with that by Chloe Callahan she writes the tons of stories for work life and the title of her story was nearly half of workers say they work four hours a day and it talks about that nobody actually sits at their computer and works for eight straight hours you're doing different things when you're in the office and when you're at home and you're at home maybe you're doing the laundry and walking your dog when you're in the office maybe you're watching some videos or stuff on your phone or whatever on the side apparently people are working basically half truly grinding working half the day I feel like a lot of PR people do work a lot more than 40 hours a day I mean they really are grinding yeah so I don't know what category of workers but it was just sort of a study that they did that's interesting I mean what's funny is that when I made the switch from in office to freelance I felt like when I was freelance was the first time I actually worked an eight-hour day right because there wasn't a lot of distractions of people who you worked with or these weird business imperatives like you have to go to this meeting and do this training and you know whatever you have to walk all the way down the hallway to go to the bathroom and then you stop and get coffee and then you run into somebody and you talk about their date last night and a half an hour goes by and right it's like I felt like it didn't happen anymore right no if you're home alone the likelihood that you're having random conversations with people is almost while you're going to the bathroom is zero right unless it's like oh Kitty right yeah so they did this blind survey and they surveyed like people at major companies so 919 Amazon employees said that 40 of them were four hours or fewer 43 at Microsoft which was 476 respondents yikes and 40 at Google which was 393 respondents each of those companies are on a hybrid schedule and meta which is still remote but pushing for hybrid by the end of the summer had 33 percent of people work four hours or less than four out of the 316 respondents from the company and this is people in person it's hybrid so it doesn't mean that all remote companies are seeing the same results a company called atlassian which encourages employees to work from wherever they want has 51 of the 82 employees that responded reporting that they were four hours or less so here is what I started thinking when I am Consulting for a lot of times for agencies or whatever and I'm on call I'm on call you know arguably eight nine ten hours a day and at any moment I could be called to pay attention to this or join this meeting or solve something or write something or pitch something or whatever I'm sitting at my desk I'm home I'm I'm not off doing other stuff like I'm ready to work and I keep track of my time but at the end of the day maybe I work three hours four hours five hours but I'm sitting there for eight or nine hours do you understand my questions yeah yeah you know I'm expected to be doing stuff in real time right okay so I'm like being a full-time employee but not getting paid full-time hours so so it made me think of that when it says that people are only really working four hours or less and I'm thinking well right but I'll work my work right right and I'm not getting paid for the time that I'm literally like either sitting available or right you know across the street available so it made me think about this whole idea of how should consultants get paid is it by the hour or is it something else how do you come to that number so I think it's up to them I think you could be on a retainer if that makes you feel more comfortable the over under that Katya talked about is there right sometimes you're going to go over and sometimes you'll be under and you get paid the same or you do hourly I would say I know for example when I was freelancing and I felt like I had to be available I would get assigned thing usually late in the day and then just work until they were done and go to bed right so we're like I waited for all of it to pile up right I spent my day doing whatever writing music or going hiking or like just doing stuff for myself if you are tied to a desk and you have something else that you are passionate about whether it's okay I want to be a standout comic I wanna write a play I want to create a piece of music I mean these are all creative Endeavors they wouldn't have to be I want to start my own clothing business I'm like you know there are things that you could be doing at your desk that you're sort of parallel pathing so you're working on that until you get interrupted cool now go over here I bill for that go back to my passion project and I'm working on that but I I think you know being like stuck at a desk for eight hours waiting for work and billing for three I would not do so I would either restructure how you do your work day and say whatever you need I'll get done by 8 PM Eastern before I go you know eat dinner or go to bed or like I'm just making this up but I would either do it that way or I would be like okay I'm gonna be at my desk but I don't belong to you I belong to myself so I'm gonna whatever it is that I care about right you know I'm gonna do in between it still isn't answering my question of basically how should Consultants who are senior you know I don't think you can Bill any hours that you're sitting there unless you're on retainer you either need to fill the hours of something with more billable stuff or fill it with stuff that matters to you so you don't feel taken advantage of you know so then it goes back to the discussion we're having with Katya like these things that you know somebody like me or me is able to do in minutes where it would take Junior people to do it at what point are you getting paid for your brain and expertise no matter what it is I would say when you're a consultant and you're able to charge packages right like retainers yeah right or like I will do your rebranding for twenty thousand dollars yeah then you do because then only you know how many hours it takes like I said most people don't care how many hours it takes like that's so in the weeds for most people I mean there's certain people that want to nickel and dime you and they care about your hourly rate and that's the thing it's like oh let's get her down to this and then it's like right when you touch it but it's also like who cares if okay so okay fine I'm 75 an hour instead of 100 and now I'm gonna just charge you an extra right half an hour like cool like if that's what makes you think that you got your deal well right because I would say that a lot of times when you talk to agencies or you know anybody about doing freelance work agencies in particular ask what's your hourly rate and that's and it's like if you give the wrong answer they're like oh well we you you're too expensive exactly okay well but it's gonna take me an hour to do it while you're gonna pay somebody less but they're going to take 10 hours to do it so I mean I usually tell people when they're interviewing and they're a friend I know you're thinking about coming in like 125 like in order to tell you if you do that you can but if you do that the number of hours that any agency can afford to assign you is so low am I not actually benefit you so you might be better off coming at like 75 85 whatever and then you get more hours because you're less intimidating with your hourly rate yeah unless unless you were that you know in demand ringer that they bring in to you know be the wolf like a Pulp Fiction the cleanup wolf right like if you're that person and only you can do what you do yeah and nobody else in the entire industry can do it right so you're one of three people who doesn't charge 300 an hour go for it because you you're the only one that can get by with that like you're the only crisis consultant who knows how to clean up right I think that I think that's just the answer I think you got to it everybody wants to be able to just be like I bill you know you have to pay me twenty thousand dollars for me to even walk in the door but there's really only a few people who could get away with that because we still live in reality unfortunately I mean there's a lot of people we don't live in AI yeah and it's like is everyone replaceable no but kind of yeah okay I think that that is the current reality yeah and there are those who have figured out how to live above reality and there's also Young Junior people that aren't charging that much that I figured out how to be really effective yeah and you're competing with them even though you're more senior is the extra forty dollars an hour actually that more much more important you know what I mean like that's the that's what you're up against when you're pricing yourself as a freelancer you have to figure out how to walk the lines yeah I'm sorry it's kind of a depressing answer no I mean I think it's the right realistic answer but like I said there are those people who have been able to create a magical world and that's what I guess we all want to try to get to yeah you know all right well maybe one day we can have a discussion with somebody about how to create the fantasy that'll be fun okay all right on that note should we call it a day and say of what else even though I'm not French okay good thank you for tuning in for the pr wind down podcast and thank you to Katya for joining us for a really fun interview remember to share your own agency stories and questions if you subscribe and leave us a rating it helps us reach new listeners like you and way to wind with you again next time laughs uh that was spoken like somebody's waiting for me to chime in and didn't um you wanna try again no because we never can do it that was good okay great it's for rap but I didn't like clean my house I didn't like exercise like I didn't really make myself proper meals I just sort of acted did you make yourself improper meals yeah lots of them lots of like yogurt and granola with strawberries lots of frozen pizza I love that I made hot dogs who eats hot dogs were they did they plump when you put when you cook them I do them on the stove they're turkey hot dogs you were all right it was just too I was like too tired it wasn't even too lazy or just like literally didn't have the energy so it's like whatever I had to eat cereal who eats cereal I ate cereal for a while I haven't done it recently I started a child like I I was like it was like a five-year-old left alone in the house with just enough know-how to make herself food well my trainer he's my old trainer because I just don't go to him anymore but he he told me once that my diet should not consist of things that I could find in a child's birthday party I was like oh my God that's totally like my diet okay so cake like ice cream cake pizza and candy like and soda [Laughter] all right