In this 350 2nd episode of data driven, Frank
Speaker:and Andy speak with Blake Reichenbach. Blake is a
Speaker:product manager at HubSpot, focusing on the Content AI platform,
Speaker:and is the owner of Howdy Curiosity, an online nonfiction
Speaker:bookstore and learning community. Stay tuned for a
Speaker:delightful conversation on data, AI, and the love of
Speaker:books.
Speaker:Hello, and welcome to Data Driven. The podcast where we explore the emergent fields
Speaker:of artificial intelligence, data science, and, of course, data engineering,
Speaker:Which is really the underpinning that makes it all possible. And to that
Speaker:end, I have my very favoritest, data engineer in the world,
Speaker:Andy Leonard. How are you doing, Andy? I
Speaker:am unlike both of you, I have not yet had COVID,
Speaker:but I and I'm doing well. But it's in it's It's in our
Speaker:house. We have a a home member here who has tested
Speaker:positive. So we're all walking on eggshells,
Speaker:over here. And, but I am doing well. I love
Speaker:the, you know, the data engineering part. I really love Frank's
Speaker:article that it was written way back last year. It's So
Speaker:2023 about roadies about roadies versus the
Speaker:rock stars, and he calls weed data engineers the, roadies.
Speaker:And, yeah, doing well. Frank, I got to present last
Speaker:night in person In person. Richmond Richmond, Virginia,
Speaker:Not not Kentucky. Which is a good segue to our guest It is. Who
Speaker:is in Richmond. Andy and I met in Richmond. We organized the Richmond code camp,
Speaker:although that was Richmond, Virginia. We are here today with Blake
Speaker:Reichenbach, who is a project manager
Speaker:product manager, sorry, at HubSpot Focusing on the Content
Speaker:AI platform, and I love to know more about HubSpot in general. One
Speaker:of the podcasters that I follow and and admire is John Lee Dumas, and I
Speaker:know he has with HubSpot. But welcome to the show,
Speaker:Blake. As we were talking in the virtual green room, you're recovering from
Speaker:COVID. I had COVID flu strain a, Sinus infection then
Speaker:followed up with this week. You're such an overachiever, Frank. I have to do
Speaker:it all day. I just have to do it all day. I know. He's putting
Speaker:he's putting my COVID to shame. I Should've got out and gotten back into something
Speaker:else before joining so that I could keep up. I have 3 kids, also
Speaker:known as bioweapon incubators. So
Speaker:Fair. Fair. My my only kid is, you know, won't
Speaker:be visible on the podcast, Yes, of course. But he's the, large bulldog sitting
Speaker:behind me, and thankfully, he doesn't tend to break too many germs into the
Speaker:house. That's awesome. That is That's awesome.
Speaker:So so tell us about HubSpot and and what it is you do there.
Speaker:What is HubSpot exactly? It's one of those things that's on I have a board
Speaker:of things I'm supposed to look at. And HubSpot is is is on the list,
Speaker:but with everything going on, I haven't had a chance to.
Speaker:Yeah. Well, if that's like your Kanban board of Software to dig into. I would
Speaker:definitely recommend moving that up in your backlog to dig in HubSpot.
Speaker:I'm clearly biased as a HubSpot employee, but It is a really cool company and
Speaker:a really cool product. So we're a leading customer relationship
Speaker:management platform or CRM platform for scaling companies.
Speaker:Our platform includes a bit of everything that a business
Speaker:needs for their front office. So we have marketing, we have sales, we have
Speaker:Service, we have data operations, and we have the part of the
Speaker:platform that I live in, which is our CMS. And
Speaker:All of these different hubs as we call them or or product lines,
Speaker:exist around that central CRM. We try and make
Speaker:everything as, you know, fittingly for this this podcast, as
Speaker:data driven for our customers as possible so that they have these
Speaker:Integrated systems across their different business pillars, so that
Speaker:things can stay in sync and aligned, and, you
Speaker:know, staying true to The data that they
Speaker:have about their customers to make the most informed decisions possible.
Speaker:As far as what I do at HubSpot, I've been with
Speaker:the company for, I'm going into my 7th year
Speaker:now, which I guess by, like, SaaS industry standards makes
Speaker:me a grandfather. But
Speaker:I for the last about, two and a
Speaker:half years or so, I've been a product manager. I
Speaker:started out in our product security organization. My focus is
Speaker:really on, you know, maturing our content abuse
Speaker:and fraud detection systems. And then I moved over more
Speaker:recently into our content AI platform. So
Speaker:thinking about this really exciting emerging world of
Speaker:AI and generative AI and how that's reshaping
Speaker:or informing the way that content marketers work and figuring
Speaker:out what solutions are going to have a
Speaker:meaningful impact for content marketers.
Speaker:Interesting. I would imagine AI and generative
Speaker:AI is probably very much on your radar.
Speaker:Oh, yeah. Has that been I don't think I've Sorry. Go
Speaker:ahead. I was gonna say I don't think I've had a conversation in the last
Speaker:6 months that has not included something about generative
Speaker:AI Or, you know, machine learning or chat
Speaker:GPT or Sam Altman. It's very, very
Speaker:central to, you know, what I'm working on and where my focus is.
Speaker:Interesting. So so how disruptive has it been for your
Speaker:your business? I mean, so is it I guess it's fair to say that that
Speaker:that HubSpot is a CRM, right? And
Speaker:how do people use AI? Like, how is
Speaker:AI integrated into your platform? Yeah.
Speaker:So we have, quite a bit
Speaker:of of new AI features that we've rolled out Over the
Speaker:last year or so, you know, I
Speaker:I again, my my focus is really within the CMS So what I'm most
Speaker:familiar with is within our our tools for managing content,
Speaker:building websites. And we've rolled out quite a few,
Speaker:different AI and ML assistance, within
Speaker:our feat our feature set. A lot of those are still, you
Speaker:know, in beta and have to be opted into, But, you know, introducing
Speaker:different, generative AI models to help marketers
Speaker:just streamline their efficiencies. So doing things like
Speaker:Generating meta descriptions for their pages or rewriting
Speaker:content, you know, pretty what I think in the market is
Speaker:becoming standard for generative AI tasks, has
Speaker:really been our our starting point there. You know, I think
Speaker:we as a company have been,
Speaker:Looking at AI, you know, longer than it's been this, like,
Speaker:flashpoint in public conversation. Coming from the security background,
Speaker:one of my first Big projects and product security was in, you
Speaker:know, maturing our abuse detection systems and figuring out, you know, how can
Speaker:we leverage LLMs? How can we leverage machine learning models
Speaker:To improve our precision and make sure that fewer, you
Speaker:know, fraudulent pieces of content slipped through the cracks.
Speaker:And then once, you know, ChatGPT became, like, the
Speaker:tech topic of the day, you know, that's where,
Speaker:HubSpot along with a lot of other folks in, in the same space started saying,
Speaker:okay, cool. How can we pull these features in app to,
Speaker:You know, give our customers new new tools to use, new things to play around
Speaker:with, and better ways to improve their own efficiencies.
Speaker:Interesting. And and you're in the since you're in that
Speaker:marketing space, like, the and and and I would imagine
Speaker:It's a very data heavy world anyway. Right? Like, it's a very it's
Speaker:you already start off with a bias towards being data driven. Yes. I said the
Speaker:name of my own show. But but, I mean, like and I think that,
Speaker:you know, I'm just fascinated by marketing.
Speaker:Right. Like, marketing is my new fascination for 2024,
Speaker:because I realized in some ways, I'm good at it. In some ways, I'm horrible
Speaker:at it. Actually, Really got awfully horrible at it.
Speaker:So, but it's funny because as I look into it more,
Speaker:I've reached out to people to kinda help, and they're like, oh, no. You gotta
Speaker:separate the data. I'm like, this is a lot of data analysis. This is this
Speaker:is my jam. Like, I I should be better at this.
Speaker:Yeah. You know, good marketing is data driven. I think
Speaker:that, you know, in marketing, especially content
Speaker:marketing, It's often seen like as much an alchemy as it
Speaker:is a science, where on the one hand, you have some marketers who
Speaker:are, like, Data obsessed. You know, they will only write
Speaker:a blog post if they have estimated search volumes and,
Speaker:like, you know, customer persona data. And Then you have other
Speaker:marketers who are kind of like, let's crank things out and see what sticks.
Speaker:And I think that's a really kind of interesting intersection
Speaker:with generative AI Because a lot of, you know,
Speaker:early generative AI tools for marketers, and I'm not going to name
Speaker:specific companies. I don't wanna start any kind of, you know, your flame or there,
Speaker:but A lot of of GenAI tools have kind of just been like
Speaker:a a churn and burn factory where they're cranking
Speaker:out a lot of mediocrity really fast. And, you
Speaker:know, you kind of see if you if you look at performance graphs of
Speaker:companies that have gone this route of just, like, Cranking out
Speaker:generative articles without, you know, human in the loop processes.
Speaker:Like, you'll see their web traffic and their conversions kinda going up, up,
Speaker:up, up, up, up, hit a cliff, Boom. Drop. Right. And, you know,
Speaker:there's not that long term ROI. There's not that,
Speaker:meaningful customer connection that lets The brand really build upon
Speaker:itself. And so I think that where we're at as an industry now is
Speaker:this really cool place where The marketers, but
Speaker:also the Gen AI tools that are winning or going to win
Speaker:long term are the ones that are able to incorporate data in a
Speaker:meaningful way. And the products that are able to,
Speaker:present generative AI functionality In a
Speaker:way that is intuitive and that prioritizes UX,
Speaker:which frankly has not been a big emphasis in the Gen AI
Speaker:industry, for the last Dear, I think a lot of companies are rushing to get
Speaker:to market and really focusing on, like, what can the Gen AI do
Speaker:and not how do customers use it? So that's where,
Speaker:you know, things are super exciting for me right now is we're at
Speaker:this place of combining generative AI
Speaker:with Customer data with user data and
Speaker:also figuring out what's the right balance of having humans
Speaker:in the loop To make sure that brands are able to have that content that's
Speaker:really unique and that is special for their brand
Speaker:and that lets them build relationships with Customers who
Speaker:are probably pretty skeptical, frankly, of of
Speaker:generative AI on the whole. Well, I love that
Speaker:phrase, humans in the loop. And,
Speaker:usually, when I like a phrase that a guest says, I'll say I'm stealing
Speaker:that, but we're recording this on the 12th January
Speaker:2024. So I will put it in quotes
Speaker:and I will credit you, for that.
Speaker:Well, I've I've stolen that from another A number of other
Speaker:articles, so I can't take total credit for it. But if it's the first time
Speaker:you've heard it yeah. If it's the first time you've heard it, you can attribute
Speaker:that to Blake Reichenbach of Richmond, Kentucky? There we go. I'll I'll
Speaker:do that, and I'll throw in a just, you know, a footnote that says Blake
Speaker:says he heard this elsewhere So that you're covered as well. We wanna be
Speaker:above board here on data driven. I I just wanna do that.
Speaker:But I one of the reasons that phrase strikes me
Speaker:Is that the successes that I've seen, you were
Speaker:mentioning the the successes going up and up and up. I have seen
Speaker:humans in the loop, You know, for those those types of
Speaker:of, solutions. And what it this is
Speaker:just my simple Bonneville, Virginia, You know, mind the
Speaker:way that I think about things, but it it appeals to me
Speaker:as, a little bit like the old mechanical
Speaker:Turk type thing Where in that,
Speaker:you've got a person doing what people do best, and you got
Speaker:LLMs doing what it really does best. And I mean, on both
Speaker:counts. They outshine the other.
Speaker:Saw an interesting tweet not long ago that said, all
Speaker:LLM hallucinate. And it's just the answers that you
Speaker:get that you like, you know, that help you or accelerate
Speaker:you are, You know, are are the ones that are just finding
Speaker:the next phrase or nailing the topic closest to them, whatever,
Speaker:though the next word. And and they just are they're doing all all the
Speaker:time that's happening. It's just some of the times the closest word is, you know,
Speaker:half an inch away. Other times, it's half a mile. And
Speaker:so their hallucination is what they do. And I found that was an
Speaker:interesting take, on that, but that's
Speaker:where the human In the loop, the person, you know, do they
Speaker:they the person in the box in the mechanical turk, that's when they
Speaker:shine because they can look at this and go, well, that no. That's
Speaker:not right. You know, we can't we can't send that forward.
Speaker:So don't really have a question. I just was, very intrigued
Speaker:by That phrase, that turn of phrase. And again, if I
Speaker:use that, I'll make sure, Blake Reichen, Reichenbach
Speaker:from, yeah, from Richmond, Kentucky. I'm making sure I've
Speaker:got it written down. I was making sure I was gonna say Richmond, Virginia. It's
Speaker:such a I almost said Richmond, Virginia, and I almost didn't. I was like, was
Speaker:it Reichenbach? I didn't wanna I didn't
Speaker:wanna call you the, name of the guitar the really cool guitar
Speaker:manufacturer, Which is sounds close. The old
Speaker:Rickenbockers. Oh. But which would be a compliment. Now I
Speaker:don't know if it'd be a compliment or not. I like Rickenbockers. To me, it
Speaker:would be, but to you, I'd be saying your name wrong. So Then break it
Speaker:at this part out. Just just just pull thing out. I have a lot of
Speaker:experience with people saying my name wrong. Yeah. That I say your name
Speaker:wrong. Oh, everybody says my name wrong. Even technically, even I say it
Speaker:wrong. I got 2 first names. So, you know There you
Speaker:go. I I spent this past summer in Switzerland,
Speaker:which is where my family's originally from. And So technically, I've learned that I
Speaker:am also saying my name wrong. But,
Speaker:you know, I I have lived in Central Kentucky, almost
Speaker:my entire life. You know, foothills of the Appalachians.
Speaker:And so, I I have heard pretty much
Speaker:Any variation of the combination of letters in my name, I've
Speaker:I've heard it. Even even my own father often says our
Speaker:last name is Rickenback. Which that's
Speaker:A little bit further off base than Reichenbach. No. Not at
Speaker:all. That that is in earnest. Yes. Gotcha. Well,
Speaker:it's a little I'm I'm sorry. I wandered off. This is my job on the
Speaker:podcast. That's what we were doing. We were doing. True. But,
Speaker:What do you see as kind of the next step in and it's kind of
Speaker:2 things in it, but we'll focus on the, the hallucination
Speaker:part of it. And I think that's maybe part of the driver for when
Speaker:you, you know, you were describing it goes up and up and up and falls.
Speaker:I think that may be part of what's defining the fall. So what do you
Speaker:think the next step is to maybe manage that or mitigate
Speaker:it? Yeah. So, you know, I think
Speaker:the Sort of first element in
Speaker:that equation is something that I I think guests on this podcast
Speaker:have talked about before, which is like having, smaller, more
Speaker:precise models. They're trained on more nuanced datasets.
Speaker:Right? One of the really powerful things About, an
Speaker:LLM like chat g p t or or one of
Speaker:OpenAI's models is that they are, pretty
Speaker:solid generalist. Right? And they have this really wide swath of
Speaker:training data, but the sort of double edged sword
Speaker:there is Oftentimes, they're looking at such a
Speaker:huge dataset that the lines
Speaker:start to blur between entities, between topics. And
Speaker:so that sort of predictive language capacity to
Speaker:understand what should come next gets a little bit diffused.
Speaker:Yeah. Right. So I think that as we see more
Speaker:industry specific or topical specific,
Speaker:or even like, I think Data training
Speaker:sets that are honed in on a specific
Speaker:brand's voice and their own, like, you know,
Speaker:existing corpus Of, of published data. That's
Speaker:where I think we'll see some pretty big improvements in the
Speaker:quality of these gen AI outputs. Yeah. But The
Speaker:other part of the equation and what I'm really excited
Speaker:about and really interested in is figuring out what that right
Speaker:balances between giving autonomy to generative
Speaker:AI tools and having humans guide those gen AI tools.
Speaker:Right. Gotcha. Because Ultimately, I
Speaker:think we're still in a phase of, you know, speaking about the content
Speaker:marketing industry specifically. I think we're still in a phase
Speaker:where People want to connect with people and
Speaker:for, you know, brands to be able to demonstrate their own,
Speaker:expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. You know, that's
Speaker:still really critical for building those relationships as a
Speaker:business to your customers. And so I think that
Speaker:What's going to be a big improvement when it comes
Speaker:to incorporating GenAI into these processes is figuring
Speaker:out that right balance Of saying, here's what I'm willing to offload to
Speaker:an l l m versus here is what, you know, explicitly
Speaker:requires human intervention or human guidance or human
Speaker:prompting. And what makes that equation
Speaker:really complicated, like, talking through that in theory, it sounds
Speaker:pretty straightforward. But then as a product manager, what I'm
Speaker:always thinking about is, like, how does the customer experience that?
Speaker:So how does the average user Who's, you know, maybe not coming
Speaker:from a data science background or an AI background or a software
Speaker:background. How are they going to interact with these products?
Speaker:You know, are they going to feel like you're giving them a worksheet and
Speaker:they have homework and they're saying, what the heck is this? Or are they going
Speaker:to feel like, I'm losing control. This is, you know, a
Speaker:runaway train and I'm overwhelmed. Right?
Speaker:There's a a really fine Balance to be struck
Speaker:there. But I also think it's it's an
Speaker:important balance to work toward, and I think it's really important for Companies
Speaker:building generative AI tools, myself included as a, you know, PM at
Speaker:HubSpot Sure. To pursue that right balance and to,
Speaker:you know, figure out how users interact with the
Speaker:with these tools in a way that gives them a sense of control
Speaker:And that lets their own expertise shine through while also helping
Speaker:them work more efficiently. I I love that,
Speaker:Juxtaposition, if you will. And I I see it, you know,
Speaker:it there's the human, driven part of this, And
Speaker:then there's this other, vector. See what I did there?
Speaker:Where you're you're using the data to inform the human And
Speaker:both those lines keep shifting and the intersections also
Speaker:shift along. Well, it's more than that, but that is a great,
Speaker:a way to look at it, kind of a, you know, a a 50,000 foot
Speaker:view, and those lines will continue to shift like you
Speaker:said. The autonomy part, I totally
Speaker:agree. I think that's you that is a hard call.
Speaker:And I you know, like, from what you just said, I gather that
Speaker:The answer may be, several different spots, you know,
Speaker:kinda like, less interactive,
Speaker:Medium interactivity, more interactive depending
Speaker:on the the users, just
Speaker:acceptance dealing with that. Some people may not have an
Speaker:issue with doing the worksheet or answering the quiz,
Speaker:questions, the survey questions so that you can gauge. And that, in my
Speaker:opinion, will put them higher on that interactive scale.
Speaker:You know, they may be more tolerant. I don't know if that's the right word,
Speaker:of the, of AI. But then you got old cooch like
Speaker:me, you know, that see see all of these questions that have that
Speaker:reaction like, Come on. I got things to do. Just answer the question.
Speaker:So interesting. Exactly.
Speaker:Interesting stuff. It is interesting stuff, and I'm always fascinated by
Speaker:content marketing, and how how
Speaker:the success, like, what you said was very true. Like, there are people that
Speaker:The either it tends to be bifurcated. Right? Like, you have people who do
Speaker:just will just spew out stuff and not think about the data, and there's
Speaker:people who will, Like you said, like, unless I'm guaranteed x number of this, I'm
Speaker:not gonna write a post about that. And I think that the sanity there's
Speaker:probably some kind of distribution of effectiveness That probably
Speaker:skews towards the middle, whether it's towards one side or the other. I think that's
Speaker:up for debate, but, clearly, it's not the outliers.
Speaker:Yeah. You know, speaking speaking as a, former
Speaker:freelance content marketer. So rather than, like, as a a PM in the space, but
Speaker:just as someone who Loves content marketing, and the
Speaker:the sort of science and orchestration of content marketing. I think
Speaker:that treating your content marketing sort of like a multi bandit
Speaker:test Is the best way to approach it so that, like,
Speaker:you're investing, let's say, like, 70 to 80% of your
Speaker:efforts Into these marketing initiatives where you have
Speaker:really strong data to indicate that it's going to be successful.
Speaker:And, you know, you can say, Like, based on past performance
Speaker:or Google Analytics data or heat map data
Speaker:that this is likely to resonate with your audience. And then reserving that
Speaker:other, you know, 30 to 20%.
Speaker:I hope I said 70 to 80% earlier or my math is gonna be way
Speaker:off. Okay. Great. No. You nailed it.
Speaker:You know, reserving Perfect. You
Speaker:know, with that other, you know, 20 to 30% of your marketing
Speaker:efforts, doing some experimentation and seeing what sticks. You
Speaker:know? I I think that, having room within your
Speaker:marketing strategy to say, okay, I'm gonna make a really
Speaker:opinionated post on LinkedIn about this topic And just see what my
Speaker:audience's reaction is. Or I'm gonna record a,
Speaker:you know, TikTok Even though the majority of our audience
Speaker:is on this other platform just to see, like, how does
Speaker:it perform, what aspects work, And use that as a
Speaker:way to continuously collect new data about, you
Speaker:know, what does actually resonate with your audience, What segments of your
Speaker:audience may you be missing, and are there emerging audiences that you haven't
Speaker:considered yet that may still be a good fit for your product or service?
Speaker:That's a good point. That's fascinating. Yeah. Try and balance all of those.
Speaker:Goodness. Yeah. You mentioned the, The multi armed bandit program
Speaker:problem, and you basically just described explore versus exploit,
Speaker:like, very well. Right? And it it it applies to more things than just slot
Speaker:machines. So so for those wondering what the heck we're
Speaker:talking about, there's this problem in typically
Speaker:reinforcement learning, Where it's the explore versus exploit.
Speaker:It's also known as, the multi armed bandit
Speaker:problem, where you basically given a simulated bank of slot machines,
Speaker:How do you maximize your winnings? Is that a good way to describe
Speaker:it, Blake? Yeah. I think so. Cool. I've done a
Speaker:number of presentations on it, and I've had a lot of fun with it. Even
Speaker:in Vegas, I think I actually presented in Vegas.
Speaker:Ironic. Alright. So now, well, let's switch to
Speaker:the pre, done questions. This is a great interview.
Speaker:Absolutely. Definitely would love to know more about that, but, we
Speaker:wanna be respectful of everybody's time. So here's the first question.
Speaker:How did you find your way into data? Did you find the Data Life or
Speaker:did the Data Life find you? The Data
Speaker:Life certainly found me. I did not go looking for it.
Speaker:So my educational background, my degrees are actually in English and
Speaker:sociology. And when I started working at HubSpot, I
Speaker:So that company seems pretty cool. I'm gonna work there as a gap year before
Speaker:I go do my PhD in American literature. Clearly, that
Speaker:is not how things played out. Ended up Falling in love with the
Speaker:product and the sort of SaaS ecosystem.
Speaker:And along the way, I realized that to,
Speaker:Meaningfully invest in growing our product and growing my own career, I
Speaker:had to become much more data informed and data conscious. So I
Speaker:am Squeezing every drop out of that single stats
Speaker:class I took in undergrad that I can. And thankfully, I've I've been
Speaker:able to work with some really, really, really brilliant Data
Speaker:scientists who have been more than willing to say,
Speaker:Blake, what you're proposing is statistically impossible and stupid. Let me
Speaker:educate you on how this actually works, to, you know, flesh out
Speaker:my own skill set and familiarity. Very cool.
Speaker:I love having those people around that'll just say, hey, wait. No.
Speaker:I have some of those around me as well. Frank's one of them. So,
Speaker:what what would you say, Blake, is the the favorite part of your current
Speaker:job? So
Speaker:my gut reaction was making flowcharts. I love a nice
Speaker:flowchart. I love, you know, diagramming out customer problems,
Speaker:but, to take that 1 step deeper,
Speaker:I think that for me what I love most
Speaker:is Being able to explore
Speaker:really complex problem spaces where there's not
Speaker:a single right answer And being able to
Speaker:be in a position of influence to say, okay, based on this
Speaker:abundance of choices and abundance of options for how we go, Here's
Speaker:how I think we should approach solving for our customer, and here's how we can
Speaker:measure whether or not we're successful at doing that. Gotcha.
Speaker:You are such a geek, loving flowcharts. Just
Speaker:say. I I am. I I fully embrace being a
Speaker:geek. I love a nice flowchart, and my coffee cup this morning even
Speaker:said as, oh, this calls for a spreadsheet. So
Speaker:it's he gets very on brand. I love that. I love
Speaker:that. That is awesome. So we have a couple of complete the
Speaker:sentences questions. When I'm not working, I enjoy blank.
Speaker:Reading and selling books. So, last year, I
Speaker:started up, a bit of a side hustle selling nonfiction
Speaker:books. I've got a website, howdycuriosity.com.
Speaker:I, you know, I I spend so much time reading
Speaker:nonfiction, especially in the, entrepreneurial
Speaker:and marketing and strategy spaces and recommending those
Speaker:books to people. So I decided, you know, maybe If I'm spending so much
Speaker:time doing this, maybe I can make a couple of dollars off of it. So
Speaker:got an online nonfiction bookstore now and that is, like, My
Speaker:favorite when I'm not product managing, I'm fulfilling book
Speaker:orders, looking up new books, writing about new books, and
Speaker:having a field day there. That's cool. You could do some
Speaker:data science on that on your own market. I could.
Speaker:So our 2nd complete to sentence is, I think the coolest thing in
Speaker:technology today is blank. So
Speaker:I Simultaneously, the coolest and in some ways, the
Speaker:scariest is, how rapidly things are
Speaker:changing and evolving. You know, over the last couple of years, we've
Speaker:seen just like a couple of, like, flashes in the pan, on the technology
Speaker:landscape where people have said, like, Oh, this is the next big thing. Web
Speaker:3, the next big thing. NFT is the next big thing. But I
Speaker:think we are actually at the point where we're encountering the next Big thing, which
Speaker:is all the different ways that ML and AI
Speaker:are influencing, you know, numerous
Speaker:industries. And I think that's really exciting,
Speaker:especially to be kind of right in the midst of
Speaker:that, To be able to, you know, chart these waters and figure out how
Speaker:these tools work together, how we can use them to,
Speaker:improve people's lives and hopefully not just, like, make their
Speaker:jobs redundant. Yeah. That I think is is is really cool
Speaker:and really exciting. Very cool. And our 3rd and
Speaker:final complete the sentence, I look forward to the day when I can
Speaker:use technology to blank.
Speaker:Oh, let's see.
Speaker:I look forward to the day when I can use Technology
Speaker:to, create a dashboard that
Speaker:lets me automate all the side projects that I have running.
Speaker:I am a perpetual tinkerer and doer. I'm
Speaker:always building something new. And as a result, I have a A
Speaker:ton of spreadsheets and notion spaces and Google Docs
Speaker:and everything else just floating through the ether. I have an
Speaker:Eisenhower matrix on the whiteboard behind me. I have a poster note Kanban
Speaker:board on the wall behind me, and I would, you know,
Speaker:Love to have, like, a a smart board or something where I
Speaker:can take all of these different projects that I'm constantly
Speaker:Throwing ideas down for, you know, everything from home improvements to
Speaker:side hustles to day job stuff, and
Speaker:and Create a better sense of organization than having Post it notes
Speaker:and docs everywhere. That's a good product
Speaker:idea. I like it. I like it. Yeah.
Speaker:So we asked our guests, to share something different
Speaker:about themselves, but we remind our guests also
Speaker:because we're all geeks and wise acres That, to
Speaker:remember, it's a family show. We wanna keep our clean rating. So
Speaker:we have to throw that out, you know, just just as a
Speaker:condition. Sorry. Well, I was going to
Speaker:talk about my love of profanity. That's No. That as a joke.
Speaker:That is a joke. No. You know, I I
Speaker:think something, different about myself,
Speaker:would probably go back To what I just mentioned about being
Speaker:a a chronic tinkerer and a chronic experimenter and doer.
Speaker:I I read a book, Many, many moons ago called the
Speaker:10% entrepreneur. And there was so much about it
Speaker:that I, didn't particularly
Speaker:like, But there was also quite a bit about it that I did. And part
Speaker:of what really stuck with me was this idea or I guess
Speaker:this question of, like, What would it look like to allocate 10% of your time
Speaker:and resources to, you know, entrepreneurial endeavors
Speaker:or, you know, Anything that kind of scratches that itch of
Speaker:wanting to do something more. And so, you know, through
Speaker:my own side project, out of curiosity, And
Speaker:through, the numerous other projects I'm always
Speaker:in, you know, in the process of juggling.
Speaker:I've I've really leaned into that 10% entrepreneur approach
Speaker:and it it is so fun. It's often a
Speaker:time sink and a money sink more than it is, you know, a
Speaker:a a revenue channel, but I just I love it. I love trying
Speaker:new things. I love learning new things, and I love, forcing
Speaker:myself to stretch my skill set beyond where it's currently
Speaker:at. Very cool. And I I love that, and I'm hoping that
Speaker:the transcription will pick up how to curiosity.com. I love
Speaker:that, you know, you're not Just throwing that in out of nowhere. It's
Speaker:definitely a passion, and it shows up and it keeps showing
Speaker:up. So and I would I I just I was trying to think
Speaker:of some clever way to say how much Ifranksworld.com that
Speaker:that way the way you're working it in. I'm just
Speaker:Sorry. That's funny. Picking on you a little, Blake, but it's
Speaker:I saw you laugh. So if you're not if you're not watching the video, and
Speaker:I don't think We'll have the video available if you're just listening. Blake
Speaker:laughed at that, so you should too.
Speaker:And you mentioned a book which kinda leads into Frank's next
Speaker:point, I think. Yeah. So Audible is a
Speaker:sponsor of the show. We we love Audible. Thoughts
Speaker:and prayers go out to the folks who were laid off in Audible this week,
Speaker:but, they are still a sponsor of the show, and hopefully, our
Speaker:domain works to go to the date driven book .com. Can you recommend any good
Speaker:audiobooks or books other than what you've already mentioned?
Speaker:Yeah. Absolutely. So I think,
Speaker:for me, the litmus test of a good audio book
Speaker:Yes. I listen to it and get so excited about it that I
Speaker:go and buy a print copy immediately.
Speaker:And, recently I did that with 2 different books
Speaker:on Audible. The first being The Long
Speaker:Game by Dory Clark, and the 2nd being Deep
Speaker:Work by Cal Newport. Interesting. Interesting. That is a
Speaker:mark of a great book where you listen to it, and you're like, I have
Speaker:to have this on paper. You know, there's something about as a book lover, I
Speaker:think you can appreciate, you know, there's something about dead trees,
Speaker:that just makes something magical.
Speaker:Totally agree. The Go ahead, Frank. No. Plus, you
Speaker:can listen and not get distracted by notifications. So Exactly. You
Speaker:know, It's a big issue for me. Sorry, Andy. I
Speaker:cut you off. That that's okay. Go ahead. Oh, no. That was
Speaker:it. Oh, so where, sorry. Where can people
Speaker:learn more about you, Blake? And, you
Speaker:you've already mentioned your side hustle. And I'm gonna check that
Speaker:out because I'm a I'm a book geek too. So where can people learn more
Speaker:about you and and all of the things you're involved in? Yeah.
Speaker:So you've queued me up to name drop my side hustle for, like, what, a
Speaker:4th or 5th time? Exactly. Right. I'll get close to the
Speaker:microphone. That's Howdy. Curiosity.comhowdycuriosity.com.
Speaker:See, I mispronounced it earlier. I thought it was how to,
Speaker:And it's how d. And as a Combination of
Speaker:of COVID science COVID sinuses, excuse Me and,
Speaker:southernism of just kind of dropping vowels.
Speaker:I'm not sure you can relate.
Speaker:That, my my business's website is probably
Speaker:the best place, and then folks are also always welcome to connect with me on
Speaker:LinkedIn. I love connecting with, you know, other folks in
Speaker:the industry, especially the data science
Speaker:industry. You all are some of my Favorite flavor of nerds. I say
Speaker:that with love. So, yeah, either my my business
Speaker:website or LinkedIn. Cool. Awesome. And we'll let the nice
Speaker:British lady finish the show. Thanks, Frank,
Speaker:Andy, and, of course, Blake for an outstanding
Speaker:show. Alright, you lovely lot. You've somehow
Speaker:endured another episode of our delightful ramblings, and for that,
Speaker:we're eternally grateful. We've got a tiny,
Speaker:almost insignificant request. You know where this is going, don't
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