AI First Marketing How AI Blockchain and Web3 Are Reshaping the Future with Sandy Carter

Sandy Carter [00:00:00]:
People think it’s either SEO or AI. But now if you look, you know, all these tools have real Lee searching capability. So they’re going to the web and they’re searching for information. So you also need to keep up your SEO because as tools go A search, the more you’re at the top of the heap, the better the information will be A making sure that that information is right about you.

Announcer [00:00:24]:
Influential and thought provoking minds in marketing, sales, and business, the business of marketing podcast.

A. Lee Judge [00:00:33]:
Welcome again to the business of marketing. I’m A Lee Judge. Today’s guest has had a career spanning multiple c suite roles at Fortune one hundred Giants. She’s led initiatives at Amazon Lee A 100 giants. She’s led initiatives at Amazon Web Services, IBM, and now Unstoppable Domains. From operations to marketing, sales to product development, her expertise cuts across the whole tech landscape. So get ready for a master class in AI, blockchain, and next gen marketing. Welcome to the show, Sandy Carter.

Sandy Carter [00:01:04]:
Thank you, Lee. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be on the show. And, you know, it was a real pleasure and a real honor to meet you down in Tennessee. The uprising spreads. It was great to get to know you in person.

A. Lee Judge [00:01:17]:
It it was. It was good to meet you, Sandy. And I’ll tell you I’ll tell the audience, you’re such a humble person. I had no idea your accolades when we had been talking. We A had several conversations before I realized, wow. This lady is a big deal.

Sandy Carter [00:01:31]:
I don’t know about that, but I I have been blessed with lots of different activities and projects, you know, spanning my career so far. So but it was just really good. That that session was an excellent one to really get to know people really well.

A. Lee Judge [00:01:47]:
Yes. Yes. Well, you know, to to dig into your modesty, let me unleash some of that or uncover some of that. And I know you just got back from the World Economic Forum at Davos. So, you know, I know that while you were there, you gave a lot of great information and people learn things from you, but I want to hear your standpoint. What were some of the highlights from the event and some of your takeaways from being there?

Sandy Carter [00:02:10]:
Well, first of all, if you haven’t been to Davos, you need to put it on your bucket list because it is a phenomenal place to go. You meet so many A. And one of the things I really like about it is what I really liked about Uprising too is it’s usually small and intimate settings. Like, you’re not gonna have a auditorium of, you know, 5,000 people. A lot of times, you’re meeting with these amazing people in settings of 60 to a hundred people. So for example, Andrew Ng, who is the godfather of AI, you know, he was in one session. He was actually speaking before me. I got to meet him in the green room and chat with him.

Sandy Carter [00:02:51]:
And then the next day, I went to a session to hear more about what he was, you know, thinking about in terms of AI agents and AI applications. And I was sitting there in the front row, and he walked in and he came right over to me and said, hi, Sandy. You know? And we started talking. And then, of course, he left to go backstage to get ready to speak, and, of course, everybody swapped me going, oh my god. You know Andrew Lee? I was like, I just met him yesterday. So these intimate settings are so great. We also have a lot of what we call dinners, and they’re brainstorming dinners. So for example, one dinner was on tokenization.

Sandy Carter [00:03:29]:
Like, how do you put things on the blockchain, and why does it matter? And so we had 10 people. You know, one was a high ranking government official, CEOs of companies, and you’re just having dinner. You’re breaking bread, and you’re talking about these different technologies that are gonna happen with some of the most amazing people. So that’s what I love about it the most is just the people. The people are phenomenal. This year, it was really all about AI, crypto, and blockchain. Those were, like, the three topics that you are.

A. Lee Judge [00:04:04]:
That’s your sweet spot. Right? Those are your three That’s my

Sandy Carter [00:04:06]:
sweet spot. I was so happy. I was so happy. You know, AI, because AI agents have now come on A on the scene. Everybody wanted to know what is an agent, you know, how do I use it, should I use it, when should I use it, what about agentic AI. So, you know, I went to a lot of sessions, but, Lee, I also spoke at 10 sessions this time. This is the most I’ve ever spoken at. Last year, I did three, and I thought, oh my god.

Sandy Carter [00:04:31]:
I can never do three again. This year, though, because it was all about crypto, blockchain, and AI, I got invited to speak at a lot more sessions. The other interesting thing is I got to do a session on marketing. I’ve never done a session on marketing. And in fact, when I was chatting with some of the folks, they said, we typically don’t do sessions on marketing because we are mostly talking to CEOs. So they wanna hear about big business concepts. But this year, because of the impact of AI on marketing and what’s happening kind of all over with messaging, storytelling, I got to do a session on marketing too, which was really fascinating. And then, of course, you know, this concept of decentralized AI, of creating AI agents that live on blockchain so they’re secure and secret, you know, protect your information, A, security is privacy for everybody as well.

Sandy Carter [00:05:32]:
Lots of conversations on that too. So in my mind, it was just a phenomenal set of days, both in sharing because, you know, you do this as well. You speak. When you share something, you really have to know it. And so you you actually learn a lot yourself, and then you learn from the questions you get asked. A so I thought that was pretty, phenomenal. And then just some really cool speakers. Right? Like, how did Argentina turn its budget around? You know, what about climate and sustainability? And then, of course, all the new stuff on AI, quantum, and blockchain.

A. Lee Judge [00:06:06]:
So speaking to all these these executives who typically don’t hear about marketing, what are some of the angles you brought to that to help them understand the impact on A, how that does have a huge impact on their business overall?

Sandy Carter [00:06:20]:
So one of the biggest areas we talked about was how much AI generated content is out there circulating around now A how much of that because it’s all just AI general generated with no emotion, no no power, no real thought process behind it, it’s just not helping your SEO, you know, your search engine optimization and that sort of thing. So we talked about that and the value of having humans integrated into what you’re doing. We also talked a lot about how people are switching their, habits. Right? Like, to A, I was just sitting there thinking, when was the last time I did a Google search? You know? Because I use Perplexity. I use Claude. I use ChatGPT. I don’t go to Google enough. And so I Lee A, because in one of the sessions, I had my computer there, and someone would raise their hand, and they’re like, oh, my brand’s really well represented.

Sandy Carter [00:07:27]:
So I was like, okay. Tell me your brand. I would just put it into ChatGPT, and it would come up with something. And there would be like, that’s old messaging. We gotta get that fixed, or that’s not who we are. It was really interesting. And in one case, it was a company that was doing sustainability efforts throughout Europe. And when we did it in I think it was in Claude, maybe Perplexity.

Sandy Carter [00:07:50]:
It said a secret society. You know? That was the way it explained it. And they were like, we’re not a secret society. We’re open. That’s Lee our whole that’s our whole value prop. And so it was really eye opening to a lot of these senior executives and even heads of country that they saw how information was presented and wanted to know how they could impact the way it was presented in a lot of these AI tools that are out there.

A. Lee Judge [00:08:18]:
That’s the key, especially for marketers. And I’ve been in several conversations recently A I’m really tuned into I’ll drop a few names. I don’t know if you know them, but Will A has SIR A. Andy A has Orbit Media. Rand A from SparkToro. They’re having heated conversations about can we or how do we affect these A. And we’re coming up with these different theories, but we’re not seeing anything to say it’s concrete yet. Do you have any hint as to anything concrete yet as to how anybody can influence the results?

Sandy Carter [00:08:56]:
So we’ve been experimenting with it at our company, and one of the things that we found is that, first of all, we feed information in, and we’ll do it on a regular basis. And I think the more you feed information into perplexity, chat, GPT, Plod, I think you get better results. At least that’s what we found most recently is as we feed data in, we’re getting better data back out. The other thing is people think it’s either SEO or AI. But now if you look, you know, all these tools have real Lee searching capability. So they’re going to the web, and they’re searching for information. So you also need to keep up your SEO because as these tools go A search, the more you’re at the top of the heap, the better the information will be A making sure that that information is right about you. The other thing I’ve noticed, I’ll just do one more and then you can jump in, is, you know, Reddit is popping to the charts a lot more frequently.

Sandy Carter [00:09:55]:
So one of the things that we’ve done is we now have a Reddit moderator for our company. We’re answering questions. We’re putting information out there. And we’ve Lee, because we’ve been doing that as well, that our data is more clear, is more recent. It’s not old data, and it’s really been helping us as we move forward. So those are the three things that we’ve been trying. I’m actually doing some more research on it because I do wanna cover this at South by Southwest.

A. Lee Judge [00:10:22]:
You know, it’s interesting because I’ve heard conversations about Reddit and how that’s somewhere we need to be as well. And the other part about feeding information to these platforms is something I’ve been doing, but I haven’t heard anybody else mention it. And so Lee A the beginning of CHAT, GPT in November, was it 2022, we’ve been constantly asking questions, feeding information. Why didn’t we show up? Why what else could we change? We would go do these things. And we would ask questions with the only intention of hoping it would stick somewhere in an LLM and result later on. Now, we’re in three years now doing that A we think we’re seeing results from it. But we’re not data scientists and content masters, we’re content creators, but we also have a keen ear to search results and we’re marketers still. So I don’t have any concrete evidence on that, but it’s good to hear that you said there’s something something there because we’ve been doing it, we see results, but I’ll leave it to the data scientists and experts like you to to finalize the the findings.

Sandy Carter [00:11:27]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’m not sure it’s final yet, but I’m hoping to present some final research at South by Southwest as well.

A. Lee Judge [00:11:35]:
Good. We’ll look forward to it. So you mentioned earlier A. Are we are we there yet? I’ve seen people who call, workflows and automations A, and then I’ve seen what may be true agents. Has that phrase been bounced around too much? Is there a definition of what a true agent is versus an automation and workflow?

Sandy Carter [00:11:58]:
So I would say I think people have a definition, but everybody’s definition is different. Right? Because the second I mean, you know how good marketers are. Right? As soon as something comes out that’s A new content word, they rebrand everything that they’ve done AI agents. Right? But an AI agent is really simply, a piece of software that has a task that it can accomplish. Swarms of agents maybe get stuff done in a coordinated fashion. And then agentic AI really takes that to another level so that it’s more orchestrated as well. I A, at A, I found three, what I thought were Lee interesting agents. I just wrote an article about them.

Sandy Carter [00:12:43]:
One was a tool, and this tool, what it does is it helps you to invest in crypto. Now I have to say, at Davos, crypto was everywhere, mostly compliments of, of, Trump because he was talking about it, but because a lot of other of these emerging countries are also really interested in it. But one of the agents that we, that I spent time with was it was an agentic approach because they have multiple agents, and their goal was to have something that a A like me could use to invest in crypto. And so it had an orchestrator. So orchestration is really part of that iGentic A, like a brain that coordinated the whole trading stack. Then it had a data aggregator agent that took high fidelity data in and analyzed it. Right? Like price fees, for example, or Dune Analytics. Then there was an analyst Judge.

Sandy Carter [00:13:43]:
So it looked for actionable signals. Right? Just like a agent, if you hired an analyst to help you out, that’s what this person does. It took traditional indicators and new indicators and made recommendations on movements that might occur. And then there was a trader A that actually signaled a real trade A then a risk manager. Right? Because if you were an investor, you would want someone managing your risk. I thought that this approach was very groundbreaking because it was very modular. Each agent focused on its specialties. And because the, the entire orchestration was so decentralized, the system still remained adaptable and resilient and scalable.

Sandy Carter [00:14:28]:
So it you know, I just thought it was interesting. I still think it’s the first inning to use a baseball analogy. I don’t think we’re all the way there yet, but I thought that was fascinating. Another agent I looked at plays games for you. I don’t know about you. I have two daughters. They’re both big gamers. And, and so they this this agent comes in, and what it does is it, plays blockchain games where you get paid for winning.

Sandy Carter [00:14:54]:
And so what it does is it optimize your playing, so it watches you play. It learns how you play. So then let’s say you go to sleep, then what it does, the next thing is it takes over and it plays like you do, optimizes it, makes suggestions for you, and then, you come back the next day, you see what it did, and then you can pick up where you where you left off. And then Sounds

A. Lee Judge [00:15:14]:
to me like the the difference is the the thinking on its own and taking actions without an instruction. It’s no longer it’s not just if this, then that technology. It’s if this, let me think about it, and I’ll decide for you what that next step is. Is that fair to say?

Sandy Carter [00:15:32]:
Yeah. That’s right. And I think that another, like, level up is this orchestration amongst several. Because if you think about how we think, right, we do think in modulars A we’re siloed, but the best decisions come when we’ve kind of put things together. Right? Like, you know, oh, wow. The weather’s beautiful. Oh, I have some time off. I haven’t exercised, so let me go swim A just one that evaluates the weather and one that evaluates your time off.

Sandy Carter [00:16:02]:
I think A the coordination, the orchestration for me is where the real power is. Otherwise, I think it’s just kinda automating what you’re doing. Right? And then having those agents kinda debate each A. Like, just take the the trading example I gave gave you where you’ve got risk, trading, information, and analysts coming in. Just like in a real A, right, you would debate, oh, let’s do this. The signals are all there, but, high risk. Do you want the high risk? So just like you debate, it’s kinda cool that these agents are kinda debating with each other and deciding where to invest money.

A. Lee Judge [00:16:38]:
That’s why I wanted to get you to explain that because okay. I’m a marketer. I’ve worked for years in marketing operations. I love automation. I do a lot of it still, even for my own company. And we’ve got some pretty sophisticated automations. So enough where we’ve taken tasks off of people’s hands in our company because you know what? We can automate that. And there may be three or four, AI modules in the automation, but something triggers it, like a file gets put in a folder, and then it comes out on the other end, maybe on LinkedIn as a post.

A. Lee Judge [00:17:10]:
But in the middle, it may have been sent one place for, for translation, one place for transcription, one place for audio A. All this stuff is A. But after we got first our initial excitement of, wow, we’re automating all this AI, we We came down to earth and said, these are really just really complicated workflows, and it’s not yet A. But do you see within maybe 2025 that there will be agentic tools where average users can log in and use this stuff without having to really understand how complicated it really is?

Sandy Carter [00:17:48]:
I think so. And that’s why I was so interested in these two agents I just talked to you about at Davos because both of them are built for, like, the common person. In fact, one of them said, I built it for my dad. My dad was asking me, hey. I wanna get in on this crypto thing. I just don’t know enough about it. And so what he did was build a way that you could trade that would kinda mimic the way a good trader would trade and put it in the hands of a common person, your dad. A same is true for the the gaming, bot.

Sandy Carter [00:18:23]:
You know, for you and I living here in The US, gaming is Lee a fun thing. Overseas, gaming is very different. I mean, people change their lives with gaming. You know, I met people in The Philippines who earned a thousand dollars in a year. I mean, that’s life changing money for them. And so now to be able to have an agent or agentic view of how to play that game and how to optimize your earnings, that opens a lot of doors. And, again, that’s made for the common person, not for, like, a technologist. It’s made for a common person.

Sandy Carter [00:19:00]:
So I do I’m I’m very interested. Both of these were just released. Very interested in seeing, are they easy enough? Right? I mean, one of the things CHAT GPT got right, how easy. Right? Anybody can do it. My dad can do it. Anybody can do it. And so I think that’s one of the powers is that anybody can do it. And so I’m anxious to see when both of these come out, are they easy enough for everybody to do? And then the other

A. Lee Judge [00:19:28]:
the Lee. Because, I mean, Chad, GPT, for A, I mean, we have friends. We all we were talking earlier about how we’re in this place where we’re probably way ahead of most people thinking about AI, but then we know then with certain circles we’re in, there are people way ahead of us and people way behind us. And I’ve got one friend, for example, who, you know, two minutes into the conversation with him, he’s talking about his local A on his own laptop A how he’s bringing the agents local and building his own computers. And I’m like, woah, you know, that’s way too much. I need a user interface to log into. And that’s what happened when chat GPT came out. It gave us this complicated thing that anybody could log into and use without being a tech person.

A. Lee Judge [00:20:10]:
And I’m hoping that we’ll get that same thing for agents in the next year where anybody Lee in to an account and just do things. I mean, I guess we’re A seeing that already with, like, perplexity and and deep seek where it doesn’t just scan the Content and give you words as an answer. It actually thinks about it and has logic. Right?

Sandy Carter [00:20:28]:
Yeah. That’s right. I think that, you know, again, we’re gonna see how it comes out. I think these two agents that have just been released are quite fascinating. The other thing that I found, is a marketplace for agents. So, you know, yeah. So, A just released a marketplace for agents. So I think that will also be good because then they could be grouped by, okay.

Sandy Carter [00:20:53]:
This is a one zero one set of agents. This is a two zero one set of agents. This is you know, if you’re hardcore, you know how to code, then go here kind of agents. I think that’s something that we’ve we’ll really need as well as we progress along. But I do think twenty twenty five will be the year that these things are made, you know, for everybody or maybe almost everybody. We’ll have to wait and see, you know, how the how those things come out. But I think that that is where we are headed.

A. Lee Judge [00:21:21]:
Well, last question on this, Eric, because I wanna get to some other things that I know you’re also expert in. Just let’s speak to marketers. They’re looking at their career the next year or so. They’re being bombarded with new technologies, things that they have A new, like agentic AI. As a marketer, what would you tell marketers to look out for the next year to protect their jobs and to get better at what they do and create better results with AI?

Sandy Carter [00:21:49]:
Yeah. You know, I think that I think marketers have such an opportunity to leverage AI and really take their marketing to the next level. You know, we’ve we’ve been saying for a long time, it’s not AI that’s gonna put you out of a job. It’s someone who uses AI that’s gonna put you out of the job. But I don’t know if that’s gonna hold true for a long period of time. I think that it will be people who use AI, but I do feel like a lot of the roles that are out there today, Lee, will go to an AI agent. It’s just inevitable. AI agents can do it better.

Sandy Carter [00:22:26]:
For example, I don’t know if you’ve tried the deep research mode for chat GPT.

A. Lee Judge [00:22:30]:
Yes. Use it today. It’s

Sandy Carter [00:22:33]:
pretty awesome. Right? It is doing deep research. So why would we pay a human to go and do that? But that’s okay because I think there’s gonna be all these other amazing new jobs that will be created because of AI as especially for marketeers. I think marketeers, I found, are probably more afraid of the technology, and I think they should be more embracing of the technology and what’s coming because I think it can make our jobs so much easier. And when I say our, I’m a past CMO. I have CMOs who work for me today. I think marketing is, like, one of the core essential elements of a company. For a start up, it can make the difference of success or failure.

Sandy Carter [00:23:16]:
I was just looking at report yesterday that said that most A, I think it was 60% fail because they don’t have the right go to market strategy. Not because the product isn’t a good product market fit, it’s they don’t have the right strategy to take it to market. So I think that marketeers should not be afraid. I think we should be bold and content and look at the areas where you could use AI to make what you do even better. So one area that I’m really excited about, in fact, I think you commented on my on my post about it, is this paper personalization that’s coming. You know, we’ve talked for I’m gosh. As long as I’ve been a marketeer about one on one marketing. Right? I mean, how many times have you heard that? But imagine now A brand could learn enough about each of us to know what we’re most interested in and then customize it for us.

Sandy Carter [00:24:14]:
So let’s take the Super Bowl. Super Bowl’s coming up on Sunday. My husband’s all about the game. All about the game. He could care less about the preshow or the postshow, the halftime show, the ads. So if you’re marketing to my husband, you better be talking about the players and the stats and what’s gonna happen on the field. If you’re marketing to me, you better be talking about the ads that are coming and what do you think are gonna be some of the cool branding strategies. And so that ability that AI is gonna give us to hypermarket A for each A, for me, is so exciting.

Sandy Carter [00:24:49]:
And for marketing who can tap into that right away, what a big, you know, level up it will be for them and then for everybody else who follows in their footsteps.

A. Lee Judge [00:25:00]:
So let’s let’s add to this to this layer. We’re talking about AI marketing. Now let’s add in blockchain. How is blockchain now this is something, you know, I learned probably my first lessons on blockchain from you when we met at the retreat. So tell us how blockchain and Web three is gonna affect A, and what should we begin to understand about it?

Sandy Carter [00:25:23]:
Well, I think first of all, let me just take a step back and talk about blockchain. So people talk about tokenization and on chain, and all it really means is you’re taking data, like all the digital transformation that marketeers have been through. You’re taking data and you’re placing it on chain, on the blockchain. And because the blockchain is set out, there are blocks of information Judge like it applies, means that no one person controls the data. That, I think, opens up a lot of help for marketeers because it adds a layer of privacy, and then you and I own our data. So I think it’s a I think it’s a game changer because now you’re not just buying a list from Facebook where 40% of the list is bogus anyway. Now you can entice Lee because Lee has his data. So how do I get data? How do I get Lee to give me data about himself? For example, there is a retailer.

Sandy Carter [00:26:22]:
They sell, like, you know, furniture and rugs and that A of thing. And they’ve determined that their biggest buyers are people who are moving into a new house, a new apartment. And so they’re looking at some of this data on chain. They’re outside The US. And what they found is they’re actually more successful going to you saying, hey. Can you tell me when you’re gonna move? Let me entice you for telling me that. I’ll give you 10% off or 20% off, for you know, when you’re gonna move? When was the last time you moved? When was the last time you redecorated? Then using purchase list from Google or from Meta or Facebook. And I think that opens a whole another door for marketeers to have relationships directly with their customers.

Sandy Carter [00:27:09]:
The other thing I think that impacts marketeers is, I do a lot of work with luxury goods. And one of the big things about luxury goods is, you know, if you get a Louis Vuitton purse, how do you know it’s real? And there are, you know, there there is there’s so many lost sales because people go buy a fake Louis Vuitton purse. Well, what if in blockchain, you could track it all the way from, you know, here’s where the material was done, here’s where the purse was put together and assembled, here how it was transported to the store in Paris. You can put all of that on the blockchain, have basically a trusted, verifiable view that the purse you have in your hands is a real Louis Vuitton purse. That’s tremendously valuable to a company, you know, who’s selling some luxury good out there for them to know for sure it’s real. I’m A content to Japan. This is a interesting story. I went to Japan, and one of the biggest things that the Japanese love is they buy onesies that are Burberry.

Sandy Carter [00:28:17]:
That’s Lee like, if you wanna really get in good with a new mom, you give her a onesie that’s a Burberry. Well, because, you know, kids grow so fast, they grow out of that onesie. So there’s a big secondary sale. So some this this woman, a startup, opened a marketplace so that you could sell your old onesies, your old Burberry onesies. But how do you know that that onesie is actually Burberry and not produced out of China and a fake? So what they’ve recently started doing is placing the origin on chain. So now you can actually verify that the onesie you have is actually from Burberry what originated from Burberry. This person bought it. This person bought it, and now you have it too.

Sandy Carter [00:28:59]:
I think that’s a powerful, again, transparency and truth. I think the new currency for marketeers will be A, and I think blockchain helps everybody in that area be able to trust more about what they’re getting and how they’re getting it. This could apply to food being organic. It could, apply to clothes being sustainable. I mean, it could apply to luxury goods being real. There are so many places I think that this plays a huge role.

A. Lee Judge [00:29:28]:
You know, I just had a sad thought when you were talking about the Burberry. We know we would know who that it originated from Burberry and that it’s authentic. But we also know who along the chain had been the owner of that A, which I could see it increase in value because if you knew that some particular person, if you’re a celebrity, used to have that, you’re like, I used to have so and so’s, you know, this came from not just Burberry, but also these people who also, I think, Lee have. So the value, like a painting, the value goes up potentially.

Sandy Carter [00:30:03]:
Yeah. That’s a great idea. Look. She’s thought about that. I will I will talk to her about that because I think her business is pretty amazing A what she’s doing, and I think that could be another add addition to her, talking about, you know, this person did it. Now today on blockchain, primarily because of privacy, they block certain people. So that’s one of the benefits of blockchain is you don’t have to share. You you just know that, Lee, you know, this person had it.

Sandy Carter [00:30:31]:
I can verify it if I need it, but it’s not gonna be shared publicly with everybody.

A. Lee Judge [00:30:37]:
K. Well, I have some domains that I bought because you encouraged me from your company, Unstoppable Domains. And so I made sure I got all of my major domain names on the Blockchain. So tell me, especially now that I’m an author, what how can I perhaps use the Blockchain or use the domains that I have, as an author or business person in, you know, smaller A? What can I do with that with that information or that asset?

Sandy Carter [00:31:06]:
Well, it’s really I think it could be really cool. So you could, there is the ability once you own a domain. So a domain sits on chain, which just means, again, the digital information, the ownership is on the blockchain. So that means when Lee owns Lee dot crypto, I don’t know what you got, but let’s say you own Lee.crypto, that ownership sits with Lee. It doesn’t sit with another company. It sits with Lee. So now that you own that, you can actually create badges. And those badges could A, you know, I bought 10 copies of your book.

Sandy Carter [00:31:39]:
I bought 50 copies of your book. I bought a hundred copies of your book. Or I listened to your book. I read your book, and I, you know, I gave it to somebody or recommended it to somebody. You can start communities with these badges and have direct communications through your domain. Your domain opens the door for you to have encrypted conversations with so many different people that are out there today. These badges are really cool. I mean, they I have one badge that signifies I’m a female patent holder.

Sandy Carter [00:32:09]:
I have a badge, that signifies I get 10% off of certain digital goods I buy. I have badges that say I am a pudgy penguin influencer. So these badges can really, really signify lots of different things. The other thing is because you own one, maybe you wanna start selling your book with crypto. Maybe you wanna accept crypto. So you could encourage your readers to have a domain as well, and then you guys can transact in crypto. We do about 30,000,000 transactions a week taking lee.crypto and converting it to your wallet and vice versa, really helping out, making that an easier, transaction, if you would. Now not right now because DNS is controlled by ICANN.

Sandy Carter [00:33:01]:
ICANN does auctions every twelve to fifteen years. One of those is coming up. We plan on taking some of our domains to auction to make them DNS. Then what you’ll have is a domain that has superpowers of blockchain and DNS. So that means it’s searchable and taggable with which every market marketer loves. You A have a website up on there, but you can also transact with it. You can do these chats and group information. You can use it for your gamers tag.

Sandy Carter [00:33:33]:
So it really opens the door to, I think, a lot of really cool elements. We even had, one celebrity who uses the badge to signify that you attended one of his events. And if you attended an event, the next time you go to his event, you get in the VIP line for a selfie with him. I think that’s So how

A. Lee Judge [00:33:56]:
how are these tangible? I mean, how how does someone show their badge and prove they they own the badge in their wallet?

Sandy Carter [00:34:03]:
It’s actually in a profile, and it has all of these super cool things in it that are visible and showable. Almost Lee, how would I describe it? Like A a LinkedIn, but everything is verifiable and provable on chain.

A. Lee Judge [00:34:20]:
Well, but I wanna make sure I meant to do this halfway through. I wanna talk about these books of yours because, you know, you have a new one coming out I want you to tell us about, but I also realize you have another one that’s still still being sold and still popular. And people who are looking for the new one are looking because they Lee the last one so much. So tell us about your new one, but also mention the the one that’s already out too.

Sandy Carter [00:34:41]:
Okay. So the new book is called AI First, Human Always. And I wrote this book a lot because I went to South by Southwest last year, and I did a keynote. It was one of the top rated keynotes, and people like the simplicity of the way I described an AI first mindset, how you should look at things, what are the new trends, what you should pay attention to, and what you shouldn’t. And so I was really excited about talking about this AI first mindset. Lee, I didn’t tell you this, but Wiley didn’t like the title. Wiley fought me on the title. They’re like, no.

Sandy Carter [00:35:19]:
We wanna do mind machine merge or some other title. I’m like, I I like AI first. Like, the room was packed. We had 5,000 people at South by Southwest because we were talking about the AI first mindset, so let’s stick with that. So that’s what that’s what we did. I published the book will be out on March 4. You’ll see it, and I’ll do another session at South by Southwest both on that book and the contents, but also A what’s coming because, you know, the space moves so fast. So it’s called AI First, Human Always because I wanted people to know, I personally do not believe that we’re gonna be sitting around twiddling our thumbs and AI is gonna be doing everything.

Sandy Carter [00:36:04]:
I think still the value is going to be in people who are augmenting with A, an AI augmented marketing strategist, A AI driven consumer behavior analyst, a personalization designer, an AI powered community manager. I think that these are gonna be the combo of both versus, you know, just one or another. Like a human or AI, I think it’s gonna be done together. And so, anyway, my session will be on March 12. I have a featured keynote at South by. My book will be out March 4 on AI First, Human Always.

A. Lee Judge [00:36:40]:
I’m glad you won, by the way, on the title because I love the title. It’s very clear. It makes you wanna read it. You know what it’s about. So, yeah, I’m glad you won that battle. Great title.

Sandy Carter [00:36:50]:
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And part of the reason I won the the battle is the last book, I tried an experiment. So my last book is entitled The Tiger and the Rabbit, and it’s Lee, a beginner’s guide to blockchain and AI. And, they wanted me to do the tiger and the rabbit because they asked me to write a business fable for the first part of the book and then explain the fable in the second part of the book. And so they did that because, you know, the five the five dysfunctions of a team, which was A massive bestseller, is done as a business fable, and it’s one of my favorite books today.

Sandy Carter [00:37:30]:
And so that book did well, but I had a lot of people going, wait a second. It’s about a tiger and a rabbit? Like, what’s that all about? And so, I got a lot of confusion about the book. And so, I think that’s part of the reason why I want it this time. Like, I wanted my title this time to be, on the book. It’s a fun book. It’s very much of a of a basic book on what these things are. It does tell a story at the beginning, so it has characters and, you know, introduces some of the human elements of deciding how to do an AI strategy, how to look at blockchain, that sort of thing as well. But I’m I’m excited about both of the books for different reasons.

Sandy Carter [00:38:09]:
First of all, I love to experiment. So people are like, are you sad that you experiment? I’m not because I learned a lot, writing that book. I had to have a dialogue in it, Lee. I’d never written dialogue before because it’s a fable, so people have to talk to each other. And so I learned a lot. I actually went to a class taught by a woman in Tennessee named Karen Kingsbury about how to write good dialogue. So I learned a ton of writing A mean, you know, in writing that book. And, I’m really excited to share this one.

Sandy Carter [00:38:38]:
I think it’s topical. I think it’s like, the timing couldn’t be better for AI first. And I wanna offer my readers a way to stay on top of everything because it’s changing so fast. So I’m looking at doing a special blog for those who buy the book and that sort of thing so they can always stay on top of what’s happening in the field.

A. Lee Judge [00:38:57]:
Was part of writing the new book wanting to catch up on some things that you had written in the previous book, or is this a different path?

Sandy Carter [00:39:07]:
Yeah. A lot of it you know, whenever I do a big presentation, I try to refresh what I do every year. And I had talked to 465 companies and learned all this great information. And whenever I do that, I think part of me my first mentor was a gentleman named Ted Childs. He was the first African American VP at IBM. And he would always tell me, as my mentor, always reach back and pull someone forward. Always reach back, pull someone forward. And so I kind of view it as, my responsibility once I learn something to share it, and that’s what I did in this book.

Sandy Carter [00:39:47]:
I had done so much research learning about the topic and getting up updated, that I wanted to share it in, you know, in this particular way. I don’t know if you knew this, but I actually started an AI in 2013.

A. Lee Judge [00:40:02]:
Well, I know you were involved with Watson some.

Sandy Carter [00:40:05]:
Yeah. IBM Watson. So funny. I went to my daughter’s school, and they asked me to talk about AI. And I said, yeah. I did AI in 2013. And one little girl raised her hand, and she goes, Chad, GPT just came out, like, two years ago or three years ago. What were you doing in 2013? Because, you know, the new generation thinks AI equals Chad GPT.

Sandy Carter [00:40:26]:
But I had been doing this for a A. So I wanted to update all my skills, update everything. And so I felt Lee as I was doing that, let me share that with, everybody I can as well.

A. Lee Judge [00:40:36]:
Well, I appreciate knowing people like you who know the true roots of of AI and have been there since the beginning. And you’ve I mean, you have the the accolades and the timing to have just to prove, like, I was there at IBM when we did this. You you can’t get any more definitive than saying you’re the beginning of AI than that. So I really appreciate talking to you about these kind of things because I know you know.

Sandy Carter [00:41:00]:
Yeah. Well, thank you. Well, you know, I was at IBM when we published the first the very first AI generated cookbook. We had at South by Southwest, we did a food truck, and all the recipes on the food truck were generated by Watson. So one of them, for example, was a chocolate bacon taco. It was awesome. It sounds horrible, but it was awesome.

A. Lee Judge [00:41:26]:
AI A, like AI doesn’t have taste buds. What is this? But Yeah. How it turned out?

Sandy Carter [00:41:32]:
It was it was amazing. I mean, we sold out every day. There was, like, a line of people all around waiting to get to the truck. So, you know, I was there when all of that happened and, you know, participated in it. And I just feel like it’s come so far. You know, people think, man, it’s like an overnight. You know? It wasn’t overnight. Like, we were working on it in 2013.

Sandy Carter [00:41:57]:
So everything everything that I think is great takes time.

A. Lee Judge [00:42:01]:
Wonderful. Well, Sandy, it’s been a pleasure talking with you. Before we wrap up, tell us again where can we find your book, the dates again when we can get it, if maybe we can preorder. Give us the the deets on that.

Sandy Carter [00:42:14]:
Yeah. So you can preorder right now from Barnes and Noble or Books A Million or, of course, Amazon, my old favorite company. And the book will be available March 4, but you can preorder right now. There are lots of deals when you preorder too. Like, right now, there’s one Barnes and Noble for 25% off, so make sure you’re looking at that as well. And if you wanna hear about it live and do a book signing, our first book signing will be at South by Southwest on March. It’s such a great show. A thank you for giving me the opportunity.

Sandy Carter [00:42:47]:
Congrats on your book too.

A. Lee Judge [00:42:49]:
Yes. And for those people listening, Sandy is in my book. We had a conversation a while back. Parts of our conversation Lee in the A, and so I was honored to have her contributions in the book as well. And so we we just learned lately it’s book season. We have books coming out this time of the year, so you can A, check out our content as it, as it evolves. So Lee me wrap it A, Sandy. Again, thank you.

A. Lee Judge [00:43:12]:
And I want to thank the listeners who listened to the podcast. If you want to see Sandy and I, A of the podcast, others are also available in the podcast section of content. Again, Sandy, thank you.

Sandy Carter [00:43:25]:
Thank you, Lee. It was so fun. You’re a great interviewer. That that was really fun. Thank you.

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Thank you for listening to the Business of Marketing podcast, a show brought to you by Content, the producer of b two b digital marketing content. Show notes can be found on contentmonster.com as well as a leadjudge.com. To continue the conversation, be sure to follow the podcast on your favorite podcast platform.