207 - Making The Most of Tech To Build Your Business In 2024 With Ema Roloff

That Annuity Show

Summary Ema Roloff, Co-Founder and Principal Consultant of Roloff Consulting, discusses the challenges and opportunities of digital transformation in the annuity and broader insurance industry. She emphasizes the importance of addressing legacy systems and the education gap in digital literacy. Ema provides insights on how to start building digital literacy and recommends finding reliable sources for learning. She also discusses the fear associated with AI and the need to overcome it by focusing on the benefits and practical applications. Ema highlights the power of video content and authenticity in marketing and suggests becoming the favorite teacher to build trust with customers. The conversation concludes with a discussion on reaching the right audience with video content. Takeaways Legacy systems and the education gap are key challenges in digital transformation in the insurance industry. Building digital literacy is crucial for individuals and organizations to leverage emerging technologies effectively. Overcoming fear and focusing on the benefits of AI can help drive adoption and build trust. Video content and authenticity are powerful tools for marketing and building connections with customers. Chapters 00:00 Introduction 01:18 Ema Roloff's Background and Expertise 03:01 Legacy Systems and Digital Transformation 05:32 Education Gap and Digital Literacy 06:21 Starting Point for Digital Literacy 09:15 Finding Valuable Insights and Lessons 10:09 Trial and Error in Finding Good Sources 18:13 Overcoming Fear and Building Trust in AI 20:59 The Next Wave of Adoption and Perception Change 23:29 Importance of Educating People in the Company 25:31 Understanding the Problems and Bottlenecks 27:52 Completing the Puzzle in Digital Transformation 30:43 The Power of Video and Authenticity 36:15 Reaching the Right Audience with Video Content 39:37 Becoming the Favorite Teacher and Building Trust 40:59 Closing Remarks Paul (00:06.752) Hi, this is Paul Tyler and welcome to another episode of the That Annuity Show. And in fact, it's the first That Annuity Show recorded in 2024. Ramsey, good to see you. Ramsey Smith (00:19.441) Good to be back. It's been a minute. Yeah. Paul (00:21.668) Been a minute. Yeah, Tisa, welcome. Tisa Rabun-Marshall (00:25.85) Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Happy New Year. Paul (00:28.968) Yeah, well, we're off to a very interesting start this year, and we've got a great guest, Ema Roloff. I got to know Ema, I don't know, I think Ema, probably maybe a year and a half ago, I think, two years ago. Yeah, and you were working at that point for a software company, really doing, I think, and you correct me if I'm wrong, it felt like you were really kind of a leading spokesperson for the company. Ema Roloff (00:42.018) Sounds about right. Paul (00:54.608) Definitely did a tremendous job creating a presence on LinkedIn, various social media channels. And then you basically are now you've got your own company and you're helping bigger companies think about technology, change transformation, and also helping people figure out how to market in a rapidly changing world. How did I do for an introduction? Ema Roloff (01:18.658) Pretty good. I'm actually impressed. Most people do one or the other and you got both. So I have a content brand that is focused on, I would call leading change and transformation as a whole. Um, and the name of that is leading change, surprise, surprise. Um, so I do interviews and live episodes on LinkedIn from that series and do speaking engagements all attached to transformation. And then on the business side, my husband and I started a consulting company because we were both salespeople that were selling in a very different way than our peers. And we thought more people should recognize the benefit that comes from updating and modernizing their sales process and taking advantage of things like social media and other digital outlets to really change the paradigm of sales and sell the way that people actually want to. Paul (02:13.42) Excellent. All right. Well, now we have, you know, a very diverse audience within a very focused market of people who care a lot about annuities. I would say two groups who should listen to the show today very, very carefully are people inside Carriers who are responsible for driving technology changes or technology. E-Apps, you know, illustration systems. I think we've got another group of people who listen to our show who are actively building businesses, talking to clients, delivering solutions, trying to think about how are they finding next client. I think both of those will should both of the if you're in any of those categories listen carefully. And I don't know Ramsey, which one do you think we should start with first? Ramsey Smith (03:01.409) I think, why don't we start with people that are on the inside? Because at the end of the day, one of the things that we see is, even though sometimes there's been some innovation on the front end in the distribution process, it's sooner or later it ends up, sooner or later somewhere in the chain, there's some sort of legacy system that ultimately ends up sort of coming into play and that can kind of slow things down. So I'd love to, why don't we start there and talk about that. Paul (03:27.276) Yeah, and maybe, you know, generative AI has got to be, Ema, the biggest wave coming over both groups. And, you know, agree or disagree here for 2024. Ema Roloff (03:35.126) Mm-hmm. Ema Roloff (03:39.718) say that it's definitely one of the top conversations that's happening across our industry and beyond. And it's going to hit every single person within the insurance landscape, whether they're on the vendor side, at the distribution level or on the carrier side, but it'll look a little different for each kind of persona, so to speak. Um, and, and some of it will go off of what Ramsey just talked about where when we're looking at, especially some of the larger companies in the carrier side, there might be a steeper. Incline to adoption strictly because of some of the foundational items that we didn't address during what I would say is kind of like the first wave of transformation and things like these legacy systems that are still looming or maybe that like. intermediate step that carriers took to go from their homegrown legacy system to something that's a bit more modern, but it took them 10 years to go through that process. So they feel like they just did it, but their system is now 10 or 15 years old again, and they're back in that legacy spot and it's time to kind of start evaluating what that next transition looks like. Those foundational items, especially when we start looking at how those platforms manage data, how clean the data within those systems are, that all impacts drastically how useful generative AI and these emerging technologies can be when we bring them into the organization. And then I would say kind of across the board, there's the dynamic that you and I talked about, Paul, when I had you on Leading Change recently, is the education gap and technical, or what I call digital literacy. that might be lacking at all of the different stages of our insurance ecosystem life cycle, so to speak. And that is on the broker side, on the carrier side, on the vendor side. And so we could certainly talk more about that. But I think that that's going to be a big challenge for a lot of people is kind of overcoming that chasm over the next year or so. Tisa Rabun-Marshall (05:56.13) Ema, do you have any tips or advice for the person listening to this inside a carrier or not? Just kind of where to start. For someone who doesn't have as much digital literacy, savviness, all of the topics, all of the terms, all feel new, all feel big. Where to start? Break it down. Where should one start? Ema Roloff (06:17.826) Mm-hmm. Ema Roloff (06:21.762) So this is where maybe this conversation isn't gonna be quite as polarized as we were talking about. And maybe this is where you guys start to see how all of these ideas are a passion of mine. I would say the first place to start is find some really good people on YouTube or LinkedIn or TikTok, Instagram to follow that are spending time educating people on how to use these technologies. And also just kind of like the basic foundational understanding of technology. So, Paul, you mentioned when I was selling core technology, one of the things that I did was I recognized that a lot of my buyers didn't know what the hell I was talking about when I used certain terms or acronyms. And that also came from me stepping into the technology and insurance landscape without any background in that. So I started as a teacher. And when I stepped into business, the amount of acronyms that came flying at me in every single industry was like, dizzying. And then I got into technology and realized how many of our terms we shift and we change and we're constantly like doing this that make these things that make it really difficult for our consumers to actually get a solid grasp of what we're talking about. And so I started a series on TikTok and LinkedIn that was explainer videos, just breaking down like, okay, what is AI? Let's do a one-on-one lesson. Now let's go. Ramsey Smith (07:45.853) Thanks for watching! Ema Roloff (07:49.806) Now we've done that one-on-one lesson. Let's talk about the differences between AI and machine learning, or what are all of the different subset technologies that bubble up to the umbrella term of AI. And let's break it down and plain English in less than three minutes so that people can get this bite-size information that makes their next meeting slightly more meaningful to them because they've got that foundational knowledge. And I'm certainly not the only one that's creating that kind of content. And. Whether it was, you know, now I'm video heavy and that's where I do a lot of my learning because I like creating that kind of content and I like consuming it. But when I first started digging deep into this stuff, podcasts, reading articles on any blog that I could get my hands on, we could even go down the path of starting to use generative AI to teach us these things and sit down and ask chat GPT, here's my role, this is what I do. Can you help? give me a list of 15 technology terms or ideas that I should know the definition of and give me those definitions. There's lots of different ways to gain access to this information, but the first step is kind of taking the initiative to start building it if your company isn't helping you build that digital literacy somehow through like a specific training program. Ramsey Smith (09:15.633) So are you finding that it's easy to find sort of good sources? So one of the interesting challenges in learning online is actually everything that you need to know is there. And in some sense, there's probably not a whole lot of new ideas because somebody said it somewhere. But finding the people that actually are really like yourself, but finding people that actually Ema Roloff (09:41.262) Thank you. Ramsey Smith (09:42.981) Finding people that can actually teach you effectively and efficiently can sometimes be a challenge. So I'm just curious how, you know, other than your own work, but as you do, you know, outwardly, like how do you filter, how do you filter through, you know, all the various carnival barkers to get to, to get to what you think are people that are providing valuable insights and lessons? Ema Roloff (10:00.822) Hehehehe Ema Roloff (10:09.422) I would say some of it is trial and error. I can't tell you how many times I've like found a new podcast and tried listening to one episode of it and been like, oh, this is not it for me. And some of it is just like what your learning style is, how you like to consume content. My husband is like a tried and true book reader and like his office is lined with all of his books that he reads. And for me, reading business books is like torture. So I have to listen to everything on audio book. Like I'm a big reader, but like it better be a fantasy book or something else other than, than business. So like, I know that doesn't work for me. So part of it is like tapping into how do you learn best and then trial and error across like some of the top podcasts that are out there in the space of technology. Ramsey Smith (10:42.55) Mm-hmm. Ema Roloff (10:59.114) I mean, I could certainly make some suggestions. When I first started, I kind of started at the very beginning of like, OK, I'm going to go listen to Harvard and MIT's business podcasts and just see what they're talking about and what ideas and who their guests are. And then I'm going to follow some of those guests that said really insightful things on LinkedIn or YouTube. And then you probably, I mean, naturally what happens is you're going to find your favorite teachers. We'll get to this idea a little bit later, but that's kind of the philosophy behind updating your sales process is becoming your clients or your prospects favorite teachers. But you start to find the people that communicate the way that makes sense to you, and then you can double down on their content and really lean into like learning in that mechanism that works best for you. Paul (11:52.46) Yeah, it's interesting. I think education is incredibly important. I mean, Ties and I are running an AI committee here at the company, Ties. So we have our next meeting tomorrow, right, with our group. And Ema, you're spot on. The education's critical. I mean, it's just critical. Ramsey, you're right. It's hard. Now, you think about the last wave of technology. Hey, could I actually, oh my gosh, fill out a form online? and submit business to a carrier. It took us a long time, Ema, a long time. And I wouldn't say, you know, people say, oh, the insurance industry is so slow. It's not really, I, Tisa, I want you to weigh in on this one is I don't think it's slow. I just think that, you know, really highly regulated business with lots of systems to connect, it just takes a lot of time to sort of get this machine rolling. And Tisa, I'm thinking this company, the predecessor company of NASA, I think was client number one or two for insurance technologies, now Hexure and Salesforce. Okay, I think we were maybe averaging, you know, when I joined, I think we had what, maybe 10 or 20% of our annuities coming through on Eapp maybe that was 2016, now we're at 85%. This is, am I 10 years later? So Tisa, what was it that... Tisa Rabun-Marshall (12:55.19) in Salesforce. Yeah. Tisa Rabun-Marshall (13:10.266) Yeah. Paul (13:18.844) If you look back there and say, okay, education was required, what are the differences between that technology versus AI sweeping in your opinion? And why does it feel harder? Tisa Rabun-Marshall (13:33.563) I mean, you know, kind of speculate a little bit, just, but I think what may make it feel harder is that prior to now, technology was more around like, efficiency and process. And AI can play a role in that, but it almost, it feels more like first people have to get over the hurdle of like, and maybe they felt like this before, but it's gonna replace people, or it has this, for whatever reason, the comments that I've heard is that, unlike other technology, nobody ever called Eapp a person or a mind or a mythical creature. It didn't feel like a thing. And for whatever reason, I guess the intelligence part of it is part of it. It feels like it's something more of a tangible. Ema Roloff (14:10.807) Hehehehe Tisa Rabun-Marshall (14:23.17) than any other technology. So you're sort of overcoming that, maybe it's fear, or fear of the unknown first, whereas before it was more so resistance to like, I don't want to change the way I work, which AI is really a tool, right? It's changing the way you work. It's changing the way you arrive at a decision. It's changing the way you gather information. But for whatever reason, it's not being viewed that way as previous technology has been. Tisa Rabun-Marshall (14:52.642) E application that just felt like a shift in behavior. But AI feels like maybe a shift in how we like fundamentally function as a society and people are more, I'll say resistant, until they learn about it and understand it. So to me that's the biggest difference, which it actually shouldn't be viewed that way. It should be viewed just as other previous technology has been, that it can drive efficiency and drive scale and things like that. But for whatever reason, it's not being viewed that way. at this moment. Ema Roloff (15:24.366) I think that you just tapped into something that's really interesting that I had never really thought of in this context. But it is the way that we've presented AI to the world feels different than the way that we've presented other tools. But the part that really gets me is in our personal lives, I don't know a single person that isn't interacting with AI, but they just don't maybe realize it. And going back to that idea of how we position it and how we put it in front of people, Tisa Rabun-Marshall (15:46.349) already. Yeah. Ema Roloff (15:54.27) Nobody thinks of Netflix as AI, but they have massive amounts of AI operating in the background to be able to deliver you exactly the show that you want to watch, but we're not intimidated by that. That's nice. So it is a little bit of like probably how we've positioned it in the past, but I think that fear associated with AI, you know, when we talk about like polarizing content and stuff like that, Paul, like. Tisa Rabun-Marshall (16:07.61) Mm-hmm. Ema Roloff (16:21.302) When I've created content about not having fear of AI and rather looking at it as a tool that's gonna help us reach new heights, the comments that I get sometimes are like calling me like a propaganda mouthpiece. There's people that have like come after my appearance because I dared say that they don't need to fear AI. You know, like it's something that gets a visceral reaction out of people because there is a lot of fear associated with it because there's these headlines. that come out about how many jobs it's gonna remove, how many people it's gonna replace. But if we looked at like what the internet did over time and tried to do a tally of how many jobs the internet removed, we'd probably be talking about the same statistics because nobody's talking about the other side of how many jobs were created and how much productivity was unlocked by these tools becoming available. And so it's probably a lot of how we talk about it and the narrative that's put in front of people that causes that fear. Tisa Rabun-Marshall (17:07.686) Mm-hmm. Ramsey Smith (17:19.161) Yeah, I think part of the challenge is a lot of the sort of doomsday narrative is happening through channels that are sort of certainly outside of the control of this podcast, this industry. And, you know, they do tend to sort of border on that border. They're, they're, they're couched in sort of existential terms, whether it's Elon Musk, or it's Sam Altman and OpenAI and everything. So it's Ema Roloff (17:30.542) Hehehe Ramsey Smith (17:46.645) That's going to be a hard thing to overcome, but I think that maybe the opportunity is where do we find ways to help people use AI in their day-to-day life, in their business, so something they can make money on, where they feel some sense of control and it's helping them do their job in some better way, because that's ultimately where the trust is going to come from. You know, in your work, whether your current work or your past work, where do you feel like you've had a breakthrough where you actually showed somebody something and it really delivered for them and they turned the corner? I mean, are we there yet? Are we still fighting for that first win? Or have you seen some of those? By the way, and it would make sense that we, we're still fighting, I'm still fighting for that first win. So, but I'm curious like what your experience has been so far. Ema Roloff (18:40.382) Yeah. So in a past life, um, I sold process automation platforms and tools. And I would say, I mean, I've been out of that position for over like a year and a half, two years and, um, so three, four, five years ago, we were selling AI solutions, but we weren't calling them AI. Um, so things like optical character recognition. that has intelligence built into it to be able to recognize what information is being extracted off of a document and where to place that data. There is intelligence built into those tools, but we call it intelligent document processing or optical character recognition, because these are tools that have been around for a long time and had these layers of artificial intelligence built into them, into these existing platforms that we've worked with. Same thing with something like the idea of process mining, where we're taking huge, huge amounts of data and looking for the most effective process route that we can take. Those tools, depending on the approach that you're taking to that process mining, might have computer vision associated with them. They might be using other elements of AI to recognize those patterns and be able to create an output that we then use. to enable other software platforms. So there have been these wins, but they haven't probably been packaged with the label of AI the same way that we are now, everything is slapped with AI because that's the biggest fanciest nicest marketing term that any company can use. And that being said, where I think we're gonna see kind of that next wave of true adoption, and probably some of that like, perception changing is going to be core platforms, bringing AI in and showing people what AI is capable of within these software platforms that they're already leveraging today. Because that's going to be, again, a smaller, it's going to be a more incremental step for them to get used to. And now we're packaging it with that AI term associated with it. So it's going to help like the... Ema Roloff (20:59.662) It's going to do a nice little PR campaign for AISO whole. Um, and then we'll start to see people more comfortable with the idea of something like a company rolling out their own large language model tool that they can leverage or, you know, maybe some of those things are being pulled into core systems. I think that's going to be where some of the perception starts to change because people are going to realize this isn't replacing me. It's taking away the four steps that I really hated doing in the first place. Ramsey Smith (21:01.795) Mm-hmm. Ema Roloff (21:29.342) And then there's going to be more of like, well, what else could we do with this? Where else could we go? And it's going to have kind of that, like, if you give a mouse a cookie effect, they're going to ask for a glass of milk and they're going to want to know where else they can go with it. Paul (21:41.388) Yeah. Well, I want to pivot over to sales in a second, but just to sort of give you one last question, you know, Ema, that we all, I think, Tisa, I want your opinion, Ramsey, which is the people, what's the people equation here to make an AI implementation successful? You know, my experience, Ema, and it's just where, you know, what you've said just totally resonates with me. Tisa, you'll, I know you'll dodge your head. Oh. hey, we're gonna bring a new email system in. Oh, we're gonna bring a new CRM system. The only time those work, in my experience, has been when you have somebody, you're reassigned to do this, or you got somebody matched up against the software platform. If you just buy the thing, sign the contract, as hard as that is, to go through the procurement, you'll just sit there, right? Okay, so here are some things, Ema, that have been thrown out. I've literally heard these tees in the last, like, what, three months here. Oh, we need to hire a prompt engineer. Oh, we need to go hire a coder. Well, we already have a coder. We already have people to answer questions. Oh, we need a... What do we need? What do you need as a company here, if you're gonna say, yeah, I wanna like pull AI into my business. Is there a good list of who to shop for? Ema Roloff (22:59.522) So I would say in terms of, I don't necessarily, I mean, taking a half step back, going back to this idea of digital literacy that I mentioned a moment ago, it's probably not that you need to go out and hire people with drastically different skill sets than you already have. You probably need to spend time educating the people that are already within your business that have the institutional knowledge of how your business works. and know where you have opportunity to improve to get a better understanding of how all of these technologies can come in and make a difference. And when you start that education process, I've seen some companies do this where they started with their executive team and had their LMS had almost, they didn't call it digital literacy, but they had this track of education focused on what is AI? How is it? helping our industry, what are the types of things it can do for you? They had this education path set up for their executives and then started rolling it out at the, across the entire company as a way to recognize where and how they should be bringing in these emerging technologies into the company. Because going back to this idea of like people then process, then technology, if your people don't understand how to leverage the tools. they're never going to come to you with ideas of where there is opportunity. But if you teach them, they're going to come to you with where there are opportunities. You can look at the process that they've brought forward as an opportunity, address what you'd like that process to look like in the future with that knowledge of how technology can support that new process. And then you can go shop for technology and you'll have a really strong understanding of exactly what you need to bring into the company to enable those people and that newly envisioned process to be effective. But if you don't take that step of that education at the front end, then your people don't know where to bring forward those opportunities. So then what ends up happening is somebody comes in with a shiny object and says, this is going to make your life really easy and your Ema Roloff (25:15.554) caught in this wheel where you're bringing in technology based off of the use cases that vendors have identified for you, as opposed to having your people in your process identify your need and bringing in the right tools. Ramsey Smith (25:31.453) So that strikes me as just such an important point, in part because people that come in selling, they bring some, it is a shiny object, it surely has some great functionality, and people are very quickly attracted to this idea that my life is gonna be easier. But you're absolutely right, unless you actually figure out upfront, what are the bottlenecks, you may end up having an unsatisfying outcome. So that's why, as... You know, Paul, as you asked that question, you know, I was just thinking there's really a lot of stakeholders, but you have to sort of deal with the people that sort of deal with the problem day to day, understand what their pain points are. Because if you solve their pain points, one, you actually build trust and confidence in using technology, but two, you're probably also focusing on the right issue. And people in leadership matter as well, because at the end of the day, people in leadership have to focus on what are the aggregate outcomes of all these systems we have. And so whether it's keeping shareholders happy or policyholders in general, et cetera, that needs to be done there. But I think you really, really have to make sure that you understand the problems at a basic level. So Ema, to your point, yes, I think you need to, you need to focus on the people that are actually doing all the inputs. Because guess what? If you bring in the wrong system, those folks will still have to do the same things in the most difficult way and they'll be upset, yeah. Ema Roloff (26:56.938) And they're going to be, and they'll be skeptical the next time that you bring in technology or they'll think that you don't care what their employee experience is like, and there's one piece, you know, Ramsey, before we started recording, we were talking a little bit about this idea of like, how does a company end up with 200 different technology systems? And how have we, and like, that kind of goes hand in hand with this idea of like, Ramsey Smith (27:00.645) Yeah. Tisa Rabun-Marshall (27:02.362) Right. Ema Roloff (27:24.366) How have we been at digital transformation for 10, 15 years with still having, depending on the statistics you look at, 70% to 80% failure rates? It's because we bring in these pieces without taking a step back to look at the entire puzzle and figure out exactly where those pieces need to go to complete the picture and actually improve the process, because you can improve this little tiny piece of the puzzle. but then you're just pushing the bottleneck back to a different point or creating another problem somewhere along the line for yourself. So then you don't even get the return that you were hoping for on these tools that you're bringing into the company. Paul (28:06.329) Yeah. Tisa, what do you think? Tisa Rabun-Marshall (28:08.366) I mean, what I'm hearing is something that we probably, take a step back and pause and think, like some basics, right? We listen to the front line, talk to the folks on the front line that are doing the work, that are interacting with, whether it's the clients or the producers or whatever the use case is. And so really in this next wave, it's sort of like not losing sight of that, so that you're solving real business problems, you're understanding where the problems are, straight from the mouths of those dealing As far as bringing in new technology, I think that... when I think about senior leadership, obviously they have to make the decisions of where you're gonna direct and where you're gonna invest funds to bring in technology. But I think the thing that connects it all is understanding that if you bring in the right technology at the right time to solve the right problem, it really truly is a differentiator in the marketplace. So the value across the enterprise is for the person on the front line to be more efficient and do their job better, feel like they're at a place that listens to them, gives them the tools they need to be successful. But ultimately, out in the marketplace, it can make you the winner, whether that's the company with the best customer service experience or the company that can get business process the fastest. And that's the win-win for everyone. But getting there is connecting all the dots. But I do think the company that figures it out, it's a big thing to figure out and probably with some time constraint. Either want to be the first or the best. can make a difference long term as far as winning out in the marketplace and being the place that folks decide or choose where they want to buy from, where they want to place their business, who they want to work with. So I think there's branding, you know, there's just, there's a lot to win with it, figuring it out quote unquote, right, but there's obviously a lot to lose if you take the wrong steps along the way. And, and Tisa Rabun-Marshall (30:07.898) you know, having the trade-off be sort of the employee piece of it, the employee satisfaction piece is a big thing to consider in how you approach it. Paul (30:18.412) Yeah, this is a tough one. I think it's, yes, it needs top-down support. Probably even like, I'm seeing a lot of companies actually being pushed into Gen. AI by the board of directors, not even the CEO. It's interesting. And at the same time, you need that top-down support to do introduce something like this, Ema. Wow, the people on the front lines are the ones who are going to give you the use cases. It feels like this will end up being more of a process re-engineering. Ema Roloff (30:43.874) Mm-hmm. Paul (30:47.964) exercise at the end of the day than it will be pure technology because a lot of this AI stuff is free. It's open source. Now there's a lot of work stitched together, right? Put it in these systems. But let's talk about marketing. I'll say we, Tisa and I demoed some stuff to one of our distributors. Yes, we called it AI, but Tisa, I don't think we really promoted it as such and it was AI driven marketing. Ema Roloff (30:57.512) Mm-hmm. Paul (31:17.601) and technology created by AI. I mean, how would you describe the response there? Tisa Rabun-Marshall (31:23.874) I think was overwhelmingly positive. I think it's a combination of two things, probably, to your point, Ema, like what we called it, the way it was presented, the perception of it, right? But also, we happened to be talking to a distributor that is also investing in technology, kind of understands the role. So it was a positive conversation. And immediately, additional use cases were identified in the one or two that we showed. But I think back to what I said a few minutes ago, it's kind of solving the same problem with a different piece of technology. So would you rather get like. template which is like literally would you rather get a word document with a template with fill it You know fill in here insert here, or would you rather have that sort of be more interactive? Conversational pick a few prompts spit out the thing you need. Oh wait go back two seconds later I'd rather have this tone spit out the next you know version of a marketing asset that you're looking for so I think we've always had from a marketing perspective we've always had like toolkits and templates and and a PDF with a fillable fill in my name. But if it can present differently, have more interactivity, and give you more choice more quickly to solve the same need, I think people would lean towards that second use case or that second description. And that's what we got in the room when we talked through what we're looking to build. Of course, they would rather use that. So I think we're heading in the right direction. Paul (33:02.886) Okay, so imagine you're talking to these distributors now. I'm in sales, I'm in marketing. I mean, what should I be doing differently in 2024? Ema Roloff (33:14.466) See, I'm going to take this in a different direction than generative AI, and it's going to be because of generative AI. And I'm going to say every single company should have some sort of video strategy associated with how they are marketing. And at the very minimum, if not a video strategy, a very, very strong education-based content strategy. Um, so not everybody likes being on video, but the reason that I'm so bullish about it is because. Now that we've hit this point where a lot of people have figured out how to use AI to create collateral or do marketing. There is going to be for lack of a better term, a thirst for authenticity. And video provides individuals and organizations if it's done right. the opportunity to truly connect and provide that like authenticity and human trust that comes through like relationships in a different way than other content. So if you're writing a blog post as a human without the assistance of AI, or even with the assistance of AI, It has the opportunity to get lost in the sea of all of the different blog posts on that same topic that are being generated using AI. Um, if you create an image or like, you know, I still hope, and I believe in my heart, but like humans will also still create art and whatever else, but like, if you go and you get this really cool image, it's still competing with images that have been generated by AI. At least at this point, the AI generated videos with like the dobovers of your mouth still lack that like natural authenticity that comes from somebody actually showing up in that avenue. And so I'm pretty bullish that we're going to see even more video content and even more of that like thirst for true authentic content, because of the push of how much AI is going to be coming at us over the next couple of months. Ramsey Smith (35:09.905) Hmm. Tisa Rabun-Marshall (35:30.51) Yeah, well, and AI makes it easier to produce those videos, right? Like the editing side, the production side is making it easier, even finding the right on-screen talent that people can connect and identify with. It's making it quicker and easier to make those videos. So I agree with you. Paul (35:30.888) Yeah, I... Ramsey Smith (35:45.285) So probably the only thing that I wonder about in that space is you can create things that are substantively very good. In other words, essentially they give the information that meets sort of in a particular educational need. But obviously the way one wins in that space is through reach and people actually watching your stuff. So the question is how much of it Paul (35:45.646) Yep. Ramsey Smith (36:15.057) I mean, do you have to be the Mr. Beast of this space, right? So how do you come up with the right strategy, assuming you get the content right? What is the best way? I know we're sort of coming up on the end of time here, so maybe this will be a prompt for a follow-up conversation, but what are the ways you do, in your view, how do you help people get that message? Ema Roloff (36:24.596) Mm-hmm. Ramsey Smith (36:41.905) to the right people, the decision makers that can actually drive your business. Ema Roloff (36:46.314) So I think there's two ways to look at this. There is, are you trying to be an influencer or are you trying to sell? And those are two different things in my mind. Yes, influencers can sell, but just because somebody has a big following doesn't mean that they're speaking to the right people and converting the right people. being a seller that uses these tools, you're speaking to a very specific audience. So you may not have the biggest reach in the entire world. You may not have the impressions of a Mr. Beast or anybody else, but because you've tapped into your specific focus and you're solving a specific problem, you're going to find more revenue from that. Then you would the giant brand that is speaking to no one in particular. And, you know, I was actually just having this conversation with my husband yesterday, because like, as we got to the year end, everyone's posting their like impressions on LinkedIn. And, you know, I have some friends that I'm so excited to see them get these like just absolutely monstrous, you know, 8 million impressions and all of the rest of it, and they've had follower counts that have increased much faster than mine, but I speak to a very specific audience. And I've got a really engaged audience that wants to interact with the content that I'm creating. And so we've seen, you know, with the launch of our business, we are practicing what we preach and we have not sent a single cold email or made a single cold call. And now we have more business than we know what to do with because we spent the time tapping into exactly who we were speaking to the problem we were trying to solve and helping educate people in that space to build trust. And so like, again, I might not have, they might have 10,000 followers more than me, and they might still be tapping into the right audience and generating revenue. I don't know that off the top of my head, but that 8 million impressions doesn't automatically transition to conversions. So I think if we, going back to this kind of teaser comment that I made before, if you as a seller or a marketer can stop and think to yourself, if I were a teacher, Ema Roloff (39:01.598) what subject would I be teaching? And get really, really clear on exactly what subject you're teaching. And then think about who exactly would be in my classroom. And you start creating content for that specific classroom and those specific people, you'll find that there will be leads that come back to you because you've helped tap in to becoming that favorite teacher and that resource that people come back to, to learn from and trust to solve their problem when it's time to buy. Paul (39:30.848) Love it. Love it. Hey listen, we're right at the end of time. We could go on. Ema, we have to have you back here. And maybe you can bring Kenny G with us too. That was... I loved your cameo you pulled in. Ema Roloff (39:37.927) Name a time. Yeah. Okay. No, it's on my list. So when I grew up, my dad always played Kenny G's Christmas album as like the announcement that we were allowed to come out and come to the Christmas tree. So I have, I'm one of six. So like my six siblings and I like that, or like the six of us, that song is like Christmas to us. And I realized this year that Kenny G does cameos where he'll play Christmas music. Ramsey Smith (39:44.125) Is that an inside joke? Ramsey Smith (39:54.834) Yeah. Ramsey Smith (40:09.481) Ah, okay. Ema Roloff (40:10.026) So I went on a probably three week campaign to get my husband to agree to let me buy a cameo from Kenny G as our Christmas card this year. Ramsey Smith (40:18.393) Wow, okay. Nice. Paul (40:19.82) Yeah, but that's, the reason I bring that up is there's lots and lots and lots of average content out there. And I think, you know, bad misuse of Gen.AI will be average. You don't get average responses. But I'm going to take somebody like you to say, let me sort of take these new technologies, put it in a way where, you know, it's not average. It is authentic. And it speaks exactly to the people I care about. You know, I don't care about. 100,000 people in North Korea. Well, actually, they could be South Korea. I guess North Korea would be shut off. But I want this audience in my room that I'm talking to, right? So, I think this is something to stay the same forever. Forever. Ema, how do people find out? How do people connect with you, learn more about you, and what you might, and ways you might be able to help solve some of their problems? Tisa Rabun-Marshall (40:53.81) I'm sorry. Ema Roloff (40:59.084) Mm-hmm. Ema Roloff (41:14.794) Yeah. So, um, our company's name is Rolloff Consulting. So Rolloff is a great way to get into contact and learn a little bit more about again, kind of our approach to digital sales, um, or find me on LinkedIn. The one tricky part is my Ema is spelled with one M so it's E-M-A Roll Off. Um, and I'm on active, very active on LinkedIn. So you'll find me there very easily. Paul (41:37.868) Yeah, excellent. All right, Tisa, Ramsey, thank you very much. Tisa Rabun-Marshall (41:42.502) Thank you. Ramsey Smith (41:43.493) Great to see you guys. Happy New Year. Paul (41:45.508) Happy New Year to everybody and join us again next week for another great episode of That Annuity Show.