Dashboard: AI, TikTok, and the Rise of Women Owners

[Music] welcome to another 21 hats dashboard brought to you by our sponsor the great game of business I'm Lauren Felman I'm here with Sean busy to talk about the things we think business owners should be following this week as you probably know from our weekly conversations Shawn is CEO and founder of Kinesis which is based in Portland Oregon and works with small businesses on marketing culture and strategy welcome back to dashboard Sean great to be here Lauren great to have you here um I don't know if you feel this way Sean but it seems to me there's a lot going on right now a lot in the air that affects business owners and and I'm happy to have the opportunity to dig a Little Deeper with you in a one-on-one conversation let's start with artificial intelligence I feel as though pretty much every day I'm sharing something interesting businesses are starting to do with AI or chat GPT in the morning report it's it just it seems unrelenting I'm wondering if you've started messing around with it yourself are you doing anything yeah I I'm going to ask chat GTP to answer these questions for you but I like it could you invite that to our weekly podcast we should man it'll make me irrelevant um no I I I must admit I was like a little bit skeptical in the beginning of this if this you know the hype around it but well let me say you you wrote a very smart piece uh in which you suggested that AI is to writing what stock photography is to real photography and I don't think you were wrong about that yeah yeah and and it's funny because now you're seeing AI trying to supplant stock photography um yeah so that's happening too um so I yeah it it is pretty profound and the other day I was I have not used Photoshop in what feels like a lifetime even though that was really how I cut my teeth and got started in the industry and I went in and the you know the new version of Photoshop said hey do you want to try this generative Ai and I was like sure I didn't know what I was doing you know I haven't used Photoshop in so long even navigating my way around is kind of hard but I just grabbed the wand I circled some stuff and I said hey get get rid of this Watermark and in like almost a blink of an eye it was gone and it replaced it with believable pixels so it not only deleted something but it it actually generated something new in the image to replace it that was was very convincing and I and just sat there for a minute and I was like Wow and then I did it again I did it with some other images and it was really good and what a lot of people might not know is that in the world of graphic design which is where I got my start and in photography practitioners spent a lot of time fixing images you know they'll you know cut out some stray hair or they'll cut something out from its background and put it in another image and a lot of that stuff takes a long time it's very labor intensive and uh not anymore not anymore you know and and gosh if I could get the hours of my life back that I spent cutting out images oh my gosh I it it's it's pretty profound and and it it makes me think too you know that th that kind of work that's the work for entry-level position that's the work for an entry-level person you know it's very boring tedious timec consuming so that's going to go away and so then what is the new entry level work or or is there entry level work and those are some of the questions I have about AI does this experience change your thinking about how this could impact Kinesis in the relatively near future I don't think relatively near future but and and to be clear I saw the writing on the wall around how creative agencies and marketing firms make their money A long time ago you know most of them are structured like an accounting a traditional accounting firm where they have a bunch of entry-level people processing tax returns and it's kind of a pyramid right so the experienced high paid people who are the partners are at the top and they're doing things like golfing with their buddies and business development and at the bottom are the people who are working all night long slogging away at this not very interesting work so I I long ago I was like I don't want to do that and so I really moved Kines I don't know probably 13 15 years ago moved it more into the realm of like strategy business model looking at the whole company very very much more complex work and so the graphic design we do is in service to brand and design and more complex things it's much harder to replace uh I think it'll have tremendous consequence for anybody who's in the design industry um because you'll I think you'll be able to fire up a a design program and say hey make me a three-page brochure and on the cover I would like a picture of a an auto mechanic working on a car and in the foreground I'd like a happy couple with a baby you know and then write me a block of copy that talks about our service and how great it is you know in that kind of real kind of basic level stuff copyrighting and design I I don't know why you would pay somebody to do that um you know so but I haven't been doing that kind of work in a long time so that's the question I do think the strategy team is talking about it a lot they're really wanting to get ahead of it and see like what are the opportunities what can be done you know to leverage it um yeah so the jury's out on what that's going to look like but I don't know why you wouldn't be exploring it as a business interesting I have a feeling we're going to spend much of this year talking about this and related issues yeah I think so I mean I just had a really frustrating year with my accountant and I had to move on and go find a new accountant and I think it's because they were structured to do this kind of like rote processing of returns and I kept asking them I need more strategic guidance like I need you to help me on the financial site from a forward-looking and a strategic way and they just wouldn't make the time to do it and I'm like you guys are going to get replaced by AI I didn't tell him that but that's what I'm thinking in my mind I'm like that kind of just processing return and that you know painful thing we do at the beginning of the year where we do the tax planner and all that kind of stuff Lauren do you know anybody who likes doing that I don't think you like it as yeah I don't think they like I don't know that they well younger ones don't like doing it so I I think that's going to go that's going to go away God bless it good good riddens but they going to be a lot of Industries like that exactly what you describe where the entry level disappears and you have to figure out how where do you find experienced accountants or or lawyers even uh if you haven't done that grunt work to learn the uh profession yeah okay all right next topic we'll answer that question another time yeah that's not for us to answer yeah next topic I can I almost can't believe I'm asking you this but I've also been doing a lot of items in the morning report lately about the power of Tik Tock the basic thrust of these items is that it isn't just for kids anymore and that it's not just about music videos going viral that there are businesses finding ways to break through and get in front of a lot of people I'm wondering if this is on your radar yet well thanks to the morning report it is now um so if you're not signed up for the Morning Report you need to be thank you Sean I you know we're in the B2B space so our customers our businesses that sell to other businesses and B2B tends to be a late adopter so businesses that are in the consumer space um really I think they need to be on this and should have probably been on this for a while but I'm seeing more and more you know folks my peers fellow business owners using Tik Tok even just like kind of recreational Tik Tok um I have a good friend from music videos uh yeah videos so they're they're not necessarily posting on Tik Tok but they're watching videos you know for hours on end what are they watching you know so take my friend he's an engineer super smart guy knows how to build Crazy robots all kinds of cool stuff he's probably watching videos on engineering and Building Things and making things and construction you know like things he's really interested in I I I don't think he's watching dancing videos in fact I'm sure he's not so uh you know certainly there's the Taylor Swift crowd and there's the you know dancing and Ice Bucket Challenges anything wrong with dancing there's nothing wrong I love watching dancing videos actually um but I just think it's filling a gap in the market and the Gap in the market is what the internet used to be for us which was you would search for things and you would find fantastic stuff you know like a Blog that somebody had curated around a niche idea or maybe even a Facebook page back in the day that was like you know really specific and interesting and what happened is those sites started to monetize things you think about they all became advertising driven and so they start pushing all the content to the top that's all ad driven which means that that Niche stuff that doesn't have a profit motive it goes to the bottom and you never see it anymore and so the results you get and I bet you've experienced this like when was the last time you went to to Google and did a search and like the top 10 things were really new and interesting and curious like I mean serious right I mean it's not a rhetorical question I mean I'm really curious like no it's been a while it's been a while but remember back 10 years ago it was like wow these discoveries are so cool oh I found this page and I found this page so I think Tik Tok is actually doing what we used to what the internet used to be in terms of delivering us the thing that we really want to see and is interesting and not driven by a profit motive although that story I I highlighted last last week um was about them making a big change which is they've introduced Tik Tock shop and you can s stuff there now and they make it really easy to you know for people to click on uh a graphic or something and you know purchase whatever it is you are selling and take advantage of this this engine and I guess the thing that's been amazing about Tik Tok all along as I understand it is that it's not something that you have to build up a Following over years you don't need thousands of followers to have something you know make connections yeah to some it's it's like it's not a toy anymore even your friend the engineer if somebody wants to sell something to manufacturers they could find those videos that manufacturers are looking at and connect with them right yeah I think so I mean I think it's a green field right it it reminds me a lot of 2005 when um I moved my business from the southern part of Oregon to Portland and if you've been to Oregon the southern part of the state is rural and you know small Market hard to make any money so I moved to a new town and I didn't have a network here so I didn't have Word of Mouth referrals I didn't have any way to get new business so what we did is we wrote blog posts lots of blog posts and we got really good at it and we got to like the top page of Google pretty quickly um we got the top page for things like brand marketing all kinds of terms website design and so we would get like a steady flow of leads in this new market we had never been to before because we knew how to how to really capture an a green field opportunity and I think that's what Tik Tok is at this point I think it's a green field you know quickly obviously people are going to figure it out and and pretty soon it'll it'll no longer be that way but that's I think that's what stage we're at in its in its Evolution so are you on Tik Tok um I am not I'm like an adult and I watch Tik Tok videos on Instagram so you know just I'm not on Tik Tock either and I'm thinking sitting here thinking you know there was a time when I might have been embarrassed to admit I was on Tik Tok if I had been on Tik Tok but I can see it's getting to a point where I might be embarrassed to admit I'm not on Tik to yeah I think it's it's cross that Rubicon um I mean for me it's it's it's a bit of a personal decision same reason I left Twitter a long time ago is like a I get kind of addicted to this stuff and it's designed to addict you and so I it's kind of like the reason I don't have cookies in the cupboard if if I have cookies in the cupboard I will eat the whole box you're not talking about digital cookies here no I'm talking about real cookies so I I have a hard time and from what I understand Tik Tok is massively addicting I I met I had an informational interview with a potential candidate the other day and she's like yeah I had to delete it from my phone it was getting so bad you know she she's like target audience right you know probably in her early 30s late 20s and so I just I I feared for that reason and also it's owned by China which there's some security and safety issues right yeah yeah all right next topic I recently highlighted another story um that gave some surprising data suggesting that over the past few years women own businesses have been outperforming businesses owned by men I'm wondering if that surprised you too it actually did I um you know the last thing I heard around you know women uh owning businesses and involvement in it was really the messaging around the pandemic when we heard about women leaving the workforce in huge numbers and how disproportionate the pandemic was on women largely because of child care you know when the schools shut down and kids were having to learn from home all that stuff it was it was really devastating right leaving in large numbers and then being much slower to come back as well yes right and I think now we're seeing that well maybe some of them chose not to come back at all and instead are starting their own businesses and those businesses are doing well well yeah yeah and that's I mean there was a point in Kinesis Evolution where I was the only man at one point and how interesting yeah we've been a I mean it's just an we're an industry that's you know predominantly female and so we've always had a gender skew probably you know 9010 8010 7030 you know I guess 80 20 7030 um you know today it's a little more balanced but yeah it's uh yeah definitely um predominantly female I Pro promoted our president uh she's a woman she's you know taking over my job um I also have been looking lately independent of this article about the ratio of male-owned to women-owned businesses and that are in our that are our customers and that has changed dramatically really um yeah yeah I at last count we are almost two yeah gosh it's hard it's I can't even believe I'm saying this we are almost 2third either women-owned businesses or married couple owned businesses interesting and has that change mostly happened since the pandemic I think in yeah yeah actually that has accelerated uh since the pandemic for sure um I bet you if I were to go back 10 years years ago it might have been 10% maybe 20% and if I were to go back five years ago I don't even think it was 50/50 so if you've had women working with you all along it's not a matter of the your female employees finding female customers that's always been the case it's something else yeah I yeah what is what is the what is it Force you know it's it's things like this you know I join a Visage group you know this is several years ago I go there and I'm like wow there's one woman in the group of 15 people and so imagine if you're a woman and you join that group how are you going to feel like you have a you know people who can understand you right so these or you know organizations that help businesses grow and Thrive you know historically they've been so skewed towards men that it can be really difficult for women to get a foot in the door I'm sure you know I mean I don't want to speak for women here but just looking around these organizations tend to be very male dominated um so I just think the infrastructure and ecosystems have have tended to be male oriented mostly white male oriented and so that tends to attract more of the same unless the organization is deliberate about changing that and so I think what happened with the pandemic is it kind of reset the plane board a bit yeah I I I think it's real I think it's a pretty exciting thing have you seen this happening with other organizations um in and around Portland absolutely you know the most dramatic one and I'm really really proud of them would be probably the Portland chapter of the entrepreneurs organization um when I was a member back around 2017 one of the reasons I left was the lack of diversity and lack of gender representation it was super frustrating for me um it was probably I don't know 8020 maybe uh maybe 90% men male owned businesses and it didn't seem like the organization really was eager to change since that time they've radically changed um it's it's just a much more diverse organization in terms of gender race ethnicity um um it's it's pretty it's pretty impressive if you look at the board today and you look at the board back then it is like a dramatically different organization and the women who are in it are really badass like really fantastic leaders I'm not in it anymore but I have some clients that are um and and you know here's what it here's what changed one is I think at the leadership level they they made a commitment to change and they changed their recruiting person and that was a big deal um so they really said like how do members come in the door well they come through the person who does recruiting and onboarding and they and that person had been the same person for a very long time and when they changed that person I don't know who they put in their place but they clear that person clearly the new person clearly had a different directive um and that started to change the organization for much for the better for sure interesting I have a feeling we're going to be following all these stories uh AI Tik Tock and the emergence of uh women business owners to the way you just described for at least the rest of the year maybe a lot longer yeah I'm excited about it I mean it fires my team up like both the men and the women we were talking about this the other day we were talking about your article and they're like really excited you know to have a more diverse um business cohort and I think that's also generational you know I think oh for sure you know if you look at especially Millennials and gen Z you know I think they are really excited by a more diverse uh business owner cohort and and so that'll continue to change things you know for sure you know we we'll have to put old guys like you and I out to pasture Lauren well if that doesn't get us chat gbt will well yeah we've already been wiped out by the robots so Sean busy is CEO of Kinesis which is based in Portland Oregon and works with small businesses on marketing culture and strategy this episode was brought to you by the great game of business which helps businesses use an open book management system to help build healthier companies you can learn more at Great game.com thank you Sean thanks Lauren have a great week everybody [Music]