EMT #51 with Jordan Walker and Hunter McKinley - How AI and Automation Are Changing Event ROI for Good

Season 2 is officially here — and EMT kicks off 2026 with a deep dive into AI, automation, and what “real ROI” can look like when you capture the conversations happening on the show floor. Chris Dunn (BlueHive Exhibits) and Brendon Hamlin (Hamlin Creative) are joined by Jordan Walker and Hunter McKinley, co-founders of Backtrack, an AI note-taking tool built specifically for live events. 

You’ll hear why teams forget most of what they hear within a day, how “speed to lead” can make or break post-show momentum, and how conversation capture can turn fuzzy anecdotes into real, usable reporting — without losing the human part of events.

• “Humans do the human things, robots do the robot things.” The goal isn’t replacing connection — it’s removing busywork so teams can stay present on-site. 
• The real ROI problem: you can’t improve what you can’t remember or measure — and teams often leave shows with vibes… not usable data.
• Speed-to-lead wins deals: the first follow-up is 3–5x more likely to move to the next step than waiting until later. 
• Privacy is a feature, not an afterthought: “be a good human and always ask,” with opt-in rates around 90% when done transparently.
• How to start using AI without getting stuck: “start with fun, then work” — low-stakes experiments that teach you the tools before you automate the serious stuff.

As Event Marketer’s Toolbox kicks off Season 2, this episode sets the tone for 2026: smarter tools, stronger relationships, and more intentional event strategy. If you care about improving follow-up, proving value, and keeping events human in an increasingly automated world, this conversation is a must-listen.

Listen to the full episode, share it with your team, and start thinking about one place in your event workflow where AI could give you back time — without taking away connection.

👉🏼 Join us for more insightful discussions like this by tuning into 'Event Marketer's Toolbox,' where industry leaders share the tools, tactics, and trends driving success in the event world.

This Show is sponsored by Blue Hive 

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Transcript

0:00:00

(Speaker 3)

Hey, hello and welcome to the event marketers toolbox. We are on the air. It is season two This is episode 51 and it's great to be back Happy New Year to everybody out there. Appreciate it. We've got a friend. Oh, we've got Ethel, too. 

0:00:13

(Speaker 3)

Ethel's moving through the studio. And a couple of good friends from the event industry, a couple of AI tech wizards here. And they're going to school a couple of old dogs, or at least me, anyways. It seems like Brendan's light years ahead of me. But I'm Chris Dunn. I'm with Blue Hive Exhibits. 

0:00:33

(Speaker 3)

This is the Event Marketers Toolbox. And hey, here's my friend, Brendan Hamlin. from Hamlet Creative. Hey, Brendan, how you doing? 

0:00:40

(Speaker 4)

Hey, Chris. I'm doing great. Happy season two. Happy New Year. I will confess my Christmas tree is still up. So not here in the office, but downstairs. 

0:00:53

(Speaker 2)

Christmas tree is still up. So I'm one of those people. And all the lights outside, too, for that matter. But yeah, so thanks for having me back. It's great to be here. Yeah, I'm Brendan Hamlin. 

0:01:05

(Speaker 2)

I run Hamlin Creative. We're a production company based out of Asheville, North Carolina. And we focus on events. So we do conferences and trade shows and experiential events. And we create content within that space, which is a unique place to build content. And we've been doing it for over a decade. 

0:01:27

(Speaker 2)

and have some great partners to line up with us. So great to be here and looking forward to this conversation today. 

0:01:34

(Speaker 21)

Excellent. 

0:01:34

(Speaker 3)

And we've got a couple other guys with us. So we've got Jordan and we've got Hunter from Backtrack. Hey, guys, thanks for joining us. Tell us a little bit about yourselves. 

0:01:42

(Speaker 18)

Yeah. 

0:01:43

(Speaker 2)

Well, first off, thanks for having us. We're excited to be here. Jordan Walker, one of the co -founders of Backtrack. We are an AI note taker for events, helping shows prove ROI to suppliers. But every now and then we know a thing about AI and we are able to come on and do fun things like this. 

0:02:00

(Speaker 6)

That's awesome. 

0:02:01

(Speaker 22)

All right. 

0:02:02

(Speaker 1)

And I'm Hunter McKinley. I'm the co -founder and CEO here. We didn't plan this, but all of us have our glasses on today. So anybody listening, we all look very, very cool. Not nerdy at all. Glad to be here. 

0:02:16

(Speaker 1)

Thanks, Chris. 

0:02:16

(Speaker 11)

That's right. 

0:02:17

(Speaker 3)

And back in the green room when we were chit -chatting earlier, Jordan and Hunter shared how they ultimately met at college a bunch of years ago. And I feel like the word, the guy's a little bit weird, but you may or may not like him, was used. I think we can all relate to that. It takes a quirky type of individual to kind of jump into the event world and stay, because it can be scary as hell. 

0:02:43

(Speaker 18)

Yes, very true. 

0:02:45

(Speaker 5)

Absolutely. 

0:02:46

(Speaker 3)

So this is going to be a great conversation. Before we jump in with both feet, I just want to talk a little bit about our sponsors. So my employer, Blue Hive, we are 21 years old. Actually, we just hit our 21st birthday. So we talk a lot about craft beer here on on the event marketers toolbox. And now we are in fact, the show is legal or I should say that the company is legal. 

0:03:09

(Speaker 3)

I'm a little older than 21 on the other on the other end. But Blue Lab is one of our sponsors. We are a creative organization, about 100 people strong, East Coast and West Coast presence. Where do we fit into the event marketing world? We are designers, builders and managers of custom trade show equipment and managers of programs. We kind of feel like we're the right size for a lot of organizations. 

0:03:35

(Speaker 3)

You know, the big guys, a lot of times you're just a number and the small folks, albeit boutique and quirky, might not have the resources that a group of our size does. So we're right sized for a lot of organizations that are out there. In addition, the folks who are helping us put this show on. is called Fist Bump. And I wrote to these guys a couple of years ago. We're having great conversations. 

0:04:00

(Speaker 3)

The idea of doing a podcast came up and, you know, being somebody who was uncomfortable with the idea initially was like, oh, I could never do that. Which is funny, because here we are, 51 episodes, and this is so much fun. I've had a blast doing this, creating really interesting conversations with people from all aspects of the event world. And Fist Bump helps us not only put the production of the show together, but they do all the heavy lifting as far as making sure that we look and sound great. They capture all the content. Then they help us with the marketing on the backside with the shorts and the clips. 

0:04:39

(Speaker 3)

So, you know, it's just there's a lot of folks out there who are talking about starting a podcast. And I can tell you from firsthand experience, it's really hard to do on your own. So Fist Bump is a great group to jump in with. And they'll do all the heavy stuff and really just kind of let you have fun and have the great conversations. So with that said, We're going to jump in here. We're usually about an hour or so. 

0:05:01

(Speaker 3)

We look forward to plenty of questions coming in from the from the audience. I see Carter and Zadia and James out there. So some of our super listeners. So good to see you guys. And as Carter Parrish is saying, 2026 can finally start now that the event is back on air. 

0:05:21

(Speaker 5)

So. 

0:05:21

(Speaker 3)

All right, guys, this is going to be great. We're going to jump in. Brendan, you're going to start us off with the first set of questions for the guys. 

0:05:28

(Speaker 2)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Jordan and Hunter, it's great to meet you guys. And what a great time to be talking about AI and having a couple people that are really intimately involved with it. I think the first place to start before we really get into what Backtrack does is maybe you can talk a little bit about how AI is being used. its way into the event space and why that's a positive. Where are you seeing it working really well and how is that really helping events perform even better? 

0:06:03

(Speaker 2)

I know we both have good answers here. Yeah. 

0:06:06

(Speaker 1)

Well, so here's the thing. It's everywhere. And what's so funny is that AI has been around for this, this AI boom that seemed to have been a fad maybe three years ago. It really isn't going away. And in fact, I'd say it's, it's almost becoming kind of like when the websites came out, it was a big deal if you had a website and then it just became, okay, we have a part of our business online. I think that's how AI is. 

0:06:26

(Speaker 1)

So I think it's, um, you know, Julius Solaris, he puts out his, his, uh, his chart on, on, on what are the top tools, and all of them have some sort of aspect. So you see it in registering attendees and filling out forms for attendees. And you see it with Zenus. They have these monitors that anonymously track facial. We do AI note -taking, which you're seeing that explosion over digital, but now it's making its way into events. I feel like AI is just getting its little tentacles into every single cookie jar in the world on every aspect. 

0:07:04

(Speaker 1)

So I don't think it's going away. I think that, in fact, I think it's just going to keep getting better and better to the point where you don't even realize that it's not a human and it's no longer AI. It's just part of the experience. It's been amazing to see it grow just in the last few years. 

0:07:19

(Speaker 2)

Yeah, I guess I would add to that, too. It's like what we see in our world is that we say what the humans do to the human things and what the robots do to the robot things. When it comes to events, the whole reason that we are in this world is that face -to -face human connection. We should be spending more time on doing that, right? Chris, what you mentioned about the podcast, we should be spending the time having fun, engaging in the conversation, not worry about the back end logistics necessarily. And I think broadly, that's where AI will really help. 

0:07:45

(Speaker 2)

is sort of stressing about sending 1 ,000 emails and making sure everybody needs this and everybody needs that. AI can help automate some of those jobs and automate some of those tasks, allowing humans to do more of what the human should be doing. That's amazing. That's probably the best explanation of how AI can best be So talk about Backtrack now. What does that platform do and what's the robot thing that Backtrack is doing? Yeah, well, there's a few things that we find really interesting. 

0:08:27

(Speaker 2)

specifically to backtrack, right? What we hear is people have a really hard time remembering the conversations they have when they go to shows. So it turns out there's some real science behind this. We as humans forget 70 % of information within a 24 -hour window, right? And it's funny, I was at IMAX a couple months ago, and I was telling this to a guy, he goes, yeah, oh, it's two hours max for me, right? 

0:08:47

(Speaker 9)

Yeah, exactly. 

0:08:48

(Speaker 2)

But across the entirety of a trade show, right, if you look at that, hey, look, we forget 75 % of information, That's a lot of lost conversations, ultimately lost prospects, and ultimately wasted dollars kind of going down the drain if you don't remember those conversations. So Backtrack's whole reason for existence is to one, help the supplier, the exhibitor, the sponsor remember the conversations they have, but then two, actually be able to prove the ROI. And what's funny too is actually at IMEX, I fell into my own trap as well. We had a meeting with, I don't know if I can say who, but a big corporate brand that we would all know. I thought it went really well and I was, you know, full of adrenaline. I was full of emotion. 

0:09:27

(Speaker 2)

I was really, really excited. And Hunter was back at home. I text him, I was like, oh man, I just crushed this meeting. It was so awesome. I loved it. You know, they're going to sign for sure, blah, blah, blah. 

0:09:36

(Speaker 2)

He's like, all right. But like, what really happened? But what's cool about it, we had a, we had a conversation. is that he was able to then go see the backtrack and see the objective measures to how that meeting actually went. He's like, all right, you actually did a pretty good job. And they actually became a customer recently, which is cool. 

0:09:49

(Speaker 2)

But the point there is it gives teams an objective sense of, what the heck actually just happened at the trade show I went to. It's easy to, what's the word, puffery in real estate. This is a beautiful house. Well, that's subjective. But to be able to actually go back and see it for real and say, okay, yeah, it is a beautiful house. 

0:10:12

(Speaker 4)

You did do a good job. 

0:10:14

(Speaker 2)

That's awesome. 

0:10:15

(Speaker 4)

That's really interesting. 

0:10:16

(Speaker 1)

I was convinced that you were going to say that Hunter listened to your or looked at the transcript and was like ripping you apart like, dude, you know that this is the marketers toolbox, right? And the funny thing is that I think the status 52 % of event marketers have no idea what the ROI is of a show. So all you hear is your sales team telling you that they did a great job. But we know the reality is that they could have just been at the happy hour the whole time, and you would never know the difference. So AI is at least giving you that objective reality to say, did you actually show up? And what did the conversation even look like? 

0:10:54

(Speaker 18)

It's amazing. 

0:10:56

(Speaker 3)

Obviously, there's a lot of, you know, recording tools and other stuff out there that I know. So my position is a VP of sales. And we talked a lot about, you know, How did that call go? What was that like? And there's tools like Otter or something like that that record it and give you the transcript back. So I know sales teams are kind of using these tools to kind of go in and pick and pick apart your story and help salespeople maybe refine what they're saying and things of that nature. 

0:11:22

(Speaker 3)

Do you find that the backtrack is being used in that similar fashion? The benefit is we're capturing the conversation, but a side benefit is like, hey, listen, right here, Jimmy, it was a great conversation in general, went well, but right here, you said something that I probably wouldn't say that again, because you may be kind of stepping in a little bit. Kind of a cool side benefit that comes from that. 

0:11:46

(Speaker 2)

Yeah, especially amongst our more corporate clients, I would say training is actually a huge byproduct of the backtrack product. To Hunter's point, right, what they generally say is, yeah, look, we hired all these new people, they're at our shows doing what they do, But we have no idea, is Jordan the new employee? Is he saying the right things? Is he delivering the pitch in the way that we expected him to deliver the pitch? Now, with Backtrack, they can look at it and go, OK, well, actually, Jordan maybe needs a little more training, or maybe Hunter can be a little more refined here, or things of these nature that, again, allow them to exponentially improve how their team's performing at shows compared to the person who's just saying, yeah, the vibes were awesome. It's like, how did it go? 

0:12:26

(Speaker 2)

What did you say? 

0:12:27

(Speaker 1)

Yeah, I took that potential customer out for a cocktail, and it was great. 

0:12:31

(Speaker 2)

Right. 

0:12:32

(Speaker 3)

So that's a great segue into kind of this next line of questioning, per se, is like, Hunter, you specifically mentioned ROI. I think all of us out there who are in the event world, who are trying to manage budgets, which are growing and growing and you know, our company is willing to spend money if we know that the ROI is going to come back to us. Right. So we've got to go. We've got to do this right. But it's hard to prove that ROI out. 

0:13:01

(Speaker 3)

And a lot of times, like, you know, coming home with a bunch of leads and be like, hey, we've got all these leads that tells half of the story. 

0:13:07

(Speaker 1)

But how does what you guys the product that you guys have built in backtrack and in general, how does how does that actually help solve some of the ROI questions that are out there? Yeah, well, when the when the company is looking at, so like, let's say a marketing team, they sent, you know, sometimes they go up to 70 events, maybe even more per year. so when they're looking at their budgets, which are always getting smaller, but yet they want everyone in the events industry. Yeah. So they're trying to, they always are trying to find ways to optimize what they're doing. And what ends up happening is, uh, I hear it every day. 

0:13:43

(Speaker 1)

So I'll give you this marketers. I'm telling you what's, what's happening. There's always a discrepancy between what sales and marketing says. So marketing will have a budget, let's say a couple million dollars to send their teams out. And then sales comes back and they don't put their leads into a CRM. That's just like one example over and over and over again. 

0:14:00

(Speaker 1)

So when the when the market is trying to decide, do we spend more, you know, with Blue Hive next year? And so we don't even know how much money we made. Where did those leads go? Did anything come out of it? And so backtrack, what we try to do is we say, listen, take your conversation, have AI take the notes. That's step one. 

0:14:17

(Speaker 1)

Just for the fact that just letting marketing see any of this is already a big win. Like I said, 52 percent. don't even know what the ROI is of the event because their leads aren't coming in. Turns out only 20 % of leads end up making it into a CRM after a trade show to begin with. So if you can just fill that gap, which we do, that's already the big one. But then we take it a step further and we say, how do we prove that they actually accomplished what they said? 

0:14:42

(Speaker 1)

Well, if you take those are if you take those notes, and then you put it into our system, which it does it automatically, we can grade you. on every step of the process. And so you have this objective reality that your manager can look at and say, Oh, wow, we should actually come back three years in a row now, because we can see that we have all these leads coming in. And the average was a B minus, which is better than this other show. That's all not possible, you'd have to hire, which we have customers, they've literally hired people to sit there and take notes in every meeting and grade it themselves. So we just took the best of the world in the world that do that. 

0:15:17

(Speaker 15)

And we just put it into software. 

0:15:19

(Speaker 3)

Wow. OK, so is the is it the conversation itself is being graded with regards to that? many things they talked about budget and needs and, you know, a show list or what? OK, so that that's pretty cool. So it's not so much about the performance of the salesperson. 

0:15:37

(Speaker 1)

It's really kind of about the overall conversation, how much information lives within those notes that can be utilized by that sales team. Yeah, it grades every every little aspect you would want. Like, for example, one of our favorite parts is the snapshot. So you see, did you have the decision maker in the room? Were they even in the conversation to begin with? That gets a grade. 

0:16:00

(Speaker 1)

How often were you speaking versus listening? We have data coming out. I won't spoil it, but there's a very direct correlation between not talking as much and making deals happen. So you get, what's your first impression score? So we break that down. How warm and friendly were you? 

0:16:15

(Speaker 1)

How clear were you about the objection objective? And then we give the top competitors emerging topics. There's so much you can squeeze out of one conversation. But what we find is that in our industry, it's face to face. We don't want to sit there and talk to a pencil or a pen, right? So we want to talk face to face. 

0:16:32

(Speaker 1)

And the best salespeople, it turns out that they just never even pick up a pen, which is why you're saying, I think that's why you're seeing that discrepancy between sales and marketing, because the best salespeople, they're, they're they're bullshitting, they're going out to a bar, they're talking about it, they're, they're not pitching, they're just talking, right. And they're not sitting there writing everything down. So unless you have an AI tool, maybe it's metric, maybe it's odd, or whatever it is, there's just so much juice that you can squeeze out of that by just having it recorded and having AI analyze it. It's never been done. 

0:17:02

(Speaker 3)

It's never been possible before, at this level. What does that look like for me as a customer? 

0:17:07

(Speaker 2)

Do I get the transcript or is the audio turned into like an MP4 or something like that and that lives in my CRM? You get a few things from us when you create a backtrack. So one is you get a summary of the conversation, right? So hey, what the heck did we have to just talk about broadly? You also get a transcription of the conversation. What's really interesting is we will also generate an AI -based email draft that will reference the conversation that you just had. 

0:17:34

(Speaker 2)

So for immediate copy and paste follow -up, we'll generate that. And the last beautiful thing that we'll generate is what Hunter just mentioned, is these ROI reports. And we'll separately generate an ROI report, which contains more of those analytical details that Hunter just mentioned. 

0:17:48

(Speaker 10)

First impression scores, keywords, phrases, top product interests, everything in between. 

0:17:55

(Speaker 3)

Wow. Okay. Is it able to aggregate all the conversations and look at that data? 

0:17:59

(Speaker 1)

It's like a pile of stuff and be like, there was 100 conversations that were had over the course of, you know, two days by the six different salespeople. And it look, can it look at like the whole shoot and match? Exactly. Yeah. We call those manager reports and sales rep reports. So you can break it down by which was the best meeting. 

0:18:18

(Speaker 1)

So like that one that Jordan had wasn't one of the top. But it was a good meeting. Still, you can see that on the chart. And then you can break it down by by a sales rep, even and say, what was the average grade of a sales rep? We try to tell people it's not a grade of how well they did. It's just a grade of how well the meeting went with the with the needs met there was there a good fit. 

0:18:37

(Speaker 1)

And so it's very fat. When you see one, you'll you'll see it. It's fascinating when you really start to analyze and say, well, here's why you're we actually use that at one of our shows. We went to exhibitor live. 

0:18:48

(Speaker 3)

We found out that one of our core pitches and one of the core pieces of our product reports that wasn't being mentioned in like 80 percent of the conversations that one of our sales reps had. So by day two, we were able to adjust and say that should be the thing that you're talking about. But again, that would never be like if you asked us four or five years ago, none of this was even remotely possible recently. I'm curious with the with the increase. level of technology that exists, and obviously it's not a video recording, it's an audio recording, but can the AI read into, let's call it audio body language? 

0:19:29

(Speaker 2)

In other words, my voice, you know, when I'm excited, I'm like, oh, my God, that's freaking awesome. 

0:19:34

(Speaker 12)

Right. 

0:19:34

(Speaker 2)

It's like, does it does it assess the level of excitement or seeming seemingly interest, seeming interest of that person that they're talking to? 

0:19:45

(Speaker 23)

Does it have those kind of tools built in or is that maybe still to come? 

0:19:49

(Speaker 2)

I was going to say we got some cool stuff on the road now is what I would say. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. How quickly do you report out? 

0:20:04

(Speaker 2)

So you're at the trade show for eight hours and you've recorded all of these interactions. How quickly do you get that information back? Is it instant or does it take time? Yeah. So your summaries and transcripts are available instantly. The second you finish up a conversation, you can go do that. 

0:20:22

(Speaker 2)

What we will do at the end of the day for the show is we'll send an email to say like, hey, now it's time to go review all your stuff. But theoretically, you could go view it in the moment if you so wanted. So I wonder, so I'm always looking at a creative spin. How would something like this help what I'm doing? And I could see a case where you've recorded a number of conversations, and I'm always preaching about that instant sort of how quickly can you get t that was a, you know, a s you, you literally could is worthy of that outreac to what that conversation with a video that says, hey, Bob, it was great to talk to you. 

0:21:14

(Speaker 2)

I love that we talked about these four things, and I'll look forward to following up with you next week. Is that something that you could see being used? It's actually already happening, Brendan. It's a really cool, again, just anecdotal story. It's one of my favorites. So last year, we deployed our service at a show. 

0:21:31

(Speaker 2)

And so the woman backtracked the conversation, finished up, and she goes, all right, my account executive will follow up with you. Well, the backtrack summaries and notes automatically went back over to the account executive who was back home. The account executive already followed up with the prospect. Meanwhile, they had just walked away on the show floor. Within five minutes, a calendar invite was sent out. They had a meeting on the books. 

0:21:51

(Speaker 2)

The prospect went back to the saleswoman on the show floor and said, I'm amazed that I now have a calendar invite from your account executive. And they knew exactly what we're talking about. 

0:22:00

(Speaker 1)

Meanwhile, they're armed with backtrack on the back end, like this superpower in your pocket. to make all that possible. So speed, you know, we call it speed to lead, right? It's, um, that's a really cool thing to say. Really cool thing to say. Well, if you're the first one to respond, I mean, imagine that everybody else on the floor, no one's sending emails in the moment. 

0:22:19

(Speaker 1)

No one's doing that. So if you can imagine everyone's waiting till Monday morning when they finally get home and they send out all the emails, if they even end up getting it to the marketer's hand, they might get a blast email. 

0:22:29

(Speaker 3)

Yeah, versus we're trying to figure out what is the edge that we can give people, Jordan, I think you're about to say it, because I don't know the I don't know the exact stat off the top of my head, too. 

0:22:37

(Speaker 20)

But there's something like the first person to reach out, I think it's like three to five times more likely to get to the next step, whether that's closing or a meeting, then the person that waits until everybody else does. 

0:22:50

(Speaker 3)

So we can close that gap. Even if you don't use backtrack, if you could just close that gap. I don't know how you do it without AI, but if you can do it, you're already ahead of the entire pack. Super impactful. Absolutely. I mean, I've done it myself. 

0:23:03

(Speaker 3)

I'm absolutely guilty. You know, we go out of business. shows and you have these great conversations and then life gets in the way, right? It's like all the stuff that I didn't do for my real job, I'm doing, I'm either doing at night or after dinner or, you know, or I'm going to the bar to meet people and continue doing that face to face. And then, so then it's two days later and you're like, oh, I had that great conversation, but I didn't write it down or I didn't track it. So now I'm trying to remember like, oh, he was a Dodgers fan. 

0:23:29

(Speaker 2)

He lived in LA. But what you guys do makes it really possible to do that. I got a question here from our audience. Adrian, how would Backtrack address privacy concerns with these recordings? That's a really good question. Yeah, it is a great question. 

0:23:45

(Speaker 2)

So there's a couple answers that I'll give you there, Adrian, to kind of answer it. So one is, we say at the company, be a good human and always ask. Hey, do you mind if AI takes notes while we talk? 

0:23:55

(Speaker 3)

It doesn't matter where you are, what show you're at, be a good human and ask, do you mind if AI takes notes while we have the conversation? 

0:24:00

(Speaker 2)

Typically, on our side, we see about a 90 % opt -in rate from people. If you asked us five years ago at the 100th point, maybe we would have given you a different answer. But we see a really high opt -in rate. And what's interesting before I get to the rest of it is we actually see now attendees want this to happen because, again, to what Hunter just said, people are so damn tired of the generic follow -up of the, hey, Chris and Brendan, met you at the show, let's meet. And you're like, Right, we're going to rehash that same conversation over again. Yeah, I talked to 200 people, right? 

0:24:29

(Speaker 2)

So it's really interesting to me in the last, let's say, eight months, especially, attendees actually really want this to happen. So that's what I would say there. I guess the answer to get to the rest of it. One, we're not lawyers. We don't play one on TV. That's something that our VP of sales likes to say, but we're not lawyers here. 

0:24:45

(Speaker 2)

But it also just depends on if you're a one -party, two -party consent state. That's one thing. And then two, I guess the layer beneath that is also depends on what the show has in terms of service. Some shows have it. 

0:24:55

(Speaker 20)

So it says you consent to being recorded, have cameras in your face, microphones, et cetera. 

0:25:00

(Speaker 2)

But nonetheless, we make it really apparent and obvious that, hey, recording is going to take place. 

0:25:06

(Speaker 3)

People can choose to opt in. And at any point in the conversation, if somebody says, hey, you know what, I actually don't want to be recorded, you can simply pause your end of recording. So we take privacy very, very seriously in our company. Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. 

0:25:20

(Speaker 5)

No, that makes a ton of sense across the board. 

0:25:25

(Speaker 3)

I'm running through scenarios in my mind. And the other thing that I wanted to add to it before we go back to Brendan with more questions is, so we also go to Exhibitor Live. We're sending two or three salespeople, but we have a team of 10. So the folks that are having conversations on site aren't necessarily the folks who are going to follow through, right? You can only take so many notes. about that. 

0:25:49

(Speaker 3)

So with this tool, what we'll be able to do is have all of those conversations and then objectively be able to farm those out. 

0:25:57

(Speaker 1)

You know what? Based on this conversation, I think Jack's a really good fit for this particular client because of the industries they're in or the people that they know or whatever it is. Right. 

0:26:07

(Speaker 7)

So and I'm sure that that's a similar scenario that a lot of other exhibiting companies are dealing with. 

0:26:13

(Speaker 1)

Right. It's not like every single rep who's going to follow through on these leads is always on site. getting that personal feedback and, you know, building those connections and like, oh yeah, we really connected about baseball or about, you know, we both love to ski or something like that. So there's all those really cool little nuggets in there that can be used by somebody who was not even at the show and feel like they still can come to the table with a personalized message that moves the needle and gets that attendees, you know, mind right back to, you know, how they felt in that space. I totally agree. You know, we get this question a lot, so I didn't see who asked it, but I appreciate it. 

0:26:53

(Speaker 1)

privacy security we get that caught conversation every day Uh, we've talked to them three years ago, four years ago when we had a different product called yak, by the way, that's our, uh, parent company. Okay. And they said, we, we absolutely have no recording internally at all. You're not allowed to record. 

0:27:21

(Speaker 2)

I've been just using this on the side to see if it works. That same company, we just worked with them less than two months ago, and now it's completely rolled out company wide. You're required to have recording on, it's just a natural extension. So yeah. someone's gonna do it. If it's not us, someone will bring this to every event. 

0:27:39

(Speaker 2)

Mark my words, five years from now, every conversation will be recorded. No matter what AI notes, it'll be required because otherwise, don't know the ROI. Right? Can you because my lizard brain is not that big. Can you just kind of step back and walk through like, what is a what is this a moment, a scenario look like? How does how does the How does your customer use the app with their customer at the show? 

0:28:08

(Speaker 2)

What does that interaction look like? And then what happens to the content after the fact? What's that all look like? Yeah, it's really straightforward and simple. So the big thing is that we handle all the logistics for setup. So we will actually provide device. 

0:28:24

(Speaker 2)

So our team will come on site, we'll have devices, recording devices ready to go. We'll make sure that it's at each table, booth, stand, meeting room, whatever the thing is. We'll make sure it's all ready to go. And then typically, if there's a meeting schedule, Backtrack will be integrated into the meeting schedule. I might actually turn on for the duration of the meeting, it'll turn off, and there's nothing that the user has to mess with. if you will. 

0:28:50

(Speaker 2)

We also have a version... Oh, I see Zeddy in the chat, not the lizard brain. Yeah. Other option, right? If there's no meeting schedule, you can kind of do it the DIY self, the DIY mode, if you will. You can choose to start and stop recordings on your own. 

0:29:06

(Speaker 3)

And then as soon as you... Again, as you end that recording, summaries, transcriptions, and et cetera, are delivered back to you just about instantly. So we make it really easy. 

0:29:16

(Speaker 18)

And then so if it say it's in a trade show scenario and you've got, you know, you've met with 50 people that day, do you then have 50 transcriptions to go through and 50? 

0:29:27

(Speaker 1)

Like, what's the how do you manage the volume? Yeah, so you would have 50 different recordings that you would go through. Typically what people do is they log into our, we have a web dashboard, so they would typically log into the web dashboard after the show, go in there, review it all, take the notes, whatever. They would generally export it out to a CSV file, manipulate the data in whatever way they need to, and then put it wherever it needs to go. But typically the behavior that we see is just after the show ends, people go review their recordings in our dashboard, and then it goes 80 million different places from there. Yeah. 

0:30:00

(Speaker 1)

Is it just out of curiosity to kind of jump in? Let's say you're having a conversation with me and I'm like, hey, yeah, I'd love to get that quote on Tuesday. Does it does does the AI kind of go through and flag like action items that are that are specific like that so that those are harder to miss? Yeah, exactly. So there's there's a few things there. So we have the report, which you can just glance through the report itself, which is pretty extensive. 

0:30:25

(Speaker 1)

Most people don't go back and listen to the whole thing. I mean, if you're having an hour long conversation, you're not going to listen to the whole thing. So we do is we just generate a summary. In that summary, there's a couple things that are really important. One is obviously what was the conversation? I'll give a quick summary. 

0:30:38

(Speaker 1)

Two is it'll actually pull out, you mentioned baseball, right? You mentioned LA. So it'll pull out those personalized 

0:30:45

(Speaker 2)

because then that'll help them remember when you follow up. We also help write that email. And then of course we have the next steps there too. Okay, so if there's a long conversation, it might not get every next step. But at least the goal is that forgetting curve, James, I appreciate you saying it is an important concept. The goal is for the person who was in the conversation to be able to remind the other one to get you back up to speed. 

0:31:08

(Speaker 12)

Because the worst is when you get back home, you need to start the sales process all over again, they've already forgotten you remember that when they're when you're a seller like us, the buyer they've met with 16 other people that day, and then they had a happy hour. 

0:31:21

(Speaker 1)

at the end of it. So their brains fried, and they've gotten home. So you try to stand out by just trying to remember every little detail isn't necessarily as important as just getting the high level so you can get jump right back in. And would you be able to use this like a roadmap into another application for creating a proposal or doing something like that? Is that does it dovetail into other programs or is it just we don't have like a proposal integration per se but where a lot of people what use us is they look at yeah that summer transcription say okay here's the key things that we at least needed to to map out and plan and then they will you know take that information and put it in an agreement or a proposal yeah um you know what's so unique about having this data that people don't normally have is that it can live and be useful in so many different places whether it's proposal software directly in the crm the follow -up email calendar invites content online, whatever the thing may be. You know, like one interesting behavior that we've seen just kind of as an anecdote, one thing that we generate in the reports is, hey, here's some of the top keywords and phrases that you can take a look at. 

0:32:27

(Speaker 1)

And in the spirit of this being the Event Marketers Toolbox podcast, marketers can look at that and go, oh, wow, actually, people were really resonating with these top keywords and phrases. Now we can adjust our content to map back to what actually was being said in these meetings. not what we guesstimated to be a good idea. Right. 

0:32:43

(Speaker 3)

We're probably gonna get to this later on anyway, so you might as well just jump in. One really cool thing that we've been seeing is people creating their own agents or GPTs, and then taking the transcripts and taking the insights that we generate, and then having it spin its way into, let's call it a Zapier flow. If you're not familiar with Zapier, it's just an automated flow, where you can turn a conversation, those insights into a proposal. So again, in the agreement, we were talking just very briefly how we try, they we get into these conversations with folks, and they want us to help automate and start to AI stuff. So what we try to do is get on a podcast like this and explain some of the concepts so they can do it themselves. And we end up inevitably getting roped in, because the better the sales process is, the better. 

0:33:29

(Speaker 3)

The salesperson makes more money, the company hits their goals, they prove the ROI, and then they come back again. So the whole industry from the top to the bottom, benefits when these people are doing these things. But if the notes end at, I didn't take notes, and I'm not going to give it to anybody, everything kind of breaks and the budgets get smaller. And you guys know what that's like. Yeah, yeah, for sure. You mentioned like keywords. 

0:33:56

(Speaker 3)

One thing I was just thinking, at Exhibitor Live, a couple years ago, when we were in Louisville, we did this cool kind of engagement activation piece. People stepped up into this space. They put their head into this kind of captive area and they watched the video and they came down and they chose a ping pong ball. And it was a very tactile kind of a process, which was which was nice. But they basically selected one of six different segments. Where are your pain points within the exhibit event process? 

0:34:24

(Speaker 1)

Is it labor? Is it the creativity? Is it the is it the technology? And they're able to kind of select those. 

0:34:29

(Speaker 3)

But what I'm what I'm thinking about with regards to what you guys are doing is we've got all these transcripts. you've got the people talking about it, and then your system can go in after the fact and look at those hundred conversations and come out with like, out of those hundred conversations, 60 % of the people had a problem with labor, or 32 % had a problem with the lack of creativity or the budgeting, whatever it is, right? 

0:34:53

(Speaker 22)

So it can look at those things and not only pick apart each conversation, but give us big picture data right on like, here's what we're seeing, here's what the market's telling us. 

0:35:03

(Speaker 13)

You know, and it's not just a single serving size, it's like 100 people, different conversations, but so many times, these issues were brought up over and over again. 

0:35:12

(Speaker 1)

So that's really cool, too. I wasn't even thinking about it as an amalgamation of data, but really, initially just looking at it like individual conversations. Yeah, that excites us too. There's, we're just scratching the surface. Give us a year. We'll find even more. 

0:35:27

(Speaker 1)

Well, it sounds like based on from how we used your, your program or your, your platform, uh, back in February or March to now it's, it's changed. So you guys have your own hardware. Oh yeah. We have a full fleet. We have our own fleet that that's completely optimized for the events industry. In fact, we've, we call it a pivot. 

0:35:48

(Speaker 1)

We've been in trade shows for a few years now. Um, but we, we are now all in on scheduled meetings because what we found. is that humans, human phones, we'll call it the personal phones. They just, they just usually aren't up to snuff. And they use VPNs when they're out. Sometimes it's from other countries. 

0:36:07

(Speaker 1)

And there's 1000 different Android devices alone. So we said, we're just gonna do our own thing. And we're not gonna let anybody basically touch it, it just runs itself. And we pick it up at the end of the day, we make sure it's charged. And that has, how about it, Jordan, that has completely changed our business because now it's a no brainer for the brand, because they don't have to touch it. They don't have to do anything. 

0:36:29

(Speaker 3)

And then the organizers, have to pay for extra power, Wi -Fi or anything for us. We just we just show up. 

0:36:36

(Speaker 2)

And I think the biggest game changer in the last few months is we just launched advertising. So now it's free. Now we're no longer a line item. Now, in between all those meetings, now we get to show advertisement that pays for the thing and then some. So now it's actually a profit driver. So it's been a very exciting. 

0:36:55

(Speaker 1)

You said since February? I'm glad you mentioned that because I didn't want to say it, but I noticed our team, because we were using our phones, it was a little clunky. 

0:37:10

(Speaker 3)

And again, it's user error, not saying there was anything wrong with the platform, but you had to go through, you had to start, you had to do all the stuff. I love the fact that now that the system is just in place. Yeah, I remember that. 

0:37:22

(Speaker 2)

We won't say who it is, but I remember Yes. 

0:37:25

(Speaker 3)

You're one team member. 

0:37:26

(Speaker 21)

You had a very, very old phone. 

0:37:29

(Speaker 2)

That's right. 

0:37:29

(Speaker 18)

I remember. 

0:37:30

(Speaker 2)

So we just removed all the guesswork. That's the biggest. I won't say who it was. 

0:37:36

(Speaker 1)

So you have a device there. 

0:37:38

(Speaker 2)

Do you have multiple microphones around the space? Nope. Just a single device. Really? 

0:37:44

(Speaker 1)

Okay. 

0:37:44

(Speaker 3)

It's only vocal to your conversations? 

0:37:46

(Speaker 1)

Yeah. So we have voice isolation built in to pick up only your conversation. So like we'd say, for every person that needs to record a conversation, that person would have one device. So rather than having mics all around and have this really chaotic thing, you just simply have the, you know, the device between you and the other, the other party that you're speaking with. All right. Looks like David is loving the workflow. 

0:38:12

(Speaker 1)

David, we're going to talk, man. Hit us up after this. Yeah. 

0:38:15

(Speaker 20)

Sounds like you're speaking our language. 

0:38:17

(Speaker 3)

David, we do this a lot. I can't even get through that. Yeah. So while you're reading that David, we do a lot of AI talks. And you'd be shocked how many folks I'm sure you, it seems like you know what you're talking about. But you should be shocked how many folks have never tried chat GPT. 

0:38:32

(Speaker 3)

So when we talk about Zapier, that usually kind of blows people's minds. Because to go from I'll give you a real example, my wife happens to be an event organizer. And there's an integrate, there's no, at the time, there was no integration between Hoover and Eventbrite. 

0:38:46

(Speaker 1)

And so to do that, the only way to do that would be a human or Zapier would be just transferring from one row to the next. So just even that is usually like, whoa, we need to spend an hour and sit down and figure this out, which I totally understand. It's a little bit of a, of a platform. Awesome. Awesome. Um, so we're talking a lot about your product as a, as a whole, let's kind of open up the, uh, the roots a little bit on that and just say, so. 

0:39:17

(Speaker 1)

One of the things you guys have kind of fallen into, I guess it would be, is like you come in, you talk, and you know your shit. And all of a sudden, a company like us that is running somewhat antiquated, we're used to doing things the way we've always done them, per se. We're looking at guys like you and going, how can you help us create better workflows? How can you help us throughout the business? So you've actually kind of fallen into, to some extent, some consulting work, right, where you're going in and working with, whether it be an exhibit company or other event related group, like how do you, what does that look like? And what are you seeing, I guess, let's say big picture with regards of AI, and you mentioned it earlier, Hunter, like it's got its tentacles into everything. 

0:40:01

(Speaker 1)

There's not anything out there in the world anymore that doesn't have some AI baked into it. But what do you see big picture and how is it working its way into all aspects of businesses, whether they be event related or not? Well, a lot of our customers, and Jordan, I'm actually curious to hear your answers too, but a lot of our customers, they're still dealing with it. you know, spreadsheets, like that's how they manage their events. There's nothing wrong with that, by the way, if it's been working for 20, 30 years, why, why fix it? I just think a really fast way to just get involved with AI that's pretty low lift. 

0:40:35

(Speaker 1)

I've been messing with it for the last 48 hours. 

0:40:37

(Speaker 2)

I'm just obsessed is that they now have, I guess it's been out for a little while, but It's built right into Google Sheets. So if you're already using Google Sheets, it's as easy as typing in equals AI and just asking it to just analyze the row before the cell before. And it's been magic. I was up for I was up till I think 1am last night and like 3am the night before. Just absolutely obsessed with these add ons. It was $15 a month. 

0:41:06

(Speaker 2)

Maybe we're getting too into the weeds. So stop me if this is too crazy. 15 bucks a month and it's saving so much time something simple like go find the public phone number of this of this cell which is like the company name. And like 10 seconds later I have a phone number like I can just hand that off to a sales team. So it's just that alone is already like that, that's a person I would have to hire to do that work. Now we're like Jordan said, we're now allowing the robots to go find the robot things. 

0:41:35

(Speaker 2)

And now the humans can actually pick up a phone and do the actual human to human interaction that's so needed. Jordan, I'm curious what you have to say, though. No, I think you summed it up pretty well. But yeah, my answer would be something to the effect of like, yeah, I still stand by, but the robots, the robot things and what the humans are the human things. And that's where AI is going to shine. And I think When we do these talks, when people bring us in, it's a lot of, well, I'm scared it's going to replace my job, or I'm nervous about this, I'm nervous about that. 

0:42:03

(Speaker 19)

My typical answer is, well, I don't think it's going to replace, I think it's going to enable the people who adopt it, it's going to enable you to do more of what you already do. 

0:42:11

(Speaker 3)

So again, using sales as an example, rather than doing maybe 100 outreaches a day, you can do 1 ,000 outreaches a day on the back of AI. Or rather than spending three hours trying to prospect, you can get it down to 15 minutes using a tool like Clay and have thousands of results instantly available to you with phone numbers, emails, and addresses. 

0:42:28

(Speaker 2)

I guess the second part of that, typically what we hear is, well, I'm scared of it, or I don't want to use it, or anything like that. And I'm not one to be a negative Nancy here or be the doom and gloom guy, but my answer is, you should have been concerned 30 years ago if you're concerned about AI automation or anything in between. I see David said he started his career at NSA, so he's going to laugh at this. 

0:42:48

(Speaker 19)

But we should have been concerned 30 years ago. 

0:42:51

(Speaker 1)

If you have an iPhone, a smartphone, or a laptop, if you're that scared, throw it all away. 

0:42:55

(Speaker 2)

Get out of here. Throw it all away, is what I would say. So it's here whether you like it or not. Again, not to be the doom and gloom guy. You might as well try to embrace it, and you might as well use it to optimize the workflow that you already have going. 

0:43:08

(Speaker 18)

Right. 

0:43:09

(Speaker 2)

I mean, we could be we could be ostriches and put our heads in the sand, but it's not going to fix. It's not going to stop other people, our competition from using it. And then we're just going to fall behind that much further. Right. And that's what I would say. Some of the organizations that have brought Hunter and I in, you know, there was one organization that I guess we said the city would probably give it away. 

0:43:25

(Speaker 2)

But there's one organization that brought Hunter and I in on site for what was a hundred two days, if I'm not mistaken. Right. Yeah. Two days. They brought in every team in the company. Yeah, and we went through every team in the company for two days straight. 

0:43:37

(Speaker 2)

And they said, help us with this, help us with this, help us with this. And we whether it was AI automation, or any sort of, you know, process optimization, and guys like that, they're gonna win, because they spent the two days to really figure it out. And what was a really cool byproduct of that, is by the end of it, their team was going, well, wait, well, I can I can probably do this or like now that you say that, actually, I think I could use it a little bit over here. 

0:43:58

(Speaker 17)

So now their team is becoming experts to level up and all this stuff. 

0:44:01

(Speaker 2)

Right. Yeah. 

0:44:02

(Speaker 3)

So I think we're going to see clear winners and maybe people who struggle and maybe fall behind. So I think everybody is going to have to adopt this, whether they like it or not. not. business that it gets me going quicker. So say, chat GPT, you know, trying to generate a creative idea. It may not be the creative idea that I'm going to use, like, but it's going to get me started in that thinking a lot quicker than just the blank sheet of paper, which would have been 10 years ago, where, you know, how are we going to address this, this problem, so it gets me gets me going a little bit faster. 

0:44:40

(Speaker 3)

And then also, I've seen A throwback to something that was early on in the Event Marketers Toolbox, using AI to get the robot things out of the way. Chris, you talked about early on how you have local knowledge of labor for Chicago versus Orlando versus New York. 

0:45:04

(Speaker 16)

That's something 30 years of experience. 

0:45:07

(Speaker 3)

has in your brain, but if you can get all those other things off your plate, then that makes that experience that much more valuable and you can focus on that part of it as opposed to building the spreadsheet for a particular thing. 

0:45:20

(Speaker 15)

I just feel like that, you know, the automation and getting through those kind of mundane tasks, yeah, let the AI do that and get to the things that you really know how to do well. 

0:45:32

(Speaker 14)

Brendan, you know what's funny about that is, again, anecdotal story related to the company that brought Hunter and I on site to do that, is that was actually one of their issues is, hey, look, we have all this local knowledge as it relates to labor and shipping and estimates and all these different cities. 

0:45:45

(Speaker 3)

We actually helped them. One of the things is we helped them build a custom GPT to basically transfer that knowledge into a very specific AI to do exactly that. Again, we were trying to get them going in the right direction. Yeah. It's at least technically possible to able to make that happen today. So, yeah, that's great. 

0:46:04

(Speaker 3)

You know. let's talk, let's go back to the whole, I don't want to say scary part, right, Terminator or the Matrix kind of thing, but like the idea of AI is coming from my job. 

0:46:18

(Speaker 1)

And Brendan, you and I have talked about this. It's like AI can create videos now. They can create rendering. So we have had some clients show up with an AI version of the booth. I asked ChatGBT. I gave it a list of things. 

0:46:31

(Speaker 1)

Here's what I need. I want some hospitality. I want a bar. I need a hanging sign. 

0:46:34

(Speaker 13)

And oftentimes, it'll create something kind of cool looking that really can't exist in the real world, but it gets us To your point, Brendan, it gets us that much further down the road, like, OK, I get the sense of where this is going. 

0:46:48

(Speaker 1)

Let's help you make it a real thing that won't fall over because, you know, turns out gravity is actually real and we have to address that. We can't just hang, you know, giant chandeliers for nothingness. But in general, it's a great it's a great kickstart. Now, at some point, AI is going to get that much better and, you know, we'll how will we as an organization that does do customized designs to meet people's needs, we're going to have to embrace that. We're going to have to go with it or we're just going to get replaced. So that's kind of finding that happy medium of like, we know it's coming, we know it's happening. 

0:47:27

(Speaker 1)

There are some parts about the technology and what it can do that might take away some of the things that we do, but then the robots do the robot things and the humans do the human things, right? Yeah, I have a little bit of a different take on that. Because I think that I think everyone's worried about being replaced. But I think that more realistically, I think it's just more about changing the job itself. And I'll give you a quick example. So if I keep writing this down, because I want to bring it up, it's hyper personalization. 

0:48:01

(Speaker 1)

If I said, Hey, listen, I need you to call. I need you to give an update to your customer every hour. Like that's just not really possible. Make sure that you know when their kid's birthday is and you send them a card on that day. Like you, We don't have time for that. We got to go build the booth. 

0:48:15

(Speaker 1)

We don't have time to sit here and, and play 20 questions about you. Right. So I think that, yes. So your customers are coming to the table, at least with what you want. So you just saved a bunch of time on the back end, trying to figure out what's in their brain. We just went through this. 

0:48:28

(Speaker 1)

I went through three different companies. Cause I was like, I don't, we were going through a rebrand. I'm like, I just don't know what the feeling of the booth really needs to be. I know it looks like junk when I do it. And then when you guys have these concepts, I'm not really sure. Right. 

0:48:39

(Speaker 1)

And so instead you can bring AI to the table. And so I just think that like, at the end of the day, especially from a design perspective, that's my background. So I love the design with AI. We all know that the AI is close. Chris, you said it's not possible. Sometimes it's not possible. 

0:48:54

(Speaker 1)

So you, so the designers, instead of coming up with a concept, going back and forth six or seven times, I don't like that. That one makes more sense. I think that role just becomes more of like, how can we creatively make what you want happen? 

0:49:07

(Speaker 12)

And that's a very interesting pivot, because it's more about the humans side of things. 

0:49:12

(Speaker 3)

Meanwhile, on the back end, what we've been helping customers do is creating a platform they can do it on their own, by the way, but they can create a platform where you're iterating and they're iterating, they're going back and forth. They're arguing with the AI about like 70 or 80 different designs, like a designer, you can't hire a designer. I'm telling you, I used to be a designer. So I know this firsthand. If you ask a designer to redo their work three times, they'll tell you, you know what, maybe we'll just move on. But with an AI, you can go back and forth. 

0:49:41

(Speaker 3)

So it's that last like 5 % where it's like, okay, I've gone through with chat GPT. I've gone through with mid -journey. 

0:49:47

(Speaker 2)

I've done the thing. How close can you get to this? Now the real hard part, which is how do we make this even work? So I, so in short, I just think that I think that we get a little scared of well, it's just gonna AI is just going to build the booth for me. I don't know if it's that close. I think it's more likely we're just going to get the last 5%. And it's just going to be happy customers, because now they can get what they want. 

0:50:11

(Speaker 2)

And they're shooting for the moon for things that maybe our designers never even thought of. So I'm very, very, very bullish if you can't tell. I think that our industry is actually poised for an explosion. 

0:50:21

(Speaker 7)

I don't think it's going to be a mass exodus event or extinction event of jobs. 

0:50:27

(Speaker 3)

I think it's quite actually the opposite. Yeah. It's great to, you know, look at it and think about it in that fashion. And again, every major, you know, human accomplishment and go back to the industrial age, I've read a bunch of, you know, historical fiction. There's people who are breaking the machines because it was taking their job as a weaver. So they go in and smash the machines. 

0:50:51

(Speaker 3)

thinking that that would fix it, but it only got them in trouble and put in jail. And then ultimately the machines got that much, you know, that much better. So we can't bury our head in the sand and pretend like the technology is just going to go away. 

0:51:04

(Speaker 1)

We have to figure out how to work with it and how to make ourselves better so that we still continue to add value and we utilize these tools to make us faster, to make us, you know, all the things that I forget. There's a funny meme I saw. It was the, you know, the camera doesn't make the photographer. And then it flips to, you know, this bad kids drawing of a frog or something like that. Like, well, you do need the camera, like you do need the tool. So I think that if this can make us, you know, If we can concentrate on that 5%, like you say, Hunter, maybe that's where people really start to put their energy. 

0:51:49

(Speaker 1)

which is really exciting because that's probably the fun part. 

0:51:52

(Speaker 3)

part of it, you know, that's probably the most exciting and interesting part of it. So, um, and having multiple rounds of, yeah, I mean, when we're editing pieces and we get multiple rounds back and forth, it's like, can we be done? Like, like you just get tired of it, but if you can get there, get through all of that quicker and get to the last part of it, where it's really exciting, I think that can be a real benefit to, to, you know, an improvement to everybody's work. Awesome. 

0:52:20

(Speaker 2)

Awesome. Yeah, I'm sure we could talk about this for hours. This is this is so interesting. And it's just I mean, we're just literally scratching the surface. We do shoot to be at about an hour with our EMT toolbox here. So the way that we like to wrap up is just, you know, shout out to Jordan Hunter. 

0:52:40

(Speaker 2)

Are there a couple of things that are that are still either you've already mentioned and you want to come back, put a pin in it or that we haven't touched on? But what can you leave our audience with? advice or ways to think about moving forward. Hunter, why don't you start? What do you got that you want to share? My marketing brain says, how do we leverage AI to have a personalized experience for every customer for the rest of the company's history? 

0:53:11

(Speaker 2)

That may be a tool, that may be leveraging chat GPT or building an agent, whatever that looks like. My advice is to find a way to make every customer, every email customized to them, every advertisement customized to them, every touchpoint customized to them. That would never be possible maybe three or four years ago. I think we're at the point now where it's finally possible. 

0:53:33

(Speaker 1)

It is achievable and I think that the results will show of who's doing that and who's not. Okay, that sounds super awesome and really compelling. 

0:53:45

(Speaker 2)

but it's already in the works. All right, how about you, Jordan? 

0:53:51

(Speaker 1)

Anything you would add or any couple of things? Yeah, I got a couple of thoughts, but for my first one, I'm actually going to brag about Hunter. So the concept that he brought into our company when it comes to AI and for folks listening who may be curious about how to get started, his whole thing that he champions is start with fun, then work. 

0:54:07

(Speaker 3)

So a lot of people get caught up in the idea of like, I can't think of a workflow for using AI or anything in between. And Hunter, what he did, and then he inspired me to do, is like, well, just start with something fun. Start with something with low stakes that has no repercussions if it goes wrong. And so it was like a Harry Potter game that you made or something like that. And then I made like a fishing log thing that I thought was really cool. 

0:54:31

(Speaker 2)

And that was our introduction to custom GPTs. And again, we weren't putting anything related to backtrack at risk. It was, OK, let's figure out the limitations for a fun game or a fun story. and see what happens. So I'd say start with that. And then there's a few tools that I guess for my second thing that I would recommend everybody check out clay . 

0:54:51

(Speaker 3)

com, Zapier, or B2B. 

0:54:54

(Speaker 2)

There's so many custom GPTs, right? I would say just to get your feet wet, go check those out and kind of get started there. So it's second everything you just said, by the way, that was masterful. I agree, Jordan. Your idea. I just said it out. 

0:55:10

(Speaker 2)

No, no, no, no, no. You said it better than I could have. I like that. But it's scary to try to boil the ocean. 

0:55:17

(Speaker 11)

You just were afraid to start because it's so vast. 

0:55:21

(Speaker 1)

Like, oh my God, it could be anything. 

0:55:23

(Speaker 2)

But just pick a thing. And I really like the idea of starting with something fun and going with it. Another dumb example. 

0:55:31

(Speaker 1)

We both like Dave Ramsey. So I built a custom GPT that would give you financial advice in the voice of Dave Ramsey. And it was hilarious. But again, through it being hilarious, trying to put together, figured out, okay, here's how a custom GPT works. 

0:55:44

(Speaker 10)

Have you found that AI financial advice is as sound as need be? 

0:55:53

(Speaker 1)

Well, I'm not using it for actual financial advice. 

0:55:55

(Speaker 9)

I just thought Dave Ramsey was funny. 

0:55:58

(Speaker 1)

What's funny is I actually was trying to get it to do the little things that Dave Ramsey does. If you listen to Dave Ramsey, he's like, better than I deserve. 

0:56:05

(Speaker 8)

What's up? 

0:56:06

(Speaker 7)

I got the GPT to figure out how to say that. 

0:56:09

(Speaker 6)

Or I'd be like, hey, custom GPT or Dave Ramsey GPT, I have $3 million in debt, what do I do? 

0:56:16

(Speaker 3)

And it would respond with his outlandish response. His wife, holy mackerel, we got to roll that one in or something like that, right? 

0:56:22

(Speaker 2)

You need to do the tone by the end of it. Cutting up your credit cards. Exactly, exactly. You guys spending so much, you know, the kids think you're gonna sell them next or something like that, right? 

0:56:33

(Speaker 1)

To do and it did. And that was really the goal. But don't miss the lesson there. Don't listen. If you're listening, don't miss the lesson there. But because Jordan knew how to do that, he was able to create bots for us internally that have a brand voice, because there's a lot of nuance to how do you get a, because you can't overdo it where every time someone says something outlandish, it's holy mackerel, holy mackerel. 

0:56:56

(Speaker 1)

There's a lot of nuance to it, but you would never, who's going to sit up till three o 'clock in the morning, putting together a bot for their company? 

0:57:02

(Speaker 3)

Nobody. But Jordan sent me a phishing log that he made with like AI coding, like two o 'clock in the morning on Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving morning. Who does that? No one. You never do that for your friends and your family and yourself. Yeah. 

0:57:15

(Speaker 3)

Yeah. So fun. 

0:57:17

(Speaker 2)

Awesome. That's good stuff. Do you guys have names for your, your, uh, either your chat, GBT or individual GBTs? Is there a name? Is there a person like I named it? I don't think I've given mine a name. 

0:57:29

(Speaker 5)

No, I think it's just GPTs, but I call it GPT or chat, but maybe I will name it after this. 

0:57:34

(Speaker 3)

That's it. That is my best friend. 

0:57:35

(Speaker 5)

If you can see this, I have a little button dedicated. 

0:57:38

(Speaker 3)

If I hit the button, it's dedicated to, it won't open without me looking at it. But the little side button, I have a button dedicated to it on my phone. 

0:57:46

(Speaker 2)

I hate Googling now. Sorry, Google. 

0:57:48

(Speaker 3)

I hate Googling now. Well, we were talking, one of the conversations we had with Brandon Lee was like old, you know, a couple of years ago, the data around Google search is four or five keywords or whatever. 

0:58:01

(Speaker 1)

But now people use chat GVT, and they they're much more conversational. 

0:58:06

(Speaker 3)

So all of a sudden now, they've got like a 30 word thing, right? It's like, tell me about, you know, a Northeast based exhibit company that specializes in blah, blah, blah, right? So they're just having a conversation, which changes the way that it searches. And that sounds exactly like what you're talking about. All right, Brendan, we got to round this thing out. Do you have anything left for the guys before we put a bow on this one? 

0:58:30

(Speaker 3)

Well, I would just say that it's nice to talk to a couple creative AI guys that don't feel like they're trying to burn down the world and take everybody's jobs and they just want to do good things. And so I am thrilled to have met you guys today and heard all about what you're doing. Sounds like you're doing it the right way. And I look forward to keeping in touch with you. So thanks for being on the show. on the podcast today. 

0:58:57

(Speaker 3)

There we go. We've got a couple of them. So Zadia's chat GBT is named Henrietta. Love that. Rich keeps, is Chad. My unpaid intern. 

0:59:10

(Speaker 1)

We do part two in a year from now. 

0:59:12

(Speaker 3)

I'll come back and maybe my GPT will be named by then. 

0:59:14

(Speaker 2)

I don't think we can wait a year. I think we're going to, this is changing so fast. 

0:59:17

(Speaker 1)

We're going to have to do another one of these really quickly. Guys, this is awesome. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Brendan, as always appreciate it. Guys, we're going to a, a newer format. 

0:59:30

We're going to go episode every other week, at least for the Q1 time frame. We just had difficulty keeping up with it, with an episode rolling out every week. So this gives us a little bit more time to promote. It gives us a little bit more time just to share our schedule, such that you can put it into your calendar and be like, I really want to you know, pop in on March 15th, it's going to be talking about exhibiting in APAC or whatever that might be. So anyways, a little bit of a new format this year. We so appreciate Jordan and Hunter coming by and sharing with us. 

1:00:03

We appreciate everybody who took time to listen to us and just know that this is, in fact, live and recorded here. It'll be on LinkedIn forever. It's on YouTube and it will be on our it'll be on your favorite platform, podcast platform. within a day or so. So many different ways to check out the Event Marketers Toolbox. Guys, thank you so much. 

1:00:24

This has been awesome and let's sign it off. Cheers and everybody have a great rest of your week. Take care. Thanks, guys. Thanks, everybody.