Episode 4 – Brooks Lockett

Filipe Santos
00:00:00 – 00:01:17

Have you been asking yourself, how am I going to build the right kind of quality and conversion oriented content in an AI transitioning world? Maybe you’ll grapple with hype and try to determine what’s real and good enough to actually apply to your business. And stick around for this entire interview. You’re not going to want to miss a single tip or strategy we uncover. Let me first start by introducing Brooks Locket, a conversion oriented copywriter focused mainly on copywriting for b2b SaaS companies. In his years of experience, he’s worked with impressive and notable companies like Looker, Soundhan AI, Ironclad, and many others. He also has a newsletter on Substack called “SaaS Storytelling”, covering real world strategic narratives and hone messaging from active GTM leaders, all in the in the marketplace. Anything you would like to add, Brooks, that I missed?

Brooks Lockett
00:00:52 – 00:01:18

I think that about covers it. I mean, I I work with, you know, I’ve worked with lots of different technology companies, mainly b to b SaaS. And, you know, I think one thing that we’ll get into a lot in this interview is I I like to consider myself 75% strategic consultant and then 25 percent writing just because the the fundamentals of copywriting is just so much thought process, which I’m sure we’ll get into. So yeah. But no. You nailed it.

Filipe Santos
00:01:19 – 00:01:42

Sounds great. Yeah. No. We’re definitely looking forward to, like, hearing from you and your perspective on this whole thing because everything’s changing, like, every minute. So we’ll go into it first. So let’s go into a little bit of the shift from basic spell checkers to where we are now with advanced content generation tools. I’d love to kinda get your perspective on how you’ve seen that shift, in your own work and, basically, like, how you’ve worked with these tools as well.

Brooks Lockett
00:01:42 – 00:02:34

Yeah. Big question. Big question to start. So, yeah, I I’ve had you know, like many others, I’ve had a journey with these tools. I you know, it’s gonna be weird for people coming up in their businesses and people just starting out their careers in an AI transitioning world, but I, you know, started in a non AI transitioning world. It was back when AI was still, at least the AI toolset available to business leaders and marketers and consultants and copywriters were still relatively primitive to where they are now, which really isn’t that long ago when you think about it. But really, I mean, I’ve had a journey, like I said, just like many other people, and I started out, you know, in a crazy volatile emotional reaction to it. Like, I had a buddy who’s a founder who actually told me about Chad GPT.

Brooks Lockett
00:02:34 – 00:03:08

I think Chad GPT is, like, the the first generative AI tool that the vast majority of people have used. And he showed me Judge Abitaine, I thought it was garbage. I was like, what is this? It’s just like a chatbot, okay, research preview, whatever this is. I kinda just was like shaking it off a little bit, and then, you know, started to hear more about it. This is back in, like, October 2022, so, you know, year and a half ago at this point, which seems like an eternity. And, you know, I so I started playing around with it. I was like, okay. I mean, I like new tools.

Brooks Lockett
00:03:08 – 00:04:03

I like new tech. I don’t like to be an eternal pessimist. I prefer the optimism around new tech. Started playing around with it, gradually got more impressed, was already using a couple little AI tools, natural language processing, like Otter AI for meeting transcripts and things like that. And slowly over time started to chip away at, okay, what are my use cases? What are my dynamic things that I can do with with this tool? Specifically, talking about Chat gpt because, you know, everyone has a different flavor of it. You know, coders, you know, use it for code generation, and writers can use it for editing, and, like, fiction writers, and all these different types of people. People are building workflow automations with it. And I think over time, one thing that I’ve really landed on is honestly beautifully simple and at least beautifully simple for my workflow because it’s just in my nature.

Brooks Lockett
00:04:03 – 00:05:08

I like to keep things incredibly simple in my business straightforward, you know, simplicity is king above all else. And what I do is essentially use it to make my writing more clear. That’s it. Like, I think and and that in itself, the fact that that sounds so simple is the reason why it’s been so impactful for my work and for my business and for my growth and for my client work, for my ability to actually get more done. So I’d say my journey has been this long winding up and down series of being so disappointed in AI tools and then so impressed with AI tools and the disappointed that impressed, disappointed that impressed, and eventually over time, just accumulate lots of, you know, unique prompts to my unique situation that I think helps me just cut through the noise better, helps me live in my market better, helps me get higher quality communications to and on behalf of my clients. So I’ll I’ll start there in in terms of my sort of AI journey.

Filipe Santos
00:05:08 – 00:05:36

Well said. I mean, I actually can resonate with a lot of that. Right? So the I I think it’s a natural human instinct to kind of fight new things and sometimes be, like, a little hesitant. And especially when they come out in the beginning, they they kinda suck. Right? Let’s let’s be honest. So it but it didn’t take time for a lot of these tools that sucked to become kind of phenomenal. Right? Even if you look at video and image generation stuff, that’s that’s obviously the ones that are easiest and more visual. They have just come a long way.

Filipe Santos
00:05:36 – 00:06:20

You know, there’s so many examples out there. But I love how you kind of, introduced the generative AI element and also, like, just coming from, like, using it as a small copilot to, like, a much more important one to just streamline the workflows that we already have. So with that, let’s kinda cut to today and cut to these new tools and where we are. Interesting interestingly enough, Authority Hacker did, like they they’ve compiled some of the statistics around AI content and other, like, chatbots and stuff. And one of the interesting statistics I saw was it was 75.7% or so of marketers use AI tools for work. So I would love to kinda, like, get a gist or understanding of how you use these tools to kinda better the messaging that you apply for clients.

Brooks Lockett
00:06:21 – 00:07:20

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I’ll I’ll start by saying what I what I don’t use it for, and then that’ll give just better scaffolding for what I do use it for. I I think and like I said earlier, it’s gonna be really custom to because there’s so many different types of marketers out there, so many different types of go to market, and I think that’s the beauty of, you know, what what Sam Altman said with, you know, love him or hate him. What what what he came out with with OpenAI is, like, he worked at Y Combinator, and, you know, the the natural philosophy of Y Combinator is, you know, start with a market, start with a target ICP, start with a problem, and work backwards and build your tool from there. They actually did it the opposite way, which is what makes this situation so freaking unique is they took this tool that had been in development since 20 15 and just kind of unleashed it to the world and did it in increments. So now people are just responding to it, and the reason that’s important for us users of AI technology is because you can’t look at it through such a narrow lens.

Brooks Lockett
00:07:20 – 00:07:58

You have to understand this is extremely dynamic and, honestly, just takes a lot of playing around and iterating through the process. And if you don’t allow yourself to do that, if you don’t allow yourself to iterate, to break things, to realize, okay. It sucks in this regard, and and it sucks for my particular workflow, but let’s flip it. Let’s tweak it. Let’s let’s understand why that wasn’t working. Let’s give it as much context as possible, and let’s just optimize, optimize, optimize, optimize, and that’s when you start to get the compounding gains. Right? So so the question was, like, how am I using it these days in, like, various ways across my workflow?

Filipe Santos
00:07:58 – 00:08:05

Yeah. Yeah. Basically, like, just any ways that you feel that that they’re ready, kinda ready for prime time and that you’re already using them for.

Brooks Lockett
00:08:05 – 00:09:11

Oh, absolutely. Okay. So you mentioned the newsletter earlier. I do the newsletter that I I use Otter dotai. That’s just like, you know, meeting transcripts and natural language processing, and it just it just gets the entire transcript for you. So that paired with using Chargebee T to actually generate baseline content that I can then use as a big chunk of granite to start chipping away at, literally, just that really simple use case for me probably allows me to do 3 to 4 times as many newsletters as I can, which is my main way of marketing. That’s my main way of reaching buyers, my main way of doing market research, having conversations with people in my target market, understanding what’s going on, and then being able to feed the information and content and write ups back into the market. And I remember when I used to have to do things like that, manual transcription, manual listening to the calls, and and literally typing out via shorthand what my interpretation of all that is, and the human brain can only do so much.

Brooks Lockett
00:09:11 – 00:10:41

So, I mean, I think the scale piece of this, especially for solopreneurs, freelancers, small businesses, all the way up to huge companies like Microsoft. I think it’s just pretty insane how and it’s so evident to me that it is ready for prime time. It’s just the fact that it’s gotten caught up in this crazy positive feedback loop over the past year and a half since, essentially, ChadGBT was released, and I felt like that was the the key unlock was the first real generative AI tool, which then unleashed a flood of large language models and various infrastructure built on large language models. And I think it’s just so clear in that use case for me, the fact that it’s so easy to see how this saves me time and frees up my brain to actually do those those tasks and those high level strategic thinking that I’m actually good at, that I actually want to do, that I’m actually really excited to do, I can spend way more time doing that than sort of just, let me just make sure I got all this meeting text right. Like and and it’s the same thing that everyone says. Right? Like, you want the low level tasks automated and done really well and reliably, so that way the humans can get the higher level of abstraction where we thrive. We can use our prefrontal cortex to its absolute maximum capacity. We’re not sitting there churning through repetitive tasks that could be done by a computer.

Brooks Lockett
00:10:42 – 00:11:21

I think that to me and that’s just one use case. I could give you another use case if you want. The the fact that, like, it’s my job as a copywriter to clarify my client’s value because I’m I work with complex enterprise SaaS providers. A lot of them are actually AI companies, like AI from the ground up. This is really hard to explain. Like, these these product, it’s kind of insane. Like, these products are so unbelievably complicated, and there’s onboarding, there’s go to market strategies, there’s target buyers. There’s multithreading stakeholders.

Brooks Lockett
00:11:21 – 00:12:14

Like, there’s all this stuff. Right? And it’s like, a lot of what my clients pay me good money to do is to essentially take all that complexity and distill it down for their target buyer to just make it make so much sense. This is art and a science. And the fact that I can use I I call it I’ve called it this in the past with mixed reactions from people, but, essentially, what I use Chargebee T and other large language models as is a clarity engine. I call it a clarity engine because its sole purpose in my workflow is to augment what I’m already doing, which is taking all that complexity and simplifying that into into a cohesive story that the target market, it actually compels them to sign up. It compels them to transact. It compels them to renew. Like, we want those business outcomes, and this all it is is just an accelerant in that direction, but you have to know what to do with it.

Brooks Lockett
00:12:14 – 00:12:52

Like, that’s the main caveat. It’s like, you have to already be clear on your goals. You have to already be clear on your business outcomes, your creative outcomes, your big lofty goals. And if you use it the right way, it’s gonna push you in that direction. But, unfortunately, we’ve also seen the other side where it’s really easy to get lost in the complexity of AI, you know, like, use lots of tools and kind of get good at some of them rather than finding the few that you can really lock into your tool belt and just get really, really dialed in. So that’s been my approach, but, hell, yeah, it’s ready for prime time. It’s been ready for prime time.

Filipe Santos
00:12:53 – 00:13:37

Well, Brooks, like, I’m enthralled by that, the the clarity engine part of this because I think if you take the blinders off and maybe maybe it’s because of years of experience. Right? But the thing is, if you look at it with fresh eyes, this is what we were always meant to do. Right? We were we were meant to kind of get rid of all the tedium and kind of focus on things that we are good at. That’s what makes jobs not a job. Right? That that that makes it something you wanna do that you you you can’t see yourself not doing. And if AI can kind of help us do that, amazing. The other point that you mentioned about the multitude of tools and trying to adapt ourselves to those, I completely agree. Every single time I look, I think it’s like every week, there’s another 500 tools that have been introduced in different areas within AI.

Filipe Santos
00:13:37 – 00:14:15

Some great, some terrible. But the point is that they’re experimenting and they’re putting out new capabilities and seeing how people react to those and how they use them. So we’re not done yet. Just like a lot of things that we’ve experienced over the last 20 years, technology has changed and shifted. And sometimes we’ve been very hesitant to adopt things, and other times they just kind of become more clear as we start to understand them. And and the the major point that I loved about what you described is that clarity is what where it’s at. If things are complicated, like, I also reckon this to, like, crypto. If they’re complicated, people don’t really adopt and don’t want to understand it because there’s too much data out there.

Filipe Santos
00:14:15 – 00:14:22

There’s so many things to put into our daily lives. So the simpler we make it, the more likely people are going to act. Right?

Brooks Lockett
00:14:22 – 00:15:08

So I love that. Yeah. And and I’d like to add one more thing to that that I think is really important for whatever whatever the audience’s goals are. You know, you mentioned crypto. You know, I’m I’ve been really into Bitcoin for a while. I’ve been really into AI for a while and just, you know, I consider myself an early adopter, and I think you do too. But for those where it might not come so naturally, like, for those where, let’s say, something like JI GPT was released and it took you a year to even put your feet in the water, I would I would challenge someone, you know, even though it can be annoying. Like, it can be annoying to have to sift through all these new tools and you’re not really sure, and you’re just gonna kinda sit back and wait and see what people say, and you’re gonna get your information filtered.

Brooks Lockett
00:15:08 – 00:15:58

I’d say I would encourage you to go code collect some field data of your own. Get in some of the tools. You don’t have to do all of them. There’s there’s too many there’s too many coming on the market every every week, every day at this point to to sift through all of them, but just pick a couple and really try to get good at it because in my career and, you know, I think throughout history, if we wanna get a little bit macro about it, the fortune favors the brave. No. I’m kidding. I think the success tends to favor those who lean into technology, not those who just are are eternal pessimists. I think you’re better off in your career, and you’re better off being adaptive, and you’re and you’re probably gonna find more success if you simply lean into new tools, and you’re just a voracious learner.

Brooks Lockett
00:15:58 – 00:16:02

Like, if you’re a know it all, can I curse on this podcast?

Filipe Santos
00:16:03 – 00:16:06

Well, I’ll try to keep it clean, but sure. Go for it. Okay.

Brooks Lockett
00:16:07 – 00:16:44

You’re screwed if you are a know it all these days because the the the rules are changing constantly. Like but if you’re a learn it all and you just wanna learn and you have this voracious appetite for new information, and also also the ability to apply that information, whether you have a business, a job, you’re a VP sales, you’re a CEO, you’re a writer, you’re an author, whatever it is you are. I think voraciously intaking that information and applying it right away and seeing what optimizations you can make and how you can better your work, I think that’s the way. Be an early adopter.

Filipe Santos
00:16:45 – 00:17:31

Yeah. I I I think that’s amazing advice. I would also add one pro tip, which is just sit down, think about the types of work you do, create, like, an outline of the things that you think you really struggle with or that, like, take a lot of time, And then look for tools that kinda help in those areas. And that way, you’ll kind of reduce the the noise and the hype and all these other tools that you won’t really need to use. And that way, it kind of eases you into the AI tool space and also makes you a little bit more comfortable as you learn. That way, you can start small with things that are very obvious to you and then go into more granular components or maybe areas that you’re not interested in necessarily in the beginning. That way you’re kind of ahead of the game, and you feel like you’re getting a in a competitive advantage. Because I think all of us in our careers need that competitive advantage.

Filipe Santos
00:17:31 – 00:17:36

We need to grow with the times. We need to understand what’s happening around us. If you don’t, you get left behind.

Brooks Lockett
00:17:37 – 00:18:39

Another and I don’t know if we wanna linger on this for too long, but another, like, super low hanging fruit, for example, is people have been talking about AI systems forever. Like, you know, the Ironman, like, just speak and your AI companion is giving you answers. Right? So, for example, in my client work, I used to have to ask for lots and lots and lots of documents, like, I’m reading these crazy technical documents. I’m listening to all of these different calls, and I’m just, like, trying to piece together all this information from all these different sources. But now there’s actually tools out there. I mean, ChargeGPT is one of them. If you have the mobile app on your phone, you can literally, like, instead of having to dig through someone’s website, like, a 100 different landing pages, product detail pages, all that kind of stuff, please research x company, download all their information on their website, and I’m going to ask you lots and lots of questions that I want you to answer. And and you get to basically immerse yourself.

Brooks Lockett
00:18:39 – 00:19:15

It’s a dialogue. Like, it’s it’s just like we’re talking about how it’s really important to learn about AI. The first thing people should do is use AI to learn about AI. What is it like? What is a large language model? Let’s have a conversation about what large language models even are and, like, get used to talking to a model. And it’s just, like, it’s so easy to immerse yourself in these tools, and that is where, like, true learning happens. It’s where you build mental muscles. And I just think I I use this all the time. Like, for example, couple weeks ago, I did a comprehensive lipid panel and blood tests.

Brooks Lockett
00:19:15 – 00:19:41

I’m not a doctor. I don’t I don’t know these things. I went to a naturopathic doctor because I wanted some really comprehensive blood work done. And she gives me, like, this document with all these crazy terms and data and information, and none of this is, like, super proprietary or anything. Like, it’s just some blood work. It’s not this isn’t, like, insane. So I’m sitting here going through the document, looking at all these terms. I’ve got the chat gbt.

Brooks Lockett
00:19:41 – 00:20:26

You know, you’re like you can do your voice and it it uses, like, the whisper technology to essentially talk back and forth. You don’t even have to read any of the text. And we’re sitting there asking questions about, what does this mean? What does this mean? Can you explain this to me in the context of the conversation we’re having? And it’s just like, I would have never learned all that, and I would have never taken the time to sit there on my laptop and research this for, like, 9 hours. But I can have a quick 15 minute conversation with a large language model that has access to the Internet that can that can look up all these terms for me, And it’s just a beautiful thing. You can learn much faster. You can digest information a lot faster. So that’s just another thing. I’d say use the tools to learn more about the space.

Filipe Santos
00:20:27 – 00:21:04

That’s an incredible example. I love that. And I think that’s that’s that’s, like, everybody can use that. There how many times have we kind of be been befuddled by information we’ve gotten, and it could be made so much easier by just having a resource. Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. I guess, one more thing that I would ask you before we kind of move into another section here is that given that, like, about 14% of user and, again, a lot of this information’s from Authority Hacker and different sources like Gartner, Forrester, etcetera. The 14% of users trust keyword data from AI tools, and, like, 32 to 33% trust AI generated results right now.

Filipe Santos
00:21:04 – 00:21:12

Let’s talk a little bit about capabilities and limitations. What can AI do and what can’t it do in content creation in the way that you’ve experienced it?

Brooks Lockett
00:21:13 – 00:22:02

Yeah. I’d say this is a really big topic among marketers and copywriters right now, especially. I think per personally, nothing about my process has changed because what like, I’ll just use my work as an example. What basically, the biggest difference maker in my work is interviewing my clients’ customers. Like, we do jobs to be done style interviews because we wanna unpack what’s going on in terms of the outcomes they’re looking for the software to accomplish for them. It’s a very systematic step by step process that I’ve honed over years. And I’ve seen a lot of people posting online about how, like, things like that are just gonna be completely automated because that process is very human to human. Like, it’s extremely human to human.

Brooks Lockett
00:22:02 – 00:22:40

Primary data. I don’t want and I and I push my clients. I’m like, I need to interview 5 to 10 of your customers, and I need to listen to recorded sales calls. I need to listen to recorded demos. I need, like, I need this firsthand information from customers, and I need to hear it from customers. And that’s really important. And if I imagine I just asked Chai GBT, what does a supply chain manager care about? It’s gonna give me this super cookie cutter because it’s gonna pull from blog posts that were written in 2010 on Google, and it’s not it’s basically the source data. I need to go get way better source data.

Brooks Lockett
00:22:40 – 00:23:39

And then who knows? I can use an AI language model to perhaps analyze some of that direct language to get better scale out of it because it’s very time consuming. I can use AI to transcribe those calls so I have the full text thread that I can go back to later. Essentially, it’s just applying AI in the right ways, the right things, which again, you can’t just abandon your process. Like, I’ve seen I mean, it’s so so easy to spot when people there’s this unfortunate trend on LinkedIn right now, where when you post something, you’re gonna get 10 people posting AI generated comments on your stuff. And it’s it’s so obvious, and it’s so cringey, and everyone seems to hate it. And it’s like, no wonder because it’s so inauthentic and not genuine. And I think people just misapply the tools and then people see that and blame the tools. It’s not the tool’s fault.

Brooks Lockett
00:23:39 – 00:24:42

It’s like if someone takes a hammer and hits me in the head with it, it’s not the hammer’s fault. It’s like you should’ve been using the hammer to go build really amazing houses, not go hurt people with it and not, like, misuse it. Right? And I think there’s just it’s never been a better time to be extremely mindful about how you apply all of these new tools. It’s not just like AI, like the people that just create all this AI hype content to just ride the hype cycle and feed into the algorithms, but it’s AI multiplied by whatever good things you already have, which could be proprietary source data in my case because I’m getting it directly from customers and using that to inform how we actually create the message, how we actually go to market, make sure that everything we do is reflective of customer value. So you have all these people that just assume, oh my god. AI is so good. I’m I’m just not gonna have to do that anymore. And then they stop getting results, and their revenue suffers, and their businesses suffer as a result.

Brooks Lockett
00:24:42 – 00:24:49

So I’d I’d I’d say be careful and just use common sense in terms of how you apply AI. It’s just like anything else.

Filipe Santos
00:24:50 – 00:25:17

Yeah. And, like, I have to mirror that with with a little bit of a story. So I was reading Noah Keegan’s book. He’s basically the founder of AppSumo. Essentially, exactly what you mentioned. One of the key things that he realized was that copywriting was critical. Right? And that meant having the human creativity, the understanding of the customer, understanding how to make it simple. And, so using AI can help you with a lot of things, but it it can’t be trusted off the bat just to do a thing.

Filipe Santos
00:25:17 – 00:25:50

It’s a tool. And I love the example of the hammer because, yeah, you can use the hammer incorrectly. And it’s amazing how how easy it is for people to and I’ve seen examples of this to use the handwriting correctly. So you can’t blame you can’t blame the tool if you don’t know how to use it. Awesome. With that, Brooks, tell me a little bit more about a time when you heard a story about someone using AI for copywriting that kinda had you flabbergasted. Maybe a couple stories or a story about the firsthand experiences with AI that just kind of threw you off.

Brooks Lockett
00:25:50 – 00:26:34

Yeah. I I won’t name I won’t name names, but the chief marketing officer at a company I I really respect was saying how essentially all copywriters are done because AI is gonna completely automate everything. And it was one of those things where it was like, not it’s like, oh, maybe not in 2024, but in 2026, 2027, all you guys are done. And I think that’s one thing in my profession that I haven’t it’s it’s 2 pronged. The one thing I haven’t liked is the hype, especially with people I respect. Like, I lost a lot of respect for that CMO, unfortunately. Still think they’re really smart. I just think that was very off base.

Brooks Lockett
00:26:34 – 00:28:00

And there’s a lot of people out there saying stuff like that. Like, honestly, I think it’s just for views. It’s it’s really just playing on people’s fear. And, you know, to to bring it back to my point earlier about a misuse that I’ve that I’ve seen in the market is people going to social media. And I think we’re at a point, we’re at a threshold with these tools where people people kinda know what a first draft of an AI generated snippet of content looks like, and I see a lot of people a lot of people abandoning their their human communication and over relying on AI, and specifically, I think it’s Chaje Pty or Claude, cut whatever the mainstream model they’re using. And I think my clarion call to people is use it, but don’t abandon what makes you unique, and don’t over rely on the tools because what happens when everyone starts relying on the same tool to write their content for them, you get saturation and the sea of sameness kicks in. And I think, right, it’s just it’s so important to keep yourself in the driver’s seat. So I think a lot of my qualms with it really just boils down to, like, people abandoning the wonderful parts of their work process or their writing process that made them unique.

Brooks Lockett
00:28:01 – 00:29:00

People abandoning their style, abandoning the way that the unique way that they think and speak, and sort of outsourcing it to AI tools and having and not knowing that it’s actually showing in the market and that people you know can actually tell, and it it just erodes people’s trust in you a little bit. So I would say that’s not to, like, downplay that people should use these tools, but it’s to be careful. It’s to use them just be so mindful and and really think through how your market is going to receive this because we are getting to a certain level of maturity, and I don’t think we’re at the max level of maturity at all. I think we have a a long ways to go, many decades to go, actually. But I think just recognize that it’s it’s only a competitive advantage if you hold on to those competitive advantages you already had. Your unique personality, your unique style with AI as an overlay on top of it.

Filipe Santos
00:29:00 – 00:29:37

Couldn’t emphasize that more. I completely agree, and I think I’ve seen these examples, not to mention the overhype that’s being placed on things like AGI, which is not a thing that we’re even near. People keep kinda referencing that. And, again, I’ll I’ll leave information about AGI and all that, but it’s a little technical. Right now, you know, we are kind of looking at how to use, you know, kind of use AI for more creativity. Right? So I’d like to kind of see what you think, how we can use AI kinda to serve us as a muse for creativity versus just productivity because it is an excellent productivity tool. But are there ways to use it for, like, a creative endeavor?

Brooks Lockett
00:29:37 – 00:30:25

Yeah. Absolutely. And it’s a really good question, and I like the delineation you made between productivity and creativity. I think the lowest hanging fruit with creativity is variation. That’s the amazing thing. It’s like, large language models, they, you know, they don’t understand you in the human sense, but they tap into a wealth of source data to predict a logical continuation of what you’re giving it. And if you give it high quality inputs, you’re gonna get high quality outputs that mirror that of your inputs. So, for example, like, I think creative brainstorming, god, there’s nothing better than doing that with AI, at least before you get with your team, before you get with your client because you just come with such a more well refined variations of of whatever deliverable you’re creating.

Brooks Lockett
00:30:25 – 00:31:00

It could be writing. It could be design. It could be video now. It could be you know, because there’s all these text to video tools, and it’s like, hey. I have this rough MVP of an idea. I wanna iterate back and forth with you. I wanna come at something that, you know, you could be using DALL E or Midjourney, and I’ve I’ve done all of these to create some pretty insane imagery just for fun. Like, for example, one thing that I’m really into is from a newsletter, I wanted to start doing some, comic strips, like marketing comic strips just because I I I grew up on comic books.

Brooks Lockett
00:31:00 – 00:31:43

I grew up on Marvel, and I just but I’ve never really had a way to do it quickly. Like, I’m only one person. I’m a one person business, and I’m not really at a point where I wanna go, like, hire this comic strip firm. It was just more of, like, a quick thing. AI is perfect for that because I can give it, like, a really long prompt. I could say come up with different variations of this comic story with this hero and this villain and these speech bubbles, and it and it does it really, really well. Of course, after some iteration, But it’s like without AI, I would have never gotten to flex that creative muscle, and I’ve got a lot of cool stuff in the pipeline that I’m really looking forward to. And it’s like, without it, I would have never been able to do that.

Brooks Lockett
00:31:43 – 00:32:18

Another one that I love doing is headline variations, and I do some because I have a couple of different writing voices. Like, sometimes I’m super casual and, like, kind of funny and, like, a little cheeky and, like, that’s just the style that I was writing in that day for my personal stuff. But then other times, it’s, like, a lot more professional, more straightforward. It’s just different different elements of my writing style, and I’m able to hone in on those particular elements. It’s like, oh, I want this one to sound a little bit more serious. It’s a bit more serious of an audience. They’re they don’t want jokes. They want straight business.

Brooks Lockett
00:32:18 – 00:32:45

And I’m able to, like, use the use AI to drill deeper on that. It’s like it’s a tool you can use to dig deeper as a creative and also just get more ideas on the whiteboard. And that is so valuable because with humans, humans are amazing. Don’t abandon that. Humans are slow. Humans take forever to respond. Humans are not always available. Humans are forgetful.

Brooks Lockett
00:32:45 – 00:33:19

Humans will forget to respond to your email about brainstorming for a particular campaign, and that’s wonderful. Humans are good at certain things. AI is very good at certain things, and now we have both. And you’re crazy not to if if you’re a creative and you do any kind of creative work and you’re not using it to generate more variations and more angles and more tweaks on the strategies, the visuals, the copy, the content that you’re already creating, you’re missing out. You’re really missing out because it’s super fun. It’s really fun. What’s been your experience?

Filipe Santos
00:33:21 – 00:33:48

Yeah. No. I I look. I I love those examples, and I I think from my experience, it’s the same. Like, I I I wouldn’t ever say that these tools, even the creative, like, creating imagery and visuals, whatever replace an amazing designer or somebody who’s, like, in that space. But what it can do is at least give you a rough idea of which direction you’re gonna take it. So even me, like, I can’t draw for crap. Like, a stick figure would probably be putting it, like, kindly in terms of, like, how I draw.

Filipe Santos
00:33:48 – 00:34:24

But at the end of the day, if I can use tools to make these amazing ideas that I have in my head come true on, you know, in paper or digital in this case, and allow a designer to take it to that next step, you know, applying what they know, their experience, and understanding how I want this to actually be framed. Yeah. No question. So my experience has been the same. Like, I’ve done it to just speed up prototypes and get a, like, a proof of concept out there or to have, like, an an idea of where I wanna take it. But after that, I have I kind of rely still on professionals and and my own experience in some cases to do the things that matter and to make it unique. So I’m completely on board with you, Brooks.

Brooks Lockett
00:34:25 – 00:35:15

Have you ever seen that? Have you ever used Replit? Like, the coding tool, Replit? So their their headline on their website is idea to software fast. And I think that’s just one that’s just one. And, you know, it’s a generative AI platform, like, really dialed in for coding. But I think for people who have lots of ideas but not enough time to really execute those prototypes, I think it’s natural in the creative process that you wanna get lots and lots of ideas documented. And naturally, some of them are gonna rise to the top, and then you’re gonna wanna refine those even more, and then those are gonna rise to the top. And then those of at that point, when it’s gone through, like, three levels of iteration, three levels of refinement, that’s when you take it to a human. That’s when you start getting serious about it. It’s because, like, and that’s when you start getting some market feedback on it.

Brooks Lockett
00:35:15 – 00:36:13

And I think that’s it could be, you know, idea to wireframe, fast, idea to website, fast, idea to diagram, fast. And it’s like, yeah. Sure. There’s gonna be, like, lots of prototypes that you don’t use, but if you in the end, you’ve saved so much time having to spend, like, 5 hours chasing an idea when you could just spend, like, 15 minutes chasing an idea just to see if there’s something there. You can just iterate back and forth with a really good AI tool. This interesting blend of saving time, but reallocating that time into the creative ideas that number 1 are your best creative ideas, and number 2, you get to spend that time working with humans, iterating through humans, and let’s call it maybe a layer 2. And now you’ve now you’ve got something. Now you’re coming to people without these half baked ideas, and now you can really get into those parts of the process that you enjoy, which is development and refining and market research and all that kind of stuff.

Brooks Lockett
00:36:13 – 00:36:27

I mean, it’s it’s definitely a beautiful thing, you know, for all the for the drawbacks we talked about earlier with people essentially misusing it, there’s there’s equally as many, if not more, benefits to the creative process. Absolutely.

Filipe Santos
00:36:28 – 00:36:44

Yeah. And and to your point, it’s not going to erase all of the time we spend on things, but it it sure as hell saves a lot of time. I mean, even if you can save 20% of your time on coming up with ideas, that’s a big cost a big time savings, and, we have to use that.

Brooks Lockett
00:36:45 – 00:36:51

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And if and if last thing I’ll say on that is if it lets you do your best thinking, it’s a win.

Filipe Santos
00:36:51 – 00:37:15

Yeah. Well said. With that being said then, let’s talk a little bit about the importance of editorial oversight because you kind of mentioned this throughout these examples. In order to ensure that we have high quality content because this is what we really are, like, looking for and what’s really critical to to how we do things, messaging, content, How can we assure quality and authenticity in the best ways that we can using AI?

Brooks Lockett
00:37:15 – 00:38:10

Absolutely. And I I’m gonna give I’m gonna give I’m gonna give something I’m gonna give something concrete that is a clarion call to anyone in the audience who creates content. Dialogues, not monologues. And for that, I think every bit of content that you create, whether it’s business content or creative content, should come as a result of a conversation with your audience. And I I think that’s why things like newsletters and podcasts are so useful is because you get to you get to create content and then you can use AI to repurpose that content in a 1,000,000 different ways, whether it’s written format, video format, design format, static format, whatever it is, you can use AI to repurpose that. You’re actually getting your source data and and your information from an actual conversation with an actual human. I think that’s, like because, you know, we talk about that all the time. It’s, like, marketers and business people and stuff.

Brooks Lockett
00:38:10 – 00:38:53

It’s like, you know, be sure oh, by the way, be sure to be human in your content. It’s like, okay. What does that even mean? But I think that this is one thing that I’ve really taken to heart, especially over the last several years, is every bit of content that you should that you create should come as the results of a dialogue with somebody, a dialogue with your customer, a dialogue with your partner, a dialogue with your reader, whatever it is. Like, get in the get in the space where you feel you are best and just talk to people. Understand what’s going on out in the world, like, real world experiences with people. Get out to conferences. Go travel. Like, have that conversation with that old dude at the at the bar, you know, like, that that that stuff.

Brooks Lockett
00:38:53 – 00:39:34

And it’s always been that way even before AI. Like, the best writers write from life experience, and and you know that because that and that’s why it resonates with people is because it comes from real world experience. And I think AI, the fact that people are, like, really hyper scaling their content production puts even more of a premium on the foundation on which all of that stands, which is real world conversation and real world experience. So I think just talk to people. Just talk to people and everything else will fall into place. That will guide all of your action, and that’ll that’ll realign your incentive when you actually use AI tools. Keep talking to people.

Filipe Santos
00:39:35 – 00:40:10

Well, to to kind of, like, reflect on that a bit. So knowledge is power. Right? But it’s not just knowledge. It’s also experience. So what you mentioned about, like, talking to people, experiencing things, travel, learn. Right? It’s all about picking up those little details that just make you that much better. And some of the best conversations I’ve had with people have involved them really loving what they do, but getting so deep into that topic that I couldn’t even fathom that there were that many, like, levels or that many layers to the onion. And that if they’re able to kinda convey that simply and and tell good stories, I mean, that makes a world of difference.

Filipe Santos
00:40:10 – 00:40:21

And copywriting is the same thing. Like, if you can get to the point where you understand the journey the person’s taking and give them the reason that they need to take action on something, you’re you’re already there.

Brooks Lockett
00:40:22 – 00:40:53

The best the you know, for my newsletter, I interview a lot of business leaders who’ve got many decades building companies you’ve definitely heard of, you know, $1,000,000,000 companies, and they’re all just so curious. They’re just curious. They’re curious about people. They’re curious about industries. They’re curious about markets. They’re curious about products and customers. They just they just want more information, and and they want those little details that you’re talking about. That is the difference maker.

Brooks Lockett
00:40:53 – 00:41:46

And then you get you just you kinda lead with that, and I feel like you you won’t have to be it it’ll just naturally make you mindful about how you apply AI because you’re you’re already intaking the best information and source data. You’re gonna know what your audience needs. You’re gonna know what those gaps are. You’re gonna know what to educate them about. You’re gonna know how to put creative spins on things. It’s just it’s like if you’ve ever read the book Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, it was written back in, like, 2,011 or something, and I’ve reread that book so many times because it’s really helped me in my business. And he talks about like, the one takeaway from the book is the keystone habits. Like, what are the one to 2 things that you can just really do well that tends to make everything else fall into place? Like, for for a lot of people, it’s exercise.

Brooks Lockett
00:41:47 – 00:42:38

It’s like people wanna get healthier, just exercise. Like literally forget about everything else because the more you exercise, the better shape you’re gonna get in and the better you’re going to feel. So you’re naturally gonna want to gravitate towards foods that make you feel better, and then your sleep will naturally improve because you’re gonna you’re gonna have a workout in the morning, so you’re gonna wanna sleep well. It’s just like and if you just focus on those particular things, a lot of stuff tends to fall into place. I think people fall into the trap of trying to do too many things, and it it clearly becomes very unsustainable. And my keystone habit in my business and my content is having conversations like this, learning from other people, giving my learnings to other people, and then all the ideas tend to percolate from there. So I I treat that as my keystone habit. And I think with AI, it’s just even more important.

Brooks Lockett
00:42:38 – 00:42:45

Like, what’s your keystone habit? What’s that one thing that you do extremely well, that just makes everything else better?

Filipe Santos
00:42:46 – 00:43:27

Couldn’t have said it better. So with regard to what I think most people worry about and what they have on their mind is how do they navigate challenges right now in the AI age? For example, potential impacts on the job market, on their particular jobs, their roles, skill requirements, and the process of work. So I guess let’s just I’ll I’ll open it up to you. Like, what do you think is essentially changing or not changing based on AI’s emergence and the amount of tools and things that people believe they can take advantage of without a person? Because I think I think that needs to be clarified.

Brooks Lockett
00:43:28 – 00:44:14

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, a 100%. I I’d say I think I’ll start with the bad, and then I’ll end with the good or at least at least what I’m seeing. I mean, I think I think a lot of jobs and more specifically, a lot of tasks that make up jobs are absolutely 100% going to be automated and businesses exist to make money, and it’s so clear that these tools will help the business make more money. So I think we’re like, for example, a lot of customer service stuff, basic questions getting answered. I think it’s, like, very clear that AI is coming for a lot of that profession. Not the whole profession, but pretty much one entire layer of that profession is just full blown automation.

Brooks Lockett
00:44:14 – 00:45:18

And I think the the customers like that because if a customer can just talk to a large language model that’s available 247 that gives you the exact answer based on the exact data that you want, I’m afraid that that’s gonna get automated. And and it spans a lot of different industries. I think if if you’re in a profession or a job where your your your tasks are, like, low level, repetitive, and easily automated, I think it’s time to build a bit of a career moat for yourself. I think it’s time to start acquiring some higher level skills and some higher level people skills, I should add, because we’ve spent the last hour talking about how, you know, the human connection is never something that’s gonna be automated because humans crave humans. And I think there is a certain level of human relationship in every profession, and I do think you asked me what’s what’s gonna change, I think things like customer service. So a lot of, like, low level sales roles, a lot of low level copywriting stuff. Like, get you know, insert profession there. I think the automatable things are gonna be automated.

Brooks Lockett
00:45:18 – 00:46:24

That’s just there’s too much pressure, like, upward pressure coming for those professions. There’s too much capitalism coming for it, and you’re not gonna beat the forces of capitalism to come automate the stuff that could be more cheaply automated. That’s, you know, that’s my my bad part of it, but here’s the good part of it. I mean, if you if you’re simply mindful of it now and you pay attention to it now and you seek solutions, not problems, and you don’t just dig your heels in. I think this change will take a little while, but I think one thing that people, at least with the Internet, like the the rise of the Internet age, to be cliche, have under invested in is relationship building. And I don’t mean, like, just having lots of followers on social media. Although that helps, I think social social media and social networks are absolutely critical in this. But as somebody who has an online business, I’ve never been more bullish on just having amazing in person relationships with people, relationships with clients, partners, other copywriters, industry people.

Brooks Lockett
00:46:25 – 00:47:12

Because that for all the reasons we already talked about, you know, your network is your net worth, and I think people in their jobs are gonna become a lot less task oriented and more about figuring out how to creatively leverage technology. And and and your moat, like, the what’s gonna protect you from, you know, the technologies of the future that could perhaps automate some of the tasks that make up your job is your relationships. People love helping people. People love it’s like, okay. This part of your job got automated. Let’s figure out a new job for you to do, but you need relationships with the right people in order to actually collaborate and figure out, okay. What else what else do we need you to do? We wanna keep you here. We like you.

Brooks Lockett
00:47:12 – 00:47:43

We have a great relationship with you. Like, let’s figure out something that you’re more suited to now that we’ve sort of, like, automated this part. I I know it’s not a perfect answer, and quite frankly, like, I don’t know what the future holds. Like, I don’t I don’t know. It it the future is kinda mysterious, and, you know, we’ve been we’ve been surprised before and we’ll be surprised again. But I I think if I had to boil it down to one bit of advice, I’d just say invest in your relationships because people are always gonna love helping people. And if you need help in the future, I would rather be the guy with the network.

Filipe Santos
00:47:43 – 00:48:19

I feel like we’ve kind of write the future that we want. Right? So in this case, you’re completely right. We just came from a pandemic not too long ago, and I I recall almost every other person saying, jeez, I wish I could, like, socialize. I haven’t had a conversation with a person in forever, or I haven’t actually been face to face with somebody. And while we still love the fact that we can sometimes be remote and hybrid schedules and all that, the reality is we need people and I think even machines. Because you talked about how, obviously, AI is trained on specific information. And if we’re not creating new things, then that that becomes very stagnant very quickly. Yeah.

Filipe Santos
00:48:19 – 00:48:50

So so, I mean, we continually need to be a part a cog in that machine even if, like, the things that we thought were the core responsibilities, tasks, things that we needed to do for our role, that will change. And, you know, with over 50% of marketers having concerns with AI replacing their jobs. And very kind of real examples of, like, freelance storytelling in the market about lower demand due to the AI tool usage, and you kind of call that out a little bit. How do you think the copywriters and editors can prepare and adapt to these changes? And I I would even extend that to marketers and entrepreneurs.

Brooks Lockett
00:48:51 – 00:49:53

In a very high level way, how can copywriters and marketers and, you know, small business owners and digital workers prepare for, you know, the coming wave of tools in the in the businesses that will try to use those tools to automate what you do I already said invest in relationships with high quality people. That’s number 1. And number 2, you know, we’ve already said it as well, which is lean into the AI tools, learn how they can make you even better because those businesses are gonna stay extremely busy. Like, I work with chief marketing officers and VPs of marketing and, you know, kind of executives at these at these technology companies. They’re extremely smart, extremely tech savvy people. They do not have time to sit there and figure out how to get really, really good using these language models. They they still don’t have time to teach themselves how to become pro copywriters. They don’t have time to teach themselves how to become great designers.

Brooks Lockett
00:49:53 – 00:50:36

And I think that the fact this is just one example, but hopefully, it helps paint the picture for the audience. Even, like, the tools could be amazing. We could be on GPT 15, and oh my god, GPT 15 is AGI, whatever. There people are still your customers are still so busy. They’re busier than ever. They’re operating businesses, and it’s it’s getting harder and harder and more crowded to operate businesses. It just it’s the way the world is going. And if you can be that person who shows up with a solution, and I actually think I posted about this the other day, what problem do you solve? Like, copywriters, you’re a salesperson with a keyboard.

Brooks Lockett
00:50:36 – 00:50:53

Like, that is what you are. You are not just this creative writer who creates fluff for businesses. You solve sales problems with copy. That’s why I I I spend so much time on strategy. I talk to customer success. I talk to sales. I talk to the go to market leaders. I talk to the executives.

Brooks Lockett
00:50:53 – 00:52:02

I talk to customers. We figure out what those messages in which channels actually need to go before we create them, and then we measure the ROI. And we do case studies, and we do metric lifts, and we measure customer acquisition costs and conversion rates. You think an AI tool is like, you think GPT 15 is gonna just go into a business and do all of that relationship management, draw from years, decades of intuition and experience, and then apply all of that information in a very unique way suited to this particular unique market context? I don’t think so. And if if at that point it’s doing that, we have way bigger problems. But it’s like to to to bring to bring the point home for the audience, what really hard problem do you solve? Do you see that being a problem in the future? Do you think businesses are gonna need to sell stuff online in the future? Okay. Hyperfocus on that, evolve with that problem. AI is not going to be the sole arbiter of sales online.

Brooks Lockett
00:52:03 – 00:52:29

We can already tell people don’t like when emails are clearly written by robots. People don’t like when the comments are written by robots. People don’t like when websites are written by robots. These are positive signals, and you need to think in bets. Need to make a bet that humans will always like humans. So I think that that would be my clarion call to, like, protect yourself, network your butt off, and just get really clear on the problem you solve and execute. It’s really not that hard. Wow.

Filipe Santos
00:52:30 – 00:53:04

I think we’ll leave that there, Brooks, because that is just incredible, and I think that was the best way to summarize all of it. And I think between all the examples, tips, and strategies, we’ve gone into quite a bit. So I wanna I wanna thank you, Brooks. This has been amazing. I wanna thank the listeners for tuning in, and I wanna encourage, basically, everybody to experiment with AI and their creative processes and to think about how to really try things that you can be comfortable with. Don’t be afraid of technology. Don’t be afraid of AI. As Brooks kinda mentioned in in this whole talk, you know, we can do things and start on a smaller level.

Filipe Santos
00:53:04 – 00:53:21

We don’t have to dive in, you know, with both feet. We can kind of dip a toe. Soon after you dip your toe, you’ll see that you really need to, like, pick up these skills. But, anyway, with that, Brooks, why don’t you kinda give us a little bit of of, like, an outro, like, what you might want people to to know about you and how they can get in touch and that kind of thing?

Brooks Lockett
00:53:22 – 00:53:45

Yeah. You you can get in touch with me. All my information is on brookslocket dotcom. That’s my website. That’s where I put all my stuff. I also have a Substack newsletter. It’s very focused on people in software and b two b and how they can better message their products and better tell their market story. And I do lots of interviews with really interesting people, and they’re short form.

Brooks Lockett
00:53:45 – 00:54:06

They’re, like, 3 to 4 minute reads, so don’t expect, like, super crazy long blog posts. You could read it You could read it right after you do the dishes. You could read it on your morning commute, whatever. And I’m also on LinkedIn. I I’m pretty active there. A little bit less these days. I’m more active on Substack, but, yeah, LinkedIn, Substack, and my website. And, you know, feel free to DM me.

Brooks Lockett
00:54:06 – 00:54:15

I’m always I’m always interested in having conversations with people and, you know, answering questions and just meeting meeting new faces. So feel free to DM as well.

Filipe Santos
00:54:16 – 00:54:21

Definitely follow Brooks and definitely DM him. Thank you, Brooks. That’s been an amazing conversation.

Brooks Lockett
00:54:22 – 00:54:23

Thanks, Filipe.

Filipe Santos
00:54:23 – 00:54:25

Cheers. Cheers.