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The Tracks Nobody Sees, But Every Marketer Should Hear.
This podcast celebrates the hidden gems of marketing insight found across all professions—both within and beyond traditional marketing roles. Just as B-sides on a single contain brilliant tracks that are treasured by true fans, every profession contains marketing wisdom that isn't obvious at first glance but is incredibly valuable when discovered.
Tom Hootman (00:05)
Welcome. It's The Marketing B-Sides. I'm your host, Tom Hootman. Thanks for joining me. For the uninitiated, this is a podcast where every single one of you is a marketer. Not a single one of us has it figured out, or even pretends to, which is great. It's a learning experience because sometimes it's about the friends we make along the way.
Which is a nice segue into the friends I've made along the way. One of them being today's guest, who ⁓ honestly I love this section because I get to record and talk about the person and I hope they listen to it and they they get to hear me just layer effusive praise and what I really admire with about them on top of them because I'm too embarrassed to tell them to their face. So it's like it's like a little Tom Hootman confessional booth about how amazing I think these people are.
I really admire this guest. I've known this guest. ⁓ I've I sold tacos with this guest. You've heard me talk about how I used to work in a Mexican restaurant and it was crazy busy and so much more stressful than you would think margaritas and tacos should be. And we used to say to each like, Hey, we're just making tacos here. Like literally, this is the least important thing in the world.
So I was doing the least important thing in the world with this guest for quite some time. back when I think they were still an undergrad. And gradually over the years, we would run into each other, we'd see each other, we stayed in touch via social media, and I've always admired the path this this person took. It's Brant Moriarty, by the way, is his name. I don't know why I'm holding back the name like it's a surprise guess.
what I love about Brant is he's one of the sharpest-witted people I've ever met. And he uses it.
mostly for positivity. I've known a lot of people, myself included, who it's really easy to to turn that into a negative and be too cool for school and not want to do new things.
he's always been fearless about trying something new or talking about his feelings or being open and out there
he was a religious studies major when I met him, bartending serving, shows up at IU, is working in admissions, goes into Kelley School of Business,
He is now helping reformat and revamp K201 Computers and Business into, what it is going to be or is now for the modern age.
I mean, for a while he was even doing like aerial yoga, right? Like the guy is fearless.
Really truly wonderful conversation with a magnificent person who I I hold in high regard and a fascinating conversation about holy shit, AI is changing everything. And I I teach at the business school at a prestigious business school, the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. How is that impacting what we do and how do we need to change to make certain that we are putting our best foot forward?
To foster and cultivate the next generation of brilliant business people. I had to say it in that voice because it sounded so textbook. And so I apologize. It's a great episode. Thanks for joining. Again, Marketing B-Sides Like, subscribe. Don't like, don't subscribe, but I'd prefer you liked and subscribed. Give us feedback, write a review. You can find us wherever quality podcasts are sold.
Enjoy the show.
Tom Hootman (03:02)
Brant thanks for coming on, man. I really appreciate it.
Brant Moriarity (03:04)
Bye-bye.
Tom Hootman (03:05)
You're all dressed up. love this. You get the most well dressed award.
Brant Moriarity (03:09)
Can't tell you, I have a reputation to uphold around here and I'm one of the best dressed faculty in my department and I usually have a pocket square, but I took that out just so I don't want to be too prestige. I don't really know. I'm down to earth kind of guy.
Tom Hootman (03:17)
Hmm.
your higher ed to the core.
Brant Moriarity (03:23)
Apparently so. I had elbow patches on yesterday. Yeah, yeah, we're there.
Tom Hootman (03:25)
How long
have you been with Indiana University?
Brant Moriarity (03:33)
I've been with IU for 23 years, been with Kelley for 19 of those 23 years. Yeah, yeah. My first job outside of my undergraduate degree was at IU, so I came from a student to support staff at the admissions office.
Tom Hootman (03:43)
So you just started.
So you, yeah, that's right. You were in admissions, right? Like.
Brant Moriarity (03:55)
Yep,
circa 2001 or so through 2007 admission.
Tom Hootman (04:01)
And now you're at the ⁓ Kelley School of Business. Very, very prominent, well-regarded business school.
Brant Moriarity (04:04)
Kelley School of Business, sir.
It has been a,
I had no idea how I got here, but I'm glad I did. That's pretty much it. It's, I literally fell into this teaching job on a Friday to start on a Monday. I had got applied, not even considered it, but I was asked to fill an adjunct position that somebody else couldn't fill because they went on sabbatical. And I was somebody that somebody knew who made the decision to call me up. Fell into it.
Tom Hootman (04:13)
They'll let anybody in.
So
you got it through your network, literally.
Brant Moriarity (04:36)
Yeah,
literally. Yeah, I worked with the boss's husband having no connection to the actual boss of the department at the time, but the husband knew who I was and said, hey, why don't you ask Brant And then she did.
Tom Hootman (04:46)
It's fascinating. I know you don't, work predominantly, it's K-201, right? So it's predominantly freshmen.
Brant Moriarity (04:50)
Correct.
Almost all freshmen, yes.
Tom Hootman (04:54)
⁓ I know that, you know, Kelley, we won't talk about the network. Kelley kind of sells the network, right? You're a Kelley grad. You go meet other Kelley grads and travel in a murder of Kelley grads. But it's interesting because like I get asked a lot when I run into Kelley students or when I'm on campus about like the question I always get is about network and like how do you, you know, because there's like this, there's like this push. There's like this, what's the formula? I my network built.
Brant Moriarity (04:58)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yes.
Tom Hootman (05:20)
And I was like, well, no, like the first thing, don't think about your network. Like, like you're just, I joke with people, like all I do, I talk to people for a living now. And I take meetings every day and I talk to people who introduce me to people they could turn into a client. They could reintroduce me to someone who could turn into a client or it's, you never know. Or it's someone who knows someone who's like a data integration specialist. And the next client in the door has a unique data problem and I need help with it, right? Like it's.
Brant Moriarity (05:22)
Yeah.
You never know.
Yeah, you can't
fabricate it. You have to be a genuinely curious person who wants to connect with people.
Tom Hootman (05:50)
And
you cannot expect fucking shit from it. Like you have to go into it thinking like, there's no like, had four meetings today and three of them referred me, so that's three out of 75%. No, like you just cannot, the second you release that, it's like, that's when things happen.
Brant Moriarity (05:53)
No.
you enjoy the process too. And as looking for the end result, you're enjoying the process of it.
Tom Hootman (06:07)
Yeah.
Yeah, there isn't the, I do meet with grads and it's like, I wanna interrupt them kind of halfway through and be like, just ask me. I'm not hiring, but like just fucking ask, right? Like it's okay. You can just like just ask, it's fine. So for those who are uninitiated on what I'll call the blissful world of K201, what is it and
Brant Moriarity (06:21)
⁓ How can you help me?
Sure.
Tom Hootman (06:38)
And what has it been? And also, the reason I reached out to you about this is because you had posted, think, on LinkedIn, or I saw online that K201 is moving to a different place in the future. So can you educate us a bit on what K201 is and where it's going?
Brant Moriarity (06:50)
Yeah, this could take hours, but I won't. ⁓ It's a whole series, right? So the full picture of K201 it was established first like in 1967. It's been part of the Kelley, before it was Kelley, part of the business school at IU's curriculum since the late 1960s. And it was called the Computer and Business since then. And of course, that very vague name,
Tom Hootman (06:51)
This is the episode one of a five episode podcast.
Brant Moriarity (07:13)
led us to be able to adapt to whatever businesses needed for computing type skills. I learned of this, the very first iteration of the course was programming mainframe computers using punch cards in a language called Fortran. Things that I have no idea what it even means, but that's what this course was taught back in the 60s. And of course, it been through major iterations since then. I began teaching in the early 2000s, mid 2000s here, and we were doing
focusing on data analysis and data management. We were doing relational databases and Excel stuff for analyzing data and kind of helping freshmen students get a handle on how to manage that data, how to analyze it, how to get insights from it. And that's been the course since my 19 years of teaching it. It hasn't changed much since then.
We have introduced new tools like Power Query and Power BI into the curriculum at an entry level because other classes upstream from us also wanted students to be able to extend their skills in those particular tools. So we kind of are able to modify our curriculum to get freshmen students more prepared for other classes downstream and be able to extend their skill sets further.
But all of this kind of changed for us in December of last year when the deans and other leadership at Kelley realized this AI shift is changing the way people work. And if our freshmen aren't getting introduced to how to use these new powerful tools in genuine, strategic, ethical, effective ways, we're doing them a disservice when they graduate by not having those skills. And it wasn't just our course. There's a whole
series of courses being kind of transformed into integrating AI in some capacity appropriate for their field, appropriate for their course, appropriate for their industry. We're just kind of the first stop in that journey for our freshmen students. But when I first started as the director, one of my first tasks was to rename the course. Now to rename a course in the same name since 1967 is not the...
Tom Hootman (09:06)
Thanks.
No pressure.
Brant Moriarity (09:22)
Not the easiest task because it's not just our course here in Bloomington. All nine campuses offer or could offer a K201, the Computer and Business course. Only two are Kelley Schools. Bloomington and Indianapolis are only the Kelley Schools, but every other campus could offer it. So to get the approval, not just of our department, our undergraduate program,
but also all nine campuses. That was quite a challenge. So I kind of began.
Talking to stakeholders of courses past us that have people that rely on the skills our students are learning for ideas for what might make a better name for the course. IU Indianapolis was our main collaborator as well because they were also the Kelley School. But we had an idea for incorporating information systems and decision making into our core name to be able to have some more obvious directions to what our course covers because the
computer business, so vague. No one knew what we were coming up with. Very, very vague. But it has served us well to be able to quickly adapt without having to go through the process of changing our course description or changing the course name because it was the computer in business. We taught computing technology in business. But that process was an interesting process for me, my very first kind of attempt at doing something like that. And of course, it passed our school no problem.
Tom Hootman (10:21)
That's the most vague thing ever now.
Brant Moriarity (10:45)
But when I get out to the other nine campuses, there was a remonstrance held on it saying, wait a minute, this will impact all of us. So let's meet and discuss and have a dialogue about it. I navigated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was one of those, exactly. St. Joe County. That was the first kind of me navigating that process, but the deans here trusted me to deal with that.
Tom Hootman (10:56)
My peeps up in South Bend put their foot down, didn't they? Yeah.
Brant Moriarity (11:07)
So I met with them all on a Zoom call and we were all there and I discussed kind of our framing of the course name and how we're approaching it and how there's flexibility in how other campuses might approach it because we are, and we have 25 faculty members, we have a support system here that covers this course. Whereas some campuses, only one person covers the entire course, right? So we can't expect them.
to do what we can do here with almost no resources. But I was able to navigate that pretty well and then it got a second vote and everyone passed it. And that's been our name change since 1967 is now Foundations of Business Information Systems and Decision Making. Harder to say.
Tom Hootman (11:47)
Catchy.
Brant Moriarity (11:47)
Yeah,
it wasn't about really marketing, but so we still call it K201, right? But I think that that course name being something more specific allowed us to now realize what we're actually doing here. We're helping students understand the technology they'll be accessing in business to make decisions. And before that, was like computer business. could be, yeah. Yeah, right. It used to be a typing class. So we have.
Tom Hootman (12:07)
You learn how to right?
Brant Moriarity (12:12)
Yeah, so a direction was now kind of formed with this new title. We've been kind of growing since then, iterating, a major new change is coming in the fall.
Tom Hootman (12:22)
So would you say this is the biggest change you've implemented as in your department since you've been there?
Brant Moriarity (12:27)
The name change was now, but this next change coming up is a thousand times more involved.
Tom Hootman (12:33)
Tell me about that.
Brant Moriarity (12:34)
So this is interesting. So the course, since its inception, I believe, always had two components to it. An in-person lab where 30 or 40 students in a group were able to work with computers, for example, and then in one day a week large lecture hall where you discussed broader concepts involving emerging technologies in business. And that separation of lab and lecture made it very hard for freshmen students to actually
connect the concepts of learning and lecture to what they're doing in lab. mean, there was often three days in between, different instructor, different modality, 250 students in one room versus 30. This fall, we're now combining those efforts into two 75-minute classes. So not only are we getting rid of that separation physically, we're also getting rid of that.
Tom Hootman (13:12)
Yeah.
Brant Moriarity (13:25)
separation conceptually. We're kind of weaving in these managerial frameworks and managerial scenarios into every tool that we're teaching them, every concept we're teaching them. They have the context of how this might be valuable to them, not now, but five years from now, seven years from now, when they're making decisions.
we're introducing more modernized tools. We've always used Microsoft Access as a way of teaching relational databases in a very easy to use graphical interface, click buttons and make things happen. And no matter how we framed it, students always believed they were learning how to use Microsoft Access, not the concepts behind relational database structures.
Tom Hootman (14:05)
⁓
and they, and I've bad news for him. Like once you, once you get out, so no one uses Access for anything ever.
Brant Moriarity (14:09)
Yeah, exactly.
Always been the feedback is that why are we learning this useless tool that it couldn't quite get behind the concepts we are. So now we're moving to SQL Server and VS Code, where they're going to be learning how to actually code in SQL, which they're going to be not happy about that because it's harder to do than click buttons to make queries happen. So we're modernizing the tools that we're using that are more appropriate for the kinds of things they might see in the real world.
Tom Hootman (14:17)
Concepts versus tools.
Brant Moriarity (14:36)
with ⁓ different tools, introducing more Power BI, more Power Query, ⁓ Databricks as a kind of online platform for synthesizing structured data and unstructured data to make decisions. So we're kind of introducing all these new tools that are more modern and weaving into it the way of extending their knowledge with AI tools in the classroom as well, not as a substitute for learning, but as an extension and a kind of an accelerator to learn concepts or to test out ideas and get
prototypes from the AI tools. If they can articulate a requirement for some kind of system, we're going to teach them how they can use AI to just see what it might look like if their idea came to realization. All kinds of stuff.
Tom Hootman (15:15)
Yeah.
It's yeah, I mean the the
grads that that we've been fortunate enough to hire who are fantastic. The feedback we've gotten that it feels like you're changing has been we didn't learn any of this right like like real world, not just working with clients and solving problems, but even like the the training. I think the concepts helps them. Learn Google Ads management or meta ads management.
Brant Moriarity (15:27)
Right?
Tom Hootman (15:40)
much more quickly and efficiently prepares them for that, but connecting those dots, they feel like or felt like, I didn't learn any of this. Well, you learn the concepts, you practice the concepts that enabled you to be able to learn this in eight to 10 weeks versus eight to 10 months in a full apprenticeship. It's interesting because the grads we've hired have moved through training and been remarkable. What takes the longest is the soft skills.
Brant Moriarity (15:48)
Alright.
looks different in real life.
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (16:07)
is
client management, is the live fire of like, okay, you launched a new campaign and it's fucking in the basement. What are you gonna do differently next week? Those are the things that you only get through experience.
Brant Moriarity (16:15)
Yeah. This is the most formal
thing. The main shift in how we are approaching the class is this build, adapt, defend framework to help students learn that if you're working on something and you have a possible solution for it, but then something disrupts that plan.
a client has changed their funding for it, a stakeholder has changed what they want to focus on, a requirement has changed what you've already built. How do we adapt to that? Helping students learn how to think on the fly to adapt what they've already done to meet a new requirement is the biggest shift in our course that we're doing, pedagogically speaking, that we haven't done before. I used a fancy word, okay? Oh.
Tom Hootman (16:57)
heading.
pedagogically.
Brant Moriarity (17:02)
man, higher ed, bitches. That's what's up. Nope, you don't have to.
Tom Hootman (17:04)
I don't even know how to spell pedagogically.
An adverb meaning in a way that relates to teaching education or instructional methods for those of you playing the home game. It's fuck.
Brant Moriarity (17:15)
Hey, yeah, how we're delivering the content has changed to be able to make our students more adaptive to the things. Because we have seen countless times, Tom, where students, they have the right answer. Explain it to me. They can't. They can't. They don't know how it worked. They just learn how to type the solution and hit Enter. But that can't be the end, right?
Tom Hootman (17:36)
That's what I learned.
Brant Moriarity (17:41)
be able to explain it and defend why you may have made a choice you made based on what new information you got. And that's what we're trying to help our freshmen learn how to do, which they may not even use until they're later in their careers. But the idea is we want to prepare our students to have jobs where they're making decisions that they're hired to make, not just entry level, do what you're told, but have a skill to be able to actually make decisions.
Tom Hootman (18:07)
Yeah. that, I mean, is, hire great people and trust them to make the right decisions and know that like, always use the term and I say, you can't break this one. You can't break it. Right. Like this is a low stakes, just make the call and run. And it's, it's interesting because we're like all of us in our, in our heart and soul are taught like, like permission. Can you check this for me? Is this what I, like, just go, go do it. We'll, we'll figure it out. ⁓ and it's so like,
Brant Moriarity (18:26)
Yeah. If it blows up, we'll figure it out. Yeah.
Tom Hootman (18:32)
Kelley has always had this really, really strong reputation that I kind of was like, Kelley, prestigious, but it does, it's an amazing reputation. It sounds like what Kelley's finally doing, what you're helping finally do is create this like meaningfully different aspect or culture shift in the program today versus not just a few years ago, but since 1960.
Brant Moriarity (18:53)
Yeah, yeah, at least in our course, yeah. The biggest frustration I've had with our course is that, because we have 2,300 students every semester in our course. That's a lot, that's thousands of students a year. And to be able to effectively grade what they've provided for homework assignments would be difficult to do.
at a much smaller level manually. So we do deploy these auto graders to check for things to be able to make sure they're accurate in what their answers are, which allows us to be able to scale at such a large course. But because of that automation, our instructions had to be so precise. In cell B3, use a sum function to do this. And all they're doing is just, okay. And like they're not thinking through what to do.
Tom Hootman (19:40)
They don't remember it.
Yeah. Yeah.
Brant Moriarity (19:41)
Yeah, yeah. So we're able to now
change that whole paradigm and let them just say, hey, here's a data set. Here are some guardrails, but get some insights from it and tell us what you learned about this company based on this data set. And that's going to be a game changer, I think.
Tom Hootman (19:59)
That's awesome. So you mentioned you work with freshmen. So you have this front row seat, not only in the next generation, but it's almost like the generation that's on deck, right? And I think that there's, I do it, we all do it, where we're like, content is broken down into 30 seconds via TikTok, attention spans. You hear all the bitching and all the moaning and like, I wanted to put the positive spin on this. Like what would you say students today?
are better at than most of us may realize or take for granted.
Brant Moriarity (20:26)
Sure. I like to always compare them at 19 to me at 19.
Tom Hootman (20:32)
Ha!
We were, for the, we were, folks, before we started recording, we were doing a bit of this. Anyway, yeah. Because Brant and I worked, we've known each other forever. Like, yeah, it's been a while.
Brant Moriarity (20:38)
and
I am continuously impressed with the vast majority of these students in terms of how they're able to not just handle the coursework, which is hard enough, but because of their desire to network.
and then be able to do more things. They're involved in clubs. They're involved in fraternities, not just the Greek life ones, but the business ones as well that focus on networking and appropriate attire for presentations. Like they're starting their own clubs. If there's not a club that exists, they are taking the initiative to begin their own club and getting a faculty sponsor to have their club started. I did none of that. I went to my classes. I enjoyed what I was learning. It was phenomenal time. I didn't do any extra.
Tom Hootman (21:16)
None of that.
No, no.
Brant Moriarity (21:23)
I mean, whatever,
these kids are driven for the most part to be successful, whatever that means for them.
They still don't understand basic computing stuff, which is surprising to me that they were born with computers in their hand, but they're born with mobile devices in their hands. They're not born with laptops or desktop computers. So the idea of installing software or troubleshooting a missing file or a corrupt file is just beyond their comparison. And it was for me too. I didn't know that when I 19.
Tom Hootman (21:53)
Yeah, I mean, I had a couple good friends who like I built my own PC, first, I built my first couple. And then when I switched to Max, super nerd, I also think that the machines progress so much. It's similar to mechanics, right? Cars don't just break down on the side of the road as much anymore. And there's not much you can take a new Toyota or new Lexus to like the corner garage and have them pop it open and look at because everything is so much more sophisticated.
Brant Moriarity (22:00)
Nerd.
Okay.
Tom Hootman (22:20)
That's the downside. The upside is they run forever. They will tell you when they're about to break down. You don't necessarily get stranded on the side of the road as much. There's also that. remember, I mean, when laptops and computers first started to be on the thing, how they were always wheezing and breaking and corrupt. And you just don't see as much of that anymore either. So like there's a, there is an element of like, they don't learn that because they don't, because they don't have to.
Brant Moriarity (22:23)
Yeah. Sure.
sure.
Have to. Yeah.
Except when new systems like our, you know, I use systems, they get so used to something working. And when just your OneDrive gets turned off, cause you rebooted your machine and it was not set to auto turn on when it came back on, then your files are not being synced up to the cloud. And you don't understand that an application had to run to do that in the first place. Like it just works until it does it.
Tom Hootman (23:06)
Yeah.
Brant Moriarity (23:07)
So when we're helping them with that and we have plans to address that kind of with our adapt and defend kind of situation to be able to teach them what the tools they have, but let's pretend you're now unable to use this method for getting your files. Let's figure out what other methods you have, a browser, an app on your phone. I think there could be other ways of getting to something that you know is there because one path is blocked. Just let's think through possible scenarios.
Tom Hootman (23:34)
I will also draw a correlation anecdotally when like in 2011, 2012, when I worked at a small agency here in Bloomington, we would hire grads and then there was a new hire in Bloomington, we would have a happy hour that first week. And then we would have a happy hour the second week. So the second week, we had a happy hour every week to find a reason to celebrate. And over the course of the 15 years and really 10 years before COVID hit and everyone dispersed,
Brant Moriarity (23:56)
Thanks.
Tom Hootman (24:01)
Anecdotally, I remember my boss and I would talk about, a good friend of mine, we were talking about how we saw the change in grads in that decade, where grads weren't down with that. They were like, no, I'm good. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna go home. I remember we had grads who were like, I remember talking to people, like, what do you, like, tell me about your night, what'd do? I went home, read a book, went to bed around nine. And I remember thinking to myself like, what? They're not all Puritans, but they're just,
Brant Moriarity (24:08)
Sure.
that's different. Right.
Tom Hootman (24:25)
I just wanted to rip heaters and have a few drinks. I was like, that's all I cared about. I didn't do anything outside the norm. They just take better care of themselves. They're much more conscientious, not only in how they participate, but how they prepare themselves to be able to participate, in my humble opinion.
Brant Moriarity (24:41)
Their mental health awareness
is way above anyone that I've ever, in my generation, like they're just aware of the importance of mental health and they will not be afraid to just get the help that they need. And that is, I think, a good thing to be able to do, because so many of people just suffer in silence when they can't understand why they can't keep up and there has possibly something actually wrong and they get it addressed. I think that's wonderful.
Tom Hootman (24:53)
Yeah.
Brant Moriarity (25:06)
I'm not one of those old cranky kids these days. I support them. They are doing some fantastic things.
Tom Hootman (25:12)
Well, you've always had a great dichotomy for those who don't know. You and I have always been around Bloomington, but when Twitter was not even relatively new, were my favorite trash talker. You would search the K201 hashtag and look for just students anywhere on Twitter bitching about it and just troll them. Good times. Good times. So much has changed.
Brant Moriarity (25:28)
Good times.
They still love the abuse. I am the same smart ass I've always been in the classroom and they eat it up. Yeah.
Tom Hootman (25:37)
Thicker skinned. I'm a
late Gen Xer. We have thin skin. They have thicker skins. They do. I don't know, just give me the feedback, whatever. And like, okay, I guess this is weird. I'm used to dancing around it. Also Midwestern. like I'm nice to a fault. Are you picking up the subtext here, bud? Like what separates, you talked about most, the vast majority of students are invested.
Brant Moriarity (25:44)
Yeah.
you
You're not gonna cry?
Right.
Tom Hootman (26:01)
What separates, in your opinion, the top 5 % of students from everyone? Because everything you just described was the top 5 % of students back when I remember it. Now they can't all be the top 5%. What are those elite students who wow you today, what are they doing?
Brant Moriarity (26:15)
Yeah.
The elite ones, again, in my course, my course is not for everybody. I mean, they all have to take it, but it takes somebody who wants to learn more about analytics and information systems to be able to want to do more. So it's a biased subset of students who already have an interest in this field, but
We are their first introduction to this idea of the computing side of business and what that means. So for some students, this is their first realization, wow, I actually like to use this technology to solve problems, not just to play around with it. So those in this context of that top 5 % are actually applying what they're learning in the classroom to something else outside of the classroom. They're thinking of their father's business, their mom's business,
or something else like that and they're using their skill sets to help build solutions for others. Back when we taught Access databases, some students would say, you know what, this might help my dad's small business to track his actual sales as opposed to an Excel spreadsheet. Let me create this relational database structure for him. And they would come to me for help with how to build and get past certain obstacles, but they were applying and extending what they learned. And that for me is just a
mind-blowing shift to not just learning it to check a box, but learning it to apply it outside the classroom. And for me, that is a separation for it, but not required to do well. It just shows they might now have a career in information systems or business analytics that they never realized was possible because they came in as a finance major, because everyone's a finance major, until they take K-201 and we sometimes convert them. Yeah.
Tom Hootman (27:57)
figure out.
It's
interesting they're finally teaching their parents just how gut wrenching it is to have a P &L. Congratulations, mom and dad. Boom, but that's fantastic though, because that's, we have a team member here who something he said when he was applying and we first started talking was like, it's like people always say, how do you separate yourself? What they did in the summers, he ran a very small, very local.
Brant Moriarity (28:05)
Yeah. Yay. The trailer continues.
Tom Hootman (28:25)
social media advertising company. And he helped a couple of businesses find themselves, have a firmer footing on Meta, on Facebook and Instagram. And it's not that any of that, it is transferable, but it's like, that's the type of process you want to see someone go through outside of just getting the certificate that shows the problem solving ability.
when they're excited and that they're excited about something that does translate to being excited about performing for a client in our business.
Brant Moriarity (28:52)
Yeah,
because they didn't do it for a homework grade. They did it because they wanted to updo it. They wanted to do it. Yeah.
Tom Hootman (28:57)
Yeah, yeah,
and it's, it's, it sounds like shitty advice. And I say it a lot. It's like, how do I, how do I get experience when I don't have experience? And it's like, you, volunteer, you work for free. As like, you, I mean, you, you literally go, go downtown and you know, who works somewhere and see if you can like, be a lot of everyone wants to go into influencer marketing. Now, every grad wants to be an influencer manager, which is hilarious to me, because it is
Brant Moriarity (29:05)
Yeah, volunteer. That's Yeah, yeah.
Tom Hootman (29:23)
task rabbit. is the it is like the least into it's the least thought provoking you forget how I mean, all you're doing is you're writing a brief, you're reaching out to influencers via platform, you're getting responses with their rates, you're going back to the client, you're going back to them to negotiate, you're setting them up, and then you're revising the brief, and then you get them a date to go live, or you get the content that UGC back from them user generated creative. It's like all you're doing is handing things back and forth. It's but you get to work with influencers.
And that's what everyone wants to do.
I keep saying this. the students are a few years from leaving when you talk to them. like, what's the most common advice you find yourself giving regarding like the practical application of what they learn? Like what kind of like real world, I'm asking you this and you've only ever worked for, why am I asking you this fucking question? I know you do, I'm giving you shit. You do many more things. But like, what's that real world advice of like, hey, this is some advice I'm gonna give you on.
Brant Moriarity (30:07)
I do more things, Tom. I do more things.
Tom Hootman (30:17)
how this shit really works and what it's really like out there that helps recalibrate.
Brant Moriarity (30:21)
I know that I often spend more time counseling those that are not getting into Kelley on what the other opportunities are, if you can't get that grade. But for those that are and that are driven, the idea is that we're gonna teach you some things, we can't teach you everything. You have to always stay curious. You have to always be wanting to learn more things, because you can't expect to grow and to be able to become a leader if you're not willing to always be hungry for new stuff.
You know, our course is so far removed from their actual graduation, but students, almost immediately see a practical application for what they're learning for at least something of use, whether it's them doing the work themselves or knowing it's so valuable that if they're going to hire people to find the right person to do that work for them. And I try to always emphasize that you can't do all the work yourself unless you want to be an entrepreneur. And then you have to, but at some point you realize if you don't
this skill set that's strong enough for yourself, know it's value and find the appropriate fit to bring somebody in or outsource it or something like that. So my main focus is just, you know, realize there's value in this process.
You want to be able to make decisions based off of data that supports what you're doing and also your experience and your human judgment. there are, there's still value in making decisions if you evaluate possible scenarios based off of data than just throwing a dart into a dartboard and whatever else. So I think that that's, that's basically it is always stay hungry and realize these skills. If you can't do them yourself, they're valuable enough to pay someone well that does.
Tom Hootman (31:59)
You struck and you struck something there when you talked about not just throwing a dart like and you were talking about like data backed decision making. But then you also mentioned using your own judgment. It's interesting because I in my evolution, like we always over indexed in my first agency towards data driven mathematics focused students like just super smart, super, super smart.
Brant Moriarity (32:21)
Okay.
Tom Hootman (32:24)
And if they were very good at reporting what the data said. And in our business, you can be talking to someone who is exactly like you, or you can be talking to a CMO who is like, what the hell did you just say? Tell me in plain English, you have two minutes. And they would struggle with that. And then the other side of the coin is you have to be able to understand the data somehow, because you can't go in on just vibes, like you're Don Draper and get him drunk. You can with some clients, very many.
Brant Moriarity (32:36)
Right.
Tom Hootman (32:50)
Right? Like there's there's a blend of being able to be personable and use your judgment and explain the basis for how you got to the decision using the data versus here's what the data says. And it's like, well, yeah, I could literally just set this up myself and hit a button every week that shows me the data. You already did that. There's a dashboard I can look at it 24/7. So what? Always answer the questions. So what?
Brant Moriarity (33:08)
Yeah. Yeah.
It's why, again, I come from a liberal arts background before I came into Kelley, and so I value that kind of education where you're learning to communicate, learning to see all sides of a problem, learning to be able to have your own human judgment on things. Like that's...
I would argue it's probably better to have somebody with that framework of problem solving and communication who can then learn how to use tools to get the actual data than vice versa. It's just harder to sometimes learn the human component of decision making than it is the actual button pushing of getting the data to tell you what to do because models don't always have every piece of context that you know
that you haven't given it. Same with AI usage. You can't just say, gave AI a prompt, it gave me this solution, because it may have missed some crucial context that you didn't give it. Or it drew assumptions out of thin air and applied it to their solution that you have no idea about. You know.
Tom Hootman (34:14)
There are, I'm sure there's, ⁓ Sam Altman's probably pouring over the data right now of like how many people, I mean, you have to adopt it and hone your own craft for what your inputs are. And you learn over time how to write the prompt in your voice, how to have the dialogue. And for me, AI, from when it started to where it's at now, to me the biggest changing point was the ability for AI to...
not just learn, but like look back upon all of the previous conversations and reference them. And to maintain the memory, even if it still fucks up and drops an em dash in and I have to be like, da da da. Son of a bitch. Here's your, here.
Brant Moriarity (34:41)
Yes, maintain that memory. Yeah.
Yeah. I said no, dashes. And quit bowling
that bullshit for no reason.
Tom Hootman (34:55)
Stop it.
And it's like knowing it's still gonna do that from time to time. But also the fact that it's like, well, it literally has been like, well, here's what you said back in December. Is this still relevant? And it's like, damn, this is what it's all worth. It's worth it now because it's got a better memory than I have. Or I can say like, we talked about this with this client. What are the differences with the problem we're handling now versus the one back then? I don't have to feed it all the info again. It goes and pulls it again.
It has absolutely changed it. I mean, when it comes to AI, it's interesting because you're you're working now with I mean, in the next few years, you'll be working with students who've only known a world with AI. ⁓ And when they come out, they'll run headlong into a C suite boss, a boss's boss, an entire team who says, I don't know, kid, like make the AI thing do its thing, we should be
Brant Moriarity (35:31)
Yeah, correct.
Tom Hootman (35:45)
This is what we hear. should, I got this question recently. How was Mixtape Digital leveraging AI in its day to day? And it's like, did AI write that question? Why are you asking? Why are you asking? Why do you wanna know? What do you wanna know? What problem was like, help me understand why you wanna know that. Because it sounds like a test grade to check a box.
Brant Moriarity (36:05)
Yeah, exactly.
Tom Hootman (36:06)
And I think a lot of CEOs and a lot of like people who have maybe not grown up now and say CEOs, nothing against the CEOs of the world. love you all. ⁓ Please hire us. But like seasoned executives are like, how are we leveraging AI everyone? And everyone comes up with these like stock answers and they go out and they spend a few tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars on a platform. But from your POV watching students
Brant Moriarity (36:13)
Please don't hurt us.
Tom Hootman (36:29)
who are who basically adapting it immediately. What do you think's a big misconception? Or what would you tell someone who's been around AI and hasn't really used it doesn't know how to use it that that you think they might be like struggling with as they try to wrap their old heads try to wrap her brains around?
Brant Moriarity (36:44)
Yeah, depending upon, again, you want the freshmen's or the CEOs.
Tom Hootman (36:49)
Give me the
thing you would tell the CEO who's like, I'm struggling with how to get my team to use AI and help me understand.
Brant Moriarity (36:55)
Sure. Yeah.
I think it's really important that it's not just a checkbox. I've seen at least memes making fun of the idea. I want AI to use AI to evaluate AI and then use AI to respond to that AI. And they're tracking token usage as if it's some kind of metric that means anything, right? And I'm...
As a director of my department, I am trying to get my faculty to also use AI, but I have to kind of guide them into what approaches are appropriate for what we do with it, right? So I'm helping them learn how to use it as a strategic partner to brainstorm ideas about lesson plans, about data sets to introduce new concepts to our students, about ⁓ questions to be able to ask our students and ideas of what possible solutions a freshman mind might come up with
prepare our faculty for just expecting what a student might do with this particular prompt. Like it has to be not just, I'm going to type my Google search and get back this 10 pages of text.
that are just kind of rambling on about certain things, I want to have an actual purpose to use it for. So I just used Claude for the first time last week. Claude Pro, I used my research funds to purchase a year ⁓ licensed for it.
Tom Hootman (38:02)
Mm-hmm.
Brant Moriarity (38:15)
And as I was preparing for a meeting that happened yesterday, and in that meeting, I'm trying to guide my faculty who are writing a new textbook for us for the next fall version of K201, and wanted to be able to give them some sample outlines for new content we're providing our students, sample PowerPoint slide decks that summarize those outlines to give them an actual clear vision of what their new chapters might look like, to try to get them to not
revert back to what we've done for the last 19-20 years. We can't be stuck in that model. To be able to push our students further, we have to come up with new scenarios, new functions, new tools to be able to teach our students. And if we don't have that skill set already, we have to also leverage some AI tools to help us learn how to deliver the introduce these tools to our students. So it's about having a purpose in my mind that
allows you to go beyond a simple question. Like I want a process to navigate with AI and then help me and analyze the outputs and make tweaks to it because it wants to get sometimes the AI outputs very, very kitschy and very slogan based and kind of makes these weird phrases that are just too...
made up and so you have to kind of switch the tone and have it reiterate. All that stuff has to be what you're doing with it to get people to actually see its value, not just make me a word document on this topic.
Tom Hootman (39:43)
It's...
fascinating because you read the stories about companies having minimum token usage. it's, again, it's the clocking in and clocking out. Like, are you in your seat? Like, it's the way to make it like we're just trying to recreate cubicle life again. it's the best way, I mean, we track our time here. And it's one of those things where if you ask everyone to have 90 % of their time to be billable client hours,
Everyone's going to turn in 90 % of their time is billable client hours like they learn how to stay in the clear Versus being honest and reporting accurately and it's it comes in my opinion and admittedly It's as hard for anyone myself included like you can't create policies or processes for everybody just to not have to manage the subset of the team that's not adopting it like you you're basically creating a
Brant Moriarity (40:33)
Correct.
Tom Hootman (40:35)
a policy so you don't have to have a couple of uncomfortable conversations. And you're like,
Brant Moriarity (40:38)
Yeah, and you have to have
uncomfortable conversations. I just finished up my annual reviews of my faculty. Sometimes those are uncomfortable, but you have to be able to give them the feedback they need to be better.
Tom Hootman (40:48)
It's absolutely fascinating to me, like the way people kind of revert back to like what's always worked
My favorite question, I'm gonna ask it last and then I'll let you go. Because it's Mixtape Digital. And I was also, let me add real quick. When you mentioned the slang and the slogan and like the, it's like the hello fellow kids thing that GPT does. Try naming a company after, call naming a company Mixtape Digital. And it's been, you know how many times I have to smack my GPT on the side of the head because it's like.
Brant Moriarity (41:09)
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (41:19)
Let's spin some fresh tracks, Tom. Let's, and you're just like, stop that. Stop that right now. That's not what we're saying. The Fresh Mix, how about this title? Tom's Fresh Mix. Here's side, no. Stop it. You sound like a DJ in 1988 on Zip 104 in St. Joe County.
Brant Moriarity (41:22)
Right? I don't like that at all.
Tom Hootman (41:39)
Anyway, music, if your career had a playlist that had two, only two or three songs on it, what songs would you choose? And what made you choose these? And I know you're gonna say not career, but life, but you do, you do you.
Brant Moriarity (41:51)
I'm gonna tell
you this, listen, I hate these kinds of questions just because.
Tom Hootman (41:54)
Love
them.
Brant Moriarity (41:55)
I love music so much. It's been a part of my life since my infancy and I can't ever pick a favorite artist or a favorite song. But I will do this. my career has not... Music's a life thing for me, not a career thing. So I will go with a bit of a revealing musical history of me. I grew up with country music. I rebelled on industrial metal, alternative rock in the 90s, early 2000s. And then I found hip hop much later.
in my mid-20s.
but I will throw out some albums or artists that I think ⁓ are the most defining for me. When I was a kid, my dad listened to an artist called John Connolly, a country singer. And for some reason, the song, I Don't Remember Loving You, somehow captured my infant brain. And I would be singing it all the time. My brothers would tease me for it or be part of an actual thing. here comes the song, Brant loves it. So this old country song by John Connolly, I Don't Remember Loving
was one song that I'll put as my life track.
The most influential artist, this is kind of hard to admit on this very popular and famous podcast, but Marilyn Manson was the most influential artist of my teenage years, which is kind of hard to admit now, but it was, it's what led me to a degree in religious studies and philosophy. So for me, that artist, the album was Antichrist Superstar when I first was introduced to it. But that just put me on this,
intellectual journey through all kinds of stuff, which led me to a degree in philosophy and religion. I'm to put Tom Waits in there just because that gave me a wonderful calmer but also drunker, perhaps shameless to play, because that also, maybe when I'm going to learn how to drink bourbon, Tom Waits made me want to learn how to like bourbon, and boy did I ever learn how to like that.
Tom Hootman (43:34)
You
Brant Moriarity (43:46)
And then for hip hop, I'll toss in some Blackalicious from the Bay Area, California. It's a duo, Chief XL and Gift of Gab, RIP, Gift of Gab. But they kind of turned me on first to this kind of West Coast underground-ish hip hop that took me on a whole new journey of music in my mid to late 20s.
Tom Hootman (44:04)
It is representative of what I love about you is that you are have always been militantly open minded and a defender and mean this because we've worked together. You're a defender of people who have differing opinions. And I remember like someone have an opinion and we would like be at the bar and start like giving them shit and you would you are inclined to jump in on that side and fight the good fight and defend them.
Brant Moriarity (44:19)
Sure.
Just about this
perspective for a minute, right?
Tom Hootman (44:31)
I love it. Brant, always a wonderful time. You're gonna be back on and we're gonna keep talking because next time we're just gonna drink through it. Which I don't think you can be in your office then, but we'll figure it out.
Brant Moriarity (44:40)
of
a guy.
Tom Hootman (44:41)
Just have a thermos. This is higher ed. Thank you sincerely for making time. I really appreciate it. A ⁓ delightful conversation. It means the world to me. Great catching up.
Brant Moriarity (44:42)
What are rules?
Thank you.
You too. I'll see you.