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Many conferences get hundreds of speaker submissions. How can you make yours stand out so it gets selected? Then, once you do get selected, how do you make sure you deliver an engaging presentation at the conference? That’s what I talk about with my...
Many conferences get hundreds of speaker submissions. How can you make yours stand out so it gets selected?
Then, once you do get selected, how do you make sure you deliver an engaging presentation at the conference?
That’s what I talk about with my guest Cathy McPhillips, who is Chief Growth Officer at the Marketing AI Institute.
Along with the virtual events they host year-round, they also host an in-person conference called MAICON, which I spoke at in 2023.
I invited Cathy on the show to share with us:
About My Guest: Cathy McPhillips is Chief Growth Officer at the Marketing AI Institute, overseeing marketing, growth, and customer experience, including MAICON and AI Academy for Marketers. Previously, Cathy led marketing at Content Marketing Institute and Content Marketing World, managed community growth for Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign, and owned her own strategic digital marketing business. She started her career at two Cleveland advertising agencies. Cathy was an Ohio University Jerry L. Sloan Visiting Professional in Public Relations, is a Folio: Top Women in Media, and a MarTechExec Woman You Need to Know in Martech.
Show notes at https://www.speakingyourbrand.com/388/
Marketing AI Institute: www.marketingaiinstitute.com
The Artificial Intelligence Show podcast: https://www.marketingaiinstitute.com/podcast-showcase
Discover your Speaker Archetype by taking our free quiz at https://www.speakingyourbrand.com/quiz/
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Carol Cox:
You're going to learn how to make your
conference speaking proposals and
presentation stand out with my guest, Cathy
McPhillips of the Marketing AI Institute, on
this episode of the Speaking Your Brand
podcast. More and more women are making an
impact by starting businesses, running for
office and speaking up for what matters.
With my background as a TV political
analyst, entrepreneur and speaker, I
interview and coach purpose driven women to
shape their brands, grow their companies,
and become recognized as influencers in
their field. This is speaking your brand,
your place to learn how to persuasively
communicate your message to your audience.
Hi everyone! Welcome to the Speaking Your
Brand podcast. I'm your host, Carol Cox.
Today we're going to talk about how to
create a speaking submission for a
conference or event that stands out so that
you get selected by the conference
organizers. One of the things that I miss
the most in the first couple of years of the
pandemic was actually attending conferences.
I love the buzz and the energy of being
around lots of different people from
different places, meeting new people,
figuring out what they're working on,
whether it's in business or marketing or
technology for me.
And so I was really excited to attend
MAICON, the Marketing AI conference, which
was held in July of 2023.
And I also had the opportunity to speak
there. And I've talked about this on the
podcast last year as well, and I'll make
sure to include links to those episodes in
the show notes. Today I have joining us
Cathy McPhillips, who is the chief growth
officer at the Marketing AI Institute.
That's the organization that puts on Maken
the marketing AI conference.
And she has a background as the Content
Marketing Institute helping to put on
content marketing World, which is a huge
conference. And she also has, uh, have a
background in advertising with different
agencies in Cleveland, Ohio, where she
lives. Cathy, welcome to the podcast.
Cathy McPhillips:
Hi, Carol. I'm so excited this date finally
has arrived. Yes.
Carol Cox:
Well, I was really excited.
It was about a year ago last February when I
got an email saying that I had been selected
to speak at Macon. I had submitted my my
speaker submission, just like so many of us
do, and I know so many of you listeners do.
And so it's always nice to be picked.
We we always like it feels good and
especially it feels good to be able to speak
at a conference that I was excited to
attend. Obviously, you know, I has basically
exploded onto the world in the past 15
months. And you all at the Marketing AI
Institute, I know I've been working on
marketing an AI for years, so this was like
your opportunity to to shine and to attract
so many people to the work that you all do.
So, Kathy, can you fill us in a little bit
more on your background and what brought you
to the marketing AI Institute?
Cathy McPhillips:
Certainly. Well, like you said, I started at
two agencies in Cleveland, Ohio.
Um, one, I was working in the studio and in
production, and the other, I worked in media
planning, which is what I wanted to do.
My first agency, I just I needed a job, and
there was an opening there, and I was like,
okay, I'll do it. But it turns out that I
loved it. It was such a great experience
because it helped me learn about every
aspect of the agency.
So when I switched into media, which is what
I wanted to do, I just really appreciated
what the other departments did. So it was a
nice, nice, um, opportunity to kind of learn
more about an agency.
And then I did my own thing for about ten
years, and then I started working with Joe
Pulizzi in the Content Marketing Institute.
And through Joe, I met Paul Roetzer, who's
the CEO of the Marketing AI Institute.
And it's been about three years.
It'll be three years in May that I've been
that I've been with Paul and the team.
So it's been it's been great.
It's been exciting and fun and kind of what
are we what are we doing?
Um, and just so exciting.
So I'm really excited. This will be my
fourth Macon with the team.
And then our fifth one overall.
Carol Cox:
Oh wow. Okay.
And so then you have obviously a lot do a
lot online. You know you have the podcast.
You have different courses that you offer
through through the through your website.
And I'll make sure to include a link to the
website in the show notes as well.
So why did you all decide to do an in-person
conference? And had you done this before the
start of the pandemic, or was the first one
kind of at the kind of as we were coming out
of the pandemic?
Cathy McPhillips:
So like I said, this will be the fifth one.
The first one was in 2019.
So it was the summer before 2020, and in
2020, obviously the event got cancelled.
I had not been I was not working with the
company in 2019 for the live event.
I came as a paid attendee.
I came with, um, with Joe Pulizzi actually,
and he and I went there and were like, okay,
this is you know, obviously we're friends of
Paul. We like Paul. We want to see what he's
talking about, and we really want to support
him. And I left like, oh my gosh, there are
so many applications and things I'm working
on. But then I went back to work and it was
like things just kind of got busy and it
just wasn't so tangible yet.
And then 2020 didn't happen.
2021 was virtual, which was great to get
back together, but it still wasn't the same.
Even 2022 wasn't quite the same then.
2023. Oh my gosh.
It was just it was just the absolute best.
And like you said, you don't realize how
much you miss seeing people.
And like, I don't know if you know Tim
Hayden, but he got to MAICON 2023 and he
walked in and I was almost like, I think I'm
going to start crying right now. It was just
so nice to see our friends and see people
together. So this will be our fifth one this
summer or this fall.
We're going to September this year.
Carol Cox:
Yeah. That's exciting.
And it's in Cleveland, Ohio, which I know is
where you live and I know and Paul and Mike
and a bunch of you all live there.
All right. So let's talk about then, you
know Macon marketing I so obviously those
are that's the main kind of gist of it is
around marketing and I applications in
marketing. So how do you all select speakers
for Macon.
What are you looking for?
I know you have your main stage speakers as
well as the breakout session speakers, so we
can talk about both of those different
buckets.
Cathy McPhillips:
Sure. From the main stage, that really is
very highly curated by Paul.
It's people that he's meeting through some
conversations. It's people that he's
following online.
He's got a very, very highly curated list of
folks he follows every week to get his eye
news for the podcast.
And if a new name pops up or even an old
name pops up, he's like, oh my gosh, they've
got a really great story to tell.
I would love to have them at the event.
So Paul and Tracy really do most of the
programming for Macon.
I like to interject some ideas when I can,
or if I talk to someone, I'm like, this
would be a great speaker.
So I do collaborate a little bit with them,
but those two really focus on most of the
programming when it comes to breakouts.
I feel like that's the biggest opportunity
for so many of us from a, you know, director
level, practitioner level, whatever the case
may be, where we have we have stories to
tell. You know, I'm on our team.
Mike and I probably are the two using I the
most on a lot of the things that we're
doing. So me being able to say here was my
problem. Here's a tool that I found to help
me. Here was my process, here is my outcome.
Like, that's a really powerful story to
tell. And so I like to think like, if I was
an attendee in the room, what would I want
to get out of this? Like I want to give them
something tangible, something meaty,
something like a real good case study so
they can either go back and do it
themselves, go back and get buy in from
their management, just giving them something
really useful.
And I think that's what we're looking for
the most when it comes to breakout sessions
is especially since last November 30th when
ChatGPT came out, it was like, or I guess
that was 2022.
But since that happened more, there are so
many more stories now that people have, from
generative AI up to AI and data, AI and
analytics, AI and so many other things, that
there are just so many good stories now.
And that's really what attendees, you know,
the main stage is wonderful, obviously, but
it's the breakouts that get a lot of folks
that give them.
The reason, you know, their managers wanted
to say, what are you going to get from this
event? You know, that's great to go see
people in a network, but I want you to bring
back something tangible.
And the breakout sessions are that are those
tangible sessions that most people attendees
need to prove that the event was worth worth
their investment.
Carol Cox:
So and then when you're looking at the
speaker submissions, what stands out to you
as far as like, yes, this this speaker looks
like definitely in the we're going to look
at them further, you know, to make it to
make a decision versus some submissions that
come through and is clearly no, it's not a
good fit.
Cathy McPhillips:
I think one just taking a little bit of time
on it and don't just, you know, make just
don't breeze through it. Like really invest
time. Look at the event. Look to see if
there's a theme. Look to see who their
audience is.
Really, really read the speaker submission
guidelines to make sure that you're adhering
to everything that they're asking for.
Uh, and customizing it to the event.
You know, you might have the same
presentation you're doing many times, which
is which is great. We do that too, but we
make sure that everything that we're doing
is really customized to the audience and
that we truly can show that we understand
the people in the room and what we're and
what message they need to hear from us.
So it's important to really customize your
abstract. I think it's also really important
when they say to include a video that you
really do. And if you're someone that
doesn't have video, you know, I've been on
stage dozens of times and I don't know if I
have access to any of the recordings, but so
either call the event that you spoke at and
said, you know, can you send me a few minute
clip of my session or they may send you the
whole thing and they might just say, just
don't publish it anywhere, but you can share
it with somebody or.
Get your phone out and just record yourself,
you know, just have a conversation.
They just want to see you. They want to see
your emotion. They want to see your
personality. They want to see if you can
talk. You know how you're how you're
talking. So that's really helpful to make
sure that you include something like that,
even if it's very, very rough.
You know, they know that what you and your
kitchen with your phone is not the same as
you on a stage. They just want to see you.
They want to see, uh, how you shine.
So I think that's really important.
I think, you know, being able to show that
you are an expert in whatever it is that
you're talking about, and I like to and I'm
giving advice that I have been told before,
you know, I always say, like, I don't know
if I really have a story to share.
Everyone else is doing the same things I'm
doing. And what difference does my is my
presentation versus somebody else's.
And I like to say that, you know, no one has
the unique experience that you do.
So if you are going into a room and you are
talking about a specific use case, a
specific example of you doing something, no
one else has that experience.
So you might think, oh, it's so simple, but
there might be someone in the room who will
who can leave. They're just so inspired and
so educated based on the information that
you told them. And I think that's really
powerful. So don't shortchange ourselves on
our expertise and our knowledge, because
people don't have that same knowledge that
we have for our product, for our service,
for the marketing that we're doing.
Carol Cox:
Yes, I completely agree, Cathy.
Thank you for sharing that. And back to your
point about customizing the speaker
submission for that particular conference.
And that's one thing that we we work with
our clients on. And we and we tell podcast
listeners all the time, like you said, like
go to the website, see who the audience is
for that particular event and what the
organization is saying about the speaker
submissions. Because I know, for example,
for Macon use very specifically said say
that the event largely caters to
non-technical audiences.
So, in other words, if you're going to be
doing a submission, it's probably not going
to be on. Kind of like the nuts and bolts of
how to how to use an LM API to build your
next application. Like that's a great topic
for other conferences, but probably not the
one that's in line with your audience's,
which you tend to be, you know, marketers,
people actually using tools like ChatGPT.
They're not the ones building applications
on top of ChatGPT.
Cathy McPhillips:
Yeah, but it might be someone who is a CMO at
an organization who was looking at, okay,
we're in a regulated industry and we are
trying to build our own LM because of our
our privacy restrictions and things like
that. So or any company could do that
doesn't need to be healthcare or anything
regulated, but we just want to protect our
own data. And here's how we did that.
So maybe that is a really good story to
tell. You know, if marketers and business
leaders can understand it.
And I think that's the difference, I think
was what your point was, is our audience is
marketers and business leaders, not data
scientists. So if you have a story that a
marketer or business leader really could
understand, then yes, please, please apply,
you know, and ask questions, you know, maybe
send in a few different submissions.
So you're because maybe there maybe one
isn't. Just because sometimes if someone
says no, this isn't a good fit for us, that
doesn't mean that you aren't a good fit.
It means that maybe that's that is already
filled in the agenda.
But if you send in a few things, maybe they
can say, oh, this actually would fit.
This person would be great, but we need them
over here instead.
Carol Cox:
And when you're thinking about the speaker
submissions like you mentioned, about case
studies and use cases and what that that
particular speaker is doing at their company
or at their organization, are you looking
for certain sizes of of organizations or
companies that people work for?
Is it are you looking for a mix people who
are, you know, companies that are actually
building things themselves, or more speakers
at companies who are using the tools?
Cathy McPhillips:
I would say we lean more toward people that
are using the tools less on agencies and
less on tech companies.
Um, but again, if there are stories to
share, if a tech company, if a marketer at a
tech company has a story to share about
their using their technology or another
technology, we're not going to exclude
someone just because of the company they
work for. It just really just depends on
what message they have to share.
And agencies, um, unfortunately, there are
just always some bad eggs at any event where
they get on stage and they just promote,
promote, promote.
And that just kind of makes us a little bit
guarded on bringing in other companies and,
you know, similar, you know, like I said,
tech companies or agencies.
But gosh, if there's an agency with a great
story to tell, especially if they bring a
client with them, that's wonderful.
Carol Cox:
So then okay, so imagine that we have our
speaker submissions right.
We do a great job on that.
You know it's targeted towards that
particular conference and it appeals and we
get selected. So now what have you found has
been helpful for you all on your end as the
event organizers, as you're getting closer
to the actual conference date, as far as
things that are helpful for speakers to be
doing for you all.
Cathy McPhillips:
Oh, it's always really nice when speakers
just share that they're speaking at the
event. You know, they have a network that,
you know, we might have some overlap and who
you're following and or you know, who's
following you and who is following us.
But it's always great to have someone say,
oh my gosh, I didn't even know that event
existed. Thank you, Carol, for telling me
about it. You know, so that's always a
wonderful thing.
Um, you know, learning more about the
audience, jumping into the app when the app
is live to engage with attendees.
And I think from an attendee standpoint,
it's always great when there are speakers
who hang out for 15 minutes after their
session is over, just to take those
questions to stay at the event for a little
while, to meet attendees, to even come in a
little bit early, to meet with attendees
before your session, because there might be
a little story you pick up in a conversation
the night before that, you're like, oh my
gosh, I'm going to weave this into my
session. So really engaging with the
audience and not just popping in, doing your
session and hitting the road.
It really is nice to have have people stick
around.
Carol Cox:
I agree, if I'm speaking somewhere, I like to
be there for the entire event because I like
to get kind of the vibe of, you know, what
are the other speakers?
What have they been talking about?
How has the audience been resonating with
certain topics or certain things that have
been brought up? So I remember my session
that I did last year was about brand voice
and maintaining brand voice, using AI tools
like ChatGPT and how to do that.
And at the beginning I had these really fun
paddles that had either human or robot.
And so it had the audience, you know, lift
the paddle. Who do you think is going to be,
you know, running the show either five, ten,
15, 20 years from now?
And what I said and this was this was not
planned, totally impromptu at the very
beginning was, okay, based on everything
you've been hearing at the conference so
far, all these sessions, you know, whether
it's about the future or about IP or, you
know, all these different things, what, you
know, how would you answer?
So, because I had been there for the past
day and a half now, I was able to talk to
the audience about that and to your point
about staying afterwards. So I think I was
on the second day.
So then the the morning of the third day, as
you know, we were having the morning
sessions and wrapping up before everyone
left. At lunch, I was standing in line to
get food, and I had a couple people kind of
find me and say, Kara, I really enjoyed your
session yesterday, you know, thank you so
much. Can I follow up with you?
And if I hadn't stuck around, I never would
have had a chance to meet some of those
people who had been in the audience who, you
know, you can't meet 100 people after your
session, but they'll find you during other
times of the conference.
Cathy McPhillips:
Absolutely. It's such a nice, such a nice
community. It's such a nice group of people
and you never know, you might get a speaking
opportunity out of sticking around, right?
Carol Cox:
Yes, exactly.
All right. So then let's talk about actual,
you know, the speakers presenting their
talks. What makes a great speaker at your
events, what have you found, based on the
feedback that you get from attendees that
they really like about about speakers that
they've been sitting in their sessions?
Cathy McPhillips:
I guess I just think part of that is like
one, they know who's in the room that they
really can. They're really speaking the
language of the people at the event in the
room who are trying to learn from them to
being engaging, you know, making eye
contact, doing all this, the right things as
a speaker, speaking slow, not reading off
your slides, making it engaging, having a
starting point and having like, here's the
outcomes and here's here's what I did.
Here are the steps I took.
Here are the outcomes I think having
something that they can just say, okay,
taking the whole 45 minute session or
however long the session is and saying,
okay, here's what you need to take away from
this. I think that's just really helpful to
have just a flow to really to especially to
the breakout sessions.
And I like. And I love when there's
engagement. You know, if there's a poll that
goes up or if there's you're taking
questions in the middle of your session and
it's really up to the speaker, you know,
whatever is easiest for you.
But I love the engaging ones.
Those those always seem to resonate a lot.
Carol Cox:
And then, Cathy, since you do quite a bit of
speaking yourself, what are what are some
things that you have done during your
speaking engagements that you have found
have worked really well?
Cathy McPhillips:
Well, I always start with a pretty a pretty
good story.
You know, I just did a presentation a few
months ago at an alumni event for a many
Ohio University universities in Ohio, all of
their alumni directors.
And I started with a story about me and a,
um, a story about me with an alum and how
this alum helped me get through college.
And it was like it just kind of set the
stage, you know, it kind of set the stage as
me, as a human.
I'm coming here to tell you a story about
why I'm here and what what this impact of
this person's role, who I was speaking to
all these alumni directors, how that person
at my university changed my life and how
important it is, what they were doing.
So just kind of was like just a real good
that sounds, you know, a little bit cheesy.
My daughter's like, that's really cheesy.
I'm like, it is cheesy, but it's it's
genuine, you know?
And it just made me feel it made them feel
like, okay, she values what we're doing.
She's trying to, you know, relate to us and
and I and then I often say sometimes like,
I, I can talk to you about what I know.
I am not trying to pretend to be an alumni
director at a university.
I'm just trying to tell you me as me.
Here's some of my experiences.
Maybe you can find a nugget or two for you
to take home and and work on this yourself.
Do you use some AI tools in your own work.
Carol Cox:
And anything else from from your speaking
engagements? Do you do you kind of tend to
use the same couple different presentations
and then how much how how do you decide to
customize them based for that particular
event?
Cathy McPhillips:
Well, with AI, I feel like every time I do a
presentation, I'm changing a handful of
slides because things are moving so quickly.
I actually just one of the biggest things I
talk about is our podcast production.
And I went through and I was doing a
presentation yesterday and I was like, oh my
gosh, all. We just rebranded our podcast.
So I had to go through and change all of my
like half of my slides because I had the old
logo on it, which was easy.
Um, but I always make sure, like, like I
said, I know who the audience is, I
customize it, I update it based on any new
technology that I'm using.
Uh, I'm trying to think what else I change,
but I never use the same one twice.
It's always changed in some in some way.
You know, even the one with the alumni
directors. I was using some tools I don't
normally talk about because I wanted to
apply it to, to their role.
But the biggest story I have is our podcast,
and that's what I know the best.
So I want to make sure to include that.
And I always start and say, you may not have
a podcast, but a lot of the things I'm
talking about, just think of my podcast,
think of your biggest piece of content and
how can you relate that to these steps and
these tools that I'm using for your own
work?
Carol Cox:
Well, since I have you here, let's talk about
what you're doing with the podcast, because
I want to talk about some of the AI tools
that you have found to be really useful,
since obviously you are you are the
marketing AI Institute.
And so tell me a little bit about, you know,
how has your podcast process changed, you
know, in the past year and what are you
finding really helpful now as far as tools?
Cathy McPhillips:
Well, gosh, when I first started working on
the podcast, I asked Paul, I said, who
produces the podcast?
And we were using someone at the time to do
it for us. But then at that time it was.
And the reason we we liked that person was
because they just handled it.
Except then when we got to the point where
we were doing a news format, we didn't have
48 hours for the podcast to have someone
else produce the podcast.
So Paul's like, can you do it?
And I was like, I don't know, I can try.
So we started using these AI tools and we
and we're doing it. It's been great.
So we're using descript to edit our videos,
edit our audio, create short form videos
from that for YouTube shorts, Instagram
Stories and TikTok, which has been the best
thing in the world. There's a there's so
many AI tools in there within, descript from
editing through cutting the transcription to
adjusting your the sound through studio
sound to overdubbing overdubbing voices.
And we've had to fix a few things with AI,
Paul, AI, Mike and I, Kathy on some of on
some things which has been remarkable.
And there are some other things we've been
using in there. And then we also use Writer
or Jasper to help us with some of our blog
posts. We use ChatGPT, perplexity, anthropic
for Agora, Pulse.
For some of our social uh, we use Opus clip
for some short form videos because it makes
it the, you know, the portrait versus
horizontal. So we can use that on, like I
said, YouTube shorts and things like that.
And I know I'm missing some Grammarly to
help us with our blog post, Canva to help us
with some of our images.
So there's AI all in every single step of
our process.
Carol Cox:
That's a lot of tools.
I mean, it's it's good, but it's a lot of a
lot of different things.
I'm sure you were excited about the
potentiality of AI agents to basically like
take the workflow and go through, and then
the AI agents just do all of those different
steps at some point.
Cathy McPhillips:
But it is amazing that AI estimated.
So we we save about 15 hours a week by using
the tools that we're using.
So that's 60 hours a month, and we're
spending less than $100 a month on the tools
collectively.
Carol Cox:
Wow. That's amazing.
15 hours a week.
That's a that's significant.
Is that mostly like where where do you find
this? Those savings are coming from.
Cathy McPhillips:
I think mostly in the transcription.
We want to we want to have captions on
things just to be accessible.
And it is good for SEO on our blog post, on
our show notes blog post, and then in the
blog post. Writing my blog posts take a lot
of a long time to write.
So if we can take Mike and Paul's content
from the podcast transcript and put it into
some of these tools that help us write the
blog posts, I feel like that's a really good
use of helping using AI to help you write
posts, because we are taking their words and
having it put into.
It's not like we're asking it to generate a
post for us. We're taking their words and
having it repurpose for us.
So I think that's a little bit different.
So you know everything we're doing, Mike
goes in and gives everything a hard edit
because sometimes it's not right.
Sometimes it's not the flow that he was
looking for.
Uh, but it really those are probably the two
biggest areas.
And the things like the sound, you know, I
don't know, before studio sound, before that
feature was enabled, we weren't using it and
it sounded fine. But then you realize when
you use that feature, you're like, oh my
gosh, it sounds so much better.
So there are some things we didn't even know
that we needed until until we found them.
Carol Cox:
Cathy, what are you most excited about
regarding AI?
Unless let's talk about maybe this year or
2024. Like what?
And then I'm most excited about let's even
look like, say, 3 to 5 years out.
Like, what would your vision be for what I
could do for us?
Cathy McPhillips:
I think the thing that we talk about that
we're excited about the most is just the
chance to get a little bit of our time back
and not always having to replace that time
with more work, but maybe being able to to
step away a little bit more clear our heads,
more refresh energized, we can get back to
doing what we're doing the next day.
But I think there's going to be a lot of
opportunities. You know, Paul talks a lot
about generative AI being great, but there
are so many other ways I could help us,
especially in the data and analytics space.
You know, I have to admit, as much as I love
data, I am not an expert at it.
And just to have some of these tools help me
synthesize some of this data, pull it into a
format that's so I can analyze it better and
be smarter using our data database better,
um, things like that, that like, how can we
better reach our customers through the use
of AI, which sounds counterintuitive, but
that actually can help us be more
personalized, be more human if the AI can,
if the AI can help us in some of those
areas.
Carol Cox:
Yeah. One thing that I did is I downloaded
all of the my podcast stats from.
Lipson into a CSV file, and I uploaded it
into GPT and had it analyze it.
So basically look at, you know, based on the
number of downloads and you know, how in
like the first 30 days of downloads with
different criteria, which topics tend to get
the most listens?
You know, because I have 370 plus episodes,
actually, this month is the seven year
anniversary of the podcast, so there's a lot
of content. Now, of course, I kind of know
intuitively which topics get the most
feedback or or the most listeners, but I
want it, you know, it to like, look at the
hard data and tell me.
And it was actually surprising some of the
things that I found and what I, what was
interesting was that some of it is topic
based, but a lot of it happened to be on
that. I knew it was the guest that drove a
lot of the downloads.
The topic was secondary, but I'm like, oh,
but I need to find more guests like that or
have that guest back on, because obviously
that drove a lot of listens.
Cathy McPhillips:
That's really interesting.
I mean, it's like like you said, you know,
intuitively some of those things, but then
you're like, oh, that's actually surprised
me or something will surface that you don't
even realize. Like, there's we have so much
data nowadays, like, let's use these tools
to help us, because I remember the days when
I was, you know, early in my career when it
was like, we just need more data.
And now it's like, we don't need any more
data. We just need to be able to dissect it
better and understand it better.
Carol Cox:
Exactly. All right.
So Kathy, let us know what is going on with
the marketing AI Institute.
What are some different ways that listeners
can learn more and to get involved with what
you're doing?
Cathy McPhillips:
Oh my gosh, there's so much going on.
It's been a it's been a crazy start to the
year. Uh, so we relaunched our 2024 AI
Academy for marketers classes.
We've got a great intro class which is free.
Paul and I do that every few weeks.
You can find that on our website.
And then within Academy we have piloting AI,
which is an eight hour course on, uh, just
how to get started with AI, how to pilot
your first program, how to figure out where
to start. Scaling AI would be the next step
for directors and above, or anybody.
Anybody could take it for sure about
building an AI council, building generative
AI policies, building an AI roadmap, being
that change agent within your organization,
the governance and things like that, that
really you spent, you know, you're working
on piloting and now like, okay, let's see
this come to fruition.
Let's see this through.
How do you do that. And then our AI mastery
membership. So the scaling AI is also a
prerecorded. And they both just recorded it
within the past few weeks.
And then the AI mastery membership I'm super
excited about. It's once a month access live
access to our team, mostly Paul and then
Mike and then a little bit of me and on our
other team members where there's an ask me
anything once a month or once a quarter,
there is a trends briefing once a quarter.
And then there is some demos and it's just
our team demoing tech, no sales pitches.
The tech companies may not even know we're
doing it. We're just going to go through and
say, here was a use case that we had.
Here's a tool we use. We want to show you
how we used it within this platform and
doing some live demos. So I'm really excited
about that. Macon, coming up, we've got a
bunch of virtual summits.
We just had our AI writer summit in early
March. Our AI for B2B summit is in June, and
then our AI for agencies is TBD.
So we're just trying you know, we've our
mission is really just to make AI
approachable and accessible to marketers and
business leaders and AI literacy.
So we just keep doing these new things.
So it's been fun.
Carol Cox:
Yes, lots of events and I and I'm and I'm
always, uh, very, uh, have a lot of
admiration for people who put on a lot of
events because it is not my thing.
I'm, I'm very detailed and organized, but I
don't know if event production and planning
is a whole different thing.
Cathy McPhillips:
It's. Yeah, it's it's a lot, but it's so much
fun. It's so much fun to seeing attendees
and seeing them.
Like when you just see that something spark
in them.
Carol Cox:
It is. Well, Cathy, thank you so much for
coming on the Speaking Your Brand podcast,
and I really appreciate everything that you
all do at the Marketing AI Institute.
I've learned a lot by listening to you all
over the past year plus, and I will continue
to do so. And for those of you listening,
make sure to connect with Cathy on LinkedIn.
I'll include a link to her profile in the
show notes, as well as to the Marketing AI
Institute website and to their fantastic
podcast. Thank you, uh, Kathy, so much for
joining us.
Cathy McPhillips:
And thank you. And one last thing, if you
don't mind me saying so.
So our MAICON call for speakers did close
for this year. But events are always looking
for good people to speak. We have our
virtual events, we've got our blog, we've
got all these different things.
So please. And we may have someone drop out
of the event as we get closer.
You know, you just never know what might
happen. So always apply to speak.
And if you didn't get included last year,
then try again this year because it may not
have been for any other reason than that
they were full. So keep trying.
Carol Cox:
Yes, yes, keep trying because you never know.
Just that they already had someone for that
topic or they were full or just for some
reason your submission just got overlooked.
It doesn't mean necessarily that you were
not a great speaker or your topic is not
great. Just keep keep applying because there
are conferences and events out there who
need great speakers.
And I know for those of you listening that
that's who you are.
Thanks again to Cathy for coming on the
podcast. If you would like to find out what
speaker archetype you are so you can amplify
your natural communication strengths and add
to them to make you even more dynamic
speaker, you can take our free quiz at
speakingyourbrand.com/quiz. It only takes a
few minutes. It's ten multiple choice
questions and then you get your results
right away. Again, you can take that as
speaking in your brand. Com slash quiz.
Until next time, thanks for listening.