Transcript
Heat. Hello everyone. Welcome to the Flow State podcast. Today I’m joined by Michaela Nichol from 22 Digital. Michaela, it’s your first time on the show. Welcome. Would you like to give a little intro to who you are and what you do and some amazing facts that people should know about you before we get into what we’re going to talk about?
I will absolutely do my best. Uh, so my name is Taylor. Yes, I haven’t quite nailed my own uh elevator pitch to to be fair. Um, so I’m currently the head of digital at 22 digital (double digital). And I’ve been here for a few months. Um, prior to here I was running my own agency. Um, let’s call it full stack but I’ve also done uh had like automation uh agency. Interesting facts about me, I’m not sure that I have many. Um, I’ve been in the music industry for 10 years as well, having a bit of a break because look currently having a bit of a break because I’m busy and tired. Um, but that’s part of my identity so I think it’s good to mention that. And yeah thanks for having me.
I love it. No look, welcome to the show and obviously I’m make I’m accidentally making friends with a lot of people from 22 as obviously as you know like Sarah and uh and Ashton have both been on as well. Um, so it’s a pleasure to welcome you on as well. There’s no no affiliation by the way, we’re just all like each other. Can talk forever. Yeah exact everyone loves to talk basically I think that’s what’s what’s drawing us together.
Um, this is totally off topic as well by the way but I’ve just remembered on our last episode we were talking about the um Daniel Ek Spotify drama and his decisions to invest in military AI. Um, so as a fellow Muso, well not really inactive muso I should say. Um, I’m not impressed by that. Yeah. Did you what do you what did you think about that? Are you like what are your thoughts on his uh his direction as a person?
I actually have a lot of thoughts. So I’ve been thinking about this for years. I mean this this information is new but I’ve been thinking about Spotify as a topic for years because we’ve just seen them get less consumer friendly less consumer friendly. Um, and that’s not even talking about like artists and how bad they are for artists. I’ve been trying to get away from from Spotify for a long time and frankly this is the thing that’s probably going to put me into action. We’ve just seen them increase their like sponsored placements rapidly over time to the point where I a couple years ago realized that I was saying no I don’t like this music actively and it was still getting shopped in every playlist. So all that to say I already was anti Spotify as it was and now I’m like “Yeah, let’s not.”
Yeah. Well it’s interesting you say that because I was of exactly the same mentality where I just think they you know (and we should clearly have a separate episode on this and we can revisit the the one from last week). But I I’m the same. Look they were like they started out you know they were sort of coming in anti you know sort of saving the world from piracy which is which is fair enough. That was that wasn’t great. But yeah over the years they just seem to have you know they’ve lived long enough to become the villain haven’t they? Where they’ve realized that you can’t actually make any money from their entire commercial model. So now it’s like how do we sell merchandise? How do we sell tickets? How do we ram like how do we just become like the radio? But at least on the radio like typically you’ll have a DJ who’s running a show who actually cares about what they’re playing. There seems to be weirdly more free reign in the old model than there is in the new model.
It’s very absolutely. And their edge at the beginning was that they had such a like such a good algorithm like you were constantly discovering music that you that was related but you hadn’t heard. And now it’s just this algorithm echo chamber of the same stuff. I love Sabrina Carpenter personally. Don’t want her in every single one of my playlists. If I’m listening to like a hip-hop playlist or something like and literally this happens that comes up I’m like “Oh my god.” So no, I’m I’m off it. I need to make the jump. Unfortunately we’ve all been stuck on it for so long that it’s like the move is like strenuous but no I don’t like it.
And Oh sorry. Go ahead.
No, you get carry on. No, what I was going to say is um we attended something digital a couple of weeks ago here in Brisbane. And they uh the first presentation was actually about all of the uh major platforms Meta, Google, etc. that are milit like been hired by the military. And you kind of know what’s happening but until somebody shoves it in your face and and you realize that that that is like a fact and the information is public and out there that’s when you kind of go oh wait like hang on that sucks that’s there’s no way around it that is a shit decision not a lot maybe broke up some platforms but yeah look do you know what like it’s. Um, you know yeah I I agree with you. And we like it’s the definitely the straw that’s broken that camel’s back for me.
Cuz um I found um I’ll send this to you actually. There’s an app that you can uh subscribe to for like a month that transfers playlists between like any music streaming services. I think it’s like I don’t know $5 or $10 or something a month. Um, you literally just sign into both your accounts. It like syncs them. Obviously not every song’s available in every in every place but it will pull across like because I’ve got like you know been on Spotify since it launched pretty much. So I’ve got like years of music playlist random stuff on there. But yeah I was like man like this decision I’m I’m off it. I’m gonna I’ll put up with Apple Music’s horrible UI for you know for the sake of just not not using it now. And like we’re going to move the I think the podcast’s on megaphone at the moment so I’m going to move it off there and like just be like. I love it. Take that Daniel.
I love it. Me too. You’ve inspired me to actually do it. I um I am so pro piracy. I don’t know if that’s a hot take but sometimes you have to be right when when when the industry that you’re attempting to support is being crushed to death by the machinery of like industry like what else can you do really? Um, like in the past obviously super anti big pro on support your artist uh make sure you’re giving them your money because they’re all struggling and they always have been till the end of time. Um, but when we kind of started seeing this flip of uh you know Netflix and Spotify just eating up everybody’s money and and they’re not giving anything back I’m like you know what. Let’s let’s go let’s go aggressively pro piracy and buy their merch and tickets to their shows instead.
Yeah. But then there’s the you know Live Nation rabbit hole which I’ll save for another conversation. Well yeah. Look I’m I’m with you. I think like you the best way to support you know artists that you like is to go direct right? Just go buy their stuff directly go to their website go on like Bandcamp. You know those websites that actually give them more money than just a here’s you know a percentage of a percentage of a whatever every time a stream happens half half a penny. I am with you.
I am with you and on a somewhat tenuously linked um you know shift to what we’re here to talk about today Michaela. Um, interestingly and linking together the conversation from last week. I’m going to have to stop doing like I’ve just noticed I’m doing like jazz hands loads in this episode I’m going to stop doing that. Um, so obviously we’re here today to talk about the latest imaginary job that has come out of uh Silicon Valley/theas industry which is the go to market engineer. Note my sarcastic finger apostrophes if you’re only listening. Now uh what the link here obviously is you know tech bros basically telling us how to live our lives. Um, yes and where I want to start with this conversation which I think uh is a neat link from what we were just talking about is obviously as a business trying to sell stuff it is useful for you to. Um, create what they used to call you know the defensive moat or differentiation in olden day terms. Now um and a great way to do that if you are a piece of software that is easily replicatable is to create what’s something that seems unique.
And look I’m a fan of doing that. I’ve done it. I’m going to do it again. But what I find kind of annoying is that often that comes from um not a customer oriented you know sort of starting point. It comes from a how do we sell more of our crap perspective. Exactly as we’ve just been saying. Right. So this role if you are not if you haven’t already heard of it is basically um another fake engineering job that’s just using computers and applications that’s come out of Clay who are a B2B sales tool largely US-centric. There are equivalents. Um, but Clay are actually pretty good at this. Like similar to HubSpot they’ve always been great at sort of carving out a bit of a niche for a few years and running with it.
But what’s annoying here from my perspective and I’m keen to hear what you think about this Michaela is when you are making up a job that didn’t previously exist that causes more stress for marketers thinking they need a new skill set or a new team. Everybody suddenly starts to say they do that job in demand a stupid salary. All they’re really doing is doing what Clay are telling them who are not in you really interested in how your brand works. Like why is that good for anybody? Should we really be leaning into these kinds of jobs? You know or should we just be kind of ignoring them? And look if your tool is so complicated that you need to create a job to actually run the tool like should we even bother using it in the first place?
So that was actually quite a few questions. Let me know what what do you think? What are your thoughts on this this approach?
I have I actually have many. Very glad to hear that. Tell tell them tell them to me. My like initial instinct is this is so Salesforce coded. You know and granted when Salesforce I think first became big um it was there was a need for it right? But we’ve got all these other platforms now. If you’re a Salesforce architect for example you can make a lot of money. Um, and the reason why you can make a lot of money is because it is so like it’s it’s so grand there and there’s so many moving pieces and it’s so technically complicated. So I kind of feel similarly towards this as I do towards that which is jobs for the sake of jobs but in a way that’s going to remove other jobs feels off. Um, I’m still kind of processing it. And I’ve always operated we’re very strong on this in in 22 but even in past agencies my my whole ethos is very much um transparency and and making sure that the end user gets to own the product. Like if we can if we have to build them something complex and that’s what they need then let’s do it. But how often do they need that right? It’s th those are kind of your enterprise corporate what have you but your everyday person and your everyday user doesn’t need that much chaos. Um, and then it’s just kind of cutting them down to this company. So I don’t know a lot about that company but um which is just I think just serves to make marketers and fake engineers uh more money down the line.
Which I know I should be like “Yay more money for us.” But no that’s just I don’t I don’t vibe with that. And it just feels a prompt engineer thing. Like are we just using the word engineer for anybody that can make anything? Like I don’t I no longer that word means nothing to me anymore.
Well look I mean that that’s an actual side of the conversation that I think uh is is under discussed I would say because I’ve actually seen quite a lot of discussion from uh real engineers who are like why is everybody calling themselves an engineer when you’ve just learned to use a computer? Like that is not engineering. Engineering is like a highly skilled highly specialized job that requires years of training and certification mostly. Uh whereas these people are like “Oh I’ve just gone on the internet and watched a few videos from you know from a software business Now I’m an engineer.”
A problems engineering I I hate the most. It’s I’ve just I know how to write stuff and think correctly. Like Yeah. I can ask my thoughts to I can ask my thoughts to a bot and then I can reverse it and save it in a file. Like you’re so right. Like I know you’re so impressive and some of these engineer jobs I’m sure that that’s already dead because I haven’t seen that in a while. But they were like I got I think I got a call from a recruiter once and they were paying like 150k just to do that. I’m like how long is that job going to last? But to your point I feel bad for these people who have gone to university got this impressive real engineering skill. And I know that that’s broad as well but um and then we’re just out here being like I’m a go to market engineer.
I know it would be I would be embarrassed to say that that was my job. And I’ve been pretty embarrassed about a lot of my jobs on the internet to be honest. Cuz when people are like you would have been the same right people used to be like oh what are you doing? I’m just like computers that was it internet and computers computers that was my discussion about the job. They’re like I don’t really get like what’s happening like don’t just don’t worry about it. All the stuff you hate about the internet basically that’s it right? Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
Um, but I think you mentioned a couple of things there Michaela that I think are interesting to dive into because the core proposition that I think we both disagree with from what you’re saying from Clay is that. And I’m just reading their article about the rise of GTM engineering here is that your GTM motion isn’t understaffed it’s undergineered. Now I would directly disagree with that. I actually think that go to market is one of the most overengineered functions in a business. And I would put a not insignificant amount of money on that. Give me a brand I will show you a brand that is spending too much time messing around with the machinery of going to market. Um, is that your experience as well? Do do you think people just spend ages tinkering with the machinery instead of just getting on with the job of actually doing marketing and sales?
Yeah. And like you know if you had that job that’s pretty fun like kudos to you but it’s it sounds to me if correct me if I’m wrong this is just business analyst cross marketing right? So it’s like we’re already doing this and I think that we have to be careful not to over uh or overengineer like you said. Um, like put all of our trust in machines to make decisions that should be often human like centric. And this has actually come up at work recently where we were looking at like just resource modeling and it was very simple internal op stuff but every time it all looked good on paper and we’re like something feels off and the thing that felt off was we weren’t allowing for human stuff. So staring into space or staring at a computer. So I feel that same way about any sort of machine level um analysis I suppose we want to call it like this. And I’m actually not fully across what the product is that they’re selling because it’s they seem to be one of those companies that are like saying lots but also not saying lots.
Yeah. What I was actually going to ask you is so. Um, I I’m not fully across the product they’re selling and I think often these companies say a lot and also nothing at the same time. Um, so you’re saying that it is a machine based product that they’re selling along with this new like role? Is that right?
Yeah, basically. Yeah. So my um and I haven’t used Clay for a long time but my understanding is they’re in um still in the same kind of area as like your Apollo’s or like sort of y originally like B2B database oriented companies that had you know big sets of data that you can buy and use and activate. And then what they’ve done and a lot of these other companies is they’ve started to build the um you know planning and activation pieces on top. So the one that we’ve used a lot more recently is Apollo where you’ve got big B2B database right? You buy you buy in to buy the information to then build your you know target audiences and learn about them. There’s a load of uh intelligence of you know varying levels of usefulness in there that you can use and track. So they’re great for like um research and planning and typically are used in like prospecting and you know sort of the early parts of a sales process. However, to your point you never really know exactly how fresh or accurate that data is. Like it only gives you the you know the basic starting point to say look here’s all the people and companies you might want to target. Here’s a basic amount of information about them. Um, but you know you need to go off and do your own more up-to-date research and actually connect with those people.
What they’ve all been doing though is building out like a oh well if you wanted to actually run stuff here’s how you can do it. Or you know if you want to score these people or you know you want to build your own um sales process and outreach. So they’ve all been over the years been building in like personas sequencing you know allowing you to send out sequence to emails integrate with chat all that sort of stuff. So that’s where they start. And then because Clay is like one of the more complicated ones. They need someone to actually run the tool for you which is the classic the classic problem most modern marketing and sales people face right? Which is like you get sold something it sounds really easy. Like Salesforce as you were saying that classic example. Oh just you know just buy it and turn it on. And you’re like no you’ve just committed yourself to a lifetime of misery basically by by purchasing.
Yeah. And they they kind of reel you in and then they get your entire business stuck on the platform. And then the cost to change like to manage the change is so high that you just kind of leave it forever until somebody explodes and says pulls the plug. Um, but yeah like as far as the role goes here’s my my my test of things like this which I am just going to coin right now like the apocalypse test. Is is this job going to exist in the apocalypse? Like no, there are not going to be any head of digitals there. There might be podcast there might be there actually might be a lot of radio. Yeah.
If we go if we get drafted tomorrow like what’s your job going to be if you’re a go-to market engineer or a head of digital it’s like you know jobs for jobs. Um, so that’s how I feel and I you it’s kind of spicy to say that about my own job but I agree with you. I think you know I’m but very thankful for and also still slightly amazed that I’ve basically had a job which is just messing about on the internet for like 20 years pretty much. Just been like computers this is a new thing people don’t understand. Just how do you deploy that for you know some some useful purpose? Like that’s basically the gist of the job pretty much. Exactly so much new stuff that someone needs to sit and look at it all and be like what’s useful and how do we use it? And what do you think your job would be in the apocalypse?
I reckon I’d go like full you know courier of some kind. I’ve got a ton of bikes. Probably just you know attempt to Yeah. Just be like “Look I’ll just take stuff get a couple of backpacks you know that’d be great.” Yeah. Assuming that there was some sort of you know requirement for like it’d be like sort of like The Postman but less sort of really long and depressing and on a bike. Did he have Did he have a horse I can’t remember? It was awful Awful film. Um, Yeah I think that’d be it. Yeah. What about you? What would your What would your apocalypse job be?
Okay. I’ve I’ve thought about this a lot unfortunately. And uh I think and for better or worse I know for better or worse and it’s a bit of a also a weird brag but my I’m very very very good at like strategy. So I’m like oh I’m going to end up like having to move around pieces of little things on a piece of paper or uh logist like organizing logistics or something like that. Leader of people to attempt to recover some semblance of civilization. Yuck. But yeah probably something like that. Or I would really like to just get some agricultural skills. Cuz what actually would be nice is just like you know growing some cabbages or something. But be very sort of zen-like. Um, yeah. Way to see out the post world right? That would be quite cool. Yeah. It comes from my probably my like love of farming sim games or something like I just want to like grow some cabbages like in Stardew Valley.
But anyway are you sty you sty valley addicts as well? Yeah Yeah Yeah. I used to be like super into um what was the one on the switch I’ve completely forgotten the name of now. Tom Nook and all his little mates. Oh Animal Crossing. Animal Crossing. That was it. Yeah Yeah. Started playing on the DS ages ago and then was like I have to stop playing this game basically to make a call that I was like this is got to the point where it’s just not productive to be doing it ruining our lives. Yeah pretty much. Yeah Yeah.
What I will say about uh skills to be gained from gaming is uh I know some people who are very good at uh I guess understanding alchemy and how the world works purely based off old school Runescape. So yeah like yeah look there’s stuff to be learned there.
I think. Well funny you say that like Theo and all his mates they’re all like sort of 10 10 to sort of 11 or 12 at the moment. All got massively back into D and D over the past few years as well which is obviously an amazing game for like character creation you know like world building quests. Yeah there’s tons of stuff there. I was getting really into it again but I was like again don’t have time to become immersed in Dungeons and Dragons right now.
Well we’ve been I started playing it. Look I haven’t often because um it’s impossible to gather a group of adults. So it’s very difficult but we started playing it with a group of friends a few years ago and it was definitely part of the whole like it got very popular during Co right? People were able to hang out online. And I I love it. And um at work they wanted to run like a short a oneshot session because of how. Well it’s so valuable for like inter relational dynamics and things like that. We always joke that it’s basically just therapy right? But anyway more of that less uh go to market engineering.
I love that though. I mean I think that’s you know perfect examples of where just the the more of these types of jobs that you know occur and the more obsessing there is over just tools and machinery and stuff like the to to your point the less space there is for actually connecting with people which is the core of what go to market is all about. Like you know everything every sort of decision to engage with a brand is ultimately emotionally driven. And you don’t I’m just I’m a firm believer that you cannot replicate that with just software and just machines because you everybody hates it. If you speak to anyone anecdotally they can be like that’s automated that’s crap that’s just you know spam.
This myth that’s getting sold from tech companies at the moment of being like oh yeah we just just automate everything. Yeah here we can just automate the entire process of engaging someone from start to finish. And you’re like well you you can automate a lot of it quite usefully but not the entire process not the soul of it. And I like I personally really enjoy um doing that. And I have offered that as a as a service in the past. I would go in and audit a business and come up with some efficiencies. My brain likes it. I like um problem solving in that way and I like tinkering with tools and things like that but yeah I I can’t shake the lack of humanity in it I suppose. Um, but I actually took a note from the uh somebody said at something digital. It was I can’t remember who said it but they said that AI can’t replicate empathy.
Something and I know we’re not exclusively talking about AI but it was a talk about agentic. That’s such a big buzz word as well. And the reminder is that these tools can only reassemble things that have already been assembled in the past in a sense. And so I heard somebody say it was just Lego you know and and same with this. And it’s like fun to play with and and like we can build something new but at the end it’s still just tool. It’s just reassembling things right?
Um, and I’m and I’m super pro uh streamlining things in in small businesses as well. We have this conversation a lot. I think people are moving towards a little more skepticism than two years ago when everybody was just excited that they could have some relief from some thoughts. Um, but I think we’re kind of moving into this like like skep sk skeptical era now which I’m here for it. And so the question that gets asked of me a lot is you know where do I sit on the morality of of it I guess? It’s like should we should we use it? And I’m like well we’re us for example you for example we’re small businesses. We’re helping often helping other small businesses and we’re using these tools to make things more efficient so that we can you know spend more time with our families and um pay our employees more and things like that. So it’s not as sinister as probably a lot of these let’s say Silicon Valley companies. Let’s call it what it is. Um, so like yeah I’m like I’m here for it but also let’s keep an eye on these big dogs.
Yeah look I’m the same. I think it’s you know the genie’s out of the bottle now. Like it’s not going to go away. Um, but I’ve been Yeah I’ve been having having very similar thoughts about it where you just like you say like there’s now the democratization part is great. Like you the ability for people to achieve a lot more and be able to do uh more of the boring work in a much more effic like efficient manner and probably more consistently across the board is great. Um, but yeah I think the whole you know sort of unicorns and rainbows top end of the the conversation is just completely like detached from what people want. And the the actual reality of what these tools can do.
And I think there’s going to be it’s all brewing at the moment and this is not really sort of directly related but. Um, a load of like legal stuff coming about the you know blatant theft of creative IP. I’m amazed at the amount of money that’s gone into all these like what are essentially wrapper businesses around someone else’s model.
The way that they started was like “Oh we’re just going to wholesale steal all the creative assets that we need in order to build our tools.” Uh and now we’re going to sell all that back to you and also undermine all the people that have essentially allowed us to create what we’ve created which is a much less appealing starting point. Um, and I don’t know how much like people use that thinking to make their decisions but it certainly like plays on my mind quite a lot.
Yeah. And and everybody’s been kind of uh shifted to be scared of you know robots and uh job loss which we should be scared of but it’s like distracting us from that’s such a tin foil hat thing to say but it’s it’s just distracting us from like looking at the people that need to be looked at. It is totally. I mean it’s you know it’s like all the noise in if you liken this to you know the industrial re revolution. There’s massive shifts in the skills required to run things and you know jobs that would have been like a stable career for life you know disappeared.
I think it’s just because the computer industry has been a bit of a you know sort of protected ivory tower of jobs nobody really knows how to do for a long time. Whereas now people are like “Oh no actually your job isn’t really anything.” And look that’s part of the risk that I think you have to accept if you work in this line of work as you were saying is like a head of digital. I know that I might have to change very rapidly but I have accepted that because that’s part of the work that I do. So um exactly you know it’s just table stakes to be in the game is it?
Yeah and and I think that’s a good point like bringing it back to the go to market um thing is it’s it’s. I lost my train of thought. You might want to cut that out. What were we just talking about?
I’m gonna leave it in. So what what we were saying was like there’s you know like being in digital jobs I think you just have to accept that those jobs are actually at quite a lot of risk because none of them are there is no moat for a digital job because anyone can do it at any point. But AI is just meaning that more people can now do more of the stuff that was previously kind of locked away.
And the point Yeah. And the point I was just uh thank you for reminding me is is this whole go to market engineer thing It’s feels gatekeepy right? Is it’s it feels kind of re reactive to oh wait everybody can kind of can attempts to do marketing strategies and can do business strategies and we have this like accessibility that we didn’t have before. Um, by people that didn’t previously have access to that knowledge. Whether it’s accurate or not is a separate discussion. But people there is like a sector of people who all of a sudden feel empowered to maybe start a business that they didn’t have the marketing budget for prior or things like that right? And so this just feel a little bit like oh no no no no it’s very serious. Like no we have to gateep it and you’re going to have to spend a lot of money for it because you can’t do it but we can for you.
Yeah. And I think there’s like a middle ground right? Is we often have clients come to us with an idea generated by II and we’ve had to put a bit a few guardrails in place because a few times we have taken it and gone all right well you know what you want we let’s implement. And then we’ve got to the other side and gone yeah we’ve literally got to the other side before and gone hm we skipped our due diligence a bit here because we’ve we’ve taken their idea uh not realizing that their idea is like crawled from of somebody else’s idea.
So you know guard rails but that’s not to say that there’s a version of that that’s really useful and and we’re seeing people get excited about doing things they’ve never done before. So all of these made up and even the whole RevOps DevOps thing and like it kind of fell flat as well. It was the same thing and I went down that rabbit hole because much like this go to market engineer it is kind of a bit of a rap list of my skills right? From years of trying many different things and you end up becoming a generalist. And then all of a sudden these new roles are created to fill the um like to for generalists to fill them which I think is good but it’s um it’s shiny and it’s distracting and expensive and that gets passed on to the consumer and then it just dies anyway doesn’t it?
Totally. Totally. And look you’ve touched on a couple of important things there as well because obviously part of working in such a varied and fast-paced industry is that you do have to keep you know one eye on the trends and buzzwords and you know all the the things that are catching people’s eyes. Which is what one of my business partners used to call the the exciters that we used to put into um a product that we made which is essentially code for a feature that we know is effectively quite useless but it’s going to get people you know sort of revved up about what we’re.
You know in order to solve the harder problems that are more meaningful you’ve got to do a lot of more boring work. Um, and to your point that isn’t like oh I’m a revops person you know. It’s like no just be a salesperson or be like a head of sales or whatever. The job of sales is inherently pretty hard because you are trying to convince people that they should one pay attention to you and two you know that you know something useful that they don’t want to hear. So like that’s why it’s hard which any salesperson will tell you. Um, yeah. And like no amount of software is gonna make that job any easier because nobody’s got any time. And even when they have time and they want something they still don’t want to talk to you about it. So like that’s you know you can’t software away that problem. These jobs haven’t survived. I think they’re just as you said they’re a function of over complication and like obfiscation of stuff that should be very simple but it’s just made very complicated um for that reason.
Exactly. And if I were you know out to market or approached with a role like that my my my first question would be like is is this five people’s jobs? Because it is it’s and and I suppose that’s what’s happening with tools is one person is able to be more efficient and across more functions. But then yeah how how many jobs is this because that’s my hunch on the whole RevOps DevOps. I’m like you’re probably kind of getting underpaid by that point even because you’re taking the job of several people. Um, and yeah and slightly related but there in lies the whole problem with making everything more efficient right? Is we should be making things more efficient so that we can live our lives more not um increase profit share revenue. That that is actually like the uh you know connects directly to a much bigger conversation about like the agenda behind all this stuff right? Because you you’re totally right. Like efficiency in and of itself is not an end goal.
And like you were saying you asked that question to 10 people I reckon nine won’t have an answer a clear answer. Um, and yeah the uh you know the classic free market economy idea of you know production at all costs increasing capital increasing growth. That’s the reason that there’s a lot of pushing for efficiency because it allows the you know alleged creation of more of this mysterious everinccreasing pool of capital that we’re all trying to grab bits of.
When does it end? Well exactly. Yeah. And like we um you know part of the reason that Flow State exists in the the manner that it does is based around that exact concept. We don’t um the business was never created to work with a million clients. We were like how do we work with a small number of people that we can maintain a really good relationship with but do the boring bits as efficiently as possible? And take away the crap bits that people don’t want to do and just focus on the stuff that we all know makes an impact. Like how do we make our stakeholders look awesome and like how do we support them in the stuff that they don’t know or they don’t have time to dig into and then how do we like help them address the challenges they have across their teams? Like it’s not hard stuff it’s just a question of exactly to your point like having a conversation in a relationship with someone. And again like that’s not something that software can tell you or AI can even tell you.
No exactly. And we and we already know that. I I like the whole like AI discussion around how quickly it’s eating itself. Very rapid race to the bottom of possibly quite a deep toilet from I know my perspective at the moment. It’s just gonna like I’m sure it’ll I’m sure it’ll shift and things will change along with it to be fair but at the current rate I’m like oh it’s just getting I mean call it AI slop like it’s just getting sloppier and sloppier.
I think it’s a common a common sort of mood to be in at the moment of just you know it’s just everywhere and people just don’t really seem to know what you can and can’t usefully do is that it seems to be the the critical issue. In my world at least most useful use cases still just an evolution of what was happening before. Like process automation has been here for ages that has incrementally improved by AI. It hasn’t taken the mad leap forward that everyone thinks it has because process automation was quite sophisticated before AI came along.
Um, and now is just slightly more sophisticated because it can be you know further further sort of optimized. That’s fine. Um data analysis again like hasn’t been a sort of massively significant change there beyond what you could do before. It’s yes it’s faster and it’s more efficient but you’ve got to be very careful with what you what you ask for and what you get out. And then yes the rest of it is just sort of fluffy.
I’m like a big Logic fan now. Like I was did use Qbase for years and then I moved over to Apple. Um, I can’t remember why now for some reason. And now I’m trapped like everyone in the society told you to. The Apple ecosystem.
Like Logic and I think Qbase at the same like have been very resistant to dropping AI into any of their tools. Still purely focused on like hardcore music production stuff. And the only places that I think they’ve dropped it in or more machine learning stuff in is in stuff that actually make a like all the virtual session musicians are really good now. If you’re doing um if you’re doing like you know just music instrument related recording and stuff which is mainly what I’m doing. The electronic stuff they’ve got loads of really good you know process automation stuff in there for like um all kinds of like electronic production and stuff which is awesome. But what they’ve resisted which I love is like they’re not just chucking in like any AI really in there. They’re just like if you do these things that we know people want. I just hope that they’re not going to ruin it. They know their market they know their customers and they’re very sensitive I think to not shoving too much in every time they push out an update.
I think it says to me there’s somebody there that knows the like who not knows but cares about the impact that it’s going to have on creative arts. Um, and the discussion being had around the arts at the moment is yeah like how far is this going to go? Are we going to replace phys physical art to what extent and things like that? And it’s like no I think that we’re just going to have a larger volume of stuff for better or worse. And we’ve seen that with platforms like Soundcloud. As people have gained more accessibility to these tools. We’ve got more music. That also means more really good music and and people getting access to these tools that didn’t have it before. So I feel the same way with the like AI stuff. It’s just kind of bringing speed to it right? I kind I’m kind of here for it yeah as long as we’re not replacing all of it with again AI slot but that’s going to happen anyway. It’s going to be harder to find the good stuff I think.
Um, because it’s going to some platforms going to get drowned out by like too much uh generated stuff I suppose. Um, but my hope my optimistic hope for all of this across all of the conversation is that it’s just going to make new pockets of the internet. Because we’re kind of sick of the current version we have right? And I just I kind of welcome that. I’m like let’s have more like I don’t know micro communities. More like niche places where we can find what we want. That’s my hope.
I think that’s a very optimistic vision which I agree with Michaela to end on to be honest. Tying it back to everything we just talked about I think that’s the danger with these you know all these roles and all this you know machinery and functions for the sake of it is like it’s just continuing to ruin what was quite a cool collective space. And you know like social media has some of the blame for sure at their door and the rest of big tech have kind of destroyed it a fair bit as well. So yeah I think um yeah the democratization of those kinds of tools definitely puts a lot of the power back into other people’s hands to be able to create those spaces which hopefully we’ll see right? And then you know we’ve just got to hope that the walls are high enough for the you know money and advertising industry to not ruin them immediately as well.
Well on that somewhat ambiguous note Michaela thanks very much for joining. Um, if people want to get in touch with you or talk to you where can they find you and what have you got What’s going on next? Do you do do I recall you and the team are coming down for South by Southwest or did I?
Yes Yep Yeah. So people can reach me. Honestly LinkedIn’s probably the best way to go. Michaela Nicl on LinkedIn. Um, South by Southwest I won’t be attending I’ll be gallivanting around Europe actually. But I know uh Sarah is doing a keynote at South by Southwest. Um, and Ashton will be there as well. So we’ll be on the ground probably in a 22 shirt if anybody wants to link up.
Love it. Awesome. Yeah. And thanks for having me.
Oh no it’s a pleasure. It’s a pleasure. And like we should definitely do another one on I think the you know the general ruination of the music industry . There’s a lot to say about there . But look thanks for coming on Michaela . It’s a pleasure talking to you . Um, and if you’ve listened before I still don’t have a good way to end the show . So this is the end of the show . Thanks for listening . Bye .