Geoff Livingston helps corporations and associations adapt AI initiatives into their marketing departments. His company Generative Buzz helps organizations generate insights and new content from their existing content and create new forms of engaging, innovative communications with AI.

He has served numerous top brand marketing departments, including AT&T, Audi USA, Cox, eBay, Ford, General Dynamics, Google, PayPal, Pepsi Co., Procter, and Gamble, SAIC, USPS, Verizon, and Yum! Brands. Industry recognition for these programs includes an IABC Gold Quill Award, multiple AMA awards, Cvent, MarketingProfs, the Society of New Communications Research, and Axiom. He has helped several brands successfully navigate brand reputation and cybersecurity crises. Geoff has authored three books on social media and marketing, including Welcome to the Fifth Estate.

Key Moments

[00:08:42] Leadership agility is vital for entrepreneurship success. Evaluate Serve exposed the author to large-scale AI projects with major banks and Fortune 500 companies. AI can revolutionize marketing strategies, generating significantly more leads. The author is enthusiastic about AI’s potential in the enterprise market.

[00:11:26] Loving Castmagic IO, but Momento’s AI sucks.

[00:14:55] Revenue is the scariest and most important.

[00:19:41] Potential for growth through federation with Mastodon.

Find Geoff Online

https://generativebuzz.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffliving/

https://geofflivingston.medium.com/

https://www.tiktok.com/@generativebuzz

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Follow Seth Online:

Seth | Digital Marketer (@s3th.me) • Instagram: Instagram.com/s3th.me

Seth Goldstein | LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/sethmgoldstein

Seth On Mastodon: https://s3th.me/pch

Seth’s Marketing Junto Newsletter: https://MarketingJunto.com

Transcript (Provided by CastMagic.io)

Seth [00:00:00]:

Entrepreneurs Enigma is a podcast for the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, the wins and the fails that we all face being entrepreneurs. How we learn from adversity. Every week, I talk to a different entrepreneur with a story to tell. I’m Seth Goldstein. Come with me on the journey. This is Entrepreneurs Enigma. Let’s get started. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Entrepreneurs Enigma podcast. I am, as always, your host, Seth. Today I have a good budy of mine, jeff livingston. He is in the nation’s capital, or just outside by about, what, three quarters of a mile or something like that.

Geoff [00:00:45]:

Yeah, stones throw, basically.

Seth [00:00:46]:

Stones throw in Alexandria, Virginia. Jeff is one of the OG of social media, of digital marketing. He wrote three books on the topic. He has worked with brands like Young Brands, Procter and Gamble, Google, PayPal, Pepsi, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Keep going. A lot of them dealt with all the BS of corporate America. He’s done his own thing a few times, so he is experienced. He has recently escaped corporate America again, this time with more of an AI slant. And Jeff is the founder of Generative Buz. And he also is the co host with Greg Dino.

Geoff [00:01:28]:

That other bald guy.

Seth [00:01:29]:

Yeah, the other ball guy. There’s two bald not I’m close to it there anyhow but he is the co host of what’s the name of your podcast?

Geoff [00:01:38]:

The no brainer podcast.

Seth [00:01:40]:

No Brainer podcast. There we go. And it’s all about AI, and they’re kind of learning it as they go, and it’s fun. They’re also on the NPN network as well, which is fun. I think I got you guys on the network, actually, even though you knew with Jason. But we do owe you for that, actually.

Geoff [00:01:54]:

Thank you, Seth. Yeah.

Seth [00:01:56]:

I don’t even think Jason remembers. The old man remembers. I referred you guys.

Geoff [00:01:59]:

Does that mean I’m buying when you’re in Alexandria?

Seth [00:02:02]:

Oh, yeah, you’re buying drinks. I got you on the podcast. All right, we’ll figure it out. So, Jeff, how’s it going? How’s the weather down? I always ask people, I always ask, how’s the weather down in Alexandria right now?

Geoff [00:02:13]:

It’s humid as all heck. I did a run this morning. Yeah, it is a swamp. It’s disgusting. I miss Philly a lot. Sometimes it’s been about 30 years, but it’s just sticky here. It’s miserable in July, and for the first part of August, I’m looking forward to September.

Seth [00:02:31]:

Yeah, I’m coming down. This is not going to air until October, but at least right now when we’re recording is sticky in Philly, too. I’m missing you went to the American University. I like how they put the in front just to screw you up.

Geoff [00:02:50]:

Obviously, a marketer didn’t write that one.

Seth [00:02:53]:

I know. Then you went to Georgetown, and so you went for Literature American. You got out, realized, wait, what am I going to do with this?

Geoff [00:03:01]:

Pretty much right?

Seth [00:03:03]:

I did my whole thing was I did history and journalism with minors in anthropology and political science.

Geoff [00:03:09]:

It’s true.

Seth [00:03:11]:

Besides be a journalist or a lawyer.

Geoff [00:03:14]:

Right.

Seth [00:03:14]:

Or a lawyer.

Geoff [00:03:15]:

That’s it.

Seth [00:03:15]:

Or history. Growing up degree at Georgetown. What’s that?

Geoff [00:03:22]:

I said nobody wants to be an English teacher. No offense to English teachers.

Seth [00:03:26]:

No, exactly.

Geoff [00:03:27]:

Especially when you write like I do. I mean, it’s just horrid. It’s bad.

Seth [00:03:30]:

No, that’s what AI is for. You started now. That’s the thing about AI. Let’s talk about a little bit about that. So how did you find your way? How did you trip and fall into AI?

Geoff [00:03:39]:

So that’s a good question. I actually started writing about it in 2018. I really kind of thought it was going to dominate. I wrote a failed book. I made a big to do about it. There’s a lesson in that. The book was all about these different types of AI that would impact marketing. It was called welcome to the Machine. And the reason why I never published the book was when I finished writing it, I realized it was just categories of types of AI and it was basically something you could do in the HubSpot chart, like that tech stack chart. And I’m like, there’s really not a lot of value in this.

Seth [00:04:17]:

You should revisit it now. There’s a lot of value in it now.

Geoff [00:04:20]:

In some ways, I’m still kind of circling on the book and the value as a marketing vehicle only in the sense that having written a few of them and I know that it’s a very popular tactic to get speaking opportunities and all that, but unless there’s a great idea I’m trying to disseminate to the market, I want to be thoughtful about this next business book, if I choose to do one. Does that make sense?

Seth [00:04:45]:

Yeah, I get it. I think I have all three of your books up here somewhere.

Geoff [00:04:48]:

I’m so sorry.

Seth [00:04:51]:

They’re good. You’re self deprecating. I love it.

Geoff [00:04:53]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:04:55]:

So you’ve done the corporate world a bunch of times. Also, if you look at your LinkedIn, you’ve done the entrepreneur journey a bunch of times. Correct. And you’re not that old, so there you go.

Geoff [00:05:07]:

Well, that’s good shave.

Seth [00:05:08]:

We’ll do that for you all the time, buddy. Exactly. What’s the difference to you? I know there’s benefits to being in the cogs, in the wheels of things, and then there’s benefits of being an entrepreneur, but you’ve gone in, you’ve gone out, you’ve gone in, you’ve gone out. What’s that experience like?

Geoff [00:05:30]:

Well, for the past seven years, I’ve been largely in. I had a consultancy in the middle of that, but I was a full time contractor of the United States Postal Service for two and a half years during that. So that’s a 600,000 person enterprise, right?

Seth [00:05:44]:

Yeah.

Geoff [00:05:44]:

And the world’s oldest, or the country’s oldest bureaucracy was CMO of a startup. And I was also vice president of marketing communications at an AI company.

Seth [00:05:56]:

That’s how you kind of tripped and fell into it.

Geoff [00:05:58]:

Yeah, I got a lot more knowledge being inside. And then when the whole generative kind of wave started hitting, I think, for me, I know everybody says Chat GPT, but when Dolly and Mid Journey really started to pop the imagery, I’m like, okay, this stuff’s getting tangible now.

Seth [00:06:14]:

Yeah, because you’re also a really good photographer. If anyone knows Jeff, he’s not too shabby.

Geoff [00:06:20]:

Thank you.

Seth [00:06:21]:

He takes really good freaking about these things should be in the Smithsonian. These are like really good freaking photos because you take your time on them. They’re not just like, oh, snapshot. You’ll have DC as a good snapshot, so there’s a lot of characters walking around. You got the monuments, so it’s kind of like you’re a new Rome of sorts. We’re going to take a quick break here from our sponsors and get right back to the show.

Geoff [00:06:46]:

I’ve been lucky, too. And actually when I had my social media boutique, I had people calling me like, hey, we want to hire you. And I’d say, great, let’s get started. What do you want to do? You want to be on Twitter? Like, is that where your audience is? No, we want to hire you to do photography. And I got hired by Audi USA and the National Park Foundation. Go shoot for mean, like really awesome stuff.

Seth [00:07:07]:

So your hobby turned into a business. A little bit there a little bit.

Geoff [00:07:10]:

But you know what I learned about photography, Seth, is it’s not the most profitable business. So I decided to return it to its place as hobby. And when people come to me, I say, thanks, that’s very generous of you. I’d like to refer you.

Seth [00:07:23]:

Exactly. Unless it’s something really special.

Geoff [00:07:26]:

If you’re Audi and you want to take me to Africa again, I’m down with it. They took me to Africa.

Seth [00:07:31]:

Man, that’s pretty wild for being a hobbyist. I’ll be a really good hobbyist, but.

Geoff [00:07:37]:

Still they had me photograph a carbon offset program.

Seth [00:07:40]:

That’s kind of cool. It was kind of marketing, kind of but you did the visuals photojournalism.

Geoff [00:07:46]:

Yes, exactly.

Seth [00:07:46]:

That’s fun. I love that you have had the benefit of being in house instead of calling a Cog, being in house and absorbing stuff while there. But what do you like better in house? Obviously, I think you like being a founder more because you’re a founder again.

Geoff [00:08:03]:

Yeah, I’d say I like both. I mean, one of the things that being inside a larger enterprise does is it teaches you process and scalability, which I think as an entrepreneur, I struggled with. And this particular entity, I’m much more focused on it like, this is not going to be a solopreneur organization or it’s just not going to exist. And it’s already more than one. And so scaling is huge. But that being said, one of the problems that I see with enterprises is that process becomes permanence.

Seth [00:08:40]:

Yes. They get stuck in their ways.

Geoff [00:08:42]:

And then when you run up against that, it’s really hard to be an entrepreneur and evolve things if you don’t have leadership above you that’s willing to be agile. I feel what this really allowed me to do, and I think for me, the last company, Evaluate Serve, was fantastic. I really got to see some large scale AI projects with some of the world’s largest banks, some of the world’s largest Fortune 500 companies. So a lot of the stuff that I see with AI right now and people are talking about, I’m like, man, you’re talking on a prosumer level about Chat GPT or using Jasper or Writer, when in actuality, this thing can really blow your entire marketing stack up and out so that you’re generating like 60, 70% more leads. So, for me, I’m much more excited about the enterprise opportunity AI brings.

Seth [00:09:43]:

You saw his face, everybody well, if you’re watching the video, you saw his face. He got very excited about that.

Geoff [00:09:48]:

Yeah. So for me, I’m animated about it because I understand what it could do on a larger scale. Right. And I think people aren’t grasping that yet. So I have an education.

Seth [00:09:58]:

It’s going to take over the world.

Geoff [00:10:01]:

Anybody that says that to me, I kind of like, have you used these things yet?

Seth [00:10:07]:

They can’t do hands. They can’t do hands yet.

Geoff [00:10:09]:

No, they can’t do hands. And the writing is often if you know how to write, if you’re a real writer, I think that you’ll find.

Seth [00:10:14]:

It to be it’s a good starting point. I have to agree that it’s not there yet. I don’t think it’ll ever necessarily be there, but it’s a great rough draft. Like, if you have an idea, throw in a paragraph or two of your idea and it’ll spit something out that is reasonably decent to then go back with a fine tip comb and edit.

Geoff [00:10:34]:

Exactly. And it’s also really good, actually, I feel. What the writing side of it is very good at is if you have good training data.

Seth [00:10:42]:

Yeah.

Geoff [00:10:42]:

Some people call that prompting. It depends on the scale you’re using it, but if you have a set of content or a set of messages that you’re using to prompt the engine, it actually does a pretty good job of spitting it back out. And then you could, as you say.

Seth [00:10:57]:

Tweak a little bit. Yeah.

Geoff [00:10:58]:

But for versioning and creating different iterations of the same communication, which I hate doing. I just like writing the original concept and then let’s iterate it with an engine.

Seth [00:11:09]:

What I found is it’s really great if they spell your name Jeff with a J the wrong way, and I have to throw it in the Chet sheet and see change this to g off everywhere else.

Geoff [00:11:22]:

What’s your favorite AI use so far?

Seth [00:11:26]:

I’m loving Castmagic IO. I got it on AppSumo for a little bit there. So I think I spent $100 on it one time. I have it for life and all that stuff. It’s great for text. It actually spells people’s names. Right. Companies names. Right. It’s really good. But I also use Momento for the video because they’re a sponsor of Market Podcast Network. Yeah, momento is great for what it does. Their AI text is not that good, Matthew. The AI kind of sucks.

Geoff [00:11:58]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:11:59]:

But I don’t use them for the text. I use them for the video aspect because they pull out really good clips. So between that and Cast Magic, I can put them together and I have a nice little package.

Geoff [00:12:11]:

Nice. Nice.

Seth [00:12:13]:

It works nicely.

Geoff [00:12:14]:

What’s your biggest hate with AI so far?

Seth [00:12:17]:

Who’s flipping the channels on me here? Budy.

Geoff [00:12:20]:

So you can see this is what happens when podcast host beats podcast.

Seth [00:12:23]:

Exactly, Budy. The biggest hate is that it doesn’t know how to use contractions. It doesn’t write like me.

Geoff [00:12:31]:

Wow.

Seth [00:12:32]:

There you go. It writes too much. Use a contraction, for crying out loud.

Geoff [00:12:40]:

Chat GPT without the personalization. You could tell a bunch of kids from Stanford wrote that thing, man. It’s just way too windy.

Seth [00:12:48]:

It’s very windy. And also, if you ask the flower something, I pick Roy flowers. If you’re bio, I did one. I called me an inkstein journalist. I was like, Whoa, fancy people’s, podcasts. I send them that one. I said, here’s the over the top AI written one. Here’s mine. Pick it.

Geoff [00:13:07]:

You know what my biggest hate is.

Seth [00:13:09]:

With AI right now?

Geoff [00:13:11]:

Too many point solutions, man. Too many of these little tools popping up, none of them working well within the existing systems that we can easily navigate through. Right. It’s just not intuitive yet. Like, these guys, they’re just like these kids creating these tools or these entrepreneurs, and, hey, we have this great tool here’s our use case. And it’s like, that’s not my use case.

Seth [00:13:38]:

Exactly.

Geoff [00:13:38]:

My use case is in HubSpot. You’re not helping.

Seth [00:13:43]:

Jeff. Exactly. So what is the best thing about being an entrepreneur in your mind? Because you’ve done the entrepreneur. You’ve done the entrepreneur. I was the entrepreneur for some reason, but you’ve done both. What’s the best thing about being an entrepreneur?

Geoff [00:13:56]:

Freedom.

Seth [00:13:57]:

Yeah.

Geoff [00:13:58]:

Freedom to focus on what matters. I’m at a point in my career where I pretty much think I know. I may be wrong, but I think I know. And when I’m wrong, I’m pretty quick on self correcting. It’s pretty clear to me. I listen to feedback from the market, from my colleagues. They tell me I have a co founder, Josh. He’ll tell me sometimes, hey, man, this isn’t really jiving. And I’m like, okay, that’s good to know.

Seth [00:14:26]:

Let’s redo the prompt.

Geoff [00:14:28]:

Exactly. But for me, that freedom is really important because I guess the best way is if I don’t see a strategy or if I don’t believe in a strategy, it’s really hard for me to walk through it month after month, year after year.

Seth [00:14:45]:

Yeah. Following a strategy that doesn’t jive is not a good thing. What’s the scariest thing? What keeps you up at night with being an entrepreneur?

Geoff [00:14:55]:

Scariest thing is always revenue. Right? To me, it’s always revenue. And I think one of the things that we’re I think by the time this comes out, it’ll probably be out there, but we’re starting to look at product pretty heavily. And that matters to me a little bit in the sense that when you look at a service offering, which most of us are, most entrepreneurs are particularly within consultancies and solopreneurs, it’s really hard to sit back. Right. It’s really hard to let it go because if you do, then your pipeline dies. You can’t really stop or pause. Right. You always have to be selling, always be selling, always be generating pipeline. Now, I like selling. I like working with people.

Seth [00:15:44]:

You’re personable.

Geoff [00:15:45]:

Yeah, I like helping people out. So when I believe in my product or my solution, it’s easy, right?

Seth [00:15:52]:

Yeah.

Geoff [00:15:52]:

I really do believe I’m helping you. And it’s a tragedy when it doesn’t work out and it happens to every successful business.

Seth [00:16:01]:

You find you’re never an overnight success. I always say it’s your 15 year.

Geoff [00:16:05]:

Overnight success and you need to make it right too. That’s also my experience, is you have to make it right with people. But building product at least allows us to get into something where if there’s a need for it and people want it, then they’re not going to have to work with us on a services level. And I think that’s going to be interesting.

Seth [00:16:26]:

It’s different. Yeah, they can do that, but they also have a product. So there’s something that’s always coming, those residuals coming in, but it’s always pipeline.

Geoff [00:16:34]:

And the reality is, even if you’re doing really well in your short term pipeline, you probably have a long term pipeline problem. And that’s why you see a lot of entrepreneurs talk about peaks and valleys. Well, I don’t like peaks and valleys, I like drake growth.

Seth [00:16:49]:

There you go. That’s the way to be. That’s the way to be. So what is the most important thing to carry with you all the time besides the camera? What?

Geoff [00:16:56]:

Paper?

Seth [00:16:57]:

Pen. Paper? Yeah. Not a camera.

Geoff [00:17:00]:

I usually have a camera with me, but that’s more for my personal creative joy for business. It’s definitely pen and paper. I can write notes on a computer, but it just doesn’t help me.

Seth [00:17:09]:

Yeah, I have a remarkable that I bring everywhere.

Geoff [00:17:12]:

Yeah, I used to use moleskins, but now use I guess they’re lectern.

Seth [00:17:17]:

You’ve gone fancy, you’ve gone German and a pen.

Geoff [00:17:20]:

And that’s all I need. And I remember everything if I write it down.

Seth [00:17:23]:

That way you never have to look at the best part about writing something down, like handwriting it down. You never look at it again.

Geoff [00:17:28]:

No, but you don’t need to quickly.

Seth [00:17:30]:

Do you look back at it, unless you really have a senior moment, which we’re getting there, where we’re having moments where we have to go back and look at our notes. It’s not that when we’re in our 20s in college where we wrote something down by hand, we remembered it.

Geoff [00:17:42]:

Right.

Seth [00:17:43]:

It’s failing a little bit.

Geoff [00:17:46]:

I do find myself checking the notes, though, particularly when I get into that proposal stage. I do like to go back.

Seth [00:17:53]:

Yeah, you’re going to screw something up. Something’s going to be left down. They’re going to catch you and say, well, what about this? I meant to put that in there.

Geoff [00:18:03]:

And if you think going back to the sales conversation again, what’s the fastest way to disrespect one of your prospects, at least in their mind? He’s not listening to me. He didn’t listen to me.

Seth [00:18:14]:

He missed it. Because if he would listen to me, he would have put this in the proposal 100%. Oh, my God. It’s great. So where can people find you online? Let’s see. We’ll start off with photos. Where can they find your photos online?

Geoff [00:18:25]:

Flickr and instagram.

Seth [00:18:27]:

Oh, Flickr. Oh, you’re an old hat.

Geoff [00:18:29]:

Old school.

Seth [00:18:30]:

Flickr is getting pretty good now that they’ve escaped the clutches of Verizon and Yahoo and wherever the hell they were before that.

Geoff [00:18:37]:

Exactly. They’ve done a really nice job of actually staying relevant. And what they did was they decided not to use an algorithm. They just show people the pictures of the people that they follow in order of posting, like, oh, my God, what.

Seth [00:18:49]:

A novels have no algorithm. Exactly. Mastodon. And then where can they and they find you. Generativebuzz.com, LinkedIn.

Geoff [00:18:59]:

Also TikTok.

Seth [00:19:01]:

We are out there brave, you’re on TikTok. What’s your kid think about that?

Geoff [00:19:07]:

Sorry?

Seth [00:19:08]:

What’s your kid think about you being on TikTok?

Geoff [00:19:11]:

I think it’s fun to me. People are searching for stuff on TikTok and there’s actually a conversation about AI.

Seth [00:19:17]:

There’s something called entrepreneur talk there.

Geoff [00:19:27]:

To me, Twitter is dead, so I’m not wait or wait X, the artist formerly known as Twitter. It’s dead. Threads is dead. And I don’t want to have.

Seth [00:19:38]:

Mean.

Geoff [00:19:39]:

Maybe it’ll take off. I don’t know.

Seth [00:19:41]:

I think it’ll take off if and when they Federate with Macedon. I think there’s a community on Macedon and I think that when they Federate, brands will be on Threads. And people who don’t want to be on threads that still want to see what Taco Bell is up to can be over on their mastodon instance away from Facebook, but still kind of dabble.

Geoff [00:20:01]:

Right.

Seth [00:20:01]:

I’m intrigued by that. If they will Federate, like Adam Mazari says he’s going to do, that’s great. Of course, the master sounds like, no, stay off our lawn. Let’s see what happens first.

Geoff [00:20:14]:

Well, we’ll see what happens with Meta writes to check.

Seth [00:20:17]:

I know. Seriously, we’ll see. We’ll see. Jeff, this has been so much fun. I’m so glad to catch up with you. Buddy.

Geoff [00:20:22]:

Yeah, man. We’ll have to have you on the other pod, man. Too good to jam. And I’m looking forward to breaking bread with you next time you’re in the district of Corruption.

Seth [00:20:31]:

The swamp. Swamp. All right, this has been great, and we’ll see everyone next time.

Geoff [00:20:38]:

Thank you.

Seth [00:20:38]:

That was a great show. If you’re enjoying entrepreneurs Enigma, please view us in the podcast directory of your choice. Every review helps other podcast listeners find our show. If you’re looking for other podcasts in the marketing space, look no further than the Marketing Podcast Network at Marketingpodcasts Network. Goldstein gee hopes you have enjoyed this episode. This podcast is one of the many great shows on the MPN Marketing Podcast Network.