#416 AI, Data Strategy, and Product-Led Growth: A CMO’s Playbook with Lillian Pierson

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased joining me Lillian Pierson. Lillian, the way I love to do it, I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves. So tell us a little bit more about, you know, your journey, your experience and what you are currently up to.

Mehmet: And then we [00:01:00] can start the exciting conversation from there. So the floor is yours.

Lillian: Thank you so much. And thank you for having me on your show, Mehmet. So I am a fractional CMO, I'm a marketing strategist and advisor. And in some cases I'm working as a full fractional CMO leading leading the marketing teams for B2B tech companies, mostly data and AI intensive companies over the last decade or so I've supported the expansion of 10 percent of fortune 100 companies whilst educating you two million learners on data science and A.

Lillian: I. But that is through incredible partnerships that have been very grateful and fortunate to have built with both linked in learning and and Wiley's. So, yeah. And so that's part of my journey. And that's also part of why I'm most of my marketing X like most of my marketing experience has been with data Data science and ai companies because I have a deep technical background.

Lillian: I'm also a licensed [00:02:00] professional engineer So

Mehmet: wow, thank you for for being here with with me on the show lillian again It's before I deep dive, you know with with the multiple Topics that we're going to discuss like just out of curiosity What you know attracted you to this intersection of? You know, the data, AI and growth strategy.

Mehmet: Like what was like the initial spark I would say for this interest?

Lillian: That was absolutely from the beginning. Even when I was working as a technical strategist, cause I have 20 years of marketing experience, but it's always been from engineering technology. In, in that, in these types of industries, but Even when I was just getting started in data science and learning it, I very, very quickly saw how data and analytics.

Lillian: Even basic expertise is extraordinarily helpful in growth. And so, I was able to grow. That's how I got like [00:03:00] 700, 000 followers online. So I spent a few years just dabbling, just looking at the analytics and, and doing, I guess what they would call growth hacking or a perm, a primitive way of doing growth marketing.

Lillian: And so, yeah, I'd say like, Now, absolutely. All of my strategies, my growth strategies, their growth marketing strategies, but that actually came from my background of both data science and marketing together. So, yeah.

Lillian: Oh, I'm sorry. I can't hear you.

Mehmet: Oh, sorry. I put myself on mute. So, Yeah, that happens. That happens. And the podcast is very transparent in that. So don't worry about it. So the question, you know, like, you know, I know you have a new book Liliane, so tell me a little bit more about, you know, the book, the title, and, you know, What are the key insights?

Mehmet: And then I get a deep dive a little bit more about each each part of it.

Lillian: All right. Thank you for asking. I love talking about, thank you. Okay. [00:04:00] Yeah. So the book is called the data and AI imperative designing strategies for exponential growth. It's by Wiley. But the whole, the whole underlying premise of this is like, well, there's two things I'm most excited about.

Lillian: One is protecting really protect, protecting CIOs, CTOs, CEOs. Protecting and like helping them guide their decision making when it comes to technical strategies related to data and AI, and then also helping data professionals level up into a more strategic role. But the reason I'm super excited to get to share my framework and approach that I built after the last 20 years working as a strategist, In technology is that well, I was around back in the day of Hadoop.

Lillian: I don't know if you're aware, there was a big hype driven buying cycle around something called Hadoop and a lot, a lot of business leaders bought, they were sold technology that was just completely inappropriate for [00:05:00] the current state of their organization and what their business objectives were.

Lillian: And then it kind of made a bad stain. On the whole big data thing. And so like now it's kind of a bad word. And, and I always felt like, gosh, if they had, if they had the framework, if they had the strategic approach, if the buyers had the strategic approach that they needed in order to make informed decisions for their organizations, that wouldn't have happened.

Lillian: They would have been known a lot more about like, been protected from the marketing, the marketing hype, really. So this book. Shares that shares that approach. And then the other part is it's my coming out as publicly. I mean, I've been a CMO for years now, but it's kind of my public debut in terms of books, as a growth marketing strategist.

Lillian: So there's a heavy emphasis on go to market And product market fit, growth marketing AI and, and data driven growth marketing, as well as yeah, these topics. And then we go into the technical [00:06:00] strategy.

Mehmet: Cool. Now let's, let's dive into these ones one by one. So I know, like you mentioned about like.

Mehmet: Five signs that you know, the AI strategy isn't ready to scale So can you share some of these signs and how companies, you know should address them?

Lillian: Sure Yeah, I I have a lot to talk about with this I would say from the perspective particularly of if you're of our audience in this episode I think ctos can really relate to The tendency to, to get really excited about technology and kind of put the cart before the horse and, and, and forget to, to focus first on the business objective and then how the technology actually supports and furthers that business objective.

Lillian: So one of the biggest. Problems that the AI strategies or technical strategies in general face is that there's more focus on the technology and the [00:07:00] technical strategy than there is on the actual, the business objective that needs to be supported by these technic, these technology systems, the products, Programs, whatever you're building they need to be super dialed into the business mission, vision and objective.

Lillian: So, so if that, if that's not happening, then there's a real risk of like lack of alignment and then low or no return on investment for the project. Overall, yeah, so that's one of them and I have four other points like plot it out But

Mehmet: so so if I want to just you know, I do a follow up on this one So we're talking here about business outcomes Lillian and I think Just adapting technology for the sake of adapting technology isn't going to to take us anyway And especially now with the age of ai so we hear this a lot like okay Let's get this new cool toy right and put it You In the organization and see what we [00:08:00] can do with it.

Mehmet: Like, so from mindset perspective, you know, from mindset perspective, and I want you to, to, to get this from two perspectives. So how, you know, because like you and me, you know, we sit on both sides of the table. So we're like doing the technology consultancy at some stage and you did it from, from, you know, growth perspective on marketing.

Mehmet: I did it from sales perspective. Like how. Do you think is the role also from the people who are bringing these techs in front of the decision makers? And by the way, they are not only going to the cto and to cio. They are going also to the Business leaders as well and taking the technology So so do you think like also the messaging is is being kind of exaggerated?

Mehmet: In front of these leaders, so they are forcing sometimes, you know cto cios to go adopt technologies that they don't want and Maybe that also the tech executive are [00:09:00] they doing exactly what they should do to show, you know, Their counterparts from business perspective. Hey guys, like this is what we should be really focusing on now And this is what we have to do.

Mehmet: So I just want to take your like point of view on this topic

Lillian: Okay so it's a great question I want to just seek clarification on one thing when you say they are bringing messaging to the cto or the ceo who is they

Mehmet: I mean like The technology vendors. Let's put it this way.

Lillian: Okay. Yeah. So that is, that creates a lot of pressure on business decision makers because, and especially if they're a venture back because investors want to see Like, especially with the AI startups, they want to see like, uptake with the latest and greatest.

Lillian: So that of course does create pressure. But the thing is, is that I don't think that with the right approach, I don't think that business decision makers need to like, [00:10:00] Even if even there's so many different flavors of the latest type of technology that even if One type it doesn't fit your current state of the current state of your organization doesn't mean that there's not a different quote unquote flavor that is very well suited for driving growth in the like next 90 days and so it's like a matter of picking The right use case and the right technology stack that aligns with your current resources to drive that growth and just basically de risking the the investment decisions because yeah, investors and the public, you know, they want to see this adoption, of course, but also without having a strategic approach and approach and a methodical approach.

Lillian: Decision makers can really open themselves up and their companies up to tremendous amount of risks. So that was one point The other point I lost it. [00:11:00] I'm sorry. What were you was the other point you made? Yeah,

Mehmet: so so we talked about it the two sided so so from one part as as You know technology companies and mainly startups.

Mehmet: We need to do the growth that you just mentioned But I meant from the other side of the table, you know, like for the cios the ctos, you know like how they can remove the You The noise that, you know, their counterpart counterparts, which are like the business leaders, they might also be hearing from other companies, maybe CFOs other companies, you know,

Mehmet: You know, so, so how they can, you know, tell them, no, like this is what we should be focusing on.

Lillian: Yeah, absolutely. So that makes total sense. And thank you for clarifying. So, yeah. So CTO is like, you know, generally and as should be our, our cautious, A lot of times slow to, especially in, in like places like the Middle East, they're slow to adopt new technologies and they're risk averse. Sure. And rightly so.

Lillian: So how I recommend [00:12:00] approaching this is just, Well, in my book, I share the star framework that I came up with many years ago, that's a four step method. So, okay, let's just make a hypothetical situation. So your, your CEO comes in and he's like, you, we need to be doing something. We need to develop some features that are generative AI features so that our marketing can be on par with our competitors here.

Lillian: And you're like, okay, yeah, but I don't know if this is necessarily appropriate for our. Our product, right? So, what are you saying is he wants to add to his mark? The CEO is saying is he wants like the marketing to be able to, like, level up with the new fancy, shiny object, generative AI, right? But the CTO has to say, okay, like, Let me, let me survey and see what other not just my industry, but in other industries, like what are people doing?

Lillian: Regenerative AI, how could I adopt this in a way that's like [00:13:00] really low risk, high reward, and is really appropriate to our current state, right? So you do the survey in the industry, take stock of data, resources, technologies, skill sets. And then based on an extensive assessment of current state and what's available within the company as well as what's happening across the market and with the depending on if you're building in house or externally.

Lillian: I feel like I'm talking way too long. This is like a big, this is a big thing. No. So, okay. So imagine we're, we're developing this and it's an external commercial feature, right? Features for a commercial product, right? So look, okay. What are the competitors doing and how are, what, what are these features that they're saying is like shiny object, generative AI.

Lillian: Okay. So we take that into account along with our current state. What data resources do we have? What skillsets do we have available? What's our technology stack? How can we make best use of what we have so it's lowest [00:14:00] risk in order to drive just a quick win 90 day drive ROI in the first 90 days. And then I always, I do everything in an experimental approach.

Lillian: So once you can validate that that works, you can start scaling it across your company or you can have, you can, so just keep the risk really, really low. And as you grow, You can take bigger and bigger risks. You, you understand how this is going to work. You have a better understanding of what's going to work and what's not going to work, but just going in and being like, okay, I'm like, what happened with Hadoop?

Lillian: Like, okay, I'm going to spend 10 million on Hadoop Hadoop infrastructure. Because. Everyone else is doing it when that wasn't the thing that was going to move the needle in the short term and then without the the data that supported that this was actually going to be like, there's going to be adoption, it's going to make a difference in the market, you know, it's just like so much risk.

Lillian: So that's how I would always approach it, like survey the industry, take [00:15:00] stock of what you've got available, do a deep assessment of current state versus Opportunity and then based on a deep technical Like develop a strategy a technical assessment and then make your recommendations based on data don't take too much and yeah,

Mehmet: right If I might ask you this because you know, I remember at some stage we were hearing a lot about it and i'm sure maybe it's still the case and You have the better visibility because you've worked with a lot of companies in this space.

Mehmet: So What about, you know, data monetization as an, as an area of focus also as well. So how are you seeing, you know, companies leveraging this possibility of having, you know, they have their data assets, right? So they have the data and trying to figure out if they can, because you mentioned ROI now, so, so

Lillian: yeah,

Mehmet: what, [00:16:00] what kind of, of, you know, perspective they should be looking at?

Mehmet: So they can say, okay, we can really monetize the data that we have instead of just, you know, buying expensive toys and putting them, you know, in the system and then, you know, just wait for the ROI to happen by itself.

Lillian: Yeah, of course. Data monetization is basic, is one of my favorite use cases. So, in fact, even though I'm coming out with a book that essentially is a technical strategy book for data and AI initiatives.

Lillian: Yeah. The only type of strategies I would deliver anymore would be like our growth, growth, marketing strategies. The only exception to that would be data monetization strategies. Cause I see enough overlap between the technical and the marketing and the business end of things to say like, okay, this makes sense to like keep rooted in this area, but in terms of examples, like, okay, this is the age of data monetization, the world.

Lillian: If you have quality data, that is of course, high quality [00:17:00] data with everything with generative ai, I mean increasingly so, if you have access to data fresh data to keep feeding the LLMs, that's gonna be like worth a lot of money because of just the way the privacy concerns people have and the way governments are locking down.

Lillian: Basically on trying to lock down on data collection. I'm just trying to think of a good use case. One of my favorite case study. I mean, one of my favorite case studies was safe graph where they took, basically they, they, they took the mobile, they did data partnership with Mobile phone providers, and then they took that and they monetized it directly by selling that location data to retail vendors who are looking to make investments into retail outlets.

Lillian: Where do I develop my retail center? And that was a direct data monetization. It was just and it was backed by Peter Thiel and Adrian or something, the founder. I mean, it's just, it was just always a brilliant model and it's done really, really well, [00:18:00] but there's a lot of different ways you can monetize data.

Lillian: I think depends on what your resources you have and what the market demand is. So I think that would be something we'd need to look at, like on a case by case basis, but they approach it to still be the same. Still, it's still the star framework applies as much as it would in any other type of use case, actually.

Mehmet: Absolutely. Now regarding, you know, also. The scale of scaling, you know, in the terms of, you know, the system that they put in place because I got to talk about scaling and others. sense in a few minutes later. So how organization they can make sure like whatever strategies, you know, new initiatives they do, they are able to scale them in the future and make sure that, you know, they will have the success that they are aiming for.

Lillian: Yeah. So actually what you're bringing to mind is when you're bringing this up is actually [00:19:00] the difference between like a one off. Data or A. I. Strategy and then a a complex strategy that's scaled across organizations where you've got multiple use cases that are integrated into an overarching data strategy or A.

Lillian: I. Strategy. But how to scale it. So say, okay, say we say we are talking data strategy, maybe it has to do with machine learning, maybe it's got to do with generative AI and building applications, you know, based on APIs. Right. Doesn't really matter if you're going to have one use case, right. And you're going to choose the one use case.

Lillian: You're going to look for the lowest hanging fruit, do what I always recommend it in the book, I show how to do this, do a multi criteria decision making assessment. Model to, to, to select what really, really vetted out what is the lowest risk, highest reward use case where we can turn, turn, you know, generate an ROI.[00:20:00]

Lillian: In the next 90 days. Okay, so this would be for less mature organization. You get that going and it's working. It's profitable. It's getting the adoption is what it needs to be. Well, then you can continue. You can scale that now across different units. You know, if you have taken into account the applicability of this use case across the business when you were in the planning phase, right?

Lillian: So once you get that in place. That's great. So you can operationalize it. You don't need to worry too much about that. You then work on the next use case, do the same thing again, operationalize that. And then once you have two, once you have three, you need an overarching integrated strategy to be able to.

Lillian: So we're talking, now we're talking about the difference between the short term, the short, short term growth goals versus the long term. For the, for more mature organizations, they have many, many, many use cases. So they would need that more integrated approach to their, to their [00:21:00] strategy, to their technical strategy.

Lillian: But this is generally how you would start from zero and scale to, you know, all the way up to like fortune 100 companies is this general, framework, if you will, or methodology.

Mehmet: Great. Now, as I was telling you, Lilian, before we did the actual recording. So I like startups and you know, one of the topics that is, you know, always coming up especially in.

Mehmet: Recently is product led growth, which is known as PLG because, you know, there's always the PLG and SLG, which is like sales led growth. And now there's also the founder led growth also as well. This is the thing. So,

Lillian: okay, we got to say, though, founder led growth is basically a personal brand. I'm all for it.

Lillian: And I'm happy to teach people and lead them on how to do founder led growth. And I have been doing that for many years, but it is definitely. It's a really the same. It's a rebranding of personal brand.

Mehmet: Absolutely. [00:22:00] Yeah. Yeah. It's

Lillian: okay. I have a personal brand. I have a big one and it takes you a long way to a certain point.

Lillian: It really helps you grow. But then at a certain point, then you need to become a media company to really get that next level. But anyway, what you're saying.

Mehmet: So let's go back to the PLG to pro product let grow. So in a nutshell, you know, why is it still like the hot topic these days? And, you know, with the With the hype of the AI and generative AI so what are like some of the strategies yet that you think they are working well in driving user acquisition, retention, and of course, avoiding churn also as well?

Lillian: Gosh, I mean, so the funny thing is about product led growth. Is it's not, it might be popular. In fact, some of my friends in the Valley are saying like, it's not popular anymore. That's been replaced by AI and marketing. And so that's like the new buzzword. I don't know about that, but I do know that [00:23:00] PLG is not new and that like, okay.

Lillian: If you think about like in my book, right. So I'm trying to just. There's a lot of, in the first part of the book, there's illustrations of like, what this, so if you think about it, a recommendation engine on it, in in a product marketplace, that would be a PLG that would be serving the PLG function because it's increasing engagement, it's increasing revenue.

Lillian: If you know, it's product. Recommendation engine really satisfies the use the use of if you're trying to illustrate machine learning or complex AI in a product environment to accelerate growth. Now there are newer ways that that startups are using generative AI or they're exploring the use of generative AI to drive product led growth.

Lillian: So in my book, I cover. A startup that is basically they're building a generative [00:24:00] AI clusters or generative AI layers, one that one of the generative AI layers works on the strategy level. So it segments the data. And it segments personas based on their behavior with the product, with the website integrated approach to like data collection and segmentation so that they can identify even unique trends that other that even trained specialists wouldn't be able to see, like, so it's using the reasoning engine.

Lillian: of LLM to identify segments that you might not even know about. It auto identifies them and then it puts a layer of human intervention to say, okay, like, do you agree with, like, does the marketing manager or whatever, they agree with this segmentation is this legitimate, right? So then the next layer of the product is, okay, we've, we've identified that these are segments based on behavior.

Lillian: So. This one's likely to churn. This one is ready to buy and just needs like maybe a [00:25:00] promotion or something like that. So like, can understand their intent and then can use generative AI on the next layer to then generate those marketing messages or at least the drafts of them for each of the segments in real time.

Lillian: So this doesn't happen like this doesn't happen like on a, like a batch basis. This happens on like a real time basis. So the holdup is where the human intervention comes in and says, okay, like, yes, there's a safety check. I agree. And then proceed. So it allows companies to really like drive product led growth.

Lillian: At scale in real time using the reasoning engines you know, reasoning engine of that support LLMs. If that is hopefully clear, I know we're kind of getting into like the weeds a bit, but I think you're, this is a CTO show. So you guys probably are on track with what I'm saying.

Mehmet: Yeah, definitely.

Mehmet: Definitely. Now the question really I have for you for in, from a PLG perspective. So When we talk from [00:26:00] marketing side of it, right? So,

Lillian: okay. Yeah.

Mehmet: Where, where do we, where do we do the most of the activities, you know? So is it like, is it like the aim for us to lead with the product? But I just shared something two days back or maybe yesterday.

Mehmet: What I'm seeing recently is We go, we build a product, whatever the product is. And then we start to talk about the whistles and whistles and whistles of this product without understanding, in my opinion, the pain point of the end user or the, you know, the, the, the person or the company that they're going to buy this product.

Mehmet: And then we keep pumping features and, you know,

Lillian: That's every founder, every founder, every builder, it's, I guess. If you, it's, if it's your product, it's almost, it's hard not to do that. But as a, as a CMO, like, that's what I, that's one of [00:27:00] the things I really help companies with is I think like, I, I I'm an advocate for the consumer.

Lillian: I'm thinking like them kind of pushing it against the tendency. It's so natural. I've built, I mean, I've built products and it's just, that's just what people do when you're the builder. But sorry, I didn't let you get to the point. I'm just passionate about this.

Mehmet: No, I want you to, to go through this Lillian, like what they should avoid.

Mehmet: Oh, because you mentioned you should, you just mentioned that. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it happens. This is where I wanted to go. So you just took the the rest of the question out. Okay. Yourself.

Lillian: Okay. I mean, 'cause it, it's, it's, it's unavoidable. It's like that is why people hire CMOs. That is why. They have this other like exact executive perspective on, on the offers on the offer suite really.

Lillian: But so I specialize in marketing strategy, growth, growth, marketing strategy that ladders up to product led growth. So more from a marketing perspective I mean, the whole appeal is that. You know, you can sell [00:28:00] 20 per month product to people, you know, you can run ads all day, every day. And once you validated product market fit and you validated your, your, I don't, it.

Lillian: The way I do it is I basically I make land landing pages or I help teams build landing pages that are not landing pages. They're actually sales pages. Like they, they punch hard with the conversions because I think landing pages are pretty weak and we need a stronger conversion, higher conversion rates in order to really validate, but once you get that set up, it's like, you could do that all day, every day till the cows come home.

Lillian: And you don't really need to worry too much about. The sales led function, right? So, that's the kind of marketing that I love focusing on because I love community led. I love thinking from the buyer's perspective from like, I just love doing this, this type of thing as a marketer. But you're asking from, it sounds like a bit like you're asking from the founder's perspective, a way of like, how do we get out of that [00:29:00] kind of natural tendency?

Lillian: Is that what you're saying? Or like, So there's, okay, there's the marketing that ladders up to product led growth. And then there's actually the, the, the levers within the product that drive retention, the drive referral. And a lot of those, in all honesty, like I'm a marketing person, but there's, there's a product strategy.

Lillian: I've got a partner and he's an incredible product strategist from CNN. Like he, and we work together. So for, for, for like, market validation and all of this. It's like you've got the product end of this, of your product that it needs to be rock solid, right? But a lot of product led growth is driven by marketing.

Lillian: And so like, maybe you automate maybe you automate portions of that marketing, but the psychology and the underlying Dynamic is the same. So like for referrals and for retention, it's like building, building features that people want to use and, [00:30:00] and like asking, asking, you know, getting, collecting feedback in automatically, you know, like building the feedback loops, getting that feedback and like really, really listening to it.

Lillian: And what can we take away from our product? Instead of what we can add to it, because that's really what people want. They want to do as little as humanly possible to get the transformation they're after. They do not want more features. They want less features that are more powerful. And so, like, feedback really helps in doing that.

Lillian: And, you know, And referrals is like, clearly to me, referrals, you can automate it through product led growth, but it's, that's definitely a marketing function. So, it's odd, it's odd to be a marketing person in this space because, you know, product people also, they're like, Oh, I'm a product person. So, you know, this is my domain.

Lillian: And I'm like, yeah, but there's a lot of marketing involved in this. And then we have go to market also where it's like there's a salespeople that are like, well, I'm doing GTM. And then this marketing person, well, I'm doing [00:31:00] GTM. It's kind of like, there's just a, there's layers where we're all kind of operating, just bringing our own expertise and talents.

Lillian: And it's a fusion, fusion area. And product led growth is one of those areas.

Mehmet: I agree with you, Lilia. And now before I ask you the follow up question It's a team, it's a team game, right? So, so you need a solid product and then you need to have the talent of a marketing genius to lay the way down for the salespeople to go and do the scoring, which is actually getting the deals in.

Mehmet: I'm focusing a little bit more on B2B, honestly, Liliane, if you, if you get what I mean. Now,

Lillian: You're talking about enterprise. I think you're talking about enterprise, like,

Mehmet: Exactly.

Lillian: Enterprise sales marketing that ladders up to enterprise sales

Mehmet: now, but, but also I figured out recently because there are some playbooks out there and these playbooks to me looks a little bit [00:32:00] outdated.

Mehmet: So everyone at some stage looking, doing the same thing, especially when it comes to outbound, you know, efforts.

Lillian: Yeah.

Mehmet: What I've seen working recently, and I want to take your opinion on this, and maybe this would be an advice for the fellow founders and even scale up you know, the people who reach this, you know, product market fit.

Mehmet: I know they want to scale. There are, there are like a new generation of getting things. Of course, ads I believe still are there, but start, I started to see people relying one on something you mentioned previously about. You know, the, our personal brand. The second thing is also relying on new ways of utilizing, let's call them technology influencers, like not the influencers in the sense of a Instagram and TikTok, but people who are like kind of authority in the industry they are in.

Mehmet: So they come, they blog [00:33:00] about them. They push videos about them. I noticed like, this is also something which is working. So Wait, can I ask you something,

Lillian: though?

Mehmet: Yeah, please.

Lillian: You have a successful podcast, so if you haven't, because I was getting brand deals out, I had to, I actually made a definitive choice, and I was making a lot of money, thousands of dollars per hour with brand deals, with really, really big technology companies.

Lillian: Fortune, Fortune 10, Fortune 100 companies, a lot of them. And I definitively said, this is not what I want to do anymore. But I am surprised that you're asking this because you have a media company. You have a media company. You have built this podcast. And so I'm, I'm just curious, like you, about sponsors and like, they haven't come to you.

Lillian: You're acting like it's some foreign thing. And I'm like, are you serious? Because I would just see you as a perfect candidate for, for, for getting brand deals like this. With the work you've been doing.

Mehmet: Oh good. Thank you for [00:34:00] asking because I decided to make the podcast as a non profit organization

Lillian: Okay,

Mehmet: well, yeah, but I just out yeah, but speaking engagements Please come.

Mehmet: I'm more than happy to, to, to join. Yeah.

Lillian: Yeah. Speaking is fun. And, and yeah, I used to do speaking all over the world. I remember one of the biggest, it was like, yeah, it was a really great deal. I, they flew me and my family to Istanbul. First class for some, but I, and I had to speak for five minutes. It paid really well.

Lillian: I was like, this isn't too bad. But after a few years of deals like this after, cause I have a small children, it's like, it's not really much fun. I rather just stay on our little Island. And I actually just found an, you know, worked on a rebuilt my business from scratch, basically.

Mehmet: Pivoted. [00:35:00] So what was your question?

Mehmet: Yeah, that's

Lillian: big. You were asking like, yeah, founder led growth and asking about use of influencers or thought leaders in order to get in front of the right audience. And it's super wise to do that. In fact, with partner, I mean, you could call it elite. I actually put thought leaders or influencers in the category of partnerships.

Lillian: But there are a lot, even a lot smarter ways to do partnerships. So I'm a big fan. I've done mentorship with a guy. Some of your listeners might know him, but Scott Oldford really have a profound respect for Scott over as a marketer and as a person. And I took one of his trainings on, on partnerships and.

Lillian: I didn't buy the full 5, 000 course. I kind of wish I had, but he shared some of the partnership deals that he was doing and it was like, so smart. Like, okay, think about someone who's built a founder who's built a SAS product that he doesn't know how to monetize or she doesn't know how [00:36:00] to monetize. She's, she's, she's allowing like, Google ads, just random Google ads to run there in order to monetize something because they don't know how to monetize their product, but they're getting a lot of traffic and you need that traffic.

Lillian: Right. So, because influencers are going to, if you can go a micro influencer strategy, then sure. Fine. I build those, like do it all day, every day, but it's also kind of saturated and people know the deal and it's like, but people aren't aware of like, people aren't super aware of like, say You find a SAS product and it's free and there's a lot of traffic going there and you know, it's your target audience.

Lillian: And you talk to, you just contact the founder and be like, yo, I'll pay you like 500 bucks a month. Just put my banner here. And they're like, for them, it seems like a lot of money cause they're not marketing people. They don't have. When you have money just flying at you from every direction, the prices go out through the roof.

Lillian: You're like, I don't want to do another brand deal. I was there. And, but they're not in that position. They're like, I'm [00:37:00] looking to monetize and people aren't thinking, aren't seeing that opportunity. So that's one thing that I haven't explored actually with my own, like, I haven't been able to have the experience of executing and like leading a team to like monetize and that way, or to drive traffic in that way.

Lillian: But I think I'm sure because I learned it from Scott Oldford, that is super powerful and there's a lot of opportunity there because everyone knows about. Everyone knows about influencers, micro influencers. That's not new. And founder led growth is like, that's almost like, just kind of like, you've got to have that.

Lillian: It's kind of like you need to drink milk or you need, you need calcium. It's, it's one of those things you just have to have, you can't get around it. But, but these other more like really like discreet. Ways of like in high, high reward, low risk ways of driving traffic, targeted traffic. I love it.

Mehmet: Yeah. So we're almost done. Yeah. And so [00:38:00] bear with me. Just, I have like, I love it. We got to

Lillian: talk so much about marketing.

Mehmet: Yeah, it's my favorite topic also as well. So, how do you see, you know, with, we talked about Gen AI and AI in general, but if you want to imagine, you know, some of the functions that a CMO would usually do, right?

Mehmet: So with the rise of AI, So how, you know, the responsibilities, the tasks, you know, the planning is being affected by, you know, the, the generative AI in, in particular?

Lillian: Well, you can get so much I mean, there are a few things going on. First of all, even as a single person, just using LLMs from a research perspective and from the reasoning perspective, one person could get so much more built, and like, [00:39:00] more quickly, more efficiently.

Lillian: Like, if you build a strategy without an LLM, I'll know I'm helping you with the research and stuff. It's just going to take 10 times as long. Okay. Now I would not say, okay, if you're not a marketing expert, do not try and use LLMs to build a strategy because you're not going to, you're not going to be able to see the big glaring problems that the, the huge potholes that you're going to fall into if you don't know, actually have the underlying expertise.

Lillian: And I think it's like that with any other field. S are applicable. Right. But that's as a single person. I'm actually working in with a, I'm a go to market partner with a organization called Ready ai, and they've built Wow. So powerful. Yeah. If you have startups start, they have built a strategy development engine using clay.

Lillian: Mm-Hmm. and, you see the back end of this thing and it's like, I really never saw anything like this before, but then I understood when Damien, [00:40:00] because Damien could worked on with me on a market target market selection. And he's got an MBA and what he came back was like, 10, 10 reports, like, like hundreds of reports.

Lillian: He's like, well, these recommendations are based on hundreds of reports. Cause I'm like, I want a few links. I want to see like the data and he like, oh, well, there's hundreds of reports. So I'll just pick like the top 10. And I'm like, how did he get a hundred? Cause he, in one day for not, not that much money now, like, how did he do that?

Lillian: And then I understood he was using clay. Once I got in with ready AI and saw what they had built, he was using clay. And it's like, no, you're not going to go a person who doesn't know. The ins and outs of go to market should not go in and try to build their own strategy doing something like that because they're not Really?

Lillian: It's risky. You're not going to see like executives, people who do have that deep background, like you, like me, like Damien, it's like you're the amount of the potential that you have, how much more you can [00:41:00] grow, how it's like, okay, you have 100 percent of your capacity, right? And then you just amplify that by.

Lillian: You know, by 10 or by 100, cause you've got your reasoning capacity along with LLMs reasoning engine along with LLMs, like layers and layers of research capacity with LLMs all operationalized in a plug and play solution. I mean, it's on freaking believable, but I'm still not at all worried. I just see that like AI is just, you know, this is the future.

Lillian: And that doesn't mean there isn't. Like you still need to know what you're doing. You still need people that really know what they're doing. So it's pretty cool

Mehmet: good so, Lilian, I know like, you know, we we we discussed a lot of things today but from and please like do it from Marketing slash ai perspective if you want to leave the audience today with like You know, kind of call it final word of [00:42:00] wisdom.

Mehmet: Call it, you know, something as a call to action from your side. You know, related to all what we discussed today, especially I want you to be talking to fellow founders, fellow entrepreneurs. So what would be, you know, your one piece of advice?

Lillian: My one piece of advice to fellow founders and entrepreneurs. Would be to adopt a strategic approach to all of your activities. So, when we're in our business, it's very easy to see the shiny objects and to get into having your team throw spaghetti at the wall and see if something sticks, that's the natural tendency, but right now is a time in.

Lillian: It's, I don't want to use the word unprecedented, but there's never been a time like this. Right. So we have extraordinary growth potential at our fingertips. There are a lot of really smart people out there that know how to, how [00:43:00] to leverage that and are, they're getting their hockey stick growth. Right.

Lillian: And so it's like, it's a matter of like leveraging technology, leveraging your expertise, the expertise of your team, and really like making sure that whatever you invest your energy. Your time, your money into that. It's going to be stuff that is going to really move the needle because there isn't a time to mess around.

Lillian: And especially if you're in AI startup, AI innovation space you really, really need to work on like, okay, I don't want to preach, but like, I see this huge bubble coming. I think everyone does. So it's like, what's the moat here? How are, how are we defensible, especially with AI wrapper startups? How is this defensible?

Lillian: We talked about Castmagic earlier. Castmagic is a wrapper startup, but they're actually, I think they're defensible. I think what they built is pretty fricking cool because it's like, yeah, it's built on, it's built through APIs. They didn't build their own LLM or anything, which they shouldn't have, [00:44:00] but it's specific enough that it's, and it's unique enough that someone can't just come in and, and like replicate what they built overnight.

Lillian: Maybe they could. What I'm saying is you want to like, Especially if you're building data and AI startups, generative AI startups, really, really focus on the market, target market selection and product strategy to differentiate and build that moat, because it's just crazy. I don't think we have any idea what's coming next, even in the next five years.

Mehmet: Know, I can't stress. You know enough the last word you said like I remember when I started the podcast I used to ask And gen ai was very new at that time. So I still was asking Okay, like what are your expectations for the coming, you know, five ten years and now I don't ask this question anymore because You know with gen ai and you know all what's happening around us So barely I can predict maybe six months to one year from now not more.

Mehmet: So, to your point lillian lillian final thing where people can you know You Get the book. Get in [00:45:00] touch. Oh, thanks. Yeah. So,

Lillian: oh, definitely. So the book comes out and on January 5th, it'll hit the shelves all over the world is from Singapore to San Francisco data and AI imperative designing strategies for exponential growth.

Lillian: And that is by Wiley. And then other than that I'm on LinkedIn, Lily and Pierson, and my website is data mania. com. And yeah, I'm always open to just having conversation with conversations with cool founders and trying to see where I can help. So I'm, you know, open to conversations, love networking, getting to know people.

Lillian: And I really hope that you and I can actually develop and get to build a working relationship over time because I've really enjoyed this conversation. And thank you for having me on.

Mehmet: Oh, it was my pleasure, Lillian, and for the audience, you don't have to go and search. You will find, you know, all the links in the show notes, and I will make sure also they are in the description [00:46:00] on YouTube also as well.

Mehmet: Lillian, I really myself enjoyed because for me, every episode I record with someone like yourself who has this, you know, Long years of experience and deep knowledge in their field. So I learned a lot. So for me, so for me Yeah, so it's also like a great, lesson for me a masterclass from from you also to the audience and to myself Of course, and as I say always thank you, you know for for you know Sharing all the insights and to the audience if you just discovered this podcast by luck Thank you for passing by if you like it, please give us a thumb up You Share it with your friends and colleagues.

Mehmet: And if you are one of the people who keeps coming back, thank you for doing so. Keep sending me your feedbacks, your suggestions, you know, anything you want to ask about the show, you want to, you know, forward a question to one of the guests, feel free to do that. I really appreciate it. So thank you very much for tuning in.

Mehmet: We'll meet again very soon. Thank you. Bye bye.

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