The AI Revolution isn’t just about creating new tools – it’s about transforming how we learn, understand, and interact with information. And that’s exactly why NotebookLM has become the darling of the AI research community. As someone who’s spent decades observing how technology reshapes human behavior, it’s been fun for me to experiment with this new application.

Here’s what’s really going on: We’re drowning in information. Between podcasts, blog posts, and the endless stream of developments on social media, staying current is like drinking from a firehose. NotebookLM isn’t just another note-taking app – it’s an AI-powered research companion that actually understands context and helps connect the dots.

It’s as close to getting a brain extension as you’ll see (at least for now!).

What makes NotebookLM different is its ability to act as both a librarian and a study buddy. When you’re deep in research mode, it doesn’t just store your notes – it actively helps you understand them. It can summarize complex papers, explain difficult concepts, and even highlight connections between different pieces of research that you might have missed. This is game-changing for anyone navigating the complex world of AI development.

But there’s something even more profound happening here. In all my years of studying digital transformation, I’ve noticed that the tools that truly stick are the ones that feel natural – that work the way our brains work. NotebookLM gets this right. It’s not trying to force users into a rigid system. Instead, it adapts to your thinking style, helping you build knowledge in a way that feels organic and intuitive.

NotebookLM — But wait, there’s more!

A few months ago, NotebookLM users discovered they could use the voice mode to command the app to have a discussion with itself, something similar to a podcast episode. A few people have even produced AI-fueled podcasts with synthetic hosts!

While I have no plans to do this with The Marketing Companion, I did turn to NotebookLM to help me in a pinch this week. My podcast is now in its thirteenth year, and remarkably, I’ve never missed an episode. But this week was close!

My human co-host became too sick to record, and out of time, I turned to NotebookLM for help. The new episode provides extraordinary value in two ways: It’s a mesmerizing demonstration of AI voice capabilities. But what’s really cool is that I uploaded my upcoming new book “Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI World” and asked the “hosts” to review the book.

The result was more than I expected, and I think you’ll love this mind-bending podcast episode. If you haven’t experienced NotebookLM in action, this will get your head spinning. Ready? All you have to do is click here:

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 304

Please support our sponsor, who brings you this amazing episode.

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customer to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence in order to strengthen their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post A mind-bending demonstration of AI and NotebookLM appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

So this is sort of weird.

Keith Jennings was a beta reader for my new book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World (coming Feb 2025!). He was so moved and inspired by the book that he’s decided to make radical changes to reimagine his career. And unfortunately, part of that means taking a sabbatical as a co-host of my podcast!

I obviously hate to see Keith take the year off but I’m excited for his future and proud that my book had this profound impact on him.

This prompted us to devote his final episode to a discussion of career transformation. Both of us have reinvented our careers almost continuously, and in this show we consider three questions that enable relevant introspection:

1. Working ON something is very different than working IN it. Are you working on your career or in it?
2. Are you working at the top of your license? Are you so busy that it is keeping you from working at the top of your potential?
3. Are you working at the edge of your abilities? Are you in a trench of career sameness? Just mailing it in? Maybe it is time to unlearn what you’ve learned.

Keith always brings a compassionate, human view to the field of marketing and this episode will definitely challenge you to transform your career. Just click here to listen:

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 303

Please support our sponsor, who brings you this amazing episode.

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customer to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence in order to strengthen their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post Are You Playing Small? Three Questions That Transform Your Career appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

What a world.

Who could have dreamed that parents would be fearful of a phone?

Is there any other conversation so vital right now? Should our children have a smart device? How do we monitor it? Keep our children sane and safe?

This is one of the essential topics Paul Roetzer and I cover in the new episode of The Marketing Companion. Paul has created a new resource.

In Kid Safe GPT for Parents, an online safety advisor to help parents understand and manage risks their kids may encounter online.

The GPT’s goal is to educate parents on the risks associated with digital interactions—from gaming to social media—and provide proactive guidance to help parents protect their children’s mental health and safety.

Kid Safe GPT offers practical advice, empathetic support, and tailored strategies to encourage healthy digital habits for families.

(And, it’s completely free to use with a ChatGPT account.)

In this show we also cover:

• AI literacy for marketers
• The future of art and creativity
• The magic of NotebookLM

You won’t want to miss this! Just click here:

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 302

Please support our sponsor, who brings you this amazing episode.

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customer to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence in order to strengthen their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post How to talk to your children about social media and AI appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I think most people have a love-hate relationship with LinkedIn. Even if you’re a fan, you’re probably annoyed by spam, AI-generated content and comments, and wonky algorithms. LinkedIn success is a challenge for us all.

Well, I have some good news for you. My recent conversation with LinkedIn guru Richard Bliss won’t make these problems disappear, but he does help you navigate the platform for a more productive and enjoyable experience.

In the latest episode of The Marketing Companion, Richard and I cover:

• The fundamental strategy for personal success
• The end of LinkedIn “pods”
• How LinkedIn is fighting AI and actually depressing the value of comments
• The truth about the success of video on the platform
• The growing power of collaborative articles
• The best strategy for LinkedIn newsletters
• … and much more.

For many years Richard has been my go-to advisor for all things LinkedIn and I know you’ll enjoy this Master Class in LinkedIn success strategy. Just click here to listen!

Just click here:

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 301

Please support our sponsor, who brings you this amazing episode.

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customer to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence in order to strengthen their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post An inside view of LinkedIn success appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I’ve given hundreds of speeches all around the world. Many kind people come up to me after my talks and thank me for some new insight or learning. But here is one phrase I’ve never heard: “I really loved that pie chart.”

People don’t normally respond to data and graphs during a speech. They don’t go back to the office telling people about the awesome Pareto Diagram they saw at an event.

People retain and share stories. People will come up to me, even years after an event, and tell me about one of my stories they fondly remember.

Every successful professional salesperson, marketer, or keynote speaker knows that effective storytelling is the best way to create a lasting, memorable, emotional connection with an audience. And when you craft that one story that truly captures your passion, expresses your values, and drives h0me your point in a memorable way, you have something special — the signature story.

In the latest episode of The Marketing Companion podcast, I cover the art and science of the signature story with Jay Acunzo. Jay has spent much of his career studying this craft and this is a fun and enlightening episode you won’t want to miss.

In this recording, each of us tells a favorite signature story and then dissects its essence to reveal why it works. In my story, I reveal why an audience literally gasped when they heard it for the first time.

You won’t want to miss this. You just have to click here to listen:

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 299

Please support our sponsor, who brings you this amazing episode.

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customer to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence in order to strengthen their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

The post The signature story: Your critical marketing asset appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Have you heard of social object theory? I think this is one of the most overlooked and even undiscovered marketing ideas. In fact, social objects are probably fueling a great deal of your marketing success!

Social objects come from a theory proposed by sociologist Karin Knorr Cetina. It creates a remarkably simple and useful ignition point for a word-of-mouth marketing effort.

You’re at a party, feeling awkward and out of place. Suddenly, you spot someone wearing a t-shirt from your favorite band. Bam! Instant connection. That t-shirt? It’s a social object – a conversation starter, a reason for people to interact.

Social objects are the glue that binds us together in the vast and often impersonal digital landscape. They’re the videos that pause our scrolling, the memes we can’t wait to share, the unique products we rave about to friends. A social object is anything that serves as a focal point for social interaction.

Without an object to trigger a topic, we’d have nothing of substance to talk about.

• When a stranger approaches someone and asks about their stylish shoes, the shoes are the social object.
• When people attend a marketing activation, the Olympics, or a music festival, the event is the social object.
• If you share this book with someone or post it on social media (yes, please!), the book becomes a social object.

Here’s where things get interesting. Many marketers view their content strategy as the starting point for a conversation, and it certainly can be. But if we broaden our marketing perspective to think of social objects as the “catalysts for connection,” we unlock endless new possibilities.

This is a topic worthy of more exploration, and Keith Jennings and I did just that on the new episode of The Marketing Companion. But we did more than discuss an idea. We started a master class on this idea as marketing strategy, unraveling critical components such as:

• gravitational pull
• critical mass
• emotional meaning

… which seem to be prerequisites for success. You won’t want to miss this extraordinary discussion!

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 297

The story behind the photo: I love the comedy/drama Lilyhammer and especially the hilarious chracter Torgeir with his quirky hat that says “I Heart Girls.” I just knew that some day I would be able to work this into a blog post! Certainly, this hat would be considered a social object!

Keith Jennings first wrote about social objects in this post.

Please support our sponsor, who brings you this amazing episode.

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now, any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide customers to their main message. We are here to support businesses in successfully navigating their digital presence and strengthening their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

The post Exploring the overlooked world of social objects appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

While AI is the greatest marketing story since the internet, it’s been earning a lot of bad press lately.

• Some analysts don’t see the possibility of an ROI commensurate with the billions being poured into the technology.
• Environmentalists decry the energy that is needed to maintain the systems.
• Lawsuits are flying everywhere, and deep fakes have become mainstream news.
• And on top of this, most people aren’t adopting the technology beyond “dabbling.”

It begins to make you think:: Does AI have a marketing problem?

A few weeks ago, I suggested that it was time for AI to embrace marketing. No tech company is telling the story of what AI is and where it’s going—the story is being interpreted by pundits, critics, and politicians.

Sure enough, both Google and Microsoft launched ad campaigns during the Olympics, but the ads were terrible. Google’s ad, in which a father encourages his daughter to use Gemini to write a letter to her favorite athlete, was particularly cringe-worthy. Writing a child’s letter? Is that the best you can do?

The AI marketing problem is one of many subjects I cover with Paul Roetzer on the new episode of The Marketing Companion. Paul is the founder of the Marketing AI Institute and always presents a measured view of the AI landscape. But we did address some hot-button issues like:

• The new AI “robber barons” knowing stealing content and IP to grow a business
• The HUGE copyright issue blocking adoption
• The special impact of Elon Musk
• The lack of preparation for possible AI-driven job loss
• AI and the U.S. election
• AI and marketing productivity

Does AI have a marketing problem? This episode will undoubtedly get you thinking. Click here to listen!

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 296

Resources mentioned in the show:

JobsGPT

Artificial Intelligence Show

MAICON

CharacterAI

Special thanks to guest appearances from RISE members who participated in the bonus Q&A session:

• Joeri Billast
• Brian Piper
• Dan Christ
• Sandee Rodriguez
• Roxana Hurduca?
• Bruce Scheer
• Scott Scowcroft

Please support our sponsor, who brings you this amazing episode.

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customer to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence in order to strengthen their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post Does Marketing Have an AI Problem or Does AI Have a Marketing Problem? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Last year I published a book about brand communities — a comprehensive view of one of the hottest trends around.

Even though the book is about a year old, SO MUCH has occurred and I thought it was time to reflect on the state of the nation of this vital trend.

In a new Marketing Companion podcast episode, Sara Wilson and I tackle some fascinating issues, including the role of community momentum in the current U.S. political climate, the unifying role of TikTok, startup marketing strategist, and big brand opportunities and challenges.

Whether you’re curious about brand community or already deeply involved, you’ll learn something from this discussion!

Just click here to listen!

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 295

Please support our sponsor, who brings you this amazing episode.

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customer to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence in order to strengthen their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post State of the Nation: Brand Communities appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

There was one moment in my career that was a defining line between having a human existence and having an inhuman corporate career.

Perhaps you don’t remember a time before cell phones and laptop computers, but it was glorious because you could hide from your boss. Now, I was a hard worker and a responsible employee, but before the digital revolution, if you needed a mental health break, you could simply hide for awhile. If I was on the road, the only way for my boss to contact me would be over a pay phone some place. So I could just be “out of reach” for a little bit if I needed a breather.

Then there was this moment that I will never forget. I received my first laptop computer, and a report was due to my boss. I was living in California, so I was working at night so he would have it when he arrived in his office on East Coast time. And I had strep throat. I was so sick I could hardly be upright but there I was, typing out this report at my kitchen table. And my wife said, “What are you doing? The doctor said you had to be in bed!”

And in that moment I realized there was no more hiding. There was no more personal independence. I was now tethered to technology, bound to my work in an unavoidable way that introduced a new level of stress to every moment of the day.

Some time in my 30s, I began to realize that I had to make different choices. I was working in a way that was making me sick and taking too much time away from my family. So I started removing myself from the rat race and began mindfully pursuing a path of personal peace. I made choices for contentment over money, and started working for myself 17 years ago.

I’ve written about this journey toward personal peace from time to time, including:

The single word that changed my life

Why I stopped growing my business

Mistakes along the way

The meaning of life

But I’ve never talked about this subject on a podcast … until now.

Mathew Sweezey has been on a similar journey, figuring out this tricky balance of peace and the natural stress that comes with work. On this new episode of The Marketing Companion, we compare notes and share our own progress and hurdles as we seek personal peace in a hectic world.

We cover

• The balance between financial security and freedom
• The elusive concept of contentment
• Meaningful work
• How we calm down in the face of stress
• Psychedelics

… and much more. Please click below to enjoy this wonderful conversation!

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 294

Please support our sponsor, who brings you this amazing episode.

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customer to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence in order to strengthen their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

Illustration courtesy Pexels.com

The post The pursuit of personal peace appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.