In this episode, Jo Shilton interviews Anna Mountford, the founder of Green Wall Marketing, about her experience with AI in marketing. They discuss the impact of AI on creativity, the challenges of being a woman in a male-dominated industry, and the potential of AI in various sectors. They also touch on the ethical considerations of AI and the importance of continuous learning.

Takeaways

• AI can enhance creativity and improve marketing strategies when used effectively.
• Women in business face challenges in male-dominated industries, but having supportive mentors and managers can make a difference.
• AI has both positive and negative implications, and it is important to use it responsibly and ethically.
• Continuous learning is crucial in the rapidly evolving field of AI and marketing.
• There is a need for more women to be involved in AI and to have their voices heard in the industry.

Find Anna on LinkedIn

Green Wall Marketing

00:00 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

Hello and welcome to Women WithAI. It is my immense pleasure today to welcome a fractional marketer to the show who's passionate about building and growing strong brands and starting to look into how AI is changing the way we all work. But before we jump into the podcast for our chat and what she's learning about AI, let me tell you a little bit more about her.

00:16

Anna Moutford is the founder of Green Wall Marketing. She's a digital marketing specialist with over 20 years experience within the telecoms, finance, energy and software as a service sectors, putting customer experience first whilst being aware of business needs. Anna is fantastic at producing effective, successful and tailored marketing. She's also the founder of the Bath Cellar, selling award-winning champagne and wine from around the globe direct to customers, businesses and corporates. And full disclosure. We went to art college together in Bath and have known each other for well over 20 years. She's one of my very best friends, so I imagine today's podcast will be more like two old pals having a natter about what we think AI is, rather than offering any expert insight, unless it's from Anna talking about what she does at Greenwall Marketing. So, without much further ado, anna Mountford, welcome to Women with AI, thank you, Jo.

01:04 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

What a great intro. It's a pleasure to be here.

01:08 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

Oh, it's fantastic to have you here with all your plants behind you. I love that green wall, but anyone that hasn't known you for as long as I have, maybe you can give us a quick introduction to what you do and what you know about AI.

01:21 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

I would like to say that it is a great pleasure to be able to talk to someone that you've known longer than you haven't known them, and I think it is so between us both. We've known each other, as Jo said, for ages and as women in business, we've seen each other's careers flourish and grow and, you know, take off and go down different avenues, which I think leads us nicely into AI and where we both are in marketing as we are at the moment. Greenwall Marketing was founded probably only the earlier this year. It was sort of a passion that I decided to do that. Actually going into fractional marketing means I get to dabble in loads more different industries and loads more different sort of variants. So I work with companies, as Jo says, from SaaS through to telco, through to banking and finance, and I've been lucky enough in my career now to be able to look at all those different verticals that you have within business and be able to effectively market products and services through them. Sick.

02:27 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

I mean, yeah, I'm in awe of you and what you've done and how you set this up. Oh, you have to say that no, I think it's fantastic, and we were just talking earlier, weren't we, about the name Greenwall Marketing, and you had come up with loads of other ones, and then it's just yeah, your background For those that are listening on podcasts rather than viewing it online.

02:44 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

So you can check it out on LinkedIn. You can find me there, but behind me sits a wall of green which I cultivated during the pandemic. Funny enough, because, as we all know, it was quite a miserable time for us all, and if we remember the one hour a day we were allowed outside to see some greenery and experience some fresh air, I decided to bring the outside in, so it's. It's been growing in both senses, um, for a long time, and to call the company Greenwall Marketing just was a really nice fit. Um. You know, my brand and myself were very much into sustainability and tailoring marketing, you know, to different approaches, so it was just a nice fit in the end.

03:29 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

And we just started talking about AI, didn't we? The other day? It was just on a random phone call conversation because you'd been to what is it you go to, like marketing meetups in Bath, and was there one on AI? Is that what I do?

03:43 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

I do. So I do a lot of networking. I find when you work at home and working on your own, networking is obviously one of the key places, one where I get to meet contacts for business, but also because you get social interaction and knowledge sharing that you have. So I've been to one in my local marketing group called the Marketers of Bath and there was a presentation on it from a great company, um, who were talking about AI and the journey AI specifically has on marketing, which, um, I suppose I've known quite a lot about. But to hear it put out onto like a slide presentation was actually quite interesting because you think you sort of move in your own bubble but actually there's so many people out there that are also learning and are at different lengths of the journey in their learning on AI, so some people are very fearful of it and then there's some people that I would guess super knowledgeable on it and the different types of avenues marketing and AI will lead together into the future, I suppose does that make sense.

04:50 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

Yeah, where do you sit and all that are you? Are you using it? Are you scared of it? You know it's the whole. Gonna take on jobs or?

04:57 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

yeah, I use it, I use it every day all the time, uh, just to structure technical blogs, to structure technical content. I think what you can't take away from is the human impact that you have then on that content and copy. But it's great for talking about highly technical things, which I do talk about a lot of highly technical software packages and things like that that I don't necessarily know a huge amount on. But what so I would say I'm probably so they produce this sort of timeline about those people that are fresh and new and don't really use it at all, to those people that I suppose are the developers and the heavy users and the constructors and the makers of AI. So they know it.

05:41

06:07 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

remember we both had the phones from uh, we had like numbers that were just one different yeah, one digit different phone numbers.

06:14 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

But even back then people were like, oh, you must be like an expert, but, I truly believe that digital and marketing and technology moves so fast. It's such a rapid place that is. Can anybody really call themselves an expert when everything's moving and transitioning so quickly? So currently, at the moment, looking at someone else's view, I'm probably mid in my journey of AI related knowledge, but I mean, there's still so much to learn. And then when you get to the end, there is no end, because then that evolves into something even more creative and, you know, aspirational in terms of what will be the next technology you know from phones. Then we moved to like having internet on the phones and then, oh my god, doing the video call on phones. You know, that was all like so intrusive, I'm gonna turn the camera off, yeah.

07:03 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

And then and it was just now. I think it's weird, like if I speak to my mum and dad, they haven't got like I'm like why are you facetiming me? I want to see what. What's it want to see? Do you remember being like this?

07:13 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

oh, and you know, I don't know that's, I don't want them to see inside my house. Um, and it's just, I think it's just the natural progression of like technology and where it will bring and where it will be. So, um, it's. It is absolutely fascinating in terms of where marketing will stand in terms of ai, and I did pose a question when I was there.

07:34

I was like where do you see the role of marketing within a company from a commercial perspective being in five years time?

07:42

Because, say, copywriters or content creators, potentially, with ai churning so much content and copy out at such high speed, will we just become the orchestrators or the manipulators of an ai tool in order to get the best out of it, rather than sitting there and for lengthy times and you know, writing reams of copy that used to take days, and it's the same for imagery as well. I mean, there'll be a time I should think not very far away if it's not being done already where you could create in two hours hundreds of individually created assets that are personalised in a heartbeat for every single member of the audience that you're looking at. And then where does that lead creative people in that stream of AI and marketing. I think there will always be that very top level of thought leaders and thinkers of that creativity, but maybe the roles will merge further down from those thought leaders. But yeah, I, yeah, it's. It's a crazy thought to think where we'll be and you know, ai is evolving so rapidly.

08:48 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

I think if I was talking to someone yesterday and I like sometimes even the people that are developing it or inventing it don't know how it's doing it or don't know what what it's doing, no, and and where it's going to go, and it is changing everything and it's kind of it's here to stay. There's no point being scared of it. You've got to embrace it and you're right, it is changing everything and it's kind of it's here to stay. There's no point being scared of it. You've got to embrace it and you're right, it's changing those jobs and it's going to change how we do marketing. But it's not about taking the jobs, it's just having to change.

09:14

So you know if you've got the tools to do it. So you need to learn how to use the tools and how to ask the right prompts or how to it's doing, and then it sort of that's the bit that I keep sort of coming across with thinking about is well, how are you, how are we shaping it? Are we making sure that it's doing what we want to do? Because it does, it's not, it's not a, you know, he or she, it's an, it it's a thing, it's a, it's a tool and it's only learning from what we put into it. Because the other day, you know, I use chat, gpt and, as you say, like putting in and helping to structure things or do whatever, and you know that it could hallucinate I'd asked it to do a something about me and it just made it up and I was like, well, obviously that's not true, uh, but you know you kind of have to, but it could be well, yeah, exactly, it could well.

09:56

That's the thing. If you, if I like, if I leave it there, then that becomes true because it's there, whereas you know you have to go back and go. Well, no, that isn't right, it's this. But that's the thing I don't know are people, when you use it if it gets anything wrong, like because it has like the thumbs up, thumbs down, doesn't it? Or you can say do it again, or I sort of I've started saying go back. You know that's not quite right. Can you do it more like this or that? I don't know. It's weird because we're teaching it, but what are we teaching it and who's teaching it?

10:22 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

It's just spinning the prophecy. You know what we want to put in it. I mean, I remember when, many years ago, there was only really Wikipedia. Do you remember? Yeah, Ask.

10:35 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

James or something.

10:36 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

And it relied on other people to input the content, and people would you know. You obviously had to be a specific Wikipedia author, I think, at the time, but people would overwrite other people's writing so then how would you ever know what is correct?

10:54

Yeah, what is the truth? Yeah, yeah, do you remember? I mean, we're talking, I don't know, like it was like the first ever real like thing experience. I don't have a working environment where people were using. It was used a lot by the tech people that were talking amongst themselves about tech solutions and, um, you know, guides and tools and things like that, and overwriting each other's stuff, saying, no, this is correct, this is correct, and then it becomes almost like a beast that what is the single voice of truth? In that way it's, it's crazy. But AI, as you say, you get the fact that you know what, what is true?

11:26 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

yeah, yeah and yeah, if you, yeah, if you, if you build it, they will come. If you write it, does it become true?

11:33 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

and you know we talked a bit about I think it's gonna be like gender stereotypes on it and yeah, that is.

11:37 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

That just drives me mad the whole. If you put in a cv, a male cv, and it will, you know, give you all these like opportunities or things you could do, and if you put in the same cv but it's got a woman's name instead, you're going to get a whole load of sort of different suggestions, or it was. Yeah, what was it? I mentioned it before on one of the other episodes. It was doing someone's review at the end of the year and it's like if you put in, oh, john has done all this, everything that someone's done, oh, yeah, john's amazing, he's done all this. You know you should get a pay rise and you put it in and you say it's jane and it's like, oh well, she's just about, you know, done what she needed to. I don't know. It's just that that vision it's got, because all the data that's being fed into it up to now kind of is skewed, because you know, if you've got more men doing a certain role than you have women, then that's what the ai thinks is normal, because it's just learning.

12:28 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

You know what we're teaching, I suppose, from a societal shift, though, isn't it? I mean, if I look, I mean I've always worked in and around the sort of IT industry, which is why I guess maybe I've become so naturally orientated towards IT businesses, but, like, predominantly are them, they're a male dominated industry, so those early adopters of some of this software will all have potentially been men, and I don't know, and I wouldn't like to say, like, who it is that creates the back-end ai, you know who creates those servers of those big data that's sitting in the back, but I would hazard a guess that the majority of them would be male.

13:07 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

Yeah, that's maybe rash there, but yeah, no, I think that's what we need to get women into tech and keep them there, so that it is equally balanced. You know, you've got yeah it's not just. You know, it's not like the father of ai, it's like the mother of ai. You need, like both, yeah, to be like feeding into it um you know, there's a wider societal issue though.

13:30 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

I mean, I've got a 13 year old daughter who is very bright and very clever and, you know, try and get her to do any sort of coding or any sort of technical stuff is nigh on impossible, because everything that's being shoved at her through, you know, her social media, through her ipads, through her she's using her phone, is all targeted at women having this uber-filtered life where she needs to follow fashion and get herself a proper filter, you know, on her beautiful young skin.

14:05

You know where I'm like gosh, you don't need it, You're 13 years old. Yeah, stunning. You see the people in the world that you actually. But then we were the same. You know, I get. This is a not a sudden issue. We were brought up in the 90s when we had the anorexic skeletal models kate lost heroin yeah, we were to. You know, try and bend ourselves into the will and if you didn't conform, then you just felt terrible about yourself the whole time. The low slung hipster jeans little spaghetti strap vests?

14:36 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

yeah, it is, and that maybe that is just part of growing up.

14:40

But then is it just part of growing up because we let it and because that's what happens and because you know my niece is a 11 and 8 and just worry, like you know, 11 year old's about to start big school and it's just all that pressure, it's just, you know it's all going to change and they're, you know, going to go from being carefree to, yeah, a young woman. And how to navigate that? I mean, how do you, how have you navigated being in a male-dominated environment like how? I mean because I think back to the early days when we both started our career. You wouldn't get the comments and things that happened then?

15:17 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

no, you, you wouldn't. And actually I would say that there has been a shift in those types. Maybe it's because I'm getting older. There's been a shift in those types of comments and inappropriate behaviour. Think in the past 10 years there has been a shift, but just genuinely. I think that, being in the IT industry and I looked young for my age as well, we both did back then.

15:43 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

We both still do, anna, I'm sure we've only known each other for 10 years. I still get ID'd. I don't really.

15:50 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

I'm sure we've only known each other for 10 years. I still get ID'd. I don't really I don't get it. But you know, I think I was always considered too young to be in the industry, so I was treated quite unfairly in some circumstances in some businesses. But I had and I was very fortunate to have a couple of really really good managers and bosses that saw the talent in me.

16:17

Were they male and female bosses? They were male, yeah, good, yeah, um, and pushed me forward. And I don't I genuinely don't think I'd be where I am today with the knowledge that I have if it wasn't for them, um, always wanting to do better and, you know, even correcting me, you know, in terms of my language, because I think, as women, we are much more passive in our language and we're not as aggressive in the tone. So, you know, I remember an incident when, um, I was a PA and I'd spoken to my male boss, who was one of my very good mentors, and I'd say, oh, I'd be apologetic that I was calling him. Oh, I'm so sorry, it's, it's only me, it's only me, I'm just calling because I need to speak to you about this meeting. I've got to book marrying him when I was what? 20, so very, very young, and he would just turn around to me repeatedly and say you never need to say it's only you, it's never just only you. You know, you just need to say it's you that's amazing advice.

17:12 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

That's what we need to kind of instil in all these.

17:15 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

It is it really young girls, um, and you know it, it was a very male-dominated environment but and always has been, I mean, as is, I suppose, quite a lot of this sort of digital sphere in, even in major industries like finance, there's still I think it's still quite a boys club in terms of the way that you know it's represented. Um, marketing, I think it's different marketing in its own entities and usually they tend to run on two different types of group functions, but marketing is much more women heavy. Um, in the lower ranks I should say yeah, but to aspire to get higher up is incredibly difficult. And then, with the juggle of you know gosh, I have a child. Will that be detrimental to my career? Because, you know, suddenly, if your child is sick, you have to leave.

18:10 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

And that does fall to the mum, doesn't it Rather? You know, just Still sadly, Stereotypically, that is what happens, but yeah.

18:19 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

So, yeah, being in a male-dominated world is interesting, but yeah, you know it's not. I've had some female bosses that have been equally terrible. You know it's not specific to male in itself, yeah.

18:36 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

It's tough, yeah, it's like having the right person for the job, isn't it? But it's. You know, everyone has different strengths and some people do like doing something more than another, but it's just being allowed to. That's the thing. It shouldn't be that. Oh yeah, you're a woman, so you can't work in tech, or you can't do this, or you shouldn't be at that level.

18:54 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

That's the kind of you. In your career, you step changed, didn't you? You went from quite a sales oriented background and then you studied marketing, sort of midway through, and almost did like a u-turn in your career, didn't you? Which was amazing to witness, because you suddenly almost like this is what I want to do, this is where I know I need to be, and you just did it, which was just amazing. I just fell into mine.

19:16 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

I'll be honest, there's never ever isn't up through the ranks.

19:19 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

I think it's yeah but, you know it's taking time, but yeah, yours, yours was a conscious choice. Yeah.

19:26 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

I wanted to be the person on the other end of the phone, rather than yeah, yeah, telling them why they should advertise in Cooler Innovation magazine.

19:35 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

Oh, do you remember? Oh, the Cooler Innovation. Is that still going to the Cooler?

19:39 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

Innovation? I don't know. I mean I hope it is. It's a very niche industry and I did get quite expert on technicalities, on the technical reasons behind why you'd either have one plumbed in a water cooler or one with a bottle on top, and which countries prefer which and why do you know?

19:53 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

We've all had those jobs. Though, we've all had those jobs. I mean, do you remember when we lived together and I was working at vodafone?

20:01 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

yeah, oh yeah, it's vodafone, not virgin.

20:03 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

Well, I did work at Virgin. I worked for vodafone selling phones, so on the shop floor selling in their bath store yeah um, yeah, I don't know how I survived that job.

20:14

It's just a complete nightmare. But I think we all have them. We all have those jobs that we look back on and actually some some of the game changes. I would say yeah, um, and throughout, you know your career. I think there are times where you consciously choose that this isn't the right path for you and for me.

20:31

I had almost a moment of clarity when leaving Lloyds Banking Group. It was at the time I'd been there five years. I've just come back off maternity leave, I think. Just something just snapped in me, I think, and just went. You know, I don't think this is the right career for me. I don't want to be pushing people down this path of debt anymore. I want to do pushing people down this path of debt anymore. I want to do something more sustainable and more need, I suppose, to the community. Um, so I made the conscious choice myself to leave and I think that was possibly one of the most empowering sensations I think I've ever felt from being a woman in business um, just to be like, no, this isn't right, and not to have to worry about actually the the consequences of that, because actually you know in your heart that what you're doing is for the best. I think that's what people need to do enough. I know a lot of people that are stuck in jobs that they hate.

21:23

Yeah any job that makes you cry, yeah it's not a good sign, basically no, that's my mantra for yeah, going forward, yeah if you feel like crying in a job. It's really not right and I'm not one for quitting or giving up and I'll always try and bend and move things. But yeah, I think it's um super interesting to put your gut instincts on it.

21:44 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

Yeah, evolving yeah, as you have as well really inspiring and water coolers and water coolers to yeah magazine space wasn't there, or something, and that's why I started getting interested in ai, though, because, for the work I do at connecting cambridge here, it's about smart projects. It's about, you know, putting signals on or sensors on traffic signals, and how can you predict how people are going to move around the streets? You know people going to cross the road, where is the traffic going to go if you close this road or do that, and it's, that was all that sort of automation, all that predicting, and that suddenly it's like, oh, that's AI. And then suddenly everyone's talking about AI and it's like, yeah, well, that's, that's interesting, and I just want to learn. That's the thing I kind of.

22:27 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

This is the start of it's always a learning, a learning journey, I think, and I think if you stop learning, then suddenly it becomes, everything becomes very boring, doesn't it? And that's the beauty, I think, of digital marketing, the evolution of it yeah I mean, and also data.

22:40

I mean, as you're saying, you can start mapping people's journeys, what they take um, and data is becoming more available and more readily available to everybody in every business, go4 coming in and stuff like that. I mean, it's just, you've got it all at your fingertips to be able to really personalise those customer journeys through. It's just yeah, I'm with you, I think, and that's what empowers me about AI.

23:04 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

I mean there are dark sides to AI which we know about, yeah, deep fakes which we won't dwell on.

23:11 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

Yeah, deep fakes, you know, and even like the augmented reality of sort of photos, just in general. So the stuff that my daughter's seeing as we were talking about, yeah, these uber filtered quiet people, are they even real? No, are even real. No, I'm not sure, but it's so difficult to tell and it's so difficult to tell her that's not a real person.

23:35 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

Yeah, because why is it there? Why are we aspiring to it anyway? Yeah, and how so it's? Yeah, it's education, isn't it? I mean, that's yeah. That's the scary side, that scares that scares me and there's dark things.

23:49 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

You know. I was reading on the BBC News the other day about somebody using the dark web to create terrible pictures of children. You know, and yeah, there's some horrible things out there, but you know equally. Then you read on the flip side, how AI in the medical industry is to help, you know, find different cancers that are missed by the naked eye so that's the good.

24:12 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

Someone the other day said guns don't kill people, people do. And it's like AI is a tool and you know you need to use it for good but you're always going to get the awful people in the world yeah, you will, you will, but there is so much.

24:30 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

There's so much that it can do. I mean, I know that I just think in general, because obviously I work with a lot of industries and a lot of companies, but I think there's a lot of nervousness around some of the creative industries about using ai, that they feel like it might impinge on their creativity.

24:45 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

So, yeah, but like you said at the beginning, if you want it can make you more creative? You still need that human element, the human person. Yeah, with it. I think so.

24:55 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

I was um, looking up, I was actually. I read quite a lot. I still read avidly, so I was looking at them about the k-pop in Korea started using AI to basically construct some of their music videos and stuff like that. There's been a bit of an outcry about whether that's the right thing to do or not from a creative artist point of view, but they said exactly the same thing. They are trying to sort of collaboratively work with ai to produce the very best music lyrics videos, because they all also use it for lyrics. Because they're churning out k-pop. They're churning out albums which usually take two years to create in nine months because the need and this is what I suppose the hunger for their music is so great. Every nine months they're churning out a new album which you know, I know we used to have to wait years between the Spice Girls albums god, I know, yeah, and then probably be sat there trying to record it from the radio press record.

25:56

Oh, I've still got my spice girls id card somewhere how are you so have I and I have the ring. Do you remember going? Girl power, girl power. So yeah, I mean the uses of AR are amazing and what can and can be done with it. I mean also AI, as we know, is a massively hot topic right now.

26:17

Everybody wants to be talking about AI, don't they? And use it in some way, because they know that it will give them the kudos from a commercial point of view, from their company's ratings and their brand kudos. But I was reading a statistic the other day that says something like 40% of companies that um startup under the guise of AI startups, um don't actually use AI at all in any sense. Wow. And because of that lack of knowledge and lack of understanding of what they are, they find it very, very difficult to market themselves because they've pitched themselves out as an AI product but then they haven't got the backup to actually using AI in its proper, true form. That a lot of companies will pinch bits of ai from. You know chat, gpt or you know those other different industries that they've got out there um. So yeah, it's, but everybody wants to talk about it and if you're not talking about it, then you're not going to get the leads, the sales, the commercial benefit from it, because that's what you've done, you've educated yourself about using it.

27:28 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

So then you can go to businesses and you can, you can advise people because you I imagine you'd say you know that you use it.

27:36 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

I think that's the other thing being up front, saying you are using it because you know how to use it, and there's the benefit you know you can become an expert, I think from a solopreneur a point of view as well, is something that you need to be careful of writing into contracts that you sign um, because unless you're on a closed ai system I think we talked a bit about this before um, you have to bear in mind that anything that you're running through chat gp to any other ai tool that you've got there, the ai system and servers that sit behind are learning from that. So it can be quite well, it has to. It can be quite sort of positive, but it can be quite detrimental, I think as well. So it can be detrimental if you start putting like customer data through that.

28:20

You should never be yeah, I know, because you mentioned this to me and I was like, oh my god, I just hadn't anything, I hadn't even thought about that and you know there's a lot, a lot of um, closed network industries like the you know the military banking people like that that need to be hyper aware of, of people using ChatGPT to stop running comms or whatever they're doing through it top secret information out there and that those types of injuries do tend to try and build their own um on-site sort of firewalled in sort of own ai systems which are out there or you can buy one box on the shelf um. But I think it can be good. So I've had a um. I've been working with a client who was struggling a little bit with leads and so I came in. We worked on an SEO and various other different tools that we've got out there and because I was running through stuff using their company name and talking about what they did and things like that, the system in the background was learning it and they actually started getting some leads through that.

29:25

Because then when the other people are then searching for whoever it is you're working for and the benefits and you know the requirements that they have, your company will then pop up on it. So it can be a quite a positive thing if you start talking about it and using it and using it on behalf of a company, whatever it can actually be really positive. And from a sales and marketing perspective, it can be manipulated quite well for that, obviously, you don't want to be putting anything personal, secure data through it. But if you want to build awareness of, say, a top or be in a competitive environment with test automation software, then, um, you want to be part of that voice, you want to be part of those people that are searching for different products and you want your company to be ranked within those people that are writing blogs or even just talking about it or getting snippets, and be part of that comparison and that top level that talk about. So there are some positives about it.

30:26 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

There's lots of positives. Yeah, I see, I've learned something from you today, so that's, yeah, excellent. I'm sure I learned from you quite a lot.

30:35 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

Every day's a learning day. I like to think it is.

30:37 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

Every day's a school day, so if I, who would you, who'd be a good future guest for me to have on? Is there anyone that you'd like to kind of learn from, or what? What sort of avenue do you think I should be going down with AI?

30:53 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

yeah, to get sort of experts in too big pardon.

30:56 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

Well, it's women with ai, so I was mainly going for like the women, but oh, do you think so? Well, I mean, we did say at the beginning I speak to, yeah, men and women, so it'd be good to get some different viewpoints on it. Yeah, because you know I'm all about, you know the bias and you know how women are impacted, like that.

31:17 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

From my perspective, I think it is difficult to find women that are solely in AI. We scurry around in the background but I, you know, I can definitely look up some women I know definitely use it. So there's a lady I know that is chief of sort of women in gaming. So gaming is an industry vertical that we don't really hear about very much and it's highly creative and quite difficult to get into. So you know, there are lots of people that are out there doing their own thing in their own different, I suppose, silos, but you just need to try and find them and eke them out. But she's a real ambassador. I'll send you her name for that.

31:55 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

But where can, where can people find you? What's the best way to get in touch?

31:59 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

Well, the best way is to find me on LinkedIn. To be honest, um, it's where I'm most prolific. Um, as you know, you can find my website as well greenwallmarketing.com. Um, but yeah, linkedin, just anna mountford, you can't miss me. I think that's. That's the key to it, but I know it gets much worse. I do know loads of men in AI, but okay well, we can uh?

32:22 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

we can pick that up after this the sadness of it all.

32:27 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

Not enough women talking about it.

32:33 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

But that's what I want to change that women are talking about it and using it and making it better.

32:36 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

And I just say to any women out there you know that's juggling the load of everything that we do as women that it's never too late to learn. There's some amazing courses out there on ai um, you can pick up a few free ones. I mean, as they said, you can learn a lot of stuff for free on the internet through ai. I love it.

33:01 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

That's great advice. I love it fantastic.

33:04 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

Thank you so much it's been a real pleasure, jo, and long where we live, another 25 years chattering around the next technology that will come on our horizons.

33:15 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

Yeah, and see how your daughter's using it my niece is yeah scary.

33:19 - Anna Mountford (Guest)

She'll be teaching me.

33:20 - Joanna Shilton (Host)

Yeah, well, thank you very much. Thanks everybody, thanks, see you soon. Bye.