Scott Smith [0:00]
It's a pleasure to welcome you, Erika, to our Inside the Workflow podcast. Erika is the Chief Customer Officer at Storytell.ai. Erika has a really impressive background. She has taught writing at NYU and published in the New York Times and Vanity Fair, and now at Storytell, she's the visionary behind clean communication, a framework that helps foster authentic communications and connections through feedback. She runs the humane tech meetup in Silicon Valley, and she helps entrepreneurs and industry veterans explore how technology can support humanity. And with a background in content strategy and her role running FounderCulture, Erika has empowered countless entrepreneurs to tell their stories. So I'm excited to be able to ask her more about her story today. She's also passionate about ethical AI and excited to learn more about that. So excited to have you with us, Erika.
Erika Anderson [0:51]
Super excited to be here and, yeah, always, always a privilege to have what's become as close as we can get to in person, face-to-face time.
Scott Smith [1:01]
That's right. Seems like we're doing more and more of less and less of that so well. To get started, I would love to know... you've heard a lot of different advice over the years. Would love to hear your favorite piece of advice, or, like, one of your top favorite pieces of advice?
Erika Anderson [1:19]
Yeah, I… you know, as advice is funny, because it actually brings to mind a crowded auditorium with the author, Arundhati Roy, who's the author of The God of Small Things, and all these writers in the room were asking, you know, for her advice; she's like, “Here's what I do with advice. I don't give it, because sometimes it's really hard to match exactly the situation that someone else is in.” So I think a truism that really comes to mind around this is Henry Ford's Maxim, “Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right.” And to me, I think, especially, you know, as a co-founder with a startup and being in the startup space this whole, “am I coming from an I can or am I coming from an I can't?” Whether that's with customers, you know, with a deal with employees, with building out a process, etc. I just think it applies to so much and, and there's this whole, like, paradigm shift within, you know, building zero to one that's starting from scratch, and so David Foster Wallace's commencement speech back in 2005 at Kenyon, where he's got he's speaking about these two fish. So it's called This is Water. And so there's two young fish swimming along, and this older fish comes through, and he's like, Hey, how's the water? And they look at each other, and they're like, “What the hell is water?" And so how can we, like, realize the paradigm we're in in order to do a paradigm shift? So to me, these are the two big things, like, I can versus I can't. And start a land and, like, how, you know, like, oh, now I'm out of the box. Oh, no, I was still in a box. Now I'm really out of the box. And I was just talking about this with my co-founder and CEO DROdio, like, oh, it's really easy to bring a perfection mindset to startups and, like, that's a recipe for failure and versus a spirit of adventure, and this like out of the “boxness”. So to me, it's like, how can I approach the day with I can't and with a spirit of adventure and and be able to see the water.
Scott Smith [3:51]
That's beautiful. One of the things that my daughter, Ray's, kindergarten teacher always says to her when she says, “I can't or I can't do it," she always adds “[comma] yet”. So she'll say, like, “I can't do it yet.” And I reflect on that all the time, and I'm like, “wow, that kindergarten teacher really got to me with that one.” But those are beautiful. I think those are really great points. And I think it is especially helpful in a startup context, where everything is hard and you just have to do it. You have to try it, and you have to keep after it. So, that's really great. You seem like a great storyteller. So you've helped craft stories for companies and platforms of all these different sizes. Tell me a little bit how you use storytelling in your roles of leadership and then also just sort of, you know, maybe in peer or mentorship kind of activities.
Erika Anderson [4:43]
Yeah, I think I'll actually bring up something here that I know we've all heard about for at least, probably 20 years. But Simon Sinek, start with why I find incredibly valuable. We talk internally as we're like training our teams at Storytell about zooming out and then zooming in. So, like, what's the larger context? Why are we here? Why are we doing this? Whatever it is, you know, why are we interested in learning how to give each other helpful feedback? What is the point of that internal focus time and then going into the details and doing it in a way that's collaborative, and that's like, Hey, Scott, are you with me? Like, how is that landing for you? What? What's going through your mind as I bring this up? So how, whether I'm on a call with a customer or or with a direct report, like, how can it be a dialog, as opposed to, like, information delivery and, and I think so often communication we assume is information delivery, but it's actually a story, and, and so, and you're a player in that story, and the more you see yourself inside that story, the more we can build something together,
Scott Smith [6:08]
interesting. Okay, so I think it feels like one thing that I've been kind of wondering as I prepare to talk with you is that you seem like a very empathetic, you know, human-centered person, like you mentioned in your biography on LinkedIn and some of your focus around AI… it seems like AI, in some ways, is very like, not empathetic. It's not, at least so far, right? It seems very inhuman and robotic, and it gives you what you want. And I'm curious, like, how you're thinking about making AI more human-centered? What that means is that making the AI more human-centered? Is it making the content? Is it making how we interact with it the outputs? Like, what does that mean? Can you tell us more about that?
Erika Anderson [6:55]
Yeah, no. I love that question. And I know with AI, it's so easy for, like, these Terminator images to pop up or, you know, just robotic interactions with chat bots. I think I would kind of step back here into humane technology as a whole and… going back to…instead of us working for technology, how does technology work for us? And there's this incredible nonprofit, the Center for Humane Technology, that has a free, online course foundations and humane technology in it. It all begins with a question: How can technology treat our attention and intention as sacred? And, you know, so there's that I'm like, “Oh, my God. I didn't even know people would use the word sacred as they talk about technology.” But also, technology is not neutral. It's not like, “Oh, we're just building what people want.” Like, okay, how can we, instead of take advantage of, like, the worst of human nature, or how evolution molded us towards vigilance and actually support human nature or help us make better decisions. Of like, oh, do I want to be on this platform for, you know, social media platform, for four hours a day? Maybe I don't. How can it help me set limits that are supportive of my mental health and my sleep patterns, and so forth? So I think we start to see some examples, like with the iOS on iPhones saying, “Hey, do you want all notifications batched? Or do you want them to just come as they go?” So just starting to have some choice. So that's like, high level. Not at the AI, something that we're doing with our product is we're starting to build in some of the clean communication frameworks of like, hey, feelings and needs. Like, what are the feelings expressed in this call, or the unmet needs? And it's interesting, Scott, because it's actually where we started. We started with the Slack bot before ChatGPT came out, and people were running it on their Zoom calls. And the part that there was these Storytell reports, and the part that we heard the most feedback around was feelings and needs. It was like, “Hey, what was everyone feeling on our team call today?” I really want to know. So I think there's always that, like, anything can be used for good or for bad, and so I'm sure people could look at that like, Oh no, there's like, big brother watching over us. But I think as we live in this remote, as you were saying at the beginning of this, like largely remote or distributed workforce, we're just getting on calls with each other, and we're not there in person, so we're missing things. And so I think with whether it's our AI or another, there's ways where it can help us be closer to each other and understand each other better. So I don't know that's the initial thoughts. I don't know what that Oh,
Scott Smith [10:12]
I, I love that. I mean, like, you know, it's funny is there's, like you said, iOS, Instagram screen time, FaceTime, all these apps screen time, excuse me, where it sort of gives you some control, but you have to take that first step and you have to enable it. I have a home automation system for my home. It's called home assistant. It's open source, and I have these little automations that go off at like, 9pm It's like, turn off the TV, turn off the lights. I have Alexa say, Okay, it's time to go to bed, guys. And like, you know, me and my wife are like, ah, darn. Alexa is telling us to go to sleep. It helps, but it'd be so cool if you know, my TV did that automatically for me, but it doesn't, and that's a really simple place where I could easily spend my evening watching sci-fi or drama or whatever I love. I love the idea too, of like, the context of how people feel in a meeting, especially as we're doing more of these, these zooms, very, super, super, super interesting. Okay, so you've been working on bots and AI and introducing this style of communication and bringing some, I guess, more emotive, or like helping you see what's happening in these meetings and calls. But what are some of the biggest challenges you're finding as you implement the AI and actually bring them to companies and customers? Is it like they just don't use these tools yet? They're reluctant it, it doesn't quite get them where they want to be? What are some of the biggest challenges? And maybe, you know, maybe you probably have some really granular, specific ones, but also some high level ones.
Erika Anderson [11:45]
Yeah, definitely, it's so interesting, Scott, because I'm sure, as you've seen and maybe experiences, how you're using AI, like, it's really changed so much in short period of time, like last year, felt like the enterprise, the big no from enterprise, like, AI is not safe. Chat GBT is banned, and a little bit like, good luck with that. A lot of people are using our product in your companies. You know, how do you actually control what people are using, especially when, like, oh, there's this massively powerful tool. But guess what, you can't use it. So that didn't last. That didn't last. So this, this has felt like the year of Yes, like, I kind of maybe it's a somewhat tentative Yes, but realizing, Oh, my God, we as an enterprise, will be left behind if we're not using AI, that said there's, there's something that we bring, which is like, where are you on your scale with AI and your relationship to AI? Are you more in the avoidant? Are you cautious? Are you enthusiastic? And we help people see like, Okay, where am I vis a vis AI, and what do I need, or what do I want to move to a different stage? And so, so I think there's the there is some like personal stance towards AI that either we overcome or we acknowledge, okay, you're in avoidance stage. This isn't, you know, AI isn't for you right now, but let's, let's see if at some point it is. But I think the the standard question that everyone has been coming to calls with with this year, as we're doing initial demos and so forth, is, are you training on my data. And so a lot of understandable concern about that, and we are not so categorically, that's just not something we're doing. And we use Enterprise APIs, and those are not training on any data. So the sanctity of of data is is definitely key in an understandable hurdle, and then beyond that, I really feel like it's behavior change. You know, going back to those stages of it's not just okay, this is the latest accounting tool. Let's, let's download this, and I'll use it on our team. But this is a different way to work and to interact and and so we've done so much AI education, and I'm sure we will continue to do that just around like, oh, when you don't get what you want on the first try, iterate. Because again, if we're accounting software and it gets a number wrong, like, I don't think we can use this, you know this, this is not working. Versus, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna reach into the LLM and and find the value that I'm looking for. And I'm gonna learn how to reach into the LLM. So again, then around prompting. So how? Do we lower the barriers around prompting so you and I can both get great results, whether we're experts in prompting or not.
Scott Smith [15:10]
In some ways, I think I totally agree with the code prompting, or like the prompting of the LM when I pick up my kids from school, I say, how was your day? And they say, Fine. And I think, man, that was a terrible example of a question, and I have to, I have to revisit it, or it's like a detective who's trying to ask somebody, they've, you know, brought in and asked some questions, and they're sort of trying all these different angles until eventually they get to the truth. But I think that is one of the biggest challenges, is like, actually, you know, going back to to your answer earlier, it's like, it might not work yet, but if you work at it, and you keep pushing, it's eventually going to get there. Super interesting. So, okay, so like, let's say, once you get your customer, or your customer to actually use storytell, and they're implementing your product and and using AI at least, and they're, they're, like, aware that it could help them, how are they talking to their customers? How are they engaging with them? What are some of the really cool and interesting ways that you're seeing either the potential for or the reality already?
Erika Anderson [16:1]
Yeah, I think along those lines, about what's possible with AI when interacting with customers is the level of personalization. And I feel like personalization has been like a meme or a trend for two decades, and it's like, Well, is it here yet? Like, okay, I can design my own Nikes. But beyond that, is it really here? And at least largely with any pitches that I receive, it. It's not been it's like, okay, this is just a standard template. This is not speaking to me. And, for instance, we have a user who creates proposals just all day long and that's because he's the one doing the work, so he's the has the technical acumen. So it used to be a go to market team, but they just they didn't have the depth of data to really create solid proposals. And so he's using our product to create extremely personalized proposals, and he's getting most of them accepted and and so he's like, Whoa, I have a way higher acceptance rate. And I'm making one, I wouldn't have even done this before. You know, says the difference between doing it and not doing it. But then it's like, I did that in half an hour or 12 minutes, and, you know, this potential customer just said yes. So it's, I think, bringing a lot of ease and and this, like, oh, you get me, I'd so I think that, you know, the people that he's making the proposals to is like, Oh, this, this shop, like, intimately understands our business. And so it makes it an easy, yes, it's
Scott Smith [17:57]
really interesting, like thinking about what so I've been in sales my entire life. And when I have a sales call with a sales rep who is really great, the first thing I always notice is that the pitch deck they use very simple. It's like, got my company logo and like, that's not always the case. It's one of these things where you would think, after, I don't know, 1020, years of baby SaaS, or however long we've been doing this, like, just the act of personalizing that first slide with my face or my name or my company or something. But like, not everybody does it, and it really, it really does set you apart right away, super, super fast. How about you? How about for you personally, I think one of the things I'm excited about is, like, you know, obviously helping your customers. But like, one thing I've really appreciated about working with you and then drodio, is that you guys are, like, power users of these tools, and you're always figuring things out. What's been most impactful for you,
Erika Anderson [18:53]
I think, like for being with with AI, for instance, yeah, yeah. I you know. And appreciate you saying that. I think, you know, we have, like, market signals, or North Star is one of our values at storytell. So it's like, be very, very user centric, and everything we do, and we have to know what we're talking about. So we need to use the tools, and it's fun to use the tools. So one, I've got many stories I could pull from. But the one I'll share is around, essentially, code switching. So you know a term that often people of color are using, but anytime that we're switching from one environment to another, and how, how you talk to your friend after work is going to be different than how you talk on a sales call and and so forth. And this, like sometimes, is gaining purchase into a world where you might not otherwise feel you belong. And as a female co founder, and there's way more female co founders now, with AI, there's been a big jump, I think, about 20% um. With this whole rise of generative AI and so how I normally speak in conversation, which is around, you know, like, connection and so forth, that doesn't always land really well with like, uh, the tech exec landscape in Silicon Valley. And so I actually, yeah, just created prompts around like, rewrite this so that you know, I am this. I'm a female co founder in Silicon Valley. I need my male peers to respect me. Rewrite this message in a way that it will really land. And I did that, and I tricked Jodie. Oh, so he saw my mom. He's like, Oh, my God, amazing. Like, that's the way to be co founder. And I was like, so about that? You know, it's due to an external party, but so that's, I think, in terms of, like, how can it be more than, I think I can be going back to that like I can mentality, AI, is incredible to support us with that,
Scott Smith [21:09]
right? And I think a lot of the time it's, it's like trying to figure out what you don't know about this group or this environment that you need to know in advance. And so like, it equips you, like you said, to pretend and to try to become and impersonate. I think a lot of us, myself included, I go into a room with other CEOs, and I'm like, Man, I'm such a joker compared to all these other guys. And, you know, I'm like, okay, Scott, take a deep breath, put on the persona of CEO, and let's go. And then, you know, obviously, like, as you had these conversations, you break down some of the communications, and people realize, like, all right, we're kind of all working on the same thing. We all feel the same way. So that's that's amazing. I actually had never heard of that phrase before, other code switching. So let's add that to the the brain. I love it. Let's switch a little bit to talking about leadership. You know, you've, you've led a your customer experience team, you have your clean communication framework. I have always loved the idea of receiving feedback, asking our customers, our team, sometimes, though, I worry that they're not giving me the feedback that I need and and I worry that I'm not going to hear their hard feedback. How do you help, I guess, foster a creative environment that, like, you can actually give the feedback, and then you actually can receive it in a way that it works great. Yeah,
Erika Anderson [22:27]
that is a great question. And I feel like we'll always be wrestling with this. You know, like humanity will always be wrestling with this, because you are counteracting culture and hierarchy and different work cultures around the world, which you know, some of those cultures are like you. You can't talk to your elders that way. That's your you can't talk to someone in a position higher than you that way. And so something, one book we really love at storytells, radical candor, by Kim Scott and and she has a question that we've brought into our one on ones of like, What's one thing I as your manager could do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me? So I find it to be a really powerful question. Now, in order to break through those different cultural barriers to actually like give that feedback that I think that's still a work in progress, but we very much invite it from each other, and as co founders, we try to model that by having regular feedback sessions with each other where it's like, Okay, I'm gonna take a half hour to look at a pattern. I think feedback is most helpful when it's not one offs or gotchas, you know, like seeing this, you know, and then we do paraphrasing. So we have a whole process of like, Hey, are you open to feedback? Okay, yes. You know, if it's not a scheduled feedback time, I could spend a lot of time on this all. I'll try to summarize myself. But so then it's okay, Scott, what are you hearing me say? So then you're paraphrasing it back. And then, okay, and how is that landing for you? It's like, okay, I see the truth here. I'm not seeing it there. Okay, where do we want to go from here? Or this is what I need from you. How do you want to get this? Actually,
Scott Smith [24:29]
I've noticed, you know, kind of, going back to the one of the comments you made about establishing a pattern, I've noticed when, whatever the context, whether it's at home with my spouse and we talk about things that we're frustrated with. You know, Hey, Scott, you didn't wash. Do the dishes like one of my main jobs, I'm like the dishes guy, and so, you know, if I miss a couple days in a row, it's like we start talking about. Or when I worked at Facebook, I had a great manager. Her name was Monica dractis. She talked about this idea, she's like, You. Typically when I give you feedback, I'm gonna have wanted to see it happen three times before I actually bring it up with you, because I have noticed that the first thing everybody says is, when have I done that? Give me an example of that. You know, it's always like hearing feedback is tough. I think in a work context, we're often more open or careful to receive the feedback. But still, there's that visceral emotional reaction, which is, which is really hard to get asked. So I love the idea of the pattern trying to identify, obviously, like, if the person stealing money from business, maybe just like, don't do that right away. That's
Erika Anderson [25:3]1
not feedback. That's the feedback is, we have contacted the authorities. Yeah,
Scott Smith [25:38]
exactly, exactly. That's super interesting. Okay, I love that. And I actually have not read radical candor other than, like, seeing the quotes, I think that's a great book that I'm going to take away and and read from there. Okay, so let's, let's talk about, I, you know, let's say, for example, we have an outcome that we're trying to achieve. We're trying to grow revenue or grow customer base or release a new product. How do you balance the sort of like, I guess, you know, communication style, the empathetic work culture, and then also, like the, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's get it and get the results. So, so how are those? How do you build a culture that cares about results and giving feedback and making sure that we're not eight holes together or two, excuse me,
Erika Anderson [26:26]
right, right, right, completely, um, and so that that's the What drew you. And I mean, that's very much part of our experiment with company culture at storytell. And I'll, I'll admit this being my first rodeo, and and the startup land, I definitely came in with some ideas that didn't, didn't totally match up we were so focused on. So these two aspects, right of like creating a product to believe in and a place belong and, and so that's something that I like, wisdom that I got from I sue Odeo and and rodeo as well. This things that that they've shared with the world and many founders through founder culture, and we realized we're so focused on creating a place to belong that we weren't doing enough right at the very beginning around product to believe in. So we had to do a whole of like, we're not at the resort stage of a startup. We're not all sitting here hanging out on the beach. It is go time. And so I really like I see clean communication as an umbrella term to like anything that's providing clarity to like Archie, which we refer to as racy, the decision making framework actually swap. People say racy, we say Archie, but like, I think that's part of clean communication. Who's the Accountable party who needs to be consulted, who needs to be informed when you don't have the you don't have that clear like, Whoa, there's just a lot of conflict. But I think so much of it is, hey, let's all know where we're headed. We need to know our mission, our vision, like our product roadmap, where we're trying to get to in this quarter, where we have to get to for an X rays, what our roles are to get there, and then operations, just like everyone's getting, you know, paid on time, the trains are leaving on time, etc. If you don't have those set up, it doesn't matter how much empathy you want to do with each other. So I think even like human technology, so much of it is table stakes, of what's a really good SAS product, what's a what's a really good UI and UX? What products do you love to use? They're probably following a lot of humane design principles and and, yeah, with our companies, it's like, okay, are you operational? Are you focused? Do you know where you're going? Great. Like, how do you weave in, like, empathy through that? But you're not a personal development company. You're trying to achieve objectives with customers, right?
Scott Smith [29:10]
You're trying to take Storytell and build it into something you know, incrementally incredible that helps your customers. So, like, yeah, that completely makes sense. I think the idea of working somewhere that cares about you and has a big mission is excited to go out and chase it like I think everybody wants that. So let's say, let's say you either meet your goal or you're making great progress towards building this incredible product at Storytell. How are you envisioning ai storytell kind of together, helping enable your customers to either connect, communicate or just be way more productive. Like, what are some of the things that you hope to see or expect to see?
Erika Anderson [29:58]
Yeah, well, our reason for existing is to make life meaningful by making work meaningful. And so what we've seen with our product, the date and it's like different industries, different roles, people just finding joy in their work, finding work life balance, feeling like a superhero, making things possible that were just not possible before finding product expansion possibilities by, like, really understanding their customers and and so there's something really meaningful about I'm not just a cog in the wheel. I like, I am here, and I this is, you know, some level of work that I need to do, and then here's the work that I want to do. And so story tell really enabling the need to do in a way that's actually joyous. So there's something around this superhero at work is essentially our like North Star metric, like, how how many people can we turn into superheroes? That's
Scott Smith [31:07]
beautiful. I talked with the COO of one password yesterday, and one of the things he mentioned is that their focus on creating a product people love has enabled their growth and their expansion and their market potential. But if they had just created any other product that people had to use, it might die as that person goes to another company. And so, like, you know, thinking about your product, if you can build something that enables you to be a superhuman version of yourself, you're going to be more productive. You're gonna be happier. You're gonna be like, less flustered and tired. I mean, there's like, infinite potential there. So let's, let's wrap up with just talking a little bit about, you know, storytell and some of the specific things that you guys are excited about, some of the areas that you're excited about that you're working on right now.
Erika Anderson [31:55]
Yeah, I think that when, like, so I'm going to go broad, and then I'll go specific. So like, with AI in general, I think there's this incredible opportunity for behavior change, like, we read books, listen to podcasts, etc, but then, like, actually changing behavior is really, really hard and and so something along those lines is, you know, why are we called story tell? Because there are so many stories hidden in our data that we don't even know about, and so like surfacing those stories. And sure, we run on data, but businesses really run on stories. And my ability to speak to you in a way that resonates for you versus someone in a different role or at a different company or in a different part of the world. And so something we're building out right now is bringing in storytelling frameworks so that it's like, okay, maybe you read a book about storytelling with data, but how do you operationalize that? How do you start, you know, speaking to the board of site in a way that's telling a story and the way that they're really going to be able to hear so that's something that we have in progress right now. I'm excited about, I think, also the analyzing feelings and needs as we really look at how to integrate, you know, humane technology into storytell and and the new wave of like, how do we reach humane AI and how can story tell be a part of that in a way that, you know, like, achieve business outcomes?
Scott Smith [33:38]
Awesome. Sounds very exciting. Well, it's been great talking with you, Erika from Storytell, and yeah, thanks for joining us on Inside the Workflow.
Erika Anderson [33:48]
Yeah, my pleasure. And for me, really big takeaway around the word yet, and just like the power of yet. So thank you for bringing that.
Scott Smith [33:56]
Oh, cool. All right.
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