The Paradox Of AI-Powered Authenticity

[00:00:00] Tessa Burg: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Leader Generation. I’m your host, Tessa Burg. And today I am joined by Troy Snyder. He’s chairman of Wonderful Foundations and a serial entrepreneur. We’re gonna unpack the shifting power dynamics that is shaping global marketing and brand trust. We’re going to explore different perspectives and angles that are really important for brands to consider on how they continue to reshape the balance between technology and human connection as we all try to remain real in a growingly synthetic world. Troy, thank you so much for joining us. I’m super excited to jump into this topic with you.

[00:00:43] Troy Snyder: Oh, you’re welcome. Tessa, really great to be here today.

[00:00:47] Tessa Burg: I would say actually we’re jumping into multiple topics.

[00:00:49] Troy Snyder: Yeah.

[00:00:49] Tessa Burg: And looking at it from angles that I don’t think traditional marketers are used to thinking about. And before we start and to ground people on your very diverse and deep background, tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey.

[00:01:04] Troy Snyder: Okay. Yeah. You know, I guess I would have to say first and foremost, um, I have a unique perspective into the world.

[00:01:10] Troy Snyder: I, um, spent a whole bunch of years, uh, training as an astrologer. A little bit different than your traditional, uh, education, I guess I would say. And that actually has created this unique perspective that gives me a way to see brands and their ability to communicate and in a more generalist view. And so the output from that has brought me into various entities that, uh, for example, today.

[00:01:40] Troy Snyder: I’m here in my role as chairman of Wonderful Foundations. Where is a place where we really try to improve the spaces that we call school. And some of those aspects of school revolve around the experience that we have of the curriculum and education, but even more of a revolve around the life of a kid in the environment of school at a very young age.

[00:02:00] Troy Snyder: And so one of these topics that comes up at school is AI for sure. Additionally, I have an internet service provider that’s targeted at solving the rural connectivity issues. It’s primarily based in, uh, rural West Virginia today. A whole other dimension of space and time, if you will. It has a whole other problem, but it also is somewhat based on this search for truth, if you will.

[00:02:21] Troy Snyder: And maybe in some ways, as we can begin our conversation today, we can start off with, you know, kind of the search for truth if you, if you want.

[00:02:28] Tessa Burg: Yeah, no, I think that when we talk about AI, especially here, where we’re doing our best to give our clients real information about real things, they can distill it down to what, not only their business purposes, but their personal purpose.

[00:02:47] Tessa Burg: I’m curious when you think about your education as an astrologer.

[00:02:51] Troy Snyder: Mm-hmm.

[00:02:52] Tessa Burg: In your application of that, what are like the pillars that you apply to professional work that come from astrology?

[00:02:59] Troy Snyder: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, there’s, I’d say the first thing that I would note here is that there, astrology is a big word.

[00:03:06] Troy Snyder: There’s many systems out there. I’m primarily practicing eastern astrology, which is moon based, lunar based. It’s the moon looking back out into the universe. It’s very much about what, how we see the world, but the conversation that we have collectively. Uh, and the public space is very western astrology based.

[00:03:22] Troy Snyder: Western astrology is sun based, or the sun looking back at us. It’s very much about how the world sees us. And I’m gonna bring this back into the brand discussion, if you will. There is one reflection of, well, how does the world see the brand? And there’s a reflection of how do the brand sees the world, and where do those two things connect, is where we make our connection to those consumers.

[00:03:41] Troy Snyder: So I’m giving you my answer. I’m saying, yeah, well this, you know, unique perspective, this perspective of these planets. How far away, how fast, how bright are they moving is very much indicative of our own experience here on this planet, and it’s, that especially comes back to the reality of when we make connections to brands, whether they’re providing products and or services and how we feel about those relationships.

[00:04:05] Troy Snyder: It’s simple as the clarity between, we have a different life at night than we do during the day. Things feel different when it’s raining, when it’s sunny, when we’re by the mountains, by the ocean. So if we use these interpretations of brand and the experience of brands, then astrology really helps us understand what are the receptions or what are the impressions and where are the things to look out for and how do we act in in this dimension, if you will, in this, in this plane.

[00:04:37] Troy Snyder: And I probably try to transition us, you know, a little bit into something that I just read recently. Um, which was a article that was published. Um, it, it’s a group that’s known as the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, the ISD Research Group. But the thing that I thought was interesting there is they were essentially talking about this notion of when we go into these models and we start to ask questions about the Ukraine war, there’s quite a bit of propaganda that comes back in the responses and it kind of set up this whole other curiosity.

[00:05:10] Troy Snyder: If you’re a brand and you’re having those same interfaces, so same interactions with your consumers through these platforms, through these models, what’s actually occurring and what might we want to do about that? And that kind of set me off on this discussion with you guys and with with you today is I have a bunch of questions.

[00:05:29] Troy Snyder: I don’t know that I have answers, but I’m definitely curious.

[00:05:32] Tessa Burg: Yeah. And one of the things that you pointed out before we got on the call is that. AI is not just about, or I would say actually LLMs are not just about finding the right answer. You see them as media environments shaping that global narrative, and based on that example in this article and the fact that maybe not.

[00:06:03] Tessa Burg: Always accurate or rarely accurate information comes back on certain types of queries. How should brands be rethinking what visibility means today and should they be competing for more of that visibility within LLMs themselves?

[00:06:25] Troy Snyder: Yeah, you know, it seems to me that, uh, those of us who, who manage and care for brands.

[00:06:32] Troy Snyder: We have a keen interest in how they’re received in the world. It might be the top of the apex of what our role is or what our job is. And so when, especially when we think about these engines and as though we’re calling them generative, which somehow implies translation it or iteration, then what happens to my brand messages is they start to hilt, hit these engines, if you will.

[00:06:57] Troy Snyder: Like are we playing the telephone game? If you remember that from, from when you were a kid. I say three things about the brand, but the time it gets to, you know, 12 people later, it sounds very different. Right. And this is the, you know, one thing that I was referring to is what I think of as the cogency factor.

[00:07:13] Troy Snyder: You know, it’s like how distant is the interpretation between the origin and the output? Another handy tool that comes from astrology in the eastern world, were taught in an oral tradition. It’s kind of interesting. As an oral tradition transmits something akin to this truth of the speaker with no interpretation, meaning there’s no words in the middle, uh, no written words in the middle, sorry, that leave room for those redefinitions and reinterpretations.

[00:07:47] Troy Snyder: So if we use that as an analog, what’s, you know, what, what is the oral tradition in the brand world when we have a. Set of interpretive in, uh, engines, getting between the voice and the li and the listener. So it gets me to places where I’m, I’m curious, you know, what sorts of, uh, controls will brands have when being seen or met or received or communicated to inside of any of these engines?

[00:08:21] Troy Snyder: Then, you know, I also wonder, well, my brand messages seem to change along the lines of, as my market changes that’s changing faster and faster, I feel I have to be more and more responsive. Almost in the moment. I sort of feel like I have to be having a real world live conversation with my constituents through these digital vehicles.

[00:08:46] Troy Snyder: Is that able to happen with generative AI? Am I able to constitute my brand and reconstitute it on a daily or even hourly basis inside of any of these platforms, which I believe sets up the bigger question of how are they constructed? How is the information compiled, how’s it being interpreted and how’s being presented back to my, my consumer, if you will.

[00:09:14] Troy Snyder: And as far as we can tell, there’s been a, been a bunch of training runs done on the internet. I don’t know if we all feel like the internet has the most accurate information though.

[00:09:26] Tessa Burg: Right. And I, part of it is very similar to when Google launched its engine, and I was one of the first Google AdWords users, one of the first people to develop websites specific to Google.

[00:09:43] Tessa Burg: Because before that, you actually exported your pages. And maybe you did this too, and you like emailed or uploaded pages and you told the engines, this is what I think is important. And the brands had ultimate control over the message, over the priority. And then Google came around and they’re like, we’re not going to listen to anything that you tell us,

[00:10:05] Troy Snyder: Right.

[00:10:05] Tessa Burg: In fact, we are going to create the algorithm. That determines rank, but it did not change the story or the message. You were able to optimize specific elements about where the message was hosted to get more visibility, and that is very similar to LLMs today.

[00:10:29] Troy Snyder: Right.

[00:10:29] Tessa Burg: They are not reading. They’re not thinking about the message.

[00:10:35] Tessa Burg: They’re not looking to understand. They just identify patterns.

[00:10:39] Troy Snyder: Right.

[00:10:40] Tessa Burg: And so I think the game of telephone is very real and for, especially if you’re a brand and advertising to consumers, I think most people don’t realize that they should be looking for so sources and that when they use an LLM clicking through to the source to double check the context of the response is important, but that takes too much time and effort.

[00:11:08] Tessa Burg: So for the most part, people will just use LLMs like a search engine and then take what is given back as a reflection of the brand or the source where that maybe holds the answer to the question they were asking.

[00:11:27] Troy Snyder: And that is a big maybe, and I think that’s the concern that we must all have as brand, you know, as brand owners, is this whole idea that, you know, um.

[00:11:37] Troy Snyder: Our own brand truth can be adulterated by these engines. And in many cases, what we’re finding when we, uh, do our own searches, do our own inquiries, do our own prompts, is that is actually happening. And there’s this whole notion of identity alignment in each of these engines, meaning that they’re characteristically, seemingly, uh, innovating and developing their own product offerings based on the things that they’re aligned with.

[00:12:05] Troy Snyder: Which tends to suggest that there is no ubiquitous knowledge set out there that we can socially agree on any longer as a shared truth, which, wow, that sets up a whole different discussion that we don’t have to have in this moment. But when it comes to brand, I’m still very concerned about how do I maintain my current brand truth and continually push that out there on a minute by minute basis.

[00:12:34] Troy Snyder: Not be manipulated or adulterated in my brand offering by the time it gets to an engine.

[00:12:43] Troy Snyder: So then it gets, you know, kind of back to this place is, well, are these engines working with folks that, you know, manage brands, whether it be agencies or direct in any form or fashion, that makes us feel like we’re gonna have some level of control over outcome here. Like, are there APIs for brands, if you will, right?

[00:13:07] Troy Snyder: Like is there an AI press office at an engine, just like there is in the traditional, uh, media, at least News World, where we used to act on this service where we put out a bunch of press releases or news flashes and the commentary would come from those.

[00:13:27] Troy Snyder: That’s no longer the case. In fact, I would suggest that most of the press agencies, uh, today are curious and interested in picking up stories about things that are broken or on fire or in a flood or these kinds of things. But if you have a positive brand message, back to my role at Wonderful Foundations, we’re providing field trips for kids in schools.

[00:13:47] Troy Snyder: It’s a tough sell to a news organization.

[00:13:50] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:51] Troy Snyder: Maybe not with a generative engine though. So it sets up this whole other opportunity is can you convince. An engine that you’re the darling of the day.

[00:14:04] Troy Snyder: That’s cur that’s a question I have. Don’t know the answer on that one. Or be like, what are the steps that you need to do to influence these engines and influence these brand, uh, positionings to have your truth be represented out there in the way that you want.

[00:14:19] Tessa Burg: Yeah. And we just did a blog post where we released the periodic table of generative engine optimization, and. We’ve done a few interviews on this podcast around generative engine optimization, and one of the themes that always emerges is authenticity.

[00:14:39] Troy Snyder: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:39] Tessa Burg: And how important it is to not just have a wholly human, authentic message, good, bad, or indifferent,

[00:14:48] Troy Snyder: Right.

[00:14:48] Tessa Burg: Is to find others who share the purpose behind that message and then get to the technical side, which is.

[00:14:57] Tessa Burg: Those people hopefully have really high domain value scores.

[00:15:02] Troy Snyder: Right.

[00:15:02] Tessa Burg: Which is really funny because that is similar to SEO. Like SEO, there were some specific things that you could do on your site and you know, when I, I was just about to say when I was little, but when I was much younger and I freelanced SEO services, it was a game to me.

[00:15:22] Tessa Burg: I, I don’t think there was a client who, I didn’t get into the top three rankings.

[00:15:27] Troy Snyder: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:28] Tessa Burg: And you And I loved doing it. Uh, like not black hat. Like it was all a above the line. I didn’t,

[00:15:37] Troy Snyder: Yeah.

[00:15:37] Tessa Burg: We’ll say the first website I launched before I knew it was wrong, we did use a ton of white text and we created. We did all the things that were wrong. But this was before

[00:15:44] Troy Snyder: Yeah.

[00:15:44] Tessa Burg: We knew it was wrong.

[00:15:46] Troy Snyder: Yep.

[00:15:46] Tessa Burg: But I feel like. Even though LLMs will not update on the spot every second of every day.

[00:15:55] Troy Snyder: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:55] Tessa Burg: It does create an opportunity to explore where else you can align with publications, with other organizations and groups and ha that have a similar message to begin to build that bubble of visibility. Because that’s what LLMs gravitate towards.

[00:16:20] Troy Snyder: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:21] Tessa Burg: The patterns, the repetition of where there’s high activity around specific language,

[00:16:30] Troy Snyder: Which makes the most popular information, the truest information, if we use that as a formula. So the cones, at least the way I heard it says that.

[00:16:43] Troy Snyder: The thing that we all believe to be true becomes the universal truth, whether there’s actually scientific truth or uh, empirical truth behind it or not.

[00:16:51] Tessa Burg: Yeah. But there’s never been truth behind what’s published on, you know, like I don’t think that part has changed and popular can have a lot of different definitions.

[00:17:01] Troy Snyder: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:02] Tessa Burg: Um, and I. I don’t know. I’m not sure if volume, like when I think of popular, I think of volume. I’m not, and this part, I actually don’t know. I don’t know how much volume matters as it does. Density. Purpose and meaning. Meaning like there’s enough, there’s activity and enough high value domains, meaning credible sites or what the LLM perceives to be credible. Are in and around aligned to a specific pattern of language.

[00:17:35] Troy Snyder: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:36] Tessa Burg: Um, but I don’t know if, I honestly don’t know if volume matters or how much it matters. I know that does matter for domain score, so there’s a factor of it, for sure.

[00:17:46] Troy Snyder: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But even less than trying to kind of get into the algorithm and how it weighs things or values things.

[00:17:53] Troy Snyder: I’m more, I’m more concerned about the, um, I don’t know, I guess it’s the consumer loyalty, if you will. Maybe something along those lines. It’s like, will consumers just get bored with reading about interpretive truths and go back to brand sites directly because things get adulterated through engines? Or will the engines be able to represent brand through so accurately and so much on the fly that we’ll continue to use these engines to get our, our most current and relevant information.

[00:18:21] Troy Snyder: And then it kind of comes to this moment too, it’s like, okay, if something, you know out there, if my brand is misconceived out there some way it’s somehow becomes identified or, or affiliated with something that feels harmful to my brand, how do I escape that? How do I leave that? Or does that become my new, you know, outcome, my new brand message?

[00:18:39] Troy Snyder: Just because engines have picked it up and the conversation won’t, won’t let it go, if you will. Right. So then I get to, is this being. I, I really like the table of elements that you guys created, and it, it, it inspired me to think about the elements that are further down the table that we theoretically know are there, but have no empirical evidence to prove they’re true.

[00:19:00] Troy Snyder: And this is kind of the way that we’ve evolved the periodic table elements in the science world over, over recent history is making some guesses of some things that we think are true, but we, we just can’t prove yet.

[00:19:11] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:11] Troy Snyder: So, I, I guess the base of the discussion is this, is there a bunch of things that we think are true, we actually can’t prove yet, but we should probably start to interact with.

[00:19:19] Troy Snyder: To determine if they’re real or not. So that would be like if I put out a statement today, uh, you know, the other day we were using this, you know, baby born with nine figures on one hand. Okay. So if I put that out as a statement and say, how long does that take to make it through the engines? And then if I change that as a new source, how long does it take to get updated?

[00:19:40] Troy Snyder: And what are the steps or the pathways that I had to go through to influence the underlying engine, if you will. Because we’re kind of past that initial training run in most of these cases. So everything from here is inferred, inferred, contextualized, or synthesized. And if we’re dealing with those three, um, assem, you know, there three mechanisms to assembly.

[00:20:01] Troy Snyder: A viewpoint inferred perspective. Imply perspective, right? Like these notions. Then how much of that do we end up grounding ourselves in and, and what creates the lasting relationship with the brand? Or like, another way to say it is that, you know, I, I said this, you know, in our back and forth too, which, which is, is there a date coming when I can just go talk to a Brillo pad in ChatGPT, or is it gonna be an agent of a Brillo pad talking to me about the Brillo pad?

[00:20:35] Troy Snyder: And is that a, is that a reality that ChatGPT is working around to use one model? Uh, to namely, could be grock or, you know, any of ’em really, but I think that the thing that, you know, I’m thinking about as a brand manager is, you know, how directly can I interface my brand with my, my audience or my consumer with the middle people in play?

[00:21:02] Tessa Burg: Yeah. And I, I love that idea of people getting to talk directly to your brand and directly to products. And it, you know, even though Google started as SEO, they made all their money on paid search, which gave brands the ability to exactly represent themselves where they wanted to be represented with their message.

[00:21:22] Tessa Burg: And I think the LLMs will do the exact same thing. It’s not,

[00:21:27] Speaker 3: There you go.

[00:21:28] Tessa Burg: Paid search, but it’s. It. One, we’re spending a crap ton of money and losing. Yeah.

[00:21:35] Troy Snyder: Yep, yep.

[00:21:36] Tessa Burg: Uh, and advertising is the easiest and fastest way. And I agree that all your concerns are shared by brand marketers and managers, and they’re probably worrying about it already.

[00:21:47] Troy Snyder: Yeah.

[00:21:48] Tessa Burg: Everyone goes through that cycle of doom on an LLM where they’re like, I love this. Oh my gosh, this is great and amazing. And then you, you start getting deeper and deeper with your questions, and then you get an answer that you for sure know the truth about. And then it does like, wait a minute, that’s wrong. And then you begin to realize most of it is wrong.

[00:22:05] Troy Snyder: Right. Right.

[00:22:07] Tessa Burg: Feel like the pervasiveness of use into our daily lives is almost demanding. That LLMs open an avenue for the sources of truth to have more visibility and that direct connection.

[00:22:22] Troy Snyder: So maybe Tessa, that’s our prediction then, right? Maybe that’s the word this comes to is like we, you know, as brand owners, right?

[00:22:27] Troy Snyder: Like I don’t, we don’t really see another way, we’re not hearing about another way to interact, uh, that makes sense to us. We feel we can keep this contiguous relationship with our consumers and keep, you know, continually giving them our brand pillars and our brand messages and our brand truths as they develop.

[00:22:44] Troy Snyder: Right. And, um, I guess, you know, it, it kind of is in this place where it’s like, you know, it was like, who’s gonna tune into this podcast? I mean, you know, people like will like to watch this podcast ’cause they’re gonna wonder about what kinds of things are we gonna mess up. Right. There’s this like, novelty of being a human that makes them make this fun.

[00:23:04] Troy Snyder: Now, you know, if we had two, you know, AI agents having this conversation, it probably would turn out very different. There’d probably people curious about hearing what they had to say, but I don’t know that, you know, you Tessa or me Troy, feel like that’s gonna be us represented well in that conversation to, to, to create a real world example of.

[00:23:22] Troy Snyder: What, what is here today, right? And so, um. Is this, are we in the world of Wikipedia where like we, you know, for one or for our time, we all thought Wikipedia was the end all, be all this free encyclopedia with all this wonderful knowledge. But we come to find out that’s actually not the case. It’s written by like 60 or 80 people or something like that, and it’s very biased and opinionated and narrow and all this kind of stuff.

[00:23:42] Troy Snyder: So we, we start to leave it. Well, is that again, that, is that the prediction that happens with these generative models? Are we in there today? Because it’s super novel and we’re excited about that. But ultimately, is it really gonna be the source of truth for us or even community in that respect?

[00:24:00] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:00] Troy Snyder: And there’s a challenge that I have, you know, with these models is are they really creating community? That’s something that I would challenge ’em all. Again, that’s not an agency problem or a brand problem, but you know, ultimately we community is something we’d like to participate both from an agency and a brand perspective.

[00:24:17] Troy Snyder: And so please, models start building some community. Include the people if you will.

[00:24:28] Troy Snyder: Yeah, I mean I feel like, you know, like, you know, we’ve covered the kind of major topics as far as my curiosity. I mean, we kind of breeze through, you know, AI hallucination, which I think has ma maybe been the topic underneath all of this, um, too, is like how much of our brand truth will actually be out there in the world and how much will actually just be hallucination.

[00:24:45] Troy Snyder: Um, and that’s not something I have an answer to today.

[00:24:52] Tessa Burg: Yeah. No.

[00:24:53] Troy Snyder: I’m so curious though.

[00:24:56] Tessa Burg: I always am overly optimistic. I about like, talking online in general, even though at one point I used to, I was at, uh, back when I was at American Greetings, I would always say like, I hate Google. Like, I could not, we, I managed.

[00:25:18] Tessa Burg: Marketing that supported seven different online brands.

[00:25:21] Troy Snyder: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:21] Tessa Burg: And at that time, when was that time? 2000, maybe it was like 2006 to 2010 somewhere.

[00:25:32] Troy Snyder: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:32] Tessa Burg: So look at my own LinkedIn and figure it out. But they were kept changing the damn algorithm and with no regard for people. So my clients who are a hundred percent e-commerce, would fall off the face of the planet.

[00:25:49] Tessa Burg: They’d lose tens of thousands of dollars in a day.

[00:25:52] Troy Snyder: Right?

[00:25:52] Tessa Burg: Like larger company at American Greetings, we would lose thousands of subscriptions. Um, and it was so absolutely devastating.

[00:26:04] Troy Snyder: Yeah.

[00:26:05] Tessa Burg: When you felt like. As a marketer and a technologist, we had done everything right. And still punished.

[00:26:15] Troy Snyder: Right.

[00:26:15] Tessa Burg: And I hope that the LLMs learn from that because there is a better way to do it.

[00:26:26] Troy Snyder: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:27] Tessa Burg: I think making the platform available and open for brands. To personify their brands, to personify their products in ways they haven’t, and then connect them to real-world experiences where human connection still thrives, is a real opportunity. And you know, I think if people reflect back on the early days of Google, they would say, well, they, they were successful.

[00:26:57] Tessa Burg: I was like, yes, financially they were very successful, but. I don’t know if they ever quantified how much money they lost from brands who started immediately looking and diversifying their channels, because that happened to them. And I know everyone I worked at, worked with and worked for. That’s what we started doing.

[00:27:19] Troy Snyder: Yeah,

[00:27:20] Tessa Burg: And there’s, I think a lot of the foundational models feel pretty secure in their place. They’re getting ever growing. Daily usage and traction, tons of investment. Every headline the news will give them.

[00:27:37] Troy Snyder: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:37] Tessa Burg: But the truth is, the other part of the AI revolution is entrepreneurialism.

[00:27:43] Troy Snyder: Yeah.

[00:27:44] Tessa Burg: And new ways to connect and new ways to be human will begin to take shape. And I think if the foundational models take the same route as Google did, which is to completely ignore. The people, the brands that are spending money on your engine.

[00:28:02] Troy Snyder: Yep.

[00:28:02] Tessa Burg: There will be more options.

[00:28:05] Troy Snyder: Yeah. We’ll have to innovate around them.

[00:28:06] Troy Snyder: Right. Like that, that ultimately becomes the challenge. ’cause brands will continue to need to innovate. And I mean, that’s the, the thing, the overarching statement here is, you know, as, as as brand managers, brand owners, we just wanna be as close as we can to the, to our constituency.

[00:28:21] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:21] Troy Snyder: We don’t wanna be separated.

[00:28:24] Troy Snyder: You know, like you said, you know, I mean, gosh, we’re going back to, you know, kind of the mid nineties here, but the promise of, you know, Google and the internet was as an advertiser, you were gonna tell us exactly who they were and what they ate for breakfast and what their favorite. You know, this, and their favorite that is, well, I’m still waiting for that report.

[00:28:40] Tessa Burg: Right.

[00:28:41] Troy Snyder: You, you seem to know that, but you’re not telling me as a brand owner, those attributes.

[00:28:46] Tessa Burg: Yeah. If anything, they went the opposite direction. They lacked,

[00:28:48] Troy Snyder: they went opposite direction. More ification. We have less of our kind of personalized, you know, connections to, to our constituents, if you will. And so I think, yeah, you know, underneath all this is this fear that wow, AI maybe makes this problem worse.

[00:29:01] Troy Snyder: Right? And so I think what we’re saying, you know, you and I as a call to these engine is, Hey guys, you gotta open up and come to the table and give us some guidelines or take some suggestions. At the end of the day, we need to collaborate and figure out how we can keep the relationships and the connections as authentic as possible so we can continue to maintain consumer loyalty.

[00:29:21] Troy Snyder: And that’s not just about the brand, that’s about the engine too. And that’s my suggestion before is I think without authenticity, people will just get bored and go on to other things.

[00:29:31] Tessa Burg: Yeah.

[00:29:33] Troy Snyder: So I guess we’re, we’re, we’re challenging the engines today in our, in our talk.

[00:29:37] Tessa Burg: Yes. We certainly are.

[00:29:38] Troy Snyder: Listen up.

[00:29:40] Tessa Burg: Yeah.

[00:29:40] Tessa Burg: And you know, there’s been times when I’ve worked for, uh, I’m not gonna swear on the show, but a-holes, and I have been told like, well, that’s how they became successful. Yeah. ’cause a head, and you know what? That’s just not true. I know a lot of super successful people Yeah. Who are at their core pretty gosh darn awesome.

[00:30:04] Tessa Burg: Yeah. And are continuing to do incredible things in the world because they’re great people. And so there is a way to make a boatload of money in whatever the foundational models wanna do. Yeah. And build a solidly good core at the same time. So it, it is a challenge because it is a lot easier to be right.

[00:30:25] Troy Snyder: Yep. Yep. Yeah. You know, authenticity is sustainable.

[00:30:29] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:30] Troy Snyder: Manipulation is not, and that’s something that comes back to the beginning of this is that’s something else that astrology teaches us. We are who we are. Like, so let’s just keep putting that out there. Right. And in a way, and think the engines could be a better play, a better, more significant role in that than what I’m currently seeing today.

[00:30:50] Tessa Burg: Yeah. Well, Troy, we are at time, pretty crazy fastest. 24 minutes of my life.

[00:30:59] Troy Snyder: Yeah, it, it went really fast.

[00:31:00] Tessa Burg: But thank you so much for coming on and sharing your perspective with us. That was an amazing conversation.

[00:31:08] Troy Snyder: I’m super excited for follow-ups. Thank you, Tessa.

[00:31:12] Tessa Burg: Uh, and if people would like to find you and ask you questions directly, how can they do that?

[00:31:18] Troy Snyder: You can just reach me, uh, Wonderful Foundations. [email protected] is my email. I’m happy to share and continue the discussion and continue it further. Uh, and of course love to talk about school and what we’re doing there as well as too and how we’re bringing field trip experiences back, um, if that’s interesting to your audience as well.

[00:31:35] Tessa Burg: Yeah. I know of at least two other people just at Mod Op alone who are on school board, so

[00:31:40] Troy Snyder: Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah, we gotta fix this school thing too. It’s a whole other discussion and we should have it, but yes.

[00:31:47] Tessa Burg: And for listeners who wanna hear more episodes of Leader Generation, you can find them at mod op.com/podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[00:31:56] Tessa Burg: Just Search Leader Generation. And until next time, have a great week.

[00:32:00] Troy Snyder: Thanks, Tessa.