Are you using storytelling in your work? Are you using AI tools?
If you answered “no” to either of those questions, you need this episode!
If you answered “yes,” to both of them, you should still listen, as you'll gain insight and ideas on how you can do both more effectively.
My guest on this week’s episode is Dan Nestle. Dan is an award-winning communications executive and recognized communications technology leader, and he understands the importance of crafting stories and narrative in any communication. Lately, he has immersed himself in AI tools and has been teaching others how they too can adapt AI to their workflow, even if they don’t think they need to.
In this episode we dive into storytelling, communications, and AI, while occasionally getting into how “Yes, And” can be a powerful tool to help in these areas.
Key Themes:
- Tailored Storytelling: Dan underscores the significance of crafting clear and tailored narratives to effectively convey messages in diverse industries, drawing on his experiences marketing technical products like industrial gas compressors at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
- Storytelling Strategies: Dan shares the ABT (And, But, Therefore) framework as a powerful tool for structuring compelling stories. We also talk about leveraging AI tools and the importance of adapting to AI technologies, especially for small businesses seeking to enhance productivity and efficiency.
- AI in Communications: Having a playful and iterative approach to AI can help demystify it, and by humanizing AI interactions, you can make the experience more enjoyable and effective.
- Creativity and AI Co-Intelligence: We also delve into working co-intelligently with generative AI to stimulate creativity and overcome writer’s block. By treating AI as a partner rather than a “solution giver,” you can use it to help unlock your own inner brilliance.
- Active Listening and Communication Skills: Nestle stresses the importance of active listening, employing techniques like “yes and” in conversations to foster curiosity and enhance communication skills.
Resources:
- Listen to Dan’s Podcast, The Trending Communicator
- Connect with Dan on LinkedIn
- Check out Dan's contribution to “The Most Amazing Marketing Book Ever: More than 350 inspiring ideas!
Unedited Transcript
Avish Parashar
Hello, Dan. Welcome to the podcast. How are you, my friend?
Dan Nestle
Hey, Avish. What's going on, man? It's good to see you again.
Avish Parashar
Likewise. Likewise. It's great to have you, on my podcast, which is Rest, Bank, and You, after I was a guest on your podcast, which was a ton of fun. And, we are going to get into that, but you've got, quite an interesting background. You've done a number of things. And rather than me sort of butchering it and leaving things out, for people who are listening who don't know who you are, could you, just give us, like, another 30 to 62nd kinda overview of the the Dan Nessel story?
Dan Nestle
It's very hard to keep it to 30, 60 seconds as you'll as you'll know from the course of our discussions and certainly the way this is gonna go. I'm I'm I'm a little bit of a talker. But, yeah, I am Dan Nestle, and I'm a marketing communications leader, professional expert, whatever you wanna call it. Very focused in, like, comms innovation, the areas of communications technology, corporate communications, and how that and integrated communications. In other words, the kind of connection between communications and marketing and all of that. And I guess what that really means is I like to tell stories, for on behalf of other people and, you know, and use technology and embrace technology as a way to really enable those stories and certainly, you know, distribute and and amplify all of those stories, you know, to a certain end. So I've had a career in, you know, my career is has most in the most recent several decades has been in marketing and communications, you know, but I I started out as a teacher in Japan, lived in Japan for 16 years, wasn't teaching the whole time, did a couple different jobs, and eventually just landed on the fact that I really like writing.
I really like, storytelling, and, you know, putting messages and and words together. So I started building a small business that way and that eventually led to corporate, being hired by a corporation and then spent the last, I don't know, 20 years maybe in corporate environments doing very variations of communications, marketing, marketing communications, etcetera. And then in recent years, I've been very focused on, you know, it's I'm I'm very industry agnostic. So I've been in, I've been in accounting. I've been in, you know, business services. I've been in on PR agency side. Very Are
Avish Parashar
you saying these are the types of groups you work for or this is the type of work you've done?
Dan Nestle
Yeah. I've worked I mean, I've done communications and marketing work for these kinds of industries
Avish Parashar
and groups. So you were not doing accounting yourself. You were working before kind of No.
Dan Nestle
You know? And and what I've always found is, like, I I've been told that I have this unearthly curiosity. It's it's one of those things, and and I just call it ADHD. But it is what it is. I have, I'm I'm a very curious person, and curiosity lends itself really, really well to being a creative and also to, you know, to kind of learning very quickly about businesses or clients or people and, you know, getting really interested in their stories and being able to tell their stories. So whether it's for an executive somewhere or for a rocket ship or for a forklift, or, you know, or for a toilet. And I'm not joking about any of these things.
I've I've done, you know, communications for heavy industries, you know, energy, oil and gas, aerospace, and, more recently, I'm late of LIXL. I I I left the company a short time ago, but that was all about, kitchen and bath and water technology. And, you know, it's really fascinating to go like, one of the fortunate things about being in communications and in marketing is that in a very transferable, kind of set of skills and as long as you find clients and companies that are, you know, looking for someone to, you know, basically get up to speed and and tell their their stories in a specific way or or or boost their profiles and such and have the patience to let them learn, then, you know, you can be you know, you can you can learn so much about so many things so quickly. I mean, I'm not about to do a spreadsheet or or a balance sheet, but, you know, I could tell you about accounting. I just can't I some you know, I'm I'm just not an accountant.
Avish Parashar
Well, I like to dig into that idea of the story thing of yeah. As you know, my whole thing is yes, and and saying yes, and to say yes, but. And I find that
Dan Nestle
Yeah.
Avish Parashar
To me, one of these yes angles very hand in hand with is digging deeper and being curious because anytime someone mentions something about what they're doing, sometimes your mind will go to, yeah, but. Like, oh, that doesn't Mhmm. That doesn't relate to me or just saying, oh, that's nice. Like, yeah, that's nice. And the end piece is where you dig deeper. So share me a little bit about for a lot of people listening, especially if they don't have a storytelling or marketing background, this idea of, like, the story behind bath, kitchen fixtures, accounting, like Anything. How what kind of stories are you talking about?
How how does that have a story and how is that important? Why is that important?
Dan Nestle
I mean, when we say a story, we're talking about a a basically a mode of communication, like a way to get a message through to a person or to somebody else on the other end. And story is the capsule. Right? Story is the is the is the vehicle. And, you know, a story basically is and almost anything that has a a a beginning, a middle, and an end on the the most basic level. Mhmm. So that it's understandable by the person who is who is the recipient.
If you go out and you just give a a random statement, like, you you said yes and. Well, without context and without, like, an understanding of where that comes from, where it's going, and why it's important, there's no story. So that's the story. Right? The story I'm I'm talking about is creating a for for lack of a better word, a narrative, and it could be just a few sentences or it could be pages and pages or it could be a whole, you know, ebook or whatever. But creating a narrative that makes that understandable and accessible to whatever your audience is. And you have to you know, you gotta tailor that message and tailor the story to whatever audience you're talking about.
Now I know that still sounds kinda high level and and I guess it is, but in practical terms, you know, you would say something like you'd have a you'd have a typical a typical product or or a or a service from a company, and and I'll just use one an example from my past. We had, when I worked I worked for a company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries a while back, and I'm picking them because there were so many fascinating products and services that they did. And, there's this one, really completely for the for for the vast majority of people, totally uninteresting. Nobody would really care except the people who are really kind of focused on this stuff. We had a we had a subsidiary company that did, compressors. And I don't mean like the kind of little small thing you put in a fridge. I mean, big giant gas compressors, industrial compressors.
These things weighed up to 100 of tons, you know, and it's a it's a giant piece of of industrial technology that basically takes on one end, it takes a gas of some kind Mhmm. And then it compresses it so that at the other end, it becomes liquid. Right? Yeah. Or or or or or a or a more compact version of that gas. So it's it's taking something and making it into small. So so the application of these things, these things are used for, for heavy industries like energy or like, like, like think of think of, liquefied natural gas. Right? It gets liquefied because it comes in as natural gas and it has to go through compressors to get liquefied. Right? So you have to put so that that's a and that in itself is sort of a little story.
But anyway, you could talk about a compressor by talking about the fan blade the, the blades on the on the on the rotor, or you can talk about how, you know, how how heavy it is or the materials it's made from. Right? These are all, like, products these are all benefits or or statistics or tech specs. And most people cannot relate to that. And, certainly, if you're one of those if you're in the market for something like that, you know, that doesn't tell you anything really about the the the efficiency of the product or it doesn't tell you anything about, you know, the people making the product or doesn't doesn't give you any affinity with the with the product or the company. So you might as well just buy a commodity product. Right? Mhmm. In this case so in this case, we had this this this big rotor blade and like a big a part of a compressor.
And the company brought them in. 1 of the things that the company did was to was bring in compressors and fix them. Right? Compressor repair was part of the business, repair and storage. So you have to imagine that you have these giant, giant things that are anywhere, you know, tons they weigh tons and, you know, you need a big fair you need a fairly big work warehouse to or factory essentially to work on them. Like I said, very high, high levels of technology, you know, pro like machine to the micrometer, big blades and so on.
Well, this completely unromantic business. Mhmm. Right? Rotor blades. We're in a factory one day and, a couple of folks from Japan are are there visiting. Now now full disclosure, I wasn't there, but I saw this whole thing on video and, this is all part of what I did. But this rotor's in the middle of the of the of the, of the floor and, you know, it's the it's it's there for repairs or or whatever.
This guy comes out, in a, you know, in a very well worn work, like, overalls and coveralls, a worker, like a Japanese guy,
Avish Parashar
you
Dan Nestle
know, in a in a blue coveralls, you know, his name is stitched on the corner and and he's got, you know, protective goggles on and he's got a little tool belt, you know, he's an engineer, but the tool, he opens up the tool belt and he stands in front of the rotor and he rolls out the tools. The remember, we're talking about a piece of technology that is, you know, again, process like, milled to the micrometer. It's, you know, high carbon steels, kind of good stuff. This guy takes out what looks like 300 year old tools, you know, like a like a hammer that could have been forged from iron in, you know, in the Tokugawa age or, you know, something like really old stuff. Mhmm. And he rolls the stuff out, puts in his earplugs so he's, you know so whatever. He's not exposed to too much noise, and he kinda stands behind the compressor or the rotor blades. Right? Mhmm. Feels it with his hands, like, places his hands upon it and then he takes that that hammer and he starts to, like, in a very rhythmic way, tap on these rivets that are holding the blades in place. Right? So you can you know, it's it's hard to picture, but imagine this this very big piece of machinery.
There are it's like a giant fan, imagine. And the fan blades are held in place by by by bolts, by rivets. Right? This is something this big piece of machinery is gonna go in a power plant or something somewhere. This guy comes out with a little hammer. He's just tapping the different rivets. And what what we saw there is that's a story. Okay? You have you have a piece of technology, but then you have an artisan, a craftsman who is doing something that we we had to explore, figure out what that was.
But he's doing something that clearly was not part of an of, like, any industrial process that anybody had seen. So why is he doing this?
What is the point? What's happening here?
How do we answer those questions? And when you answer those questions, you have a story. Mhmm. And those and that story then becomes part of the brand of the of the item. It becomes, you know, in it, I guess, in a very commercial sense, another reason to maybe be interested and buy the product. But it also, like, feeds into the heritage of the of the of the product itself or of the of the process and it feeds into, you know, employee morale, everything.
So we have this guy out there. He's doing this little you know, he's he's tapping this thing with his hammer. And what we learned was he's doing something called peening. And I didn't know that word before then and I've really never had occasion to use it since. But he's he's taking a hammer and he's, like, tapping the rivets to just to kind of make a small slight little bevel onto rivets to make sure that they stay in there more firmly and, and that that machine sings. And I I gotta tell you, I don't know how many rivets were on that thing.
A 100, 200? I don't know. Mhmm. Every single one of them, when he was done, was was perfectly beveled around with a kind of, like, you know, this this just a beautiful edge. You'd think a machine did it, but it was this guy. And it turns out that there's 8 people in the world who can do this.
Avish Parashar
Wow.
Dan Nestle
He is one
Avish Parashar
of them.
Dan Nestle
That's what he does. He goes place to place and he just peens rivets or whatever whatever the right verb is.
Avish Parashar
He's the beveler.
Dan Nestle
He's the beveler. So we'll so so we create a story out of this. Alright? It's a story about artisanship, about about old and new, about the, you know, the the importance of may of keeping the human in the in the loop in a technology in a in a high-tech manufacturing environment. You know? It's about what the human eye can see that a machine can't see. So, you know, from beginning to end, it becomes, you know, a beautiful piece of machinery that is that is normally done by machine, but we have these great artisans that are amazing and that do these, you know, do this ancient work that makes it even better.
And, you know, his name is such and such and this is why he's great and you talk about that. And then you at the very end of the story, it's therefore this is a product that's so unique and stands above everything else. You know? So you have this arc Mhmm. That's focused on the person. And then out of that, you have these mini arcs like, what's the story of this guy? Right? What's the story of and where is this where is this particular machine gonna go?
Where'd it come from? Where's it gonna go? Right? What does the client say about this? What does the customer say about this? The person who paid 1,000,000 of dollars for this. What, you know, what what is the, what's the advantage?
So you have all these different elements that can then be woven into any number of, of of of narratives, of advertisements, of blog posts, you know, go and on and on. The story goes on. So I realized I talked for a long time about that, but, you know, it's a simple story. It's just that's the way it happens, you know. And sometimes it's simpler than that. Sometimes it's just simply, you know, you have an you have an employee who's done great things, and you can just talk about them.
Avish Parashar
So it's it's real true because even as you were just going through that story, like, I I definitely wasn't super interested when you were talking about the compressors and the fans and the Serpentera. Right? But as soon as you start talking about this guy, it comes off by curiosity. Right? You talk about you being curious, but that's really what stories are. Stories I I read it once because I do a lot of writing. I I, you know, do fiction and stuff.
And, so I said all stories are mysteries. Like, it's not Right. It doesn't have to be a mystery, you know, who done it, but all stories raise a question of either what happened or what's going to happen. And then Right. Gets curious. And just the story about, oh, what's this guy doing out there with his little hammer? So it's and so the next question which you started answering is so you it's one thing to find and create the story, but if it's just sitting on a shelf, it does nothing.
So then you gotta get it out there. So Yeah. Is this something you did in the form of press releases or just on the website or blog posts or, like, how do you get these stories out there?
Dan Nestle
In in this particular instance, it's it was really serendipitous. Like, we didn't know that this was gonna happen. So, we you know, I had this wonderful colleague who was on-site at the time, and she had a video crew there. Happened they just happened to be doing something different.
She grabbed the crew and said, you need to film this. So we we captured it on a video and created a 2 and a half or 3 minute video. Brilliant. I'll share it, I'll share it with you.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. I don't know. You can you can put it
Dan Nestle
in the link, and, it is it is a gorgeous piece of storytelling, a visual storytelling, and, and even the words are are are terrific. And, you know, it was then posted to our channels and and it was it was, distributed through, like, we may we publicized it through social media. We publicized it through, you know, through client and customer communications with that for that business. You know? But, again, this this is a very esoteric small kind of niche business. And it's not a small business, but it's a it's a niche business. So it's not like it has mass appeal, but that story itself definitely has the the visuals of it have appeal to so many even if you don't know what's going on, you're it's like, oh, wow. That's beautiful.
I can't believe this guy. What's he doing? So, so it did have a lot of appeal across various channels.
So we put it out there on YouTube. We put it out there across a different a bunch of different channels and, you know, this was like, you know, 7 or 8 years ago, I guess. So even now the tools and technology available to to specifically target audiences and and get the most out of those stories are are even far more advanced now than they were then, and then they were pretty advanced. You know?
Avish Parashar
Oh, yeah. Now anyone can So Well, it's interesting because I come in and out of doing video, various video social media platforms via YouTube or TikTok or something because as a speaker, you know, the more video I can get out there, the better. Yeah. And it's just it's another lesson is that it's one thing for me to get out there and say, here's how to use yes and, here's how to think quickly.
Dan Nestle
Mhmm.
Avish Parashar
But the more you can wrap it into story, the more engaged people get. Yeah. So let's bring this down. You know, you're talking about a giant compressor fan, a giant company. And and some people listening are gonna be leaders, marketing, comp people in big corporations. A lot though are gonna be more small business, solo business.
Dan Nestle
Sure.
Avish Parashar
Or even just people who are interested on a personal level. So how and do you see is there a way and how can people use this on a more individual level? So not just a corporate brand story, but a personal, a professional level. How can individuals use these same ideas? So
Dan Nestle
the have to be aware of. And and, you know, I love the art or the kind of the the process of of of storytelling and of narrative development, etcetera. I'm by no means the leading expert in this, but I like to grab from some of the experts. And there's one there's one expert that I really love, as a as a as an accessible kind of who who's created a very accessible framework for anybody to create a great story. Alright? And it's it it it is a little bit, I'd like to see how this jives with with, yes and.
Avish Parashar
Okay.
Dan Nestle
Because the because the story itself has a big but in the middle. Right? It has to have a but. Although you don't have to say but, you could say something different. But. And and, there you know, a simple framework. But you just said you said a story is a mystery. Right? Well, create a mystery, whether it's about yourself, about a you know, you could see I have, you know, like, hats in the background. Mhmm. A picture.
It doesn't you know, a big compressor. It doesn't matter. This I I call it maybe the the maybe the best starter's framework I've ever seen, but it you can you'd never have to have another framework again. It's called the it's called the ABT. The and, but, therefore, framework.
And a fellow named, named, gosh, Park. Oh oh my good why am I blanking on, on Park's name? I'm sorry. I'm gonna I'm gonna look and look behind me for a sec. Yeah. I'll I'll get the information to you for I don't know what's going on. Park's gonna kill me because we're we're actually friends.
But but, he's created this with a with a with a colleague of his, the ABT framework. And if you go to, business of story.com, for example, you'll be able to
Avish Parashar
Okay.
Dan Nestle
To, to find any of the information. But the idea is you you start off with with with a little bit of context. You know, that's your that's your and story.
Avish Parashar
You
Dan Nestle
know? You know, the world is, you know, the world is changing and, yeah, and everybody needs, a and everybody need I'm just I'm just making something up off as we go. But, let's say something like the like the world is changing and, everyone, needs to protect themselves from, from the sun. Okay? So that's a Yeah.
This is a an and. Right? The world's changing and we know that everybody needs to protect themselves from the sun. But it's getting but it's getting increasingly difficult, right, to know what is what what, what's the best way to to protect yourself and what, you know, and you can go on and on. Right? But it's increasingly difficult to find a really a good way to stay out of this, as climate change happens and so on and so forth. But, therefore, what you really need is a brand new gorgeous, the trending communicator hat to protect your head head from the sun.
You know, it has all the elements you need, the blah blah blah. Terrible story, but you get the idea. Right? Yeah. There's a I gave it context. Right? The world's changing. Right? But it's really hard to cope with that change.
Therefore, here's something that's gonna help you cope with that change. So that is that is probably I should have said that to begin with. But that's probably, like, a a really good way to kinda look at things. So you can do an and, but, therefore, for anything,
Avish Parashar
as long as you have an idea
Dan Nestle
of what you're kind of what you're offering is, what you're an idea of what you're kind of what you're offering is, what you're unique what's unique about you, what's interesting about what you're talking about, and what it is about you or your career or what it is about your business. You can start off with creating a whole lot of different ABT statements to find something that really resonates because they're not very hard to create despite the fumbles that I just had because, you know, I'm even though I said I'm, I'm a good I'm a storyteller and a and a curious person, I'm not an on the spot creator all the time. But, you know, I just have to say that.
Avish Parashar
It's a Yeah.
Dan Nestle
But you can, like but even then, right, I would have, you know, I I would have probably thought about it a little more. But then you, you know, there you have now in addition to that, you have so many tools available to you that can then turbocharge that ABT or that framework. Okay? And you can choose other frameworks, in anything with a beginning, middle, and an end. I mean, there's there's a lot of different frameworks out there. I'm just gonna use that one as as my main go to park howl, by the way. Park howl.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. And I like that because it is normal stories are done as 3 act structures. There's the the what you want, the obstacle to get it, and whether you get it or not, and this is kind of a variation on that. I like this is a little bit more business focused with the Daraphor being kind of the the solution, which I like.
Dan Nestle
And you can use you can replace those words with words that mean the same thing or you can you know, once you get used to it, you can play with the structure and do different syntaxes and, you know, kind of play around and you can expand different sections and do nested things and so on. But the what I was going to then say though is that today, even for the small business owner, for the person who isn't doesn't have a lot of time to do these writing and to kinda come up with all these things. Right? Now we have incredible tools available to us that can give you 500 examples in seconds. Right?
Avish Parashar
And, of course, it's already
Dan Nestle
been a while.
Avish Parashar
I wanna talk more with you about because you are, you've been doing a lot with AI lately.
Dan Nestle
Yeah.
Avish Parashar
As lately as in, like, the last few months or year. Mhmm. Even your I was kinda going before the the Prava was going through your podcast episodes, and, you know, about a year ago, it was general talking to corporate leaders, executives, or experts on core on marketing communications. And the last however many episodes are like, how to use AI, here's the challenge they have. So so this is an era you really jumped into, and you probably know as much about it as most people I know.
Dan Nestle
Well, you know, I kinda came up with my own story in some ways. Right? Like I this is maybe illustrative of how a lot of, I guess, independent people, in in small businesses go about doing things and, you know, I started off as The Dan Nestle Show. My podcast was The Dan Nestle Show, which was really just really, you know, kind of general. I mean, I I had an idea that I just wanted to have great conversations with great people, you know, but that's a little little vague. And I just gravitated more towards people in marketing and people in in in personal development, you know, people I was interested in. And I got a lot of people in, you know, a lot of coaches, a lot of folks who were, you know, in in marketing communications and so on, and including you, Avish.
You were on the show. Mhmm. But then, you know, I got a better hold of my story, which was that, I have this background and this experience in the world of communications and an insatiable curiosity for technology. Right? But so many people in my profession and so many people out there don't know how to cope with it. They don't know how to under they don't know what to do with it. They're afraid for their lives. Right? They're afraid for their jobs.
Therefore, I started the Trending Communicator to offer at least I'm gonna mix metaphors, but to offer a paddle in the canoe or or boat that they're kind of going down the river on. Right? Like, the trending communicator is there to help people cope with all this change by talking with experts who are looking to the future and and and solve and and coming up with with different solutions or information. And you see, I packaged that and that was actually not too bad of a of a story, the way, you know, it had packaged. I just did a whole big ABT there for you. Yeah. But, but, you know, when I narrowed into the Trending Communicator, it turns out that, you know, what's happening now is a lot of work with AI.
So maybe 7 out of the last 10 guests I've had have been all about AI. And I've been, as you said, in that space now, like, really focused on what the heck is going on with with generative AI for, well, when did ChatGPT launch?
November 30th or December 1, 2022? Since that
Avish Parashar
long ago? Wow.
Dan Nestle
Yeah. I
Avish Parashar
I think I got involved in 23, but yeah.
Dan Nestle
Yeah. Yeah. But, like, the day it was launched, I belong to a really great, community of of marketers and communicators who are, you know, focused on sharing each other's, sharing learning and the betterment of of one another. And these kinds of things when they happen, I just check my community and it's somebody's on it, you know. So we were on it from from day 1. And, I really dove in and I've I've really I've very much embraced it, and I and I want to help our profession and help people kind of understand it better. You know?
Avish Parashar
Well, I'll ask you a few questions about that. Mhmm. Starting kind of a little higher level first. Yeah. There's this line that relates to this, I think, on your LinkedIn profile which may also be on your podcast about you page. But your thing saying if you say that change is the only constant, you're doomed.
Dan Nestle
Yeah.
Avish Parashar
Because it's not constant. It's accelerating.
Dan Nestle
That's right.
Avish Parashar
And I feel like that has really been brought to the forefront with with AI because so many people are like, oh, it's the latest trend. It's a new thing. And Mhmm. So many people because it's different and they don't know it or they try to use it once one day and are like, oh, it gave me terrible answers. This is a waste.
Dan Nestle
Yep.
Avish Parashar
So for people who are maybe a little reluctant or Mhmm. Who are like, ah, it's just, you know, yeah, everything changes anyways.
I don't need to get on this. Like, what is
Dan Nestle
Right.
Avish Parashar
What is your kind of thought about that?
Dan Nestle
Well, you know, there is a hype cycle to everything, you know, that where you have your early adopters and, oh, this is the most important thing. This most you know, this is this is crazy. You gotta try this. You gotta do this, and you other early adopters who are gonna jump on and, you know, I'm one of those people. So it's easy to to dismiss that the hype a little bit with anything new that comes out because we've been inundated with that for, you know, for generations, I suppose. But with AI and generative AI, it's a little bit, different. I would I would call it something more akin to the first iPhone or or I'll go even more grandiose and say, the printing press.
Like, it's I think it's that Yeah. That revolutionary. But there's a there's there's a couple of things about it that that I think will make it either very, very easy to adopt and adapt to, or you'll adapt to it and you won't know it. Right? Mhmm. Or or you won't adapt. You'll you will kind of, you know, turn your back on it and just sail off into the future of of, you know, doing something with your hands because and that's fine.
That's great if that's what you wanna do. The thing is, like so so I do think that it is it is a it's a different level of change that's that's upon us. Now it's it it it it it accelerates and slows down a little bit over time, but we're seeing such advances in the way that, that the generative AI models. And when I say model, you you know chat gpt or maybe you know, if you're into it a little more, you know, Gemini or or Claude or these other these other products. But but just, you know, ChatJikati seems to be the most common, use of the of of this. But these all refer to to language models that, you know, give you answers to things, by some miracle of technology, you know. And, and there's no miracle involved.
It's it's it's very it it's very straightforward if, to a point, like, how it happens and why it happens. But at the same time, where it's going and how these models behave is is kind of still a mystery. There's a lot of black boxness about this whole thing where we don't know what's happening. But, you know, peep I I do think people need to get on board with it and, especially, you know, folks who are not just in, you know, marketing communication or creative professions, anybody who's running a business, a small business especially, the productivity gains, the, the efficiency gains, and the let's call it, opportunity kind of revelations that come from AI Mhmm. Are are priceless. And when I say I think everybody can understand productivity gains. Right? Yeah. You can write an email much faster. Yeah. You can you can write a story faster.
You can, yeah, you can you can edit documents, do those do all the things that that I think, people understand it's good at by now. And if you don't understand that that those are that AI is good at, you know, taking on very easy and kind of day to day writing tasks and editing tasks, take my word for it. It's very good at that.
Avish Parashar
Yeah.
Dan Nestle
But so everybody I think the productivity gains are are are kinda clear. Then efficiency gains, I mean, you're talking about, well, if it can do this really well, then maybe I can use it to kind of do that more and and stop other people from doing that particular task. Like like, if it's if if it's something simple as and I'll just stick with the world of of of writing and editing. But if it's like if it's like you have a a you you're hiring people to proofread and edit things, well, you shouldn't be doing that anymore because the efficiency from the from AI is ridiculous. Right? You can just upload things and you can get it proofed and edited perfectly well with no problems at any time from any of these models. Right? And it's all basic stuff.
But what I, you know, what I really mean by the opportunity opener, right, is that when you really kind of start to understand that that generative AI becomes is not a search engine. Right? A generative AI is now Google. It's not gonna give you answers to things. Generative AI is giving you answers that it thinks you want based on patterns that you give it. Right? It's a big pattern matching thing.
And the more kind of interesting your questions are, the more, complex your inquiries are, the more interesting the patterns and the more and and responses become that you get. And you can continue along that path of of well, I'm gonna ask it something interesting, to a point where you are writing or asking it or telling it to do things and that's called prompting.
Avish Parashar
Mhmm.
Dan Nestle
People who don't know, where you are you're you're creating these incredible prompts that then help you to work side by side with AI as a partner. And the Ethan Malek who's at, who's at the Wharton School and he's, definitely one of the leading thinkers in the world of where what you can do with generative AI. It's not about, like, he's not about he's not the technologist, but he's more he he is absolutely deep in it. He's written this great book called Co Intelligence, and it's a very it's not a long read. I recommend anybody's interested in AI should read it. And co intelligence just means that you should be working with AI as your cointelligence.
It gives you another brain, a second brain. And and you can, you know, work with it on what you're doing and whatever you're doing, and then start to ask it.
What do you think of this? What's you know, you know, put yourself in in this particular role or, you know, act as as a, act as a if if I was if I wanted to channel a vis, I'd say, you know, act as a improv master and public speaker and, you know, and expert communicator and tell me what you think about this. And you start to converse with it as if it's a partner. Right? Mhmm. What that does for you is it gives you do new perspectives on what you're working on and some of it you a lot of it's gonna be trash. Right? But it's it's you have an endless amount of of, of fuel there.
Like, you don't have to limit it to 3 answers. You can get 500 answers and choose the ones you like. The but, like, you can you can start to talk to it about, you know, ideas and business ideas and and kind of, scenarios that you have in front of you or that you dream might happen. And and it will give you some semblance of answers whether you like those answers or not or whether they're true or not is another story, but it gets the brain going. Right? So you can you can discover all kinds of interesting opportunities that way.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. About this whole, model I talk about creativity, it takes a little time to explain, but the rough idea is you throw a pebble into a pond and the ripples you get are the ideas. Mhmm. And this whole thing about making the pond more calm so you see more ripples. But when I I do I've done some programs, specific with the government professionals, on how they can start using AI. Yeah. And what I find is we're the pebble you're throwing in the pond is like your prompt for the AI.
The better the prompt, the better the ideas. My kinda to your point, though, some of my best use results from AI, I use it for the writing, the end when I write something I don't wanna write or procrastinate. But it's when I throw an idea in there and then I use its response as the pebble in my own pond. So Yeah. I'm not kind of to your point about cointelligence cocreating, I'm not even if I start out with this mindset, my ultimate goal is not to use the AI to get the answers. It's to give me a slightly different angle or approach, which will suddenly give me a new creative idea. And this has happened yesterday.
I'm working on a new keynote I'm doing in a week or so, and this is one little segment. I I'm like, it's all about yes and, and I wanna talk about yes and emotions. But I'm not exactly sure what to say about that, and so I just put it in chat gpt. I'm like, here's what I'm writing. Here's this context of the keynote. Can you just write me a blurb about what yes end emotions are and why they're important? And it came me back.
And to your point, I'm not gonna use any of it. But I had, like, one line in there, I'm like, ah, I hadn't thought of it that way, and that suddenly opened up a whole new so the content's all mine, but that jogged my mind in just a new direction, just nudged me in a new direction just enough to let my creativity start flowing out.
Dan Nestle
Absolute absolutely great use case, you know, and and that's that's there are so many different use cases that are popping up and and, you know, you can if you're a scientifically or engineering minded person, you can use it to write and check your code. I mean, there's there's, you know, right now, you can, the latest versions especially, you can actually just start to talk to it about a business idea and say, you know, what I'd like you to do is create is is is depending on which one you're using, look at the market research that's out there, create a unique idea for this, find out if this segment is valid. Then I want you to do a SWOT analysis of x y z, and, then give me the code for a website, for a basic website that's gonna that's gonna represent this new company. You know? And, you know, in the in the process, it will do all of these things. And you're create you have a whole creative team at your at your disposal. Now you of course not everybody's gonna do that every day.
But whenever I have like some sort of whenever I ask myself something like, would it be great if right? Wouldn't it be great if then I wanna invite AI to the table there. Right? I wanna I wanna say, okay. I wonder what is out there or let let me expand on this idea a little bit more and and you kinda talk to my little intern that knows everything, about this particular idea. You know? So, like one example the other day I was I was thinking, you know, it's very I'm try I I want to launch a new consulting business. Right? I wanna think about consulting with companies about AI and about, you know, the implementation or the enablement of AI.
You know, of course, part of that is showing people how to use it, but it's more about that AI mindset. Where how do people think about it? And when you change the mindset, it it changes everything about how you work with it. So if I can help companies to do that or if I can help people to do that, great. So I went to so I started to flesh this out using, I was using Claude at the time, which is the anthropic version of Chat GPT.
It's not even a version of Chat GPT anymore. It's its own thing.
Avish Parashar
Mhmm.
Dan Nestle
And, you know, I was asking it. Okay. Look at I asked it to look at everything it knew about me. So I gave it the website for my for my podcast, The Trending Communicator. I gave the website for my, the link to my LinkedIn profile. I uploaded my resume, and then I said search the web as well for anything you can find out about Dan Nestle. Right? Then write me an 800 word feature about how Dan Nestle is at the forefront of AI, of AI in communications.
Because, you know, I'm thinking, okay. I'm how am I gonna market myself in this way? And you know what it did? It gave me an 800 word, like, feature piece Mhmm. About the greatness of Dan Nestle. And I was like I was like, okay. It's too much puffery.
But it was a start. You know? It it was a really interesting exercise because we're so hard it's so hard for us to sell ourselves. So, you know, thinking thinking it through, I was like, okay, this is a pretty good beginning of, alright, how I might be able to position my, my consulting practice because here's my strengths. Here are the things that I'm known for. Here are the things that I'm that that are out there that I'm good at and here's some of the and and by the way, here's some of the things that I've said in my my hundreds of hours of podcasting. Right, it pulled quotes.
It pulled quotes from my transcripts that were pertinent to the topic. So, like, you know, I didn't ask it to necessarily do that, but it did that. And, I'm I'm just amazed every time I use it at the ideas and the opportunities that open up in my mind from from, you know, working with it together as a cointelligence.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. And I think this iterative slash playful approach is so important. I think, because it seemed as a business tool and, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty, a lot of fear, a lot of misconceptions. Mhmm. You know, most people's, you know, initial ideas about AI came from either 2,001 or the terminator. You know? Neither of which are particularly positive.
So it's all like, oh.
Dan Nestle
To to date to date us a little bit. Yeah.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. Yeah. I can at least say for me it was terminator, not 2,001. But but, so let's just take a, and I think it's
Dan Nestle
a little
Avish Parashar
easier for people who are have a lot of hats to wear, like a small business person, a solar provider, entrepreneur. Because a lot of AI is good because, hey, here's a hat. I didn't go into business to wear this hat, but I have to.
Oh, now AI can help. Right. But let's kinda bring it down to, say, a knowledge worker, you know, working they've got their job that you know, like you said, the accountant or the, HR person, whoever, and they're uncertain about AI. They haven't really used it. How would you recommend they just get started
Dan Nestle
with it? Well, you know, as it happens, I've done workshops exactly on this topic, with with those with those very with those very groups. You know, I've I've done I've done workshops for people in HR and legal and, and to some extent, finance. The interesting thing is they think, well, it's not really necessarily relevant to me. Legal's different, but it's not necessarily relevant to me because I'm so focused on, like, processes. Right? But that's exactly where AI is great.
So how I I guess to get started, the first thing the very first thing is to is to just change your understanding of it. Right? It's to just say and I I mentioned the mindset before. You absolutely have to just wipe your slate wipe the slate clean a little bit first and say I'm not okay. Just because there's a there's a digital interface, this is not a search engine. Right? This is not Google.
Avish Parashar
Yeah.
Dan Nestle
Right? And understand that you interact with it in a very, very different way. Now you can interact with it just like you interact with Google, but believe me, you're not gonna get any results from it. That's what most people do. They do that and they walk away. Oh, this is nothing. Right? Mhmm. But once you once you get past the mindset and you say, oh, wait a second.
I'm not I'm gonna I'm gonna, to some degree, humanize it, like, think that I'm dealing with a person, anthropomorphize it, I suppose.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. Like I said before, I'm gonna talk to my little intern who knows everything.
Dan Nestle
My I call him my little intern who knows everything. Somebody a friend of mine calls it my smart little friend. What whatever you call it. Humanize it a little bit, whatever you're comfortable with, and, you know, understand that you're dealing with an intelligence, that it's in the it's in the name, artificial intelligence. Right? So you're dealing with something that is, that's a lot broader and bigger than you know, that any of us know really. So get that mindset right first.
And then the then I would I would start with, once you have that in place, 2 things that have to happen in parallel. The first thing is subscribe immediately to 1 of the major chat one of the major, AI platforms. Right? One of the frontier models they call them. And the most I mean, the most likely one the the most common and recommend one would be ChatGPT. Right? So go to OpenAI and open up a ChatGPT account if you don't have one already because, the even the free version is excellent for what you need for a lot of I'm
Avish Parashar
still on the free version. I use it a lot. I'm still on the free version.
Dan Nestle
Oh, and the and the new ones with with, g with g t four o is is fantastic. Right? Mhmm. So and even the free version of Claude, with with Sonnet 3.5, I think is the
Avish Parashar
is the free one. Don't know Claude, is that with a k or a c?
Dan Nestle
C. C. C, c l a
Avish Parashar
d u d?
Dan Nestle
D e dot a I. Right? And that's from Anthropic. And Claude is like, Claude is much better, I think, at writing and at at, at that kind of longer form content. Then all these platforms have different functions and they're changing all the time. But, but go to chat gpt, open up an account. So so the 2 things you need to do.
Number 1, chat gpt, what or, you know, one of them, open up an account, get started. Right? And just play around. The and it gives you, like, it gives you some, hey, try this type prompts. You know, play around with it. See how it goes. The second thing you need to do is learn how to prompt.
Avish Parashar
Mhmm.
Dan Nestle
And there are a lot a lot of resources out there. Right? A lot of resources out there, but you just need to remember basically, I think, you know, once you have the mindset right, you know that you're not gonna use it like a search engine, you realize that you need to put a little bit of time in upfront to get the most out of the out of your partnership with AI. Subscribe to the tool.
Learn how to prompt. There's a lot of models out there. I like to use one called, well, I mean, I just like I just say basically give it a role. Yeah. Right? Always always tell it what it is.
Give it an action. Give it context, like, role and action to do, context around what it needs to do, and then tell it what to do, the the execution. It's called the RACE model, r a c e. I didn't invent that, but it it works really nicely. You can go to, there's a fellow named Christopher Penn, p e n n, who has loads of free resources about this. But go get a basic prompting structure down, you know, or just use your use your natural language, like, natural conversational capability and start talking to it. So I
Avish Parashar
would also think on a sort of a psychologic, you could also ask he chat g p t.
Dan Nestle
Mhmm.
Avish Parashar
What should I put in my prompts to help you give me better answers? And it will literally give you a formula on how to structure your prompts.
Dan Nestle
That's right. It will. It totally will. It'll help you like, that's the other thing about it is if you don't know what to do, ask it what to do. You know?
Avish Parashar
Yeah. And I've done that before. I'm like, how what what information do you need for me to write this? And it'll come back with a list of things.
Dan Nestle
Exactly. So those two things are the first things that you need to do is is really well, once you have the mindset down, then just play. Right?
Avish Parashar
Yeah.
Dan Nestle
The 3rd then I would I would add one more though, which is, like, it has to be relevant to you. So it's easy for us as as creative types, as people who write things for a living to immediately get a relevancy from AI. Right? I suppose people who are who are coders and and, like, you know, doing kind of very, very deep process type work also have some pretty immediate relevancy. It's harder for a lot of the other corporate functions and a lot of other professionals to understand immediately how it's relevant to them. But I will that's because I think they've been inundated with the other the other use cases. So what I would do next is come up with use cases.
And the use cases are basically start with things like, what tasks do I do every day or every week that take up time, but don't offer me any particular value? Yep. Start there. Right? And, and position your interaction with AI as that of a help it helpful assistant. Right? How is this gonna help you?
So start with those use cases and, you know, jeez, I really hate writing these weekly reports. It's a pain in the neck. It's always the same thing. Well, if it's always the same thing, it's a pain in the neck. Write a prompt. Right? Mhmm. And then have a prompt ready, and then you can create those weekly reports in the same format every week in minutes rather than hours.
So, and now I'm speaking from experience on that particular use case, but there there's a lot of them. Right? So come up with use cases and then just play. So those things, I think if you can do those things, then you're, then you're golden. And, the more you spend time with it, the more you play with it, the more, you know, the more you'll see, wait a second. What if I could do this? What if it could do this?
You know, keep asking yourself, wouldn't it be great if?
Avish Parashar
Yeah. And if I could have one suggestion to the use case, I think the mind because the text format, the mind immediately goes to writing, writing this email, writing this report. And a lot of people, like, I don't do that much writing. I would say going back to what we talked about about the creative generation is if you've got some problem, just get Chatchebe. So give me 10, 20 potential solutions to this. Like, if you've got an employee who you have a conflict with Yeah. Like, hey.
I got this employee. Here's the situation. Can you give me 20 potential things I could try to resolve the situation?
Dan Nestle
Yeah.
Avish Parashar
And so it doesn't have to be just for writing. It could be idea generation. Yeah. It could be code. It could be format. Like, it could be so many things.
Dan Nestle
I mean, it it depends on what you like, it really depends on what you want from it. You're and you're totally right. People think tend to think of what's of of getting an output from it that you can then take and use someplace. Yes. Like, and and, you know, that makes sense for writing. But what about advice and consulting and things like this? You know, when you start to ask it for advice that you can take you know, give take or leave it, it doesn't matter.
But when you start to ask it for advice, you're not gonna that's not something that you're going to then grab and cut and paste into a document. That's something that's gonna help inform your thinking. So that's, you know, that's I think that's a great point, Avish. You need to really understand that that it has those capabilities, you know. And when you start to play, you realize that that you can keep going and going and going with that, to various different places.
Avish Parashar
Awesome. Well, this is great. We're kinda coming to our end of the time here.
Dan Nestle
I
Avish Parashar
wanna ask you well, I'm gonna give you a chance to kinda send people to a place, and then ask you one final question. Before that, though, a quick question. Do you think that Rush is the best rock and roll band or just one of the best rock and roll bands of all time?
Dan Nestle
One of the best for sure. And and maybe your listeners and viewers need to know that Avish and I in Full Disclosure have known each other for 3 decades.
Avish Parashar
Wow. That's crazy.
Dan Nestle
And, we we we were in the same fraternity together. Still are I suppose, in a meta level, and spent a lot of time together. But one of the bonds that has kept us together these many years is an insane love for the band Rush. And I dare anyone to say that it is not one of the best bands because then you will be not welcome in my personal in my personal circle, although you're welcome to to certainly, talk to me about AI, but Rush
Avish Parashar
She's surely welcome to hire us for any services. We'll hire
Dan Nestle
No. I I jest.
But Rush Rush is, yeah, Rush is one of the best bands. I mean, there's a great bands coming out. There's great new bands and great old bands, but, you know, when it comes down to it, you gotta ask a question. Yeah. But is it as good as Rush? Yep. How does this compare to Rush?
Avish Parashar
Yeah. My favorite band.
So for me, the answer to that question is pretty much always no, but, you know, it's like, are you close? Like, alright.
You're pretty good. You're like that. So
Dan Nestle
Yeah. Yeah. I know.
We we have a lot of fun with Rush, but thank you for that. And and by the way, you know, with AI, you know, you can explore the lyrics and the and the music of Rush or any band that you like. There are some AI tools out there that actually you can create music in the style of or or in, you know, in
Avish Parashar
some way. Gonna say for AI also, if you're overly stressing it, it can also just be a tool for fun play. Like, I think way back earlier is I think I had it write me, like, write a song about something totally random in the style of Rush and just give me, like, Neil Peart lyrics. And he gave me that lyrics. I'm like, you know, I can see this being a Rush song.
Dan Nestle
It just Exactly.
Avish Parashar
It can be it's a it can be a tool for fun as well. Total fun.
Dan Nestle
Yeah. So go listen to rush and and subscribe to chat GPT. That's the 2 things.
Avish Parashar
The YouTube messages. So real quick, if people want to Yeah. Either learn more about you, listen to your podcast, or potentially engage you for some services? Where what's the best way to do that?
Dan Nestle
LinkedIn is always the best place to find me. I I'm a denizen of the LinkedIn platform. So just look for me, Daniel Nessel, on LinkedIn. I also have, my podcast is The Trending Communicator. So you could just go to trendingcommunicator. com. It's it's trendingc0mmunicator. com. Yeah. And, I'm on most of the socials at atd s as in Steven, d s nestle.
That's most of my
Avish Parashar
Fantastic. And I'll link to all that in the show notes and the blog page for this, this episode as well. Appreciate it. Awesome, Dan. I'd like to finish up with kinda one simple well, maybe not simple, but short question. So one of my things one of the reasons I do what I do is I honestly believe the world would be a better place if everyone just started with the default yes and instead of a yes but, I think communication connection. So my question to you is what is one small thing that you believe if if people did?
If everyone did just this one small thing, it would make the world a better place.
Dan Nestle
Well, I mean, I've been thinking a lot about this lately actually, Avish. And I think yes, and it could be a really helpful tool for this. I think it's listening. I think it's just pausing and listening. And, you know, it is difficult to to do, to have to be mindfully present all the time and listen. But and and, having a tool at your disposal like yes and, which is I think initially think of it like a tool that you can just start to use, before it becomes habit and before it becomes embedded in your in your mindset. You you know, having something there will make you a better listener.
I believe that that is a it's a great opportunity here to kind of say, you know, when you hear somebody, and you're talking to somebody, especially in a business situation, you know, think of how you will answer them with yes and rather than injecting your own opinion or or other some other manner. And I think that would improve so many things and, you know, I'm I'm certainly not not the authority on this or or a great practitioner of it either and I'm I I you know, mea culpa for so many conversations that I've stepped on and interrupted.
But and Sorry. I didn't say but. No. I am I am I am very, I guess enthusiastically supportive of the idea of saying yes and, you know, in those situations and I need to train or I should and I want to train myself to do that better.
Avish Parashar
Well, I think it comes back to also what you kinda said right at the top is you have an earthly curiosity. And I think if more people approached conversations from curiosity versus being right, like, a lot of the listening then sort of automatically happens because then you're you're may even if you're interrupting, you're interrupting to learn more, not to argue and and prove your point.
Dan Nestle
Absolutely. You're totally Fantastic.
Avish Parashar
Well, Dan, this was a pleasure. Thank you so much for, being on here. So everyone listening, be sure to check out, Dan's LinkedIn profile, Dan and Ussel, his website, danussel.com, and his podcast, which is awesome. Dan, thank you very much, and, hope to have you back on again sometime soon.
Dan Nestle
Thanks, Vish. Good to see you.
Avish Parashar
Alright.