July 22, 2026 – Leadership Action Stuart Kliman, Fire Protection Collins & Giammanco and Trust Signals Scott Baradell

Jim Beach 0:10
We don’t have time for the introduction today. We have three great guests, and we need to go ahead and get started. We’re going to be talking about AI and fire protection, a lot of stuff, leadership. We’re going to go and get started right now. Very excited to introduce another great guest. Please welcome Stuart Kliman to the show. He is very busy. He has a venture fund that he started 30 years ago, where he is the emeritus now. He is also head of business development and partially helping a company called Prescriber Point, which is in the pharma space, of course. He has also got a startup in the grocery space called Breeze, which will help us get through the grocery store faster. And most importantly, he has just written a new book called “All the Difference: Six leadership actions to bridge perspective, strengthen teams, and create value. Stewart, welcome to the show. How you doing?

Stuart D. Kliman 1:07
Hey Jim, thanks so much. I am doing fantastic. It’s an exciting week for me and my co-authors. You know, we’ve been at the writing of this book for close to three years, and seeing it launched yesterday, and starting to you know get a little press pickup and speak to wonderful people like you is a is a complete complete joy. So couldn’t be better.

Jim Beach 1:32
So tell me about the two co-authors and what were y’all doing for so many years to get it out?

Stuart D. Kliman 1:37
Yeah. So I have an amazing set of co-authors. You know, our book is called “All the Difference, and you know, the three of us, in in many ways, are our own little experiment in bringing together different capabilities and different experiences and different ways of thinking about the world to come together to try to create something, which which we think is pretty cool. So our our kind of lead author and real energizer bunny, if you will, who’s really kind of willed our project into existence, is a woman named Susan McKenty Brady. Susan actually worked for me 2025 years ago at my consulting firm, Vantage Partners. And Susan is herself a best-selling author. She’s written a book called Arrive and Thrive for Women in the Workplace. She is a coach. She’s a facilitator and a thought leader. And she has spent the last several years building up a a leadership institute primarily focused on women and women’s leadership at Simmons University here in the Boston area called the Simmons Institute for Inclusive Leadership. She’s amazing. My other co-author is formerly retired three-star General Leslie Smith from the Army. He was the 66th Inspector General of the of the Army. Susan is a white woman. I am a white man. Les is an African American man, and he just brings you know this whole different set of experiences about the army and you know what does it mean to to be a leader in that context and so you know and and I spent my life kind of consulting and really helping change management and in the context of alliances and joint ventures and various kinds of collaborative activities, and so the three of us came together about three years ago. We’re actually on the board of a of a different startup that that that failed, but we started talking about leadership and the challenges of working in a difference filled world, and found that we were kind of inspired and energized by working with one another, and decided to create a little petri disc of our own of difference to see to see if we could hop on this journey together.

Jim Beach 4:13
Excellent! I love it. I love hearing the story behind it too, and how it’s interesting that you came out of a startup that didn’t last. That’s absolutely fascinating. So, what’s the thesis of the book? What do you want us to do? How do you want me to be all the difference?

Stuart D. Kliman 4:27
Yeah. So, first, thanks for asking. So, first of all, the core thesis of the book is that you know the workplace is getting ever more difference filled, right? Which means that leading today requires a new way of showing up and leading through and in the context of difference. So, generational differences, cognitive difference, cultural difference, experience difference, relationships with technology. Experiences, ways of thinking about the world, relationship networks-all of those things are difference, and the workplace has never been more filled with that variety. AI obviously is accelerating speed and complexity and pressure on human judgment, which itself we believe is actually making the ability to navigate difference more critical than ever, and you know the issue, Jim, is not difference itself, right? You know, both you and I, and I’m sure all of your listeners here, have been in in multiple situations, all of them, every every situation you can imagine, from strategy making to initiative creation to initiative execution to working with customers and suppliers is filled with difference. The question isn’t you know, and the issue is not difference itself. The issue is how do we tap into that difference to create value. So at core, our thesis is difference is here. It’s part of the human condition. It’s like gravity around us. You can’t fight it. You can’t manage your way around it. It’s here. Difference can either undermine execution, right? It can get in the way of success, or it can be a true value enabler. We think of difference as dormant capital. It’s an asset, and what sits kind of in the middle is the leader faced with all that difference in the organization, and what the leader does, the culture that that leader creates, the behaviors that that leader brings to the table will make all the difference in whether or not they’re going to end up in the problems of execution that difference creates, or they figured out how to tap into that value and create you know new forms of innovation, greater alignment, faster execution, and ultimately competitive advantage.

Jim Beach 7:00
Can we go through some of the six leadership actions?

Stuart D. Kliman 7:04
Yeah, absolutely. So, in the book, Jim, we we we do a few things. First of all, we frame up, and we can talk a little bit about this. What actually creates challenge in terms of how leaders show up, and we call those the four landmines of managing difference. You and I can come back around to them, but I say that because you know, as I walk through the leadership target actions, you know, I can say they can sound a little simple, but the question isn’t do they make sense. The question is: Can we actually behave in ways consistent with them when things are hard and what gets in our way? So let me sort of walk you through that that pathway, right? So six target actions, and I know we don’t have too much time, but let me kind of wander them through relatively quickly, right? So we we we talk about the first target. Actually, the first two target actions, interestingly, are more about the leader internally than how they necessarily behave externally. With the next four being really all about how you build on what’s happening internal to be able to behave certain ways externally. So, target action number one is simply kind of know yourself, Jim. Self awareness is the foundation, right? Difference does not derail teams. Unaware leaders do, right? Leaders need to understand their own triggers, their own blind spots, and kind of you know default behavioral norms, if you will, before they can they can lead others through difference. And Susan, my co-author, uses the term your best self. So you know ultimately you need to know yourself to unlock your best self, which can really empower those around you to bring their best self as well. So we think of that as target action one. Target action two kind of really builds on knowing yourself. That’s return to respect, right? So when a critical thought arises, we need to be able to self-regulate, right? Manage that thought because it signals. And I’ll come back to a little bit of what we’d call kind of a landman on the horizon, right? So return to respect-it’s not agreement; it’s really the baseline that keeps dialog open when difference is at its most difficult, right? If ultimately, in the face of difference, we are not able to garner up enough respect for those around us and their points of view, and the fact that they have differing points of view or different ways of seeing the world. It’s going to really undermine our ability to actually engage with those folks and and create value together. So know yourself. And return to respect are kind of these foundational what’s happening internal actions, if you will, and then we’ve got these other four. So target action number three for us is activating honesty. Activate honesty. So you know, truth telling is where trust begins. Leaders have to create four ends. That is exactly true, Jim. And stop me at any time. I’m going with these.

Jim Beach 10:30
Leaders, I got

Stuart D. Kliman 10:31
it. Leaders need to create conditions, Jim, where hard truths can surface early before they become costly problems. And you know it’s interesting. 80-5% of employees report withholding concerns because speaking up feels risky, right? And speaking up about different points of view, concerns, other ways of seeing the world, different reasoning paths, different assumptions about what might lead to success, honest leadership. Target action three: activate honesty changes that changes that equation. Target action four: see the full story. Leaders have to honor multiple perspectives, truthfully, honestly, seriously. Asking, what am I missing? What might I be missing? What is the reasoning path that others who are viewing things differently are taking? Where are the logic leaks that I myself has? Right. This action really opens the leader to information that sharpens decisions. Seeing the full story prevents costly mistakes, misinnovation, you know, and decisions made on on incomplete information. Once I see the full story, as I talk about in Target Action Four, Jim, that allows me to go to Target Action Five, which is ignite togetherness. So we really want to harness the we ask how the team can better understand each other’s thinking and bring all these varied ideas together, right? So difference is stronger when it is integrated. Differing perspectives working towards shared outcomes, you know, create more value than any single viewpoint is our thesis, and in the book we have story after story from the 20-two leaders who we interview in the book, really, really making that point. So you know, togetherness is not uniformity; it’s kind of alignment built through genuine engagement with with different difference. And then, you know, target action six. We say commit to action, right? Accountability and modeling the way you can’t hold others accountable for trying to tap into difference unless you are willing as the leader to model all the behaviors and mental models that I just described. So really, target action six, Jim, is the culminating action that brings all five prior actions to to life. Right in daily leadership practice.

Jim Beach 13:09
All right, I love it. I’m sitting here thinking about different generations going through this, Stewart.

Stuart D. Kliman 13:15
Yeah,

Jim Beach 13:16
are you? What are your thoughts on the younger generations? I don’t know that the younger generation can accept this kind of accountability and open. I mean, what are your thoughts?

Stuart D. Kliman 13:27
I I guess I would say, Jim, that that framing is in many ways a framing which speaks to the challenge, right? So, however described, younger generations have a different way of showing up. They have different sets of expectations for themselves and others around them. Around what does it mean to you know be an authentic self? What does it mean to show up and work day to day? What does it mean to be accountable for outcomes? Right. Those differences are in fact different than perhaps what you or I might have, and that is the problem. It is the challenge. You know, it is very difficult to change. You can you can coach people. There’s lots of different things at the margins, but the differences between generations, just like the differences in experiences, just like the differences in reasoning paths, just like the differences in how we interact with the world around us, are just there. And so, the leadership challenge is to engage those in a way which ultimately will create more value, and so as I am working with folks who are in different generations who, you know, don’t seem to conform to my expectations of what it means to show up at work. That’s my leadership challenge, right? And I got to know myself. I need to return to respect when the way they are showing up triggers an emotion. Reaction for me. I need to do my best to model the way of activating honesty, and hopefully, hopefully, and I believe that will trigger more honesty in return. I got to understand right the full story about what they’re doing, and try my best as a leader to ignite togetherness around it. Right, so I’m going back to those six target actions, Jim, to to kind of make my point, that is a a cohort of difference, and the reality of having that cohort of difference creates challenges for the leaders. The best leaders are thinking through these six target actions in terms of how they’re going to best engage that cohort of difference to ultimately create value.

Jim Beach 15:43
Wow, I was really impressed the way you put that back to your six leadership points, Stewart. As if the the younger generation doesn’t have any responsibility. You’re like, it’s my leadership responsibility to lead that whatever. No, it’s one of the youngsters right now. I if you are that’s a great seven through 30-five right now. I I just have no respect for you. Yeah, that’s a great. It’s a great. It’s a great point,

Stuart D. Kliman 16:11
Jim. It’s a great point. I do not mean to be taking accountability from those folks. I believe that it starts with great leaders, and our ability to work with others works in the context. Jim, sorry to get a little consultanty here for you in the context of a system. So I believe that leaders can impact those folks around them and the way people around them behave. So yes, I do think that it starts with great leadership, but along with that leader, leadership is also working to ensure that others around us are also behaving in ways consistent with the target actions and holding them accountable for such. It’s just that I think I am going to be a lot more successful at holding others accountable for behaving in ways consistent with our prescription if I myself am, and if I’m not, which is also goes back to some of the landmines. They will see that inconsistency. They will then view my request as illegitimate, and they will come up with reasons to not follow follow my lead.

Jim Beach 17:28
Yeah, again, I’d rather hire a 50 year old than a 30 year old any time these days. So I have two kids of that generation. I have four children, Stewart, and two of them are in this generation, and I’m incredibly proud of them in some ways. And in some ways, they totally missed the acting boat. You know, I did a horrible. My wife and I did a horrible job of raising them because they. Yeah, I’m boat on a whole bunch. I’m

Stuart D. Kliman 17:58
sure. I’m. I’m so sure that isn’t that is that isn’t true. I’m sure you guys did an amazing job, and again, you know, I mean that that just defines the challenge, right? Because that generation is here, right? Just like all sorts of people with various kinds of differences, as I described before, cognitive, cultural, ideological, whatever. That’s the soup. soup in which we, you know, from which we need to drink as leaders. And the question is, how do we knit all that difference together in a way which ultimately does not undermine our ability to execute, and that ultimately enables us to tap into it to create new new outcomes. It is you are right to say. I hear it’s a tall leadership challenge, but we believe it’s it is the challenge for leaders in a world filled with all this difference.

Jim Beach 18:53
I don’t think. I think Patton was right. Sometimes there’s soldiers that shouldn’t be soldiers. I want to slap some of them. So anyway, Stewart, I heard you wanted to play our little game, the Quick 10.

Stuart D. Kliman 19:09
Yeah, that sounds totally fun. Thanks for asking.

Jim Beach 19:11
Are you currently sober? I’m required by state law to ask. Are you currently sober?

Stuart D. Kliman 19:16
I am currently sober.

Jim Beach 19:19
You don’t have to be sober. We just need to know which it is. Change your status.

Stuart D. Kliman 19:23
No, I do not.

Jim Beach 19:25
Okay. Do you want to accept the standard wager? The standard wager.

Stuart D. Kliman 19:31
Scary question. Not knowing what it is, but sure, I’ll give it a go.

Jim Beach 19:36
There you go. There’s the attitude. All right. Number one, your favorite creativity hack.

Stuart D. Kliman 19:41
Yeah, of course. My answer for that is asking 10 friends for of different of different backgrounds their ideas that I can build on.

Jim Beach 19:50
Number two, favorite bootstrapping trick.

Stuart D. Kliman 19:53
Same question, same answer. Asking 10 friends for help.

Jim Beach 19:58
Number three, name your top. Passions,

Stuart D. Kliman 20:01
family, my wife, my kids. I’m passionate about history and doing my best to learn from it. And I’m super passionate about dining out.

Jim Beach 20:11
Number four, the first three steps in starting a business are

Stuart D. Kliman 20:16
great partners, curious about everything related to it, and just just a little kernel of knowledge.

Jim Beach 20:24
Number five, the best way to get your first real customer

Stuart D. Kliman 20:27
is you got to ask them to be your first real customer. Lesson learned: if you don’t ask, they won’t be.

Jim Beach 20:33
Number six, your dreamiest technology

Stuart D. Kliman 20:37
is. I’m going to give you a bad answer. My dreamiest technology is an old phone because I pick it up and it works like I want it to.

Jim Beach 20:44
Number seven, best entrepreneurial advice:

Stuart D. Kliman 20:47
don’t overthink it.

Jim Beach 20:49
Number eight, worst entrepreneurial mistake:

Stuart D. Kliman 20:51
overthinking it.

Jim Beach 20:53
Number nine, favorite entrepreneur and why?

Stuart D. Kliman 20:56
Anyone who can make a great business out of something that isn’t a new idea. So you know, Stacy’s pita chips was just a pita. Life is good is just T-shirts, and yet they built amazing businesses out of that. You don’t need to have the world’s greatest new idea. You need to be able to execute.

Jim Beach 21:15
Number 10 favorite superhero.

Stuart D. Kliman 21:18
Got to be Batman, Jim. Got to be Batman.

Jim Beach 21:21
Why?

Stuart D. Kliman 21:22
No superpowers, right? No superpowers,

Jim Beach 21:27
right? The definitive answer for that question,

Stuart D. Kliman 21:30
right? Right. Brain and using pain to drive yourself forward, a belief system to drive yourself forward, is a beautiful thing.

Jim Beach 21:40
I couldn’t agree more with that. Great answers, Stewart. We are calculating the score right now. While we do that, how do we find out more about you? Follow you online. Get a copy of All the Difference.

Stuart D. Kliman 21:52
Hey, thanks so much. So you can get a copy of All the Difference at any of your major places where you buy books: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. If you’ve got book buys, if you’ve got excuse me bulk buys, which is amazing, you know, shoot me a shoot me a LinkedIn. Well, you should shoot me a LinkedIn anyway, and I’m happy to connect you to the best place you know where you can get where you can get bulk buys. Our website, Jim, is leadingallthefference.com Leading l e a d i n g. All the difference. So it’s one word: leadingallthedifference.com. You can learn more about us. You can learn more about our ideas. We’ll be generating a lot of content there, and you can buy a book straight from that website,

Jim Beach 22:41
fantastic, Stewart. Great, great information, and really appreciate. Oh, oh, gosh, this is. Oh, I feel so bad for you, Stewart. I just got your score. You got a 90-four, which is an excellent score, but you have to have a 90-five to win. So you owe us a Tesla. We always play for a Tesla. So I’ll look forward to receiving that, we had a judge from ah from New Hampshire, right over the line, who didn’t like some of your Bostonisms and

Stuart D. Kliman 23:08
ah well, there’s CBS connections,

Jim Beach 23:10
you know, all of these Boston things upset the you you should you

Stuart D. Kliman 23:14
should you should feel free to keep checking your mailbox every day for that Tesla gym. Keep checking.

Jim Beach 23:21
I, I, Mike. I’m expecting the keys in the mailbox and the the car by the end of the driveway.

Stuart D. Kliman 23:28
Excellent, excellent. I look forward to to getting videos of you driving it around.

Jim Beach 23:33
I will post those. Stuart, thanks for being with us, and we’d love to have you back.

Stuart D. Kliman 23:36
Great to talk to you, Jim. Thanks for the time. Great talk.

Jim Beach 23:39
And we will be right back.

Stuart D. Kliman 23:43
Bye bye bye.

Jim Beach 23:51
We are back, and again, thank you so much for being with us. You know, this is a time of year where we need to think about our homes and the safety of our homes, and I hope that we all can take some of the lessons from the horrible fires last year in Los Angeles to heart, and pay attention to the safety of your home. I have two great guests who are going to help us do that. Please welcome Karen Collins. She’s the vice president of property environment in the polis. Oh, I’m sorry. I got her title is so long. Vice President of Property Environment at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, and Dr. Ian Jamanco. He is the Managing Director of Atmospheric Science and the Lead Research Meteorologist at IBHS. Welcome to both of you. How are you doing today?

Karen Collins 24:41
Thank you. We’re doing great.

Ian Giammanco 24:43
Yeah, thanks for having us.

Jim Beach 24:44
All right. What is the official fire season? When do we need to be most aware?

Ian Giammanco 24:52
Yeah, you know, unfortunately, the fire season seems to run year-round these these days. Anyway, when we look at the Western United. States it often really starts kind of late summer, extending through the fall and into the winter, and it kind of varies in some of those geographies. But that’s the time when you often couple some of the driest conditions with some wind events. So it’s not necessarily that they’re perfectly aligned, but it’s when those two factors come together. When you have less precipitation and you have more wind events that move down the slope of whether that’s the Sierra Nevadas or the Rocky Mountains, that’s when you can really exacerbate fires. But unfortunately, as our drought has persisted across a large portion of the United States, fire season sort of gets extended, and there’s no one set time where we have to just say, “Hey, this is our season now. We’re looking for those combinations of where humans meet drought and where wind shows up as the the potential ingredients for catastrophic fires.

Jim Beach 25:48
Karen, is this a Western issue only? I’m here in the East Coast, so I need to worry about a fire.

Karen Collins 25:56
We we are seeing fires all over the continent, both in the U.S. and even in Canada, with with North Carolina and Florida, for example, we had these recent hurricanes that created a lot of dead trees, and that’s fuel on the ground that’s now a couple years later dried out. And we’re seeing big wildfire events in these two states, alone with a number of fires across our western U.S. The western U.S. sadly had a very dry winter, minimal snowpack that’s mostly already melted out, and so we are seeing big events across the West as well.

Jim Beach 26:28
All right, what do I need to do to get my property ready? What are some of the basic steps I need to take?

Ian Giammanco 26:36
Yeah, we’ll start with some of the three core ember protection items, and again, embers embers attacking our homes is some of the is one of the biggest things we have to worry about. So it starts in that first five feet from your wall outward. So that zone that surrounds your entire home-it’s five feet wide. It goes all the way around your home. That’s where embers like to collect the most, and whatever is in that zone, they can ignite if if if it can, so the best practice is make that a fully non-combustible zone. Remove all the anything that can burn from that area. Replace it with things like hardscapes, pea gravel, things like that. Move that vegetation out of that five-foot zone. Move it outward from there. Another thing to look for: look for fences that may connect to your home in that five-foot zone, and make sure, say, that gate is replaced with something that’s metal that can’t burn. So that’s that last link of fire coming to your home, and embers like to accumulate there. Within that zone, there’s the base of your wall that hits that zone. We want to make sure that area, especially the lowest six inches, is made of a material that will not ignite. Embers will pile up there, right at the base of your wall, and you want to make sure when those embers are touching something on your house that it is not going to ignite. So, for a lot of us, right, that’s our concrete foundations that may extend that high, and we don’t have anything to worry about there. But for some of us, we might need to replace that with a non-combustible veneer, a stone veneer, brick veneer, even metal flashing can also do the job in that area. So that’s that’s the last piece of that zero to five foot puzzle. And then we got to start looking at how embers can actually get inside our home. So an easy DIY is our vents or roof vents. Maybe we have a gable in the triangle part on our house with a vent on the end or a crawl space vent, we want to replace the mesh that’s protecting those with eighth inch or finer metal mesh. The easy trick is take a golf tee, take the pointy end. If you can push that golf tee through that mesh, it is too big, and embers can come in your home. So replace it with the 1/8 inch or finer metal mesh that will keep the embers from getting in there. And if you’re actually replacing vents, there are actual vents that are labeled as ember resistant that meet these criteria as well. So it could be a DIY project, or if you’re doing a bigger roofing job, you can go to those ember resistant vents. So that is some of the core things to protect your homes against ember attack, which is one of the primary ways our homes ignite in a wildfire scenario.

Jim Beach 29:01
This is that is how to reduce.

Jim Beach 29:02
Go ahead, Karen. I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Karen Collins 29:05
Oh, I was going to say that that’s exactly how you want to take steps to reduce the physical risk of property damage from an insurance standpoint. There’s also a lot of great steps to financially prepare yourself and prevent potential underinsurance, which I can walk through.

Jim Beach 29:19
Please do, Karen.

Karen Collins 29:22
So your home is usually your biggest financial asset, and you want to have that protected. What many do not realize is, from an inflation standpoint, if you go back to the beginning of the COVID pandemic, January 2020 versus today, we have seen the cost to rebuild, both for construction materials and labor is up 40-7% and that can put a lot of financial stress on your insurance coverage limits if you’ve not had a conversation with your agent or company recently. So the big tip is to make sure you’re having that annual insurance checkup to discuss your policy. Limits and what coverage is under your policy. The worst thing to do is learn what you have or maybe don’t have after the event has already happened. So, in discussing your policy coverage, the limits is probably most important. But also understanding what’s reflected in your policy: is it reflecting the right square footage and materials of your home, have you made any home improvements over the last few years, as many did during the COVID shutdown stay-at-home period? Have you talked about optional features that may be available to even increase further the amount of financial protection you have? There’s a few typical options that people really choose to purchase regularly, and that’s extended replacement cost coverage because when we have these big disasters, it puts even further stress on the prices of construction labor materials. When everyone’s kind of fighting over that same you know resource at once, so that will give you an extra financial cushion to absorb some of those demand surge costs. If you’re in an older home that has to comply with newer building codes or even solar panel energy ordinances, you can increase ordinance and law coverage as an optional feature under your policy. These disasters, especially wildfires, more than other events, people are displaced for longer periods, and so additional living expense coverage under your policy. You can also choose to increase to give you more financial resource. The main thing is know what your policy covers, and the details really do matter. You want to know: Do I have a replacement cost policy, which will replace everything at current market price, or do I have an actual cash value policy that might take depreciation into account and pays less for those aged items. These are the kind of topics you want to be having in that annual insurance checkup, so that you are not caught by surprise after the event happens.

Jim Beach 31:53
Great advice. We’ve already run out of time. Boy, that went quickly. Do we have any final words you’d like to throw out, Ian?

Ian Giammanco 32:02
Yeah, for. For you know the tips to make your home wildfire ready, please check out ibhs.org/wildfire ready. It’s got everything from the big stuff all the way to the small things.

Jim Beach 32:11
Fantastic. And

Karen Collins 32:12
for the insurance thesis, go to apci.org/wildfire. It’ll give you great tips on how to create a home inventory, other things you should consider in the conversation with your agent, like maybe getting flood insurance as well, and other resources available.

Jim Beach 32:28
Fantastic! I can’t imagine needing flood and fire; those are the opposites. That should. Oh my gosh! Anyway, you are so correct with such great advice. What I’m really hearing is get rid of all your grass, which is sad.

Karen Collins 32:43
There’s some good approaches. You don’t have to get rid of all of it. There’s some good curb appeal, but move

Ian Giammanco 32:50
that stuff outside the five feet and break that chain of fire.

Jim Beach 32:53
Oh, there you go. That’s for a good idea. Thank you so much for being with us, and we’d love to have you back. Is this going to be? Do we rate these seasons like with hurricane seasons, where we anticipate a slow season versus a heavy season? Do we do that with fires?

Karen Collins 33:09
There’s already evidence that we are well above the 10-year average. I think over almost 28% higher with fires that have already started this point in the year, and like 33% higher with the acres burned so far this year, it is shaping up to be a bad wildfire year. And I mentioned flood because this is weather whiplash. One leads to the next. Right. You tend to see the rain come, and if there’s been burned acres, the water runs off and creates flood risk. And if you’re watching the news, they’re projecting a super El Nino, possibly the strongest on record, which means we may see some of the worst atmospheric river rainfall events in the winter ahead. So now is the time to have those insurance conversations, so you’re not caught unprepared.

Jim Beach 33:53
Karen, Ian, great information. Thank you so very, very much.

Ian Giammanco 33:58
Absolutely. We’ll

Jim Beach 34:00
be back in just a second.

Jim Beach 34:12
We are back again. Thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce another great guest. Please welcome Scott Baradell to the show. He is author of a new book called Trust Signals: Brand Building in a Post Truth World. You can find out more about the book at TrusSignals.com. We have a great conversation about it here. He is the CEO of Idea Grove. It is a B 2b marketing agency, three times on the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing List, Two Times Best Place to Work list. Started off as a journalist and then had some startup experience with some billion dollar brands. We will talk about that as well. Scott, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Scott Baradell  34:57
Good. Thanks for having me. It

Jim Beach 34:59
is. Our pleasure. So, why did the book? What what goal did you have with the book? You already have tons of credibility in the industry and things. What’s the goal of the book?

Scott Baradell  35:11
Well, the the book was, you know, just just for clarity, we the originally the book came out in 2022, and we’ve got a new version coming out for the age of AI, so new edition. Yeah, thank you. But yeah, it’s a new edition because of how AI has changed everything, as you know. But the idea of trust signals was, I was thinking about how it used to be in the early days of the internet, people would were afraid to do things like put their credit cards online because it was all so new, and you were scared what would happen if you used your credit card on a website. And so they did all kinds of things. The early e-commerce companies, like Better Business Bureau seals and security seals and Norton Security, all these things just to get you to trust the website enough to give your payment information, and they called that trust signals. That was a big e-commerce term, and I just started thinking about how things have evolved over time. Obviously, we’re not worried as much as we used to be about, you know, putting your credit card information on a on a website, but we do look for signals that the companies that we’re going to work with or might work with can be trusted, and those could be things like, “Hey, if I-it’s still to this day, if I see a better business bureau seal on a website, I’m going to think more highly of them. But it’s not just that; it’s things like, are they getting good reviews? Do they have media coverage saying good things about them, are there influencers on social media that are that are endorsing them? You know, all of these little points of information are the trust signals that consumers use today to make a purchase. And so, I decided to kind of put all of that into to one book in one place, so businesses of all sizes could think about: Hmm, am I kind of putting a constellation of data points out there that will make people want to do business with me?

Jim Beach 37:11
All right, and there are a lot of things that I look for: a real telephone number, yeah, all sorts of things.

Scott Baradell  37:18
Exactly,

Jim Beach 37:19
an address. You know, businesses should have an address. I thought, you know, so

Scott Baradell  37:25
that’s that’s that. Well, it’s it’s a really true, it’s a really important point, and and I’ve I’ve made that exact point to businesses that for whatever reasons, maybe there’s a cybersecurity company and they worry about security, all kinds of different reasons why they they don’t even think about, oh, I need to have an address and phone number on my site, but those things like that are very important. People want to know who they’re working with.

Jim Beach 37:48
Yes, I see sites all the time that you can’t find who the person is. You know, it’s a consulting website, but you can’t find who the principal consultant is. You know, and they’re hiding stuff like that. I think on purpose a lot of times. So,

Scott Baradell  38:03
well, yeah, it’s exactly the kind of thing that makes you not trust them. Another one is like the testimonials. Let’s say you have reviews or testimonials on your site, and and it has a big glowing quote in it that says, “From Tina B. You’re like, “Oh, okay, who’s Tina B. Maybe actually tell me the person’s name, maybe link to their LinkedIn, their company. Give me enough information that I can believe you didn’t didn’t make this up.

Jim Beach 38:26
Well, even that, even then, if it was Tom Jones, Veracity Inc. President, you know, that looks good enough to me. I’m not going to take the time to look up Tom Jones. Are you?

Scott Baradell  38:40
True, probably not. Probably not. You’re right.

Jim Beach 38:44
Let me ask you an interesting twist on it. So, I have been working with Chat GPT on a new book, and I’m doing something I think which is Chat GPT tells me is unusual is that I’ve put the same chapter through 20 times to be evaluated, and you know what’s wrong with it now? What’s wrong with it now? What’s wrong with it now? And stuff like that. And I got to the point where it’s giving me a numerical grade for everything, and it got interesting. The book now is up to a 9.95 Chat GPT will give it a 9.95 Can I put that on the cover of my next book, Chat GPT? 9.95 stars.

Scott Baradell  39:27
I like it. You can do that. The problem is, all of these LLIs like ChatGPT are programmed to tell you what you want. So everybody’s the same

Jim Beach 39:37
as Tom Jones. You know.

Scott Baradell  39:39
True. It’s true, but yeah, you’re right. What you’re doing is what maybe, hopefully, we won’t have to do it as much in the future. But to get anything halfway decent out of most LLIs, if you’re really trying to produce something of quality, you know, we’ll use multiple ones to check each other. And and exactly what you’re describing. I mean, I think that it’s not that when when people talk about AI slop and really bad content from ChatGPT, it’s not that people can’t make great content using it. It’s that it it has to be a tool, and and it’s very obvious when people just put in a prompt and they they take the output and they just put it out there on LinkedIn or as or as as content on their website. That’s so obvious what that is, and people don’t like it. But if you take it and you use it and you mold it and and do things like what you’re doing to to improve it through iterations, you know, every time you see it, you’re finding things you want to make better, and then, and then it’s it’s an iterative process where your brain is is is involved in in in making the finished product. That’s what a lot of people think don’t get about, you know, what’s bad AI content versus what’s good content that was just made a little easier to create through AI.

Jim Beach 40:58
What score would you give our trust of AI right now, like how much do you trust AI out of 10?

Scott Baradell  41:05
Well, we actually funny you should mention that we our agency Idea Grove did a survey recently of 1000 U.S. consumers asking them those kind of questions, and the the reality is that you know a very few I think about 15% said they they fully trust results coming from from a ChatGPT or a clot or perplexity. Not only that, but we asked consumers if they used tools like ChatGPT when they’re looking for product recommendations or what companies to work with, and about half of them, about 40-5% said they did. But what was interesting is they said that once they received that recommendation of here’s the best PR firm, here’s the best plumber, whatever it might be, 90-8% 90-8% said they they they checked on that. They did not rely on that alone. They they used that as a basis for maybe creating a short list of companies to check out, but they would not trust the ChatGPT results alone in terms of a recommendation like that. What they would do is then go. Half of the people we surveyed, half of these 1000 people said they would immediately after seeing a recommendation in ChatGPT, they would go to Google and then they’d Google that company or Google see if Googling got them the same answers, or they’d go to review sites to see what the reviews were for a company. So I didn’t know that we still

Jim Beach 42:42
provided data in things. I thought it only provided ads at this point.

Scott Baradell  42:46
Yes, that’s a good point. That’s a good point. Find

Jim Beach 42:50
a honest, clean return from a data a listing on Google. It starts on the second page. The first organic data is on the second page nowadays. It’s ridiculous.

Scott Baradell  43:03
Yeah, yeah, it’s true. It keeps getting pushed further down, and of course, they have these AI overview results, which are the first thing that come up often now, too. So you know, it’s it’s so many websites have seen a decline in traffic because of that. Yes. Well, so if only 15% of us trust the AI, why are 40-5% of us doing research on it? Well, I think the the reality is that it’s it’s it’s kind of what what was the old saying? Was it Ronald Reagan or was an old Russian proverb, “Trust but verify. I think it’s. I think it’s like that. I think people know that using tools like that will save them time, but they also know that you can get all kinds of nonsense from chat. Sure, you have too. Or they’ll think they. You know, there’ve been lawyers who have been disbarred for using fake cases made up by ChatGPT and and putting them in their legal briefs, so you you got to you got to watch it. So yes, it’s helpful. It makes things go faster, and everybody’s using it as for that reason. But a lot of us have been have been caught or have found ourselves dealing with information that we thought was legit, but just some some nonsense that that ChatGPT put in the results they gave

Jim Beach 44:24
us. Yes, and it’s amazing how in a one-hour session you can get it to break three or four times.

Scott Baradell  44:31
You

Jim Beach 44:32
can pretty bad. So, is the AI changing our trust signals, or realigning them, or reinforcing them. What do you think it’s doing? Which we’ve talked through different scenarios here. We could use a lot of the re words.

Scott Baradell  44:50
Yeah, it’s a really it’s a really good question. I think really what’s happening is what if you think about our process of how we look for things, looking at review. Looking at who comes up in search results. Looking at oh, did was there an article in a trade publication or something written about this saying it’s good stuff? Whatever it might be, all those things that we did. Well, that’s what you know. That’s what ChatGPT and and these tools are doing too. They’re basically it’s us basically automating that process that we did as humans before online to go search those things, and so in other words, if if I asked who’s the best plumber, it’s going to ChatGPT is going to look at reviews. They’re going to look at any kind of relevant editorial coverage. They’re going to look at YouTube videos. They’re going to look at other things on Reddit posts, things, all those different sources. They’re going to look at that, and then that’s then they’re going to spit out their their output for their recommendation. Well, think about it. That’s just automating what you and I were doing before ChatGPT. Now, what’s interesting is, assuming that’s the case, and that’s what ChatGPT does, then why do only 2% of us trust that. Why do the other 90-8% go and and go do our research? You know, and I think it’s just because it’s so new. Because I think the reality is, if we know ChatGPT’s process for making its recommendation, and it basically is the same thing we would have done, well, there really should be no reason to to do more checking. It’s just early enough, and it’s making enough mistakes that that’s why I think that that we’re not doing it. But I I I wouldn’t doubt that within a few years, more and more people. I I got someone ChatGPT told me to hire this HVAC company, and that’s who I’m going to call. They’re just not ready to do that to do that right yet.

Jim Beach 46:44
Right. Well, the claim is that you don’t even have to do anything. You just tell the Chat GPT, “I need the HVAC company, and then they hire it and schedule it all for you, and then open the door for you, and then show them where the HVAC is for you. You know. The dreams are further away than we think. I think,

Scott Baradell 47:05
yeah. Well, it speaks to you know. There’s a lot of talk about what’s going to happen as as LLIs like ChatGPT try to monetize with ads and things like that. Are are the results going to be kind of skewed and and and Google never

Jim Beach 47:24
skewed their data because of who was paying.

Scott Baradell  47:29
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Dust

Jim Beach 47:31
words ever said together, put together the sentence. I mean, they claimed they never did, but we all saw that they did, right? You know, I mean, lead them on that. So, and I’m certainly not going to trust Sam Altman in anything that guy says. So,

Scott Baradell  47:50
he’s been a he’s been a little slippery. You’re right about that.

Jim Beach 47:53
I saw an interview where, in my opinion, he admitted to killing that software programmer that they were having problems with. That’s the way I interpret the English language.

Scott Baradell  48:03
I’m not going to go there, but yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know. You you know, people. You know what they? What did they say? The was it the Great Gatsby? The the rich are not the same as you and me. So I I can’t I can’t speak to how what billionaires do and and what they’re willing to

Jim Beach 48:23
do. Oh, they’re all moving to secret caves in New Zealand. Exactly,

Scott Baradell  48:27
that’s right.

Jim Beach 48:31
It’s the one that Zuckerberg is building in Hawaii. I think he gets really close to Bond Villain pretty quickly. So anyway, you mentioned that some of the LLIs are designed to be friendly. I have always thought that Chat GPT was designed to suck up to you much, much more than the others, especially Grok. Grok can be mean to you. I’ve had Grok give me what I would think would be unacceptable responses that I would say no, no, no, you’re not allowed to say that. What are your thoughts on this? Are they all programmed to tell me how smart I am?

Scott Baradell  49:08
To an extent, but you’re right. I think ChatGPT is probably the most pandering. You know, it’s it’s they’re the worst. Of course, they’re the most widely used. Maybe people like that, but we tend to use Claude a lot, and and Claude is less so, but I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, but you know sometimes you know you’ll get frustrated that not getting the results you want or what you asked for, and you might maybe call call Claude or ChatGPT a name. I’ve I’ve been known to do that, and you know, ChatGPT would always just say, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, and I’ll try harder or whatever. And Claude came back with a response the other day, “I I’m going to address this issue, but I will not be called. I will not stand here and be called names. I thought, okay, well, good. I’m. Glad he’s standing up for himself. So you’re right. They all have little, little different personalities, but you can change them. Like I hated the all the sucking up that ChatGPT was doing. So they have something where you can ask it to go into machine mode, where it’s literally just going to be like dealing with Spock, and it it’s not going to get into any of that kind of discussion where it tries to be more human. It’s just giving you your answers, just spits it out. And with ChatGPT, I find the personality so cloying that that I I tend to do that when I use ChatGPT.

Jim Beach 50:34
What about all of these shows that everyone does? The podcasts, the radio shows. Do they help with the trust signals. If you have a list of 20 shows that you’ve been on, do people care about that?

Scott Baradell  50:47
That’s a really, really good question. I think one of the-it’s all going to evolve, but you’ve probably seen that one LinkedIn and Reddit have gotten huge boosts from From these LLIs because they rely on them so much. They’re typically in the top two or three sources. They like Reddit because it’s you know information directly from people, and there’s lots of written information there. They like that a lot better than like you know a short reel on you know a Instagram or TikTok that some influencer makes endorsing a product, those are are have been incredibly important, right, in marketing in recent years. But at least as of right now, TikTok or ChatGPT and those tools don’t really know what to do with them. So they’ve gone down. So you’ve got more marketers pouring money into how do I influence what people say on Reddit, less spending maybe taking a little of that money of what they were were putting on into influencers to make their reels. As for things like podcasts, podcasts basically where it is right now, probably kind of where Google was a few years ago. You’re going to do better if there’s written documentation. So if if it’s a podcast that it it you have not only the audio or video file there, but you’ve you’ve to stream, but you’ve also got say a transcript of it, maybe an FAQ developed from it, all the kind of formats that those LLIs like. If you can turn that into written written content to support the video or audio content, LLIs like that better and are more likely to use it.

Jim Beach 52:27
What are your thoughts on the AI and the influencers in a long-term situation? Are they going to figure it out? It seems to me like influencers are having a bad year overall. Oh, why is that? Clout has gone down.

Scott Baradell  52:42
I think. Well, I think you’re right. I think it. I don’t think. I think it’s definitely true that LLIs have not figured out influencers and how to use them, and and and vice versa. But I kind of think that they they will figure it out. So that’s why they’ll go straight to Reddit. But you know what happens? You’ve already got brands that are you know screwing up Reddit, right? So there’s all kinds of companies that have bought that have bots and and really kind of fake accounts that are are kind of trying to skew those results. So basically, wherever there’s money to be made, you know, you’re going to find brands that go in and and and try to, you know, try to skew the results in their favor, and that can diminish the product. So right now, there’s there’s so much focus on trying to get input directly from the consumer as opposed to through kind of the filter of an influencer, but I have a feeling that influencers are-they’re not going away. I think they just haven’t figured out how to to make this connection with LLIs

Jim Beach 53:50
yet. Very well said, Scott. Congratulations, five star rated on Amazon second version. How do we get a copy? Follow you online, all that, please.

Scott Baradell  53:58
Well, I’ve got a website called TrustSignals.com, and you can find out all about this stuff there. There’s a lot of content related specifically to what we’ve been talking about. Our agency is Idea Grove, and that’s IdeaGrove.com. So those would be the main two places you can find me. Fantastic!

Jim Beach 54:17
Thank you so very much for being with us, and we’d love to have you back, Scott, before the third version.

Scott Baradell 54:21
All right, all right. Thanks so much for having me.

Jim Beach 54:24
We are out of time, but back tomorrow. Be safe. Take care. Go make a million dollars by now.