Approaching the Power of Digital Twins | Eric Kramer from Personal AI

Ernesto Quezada: Pathmonk is the intelligent tool for website lead generation. With increasing online competition, over 98% of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments. With relevant micro experiences like case studies, intro videos, and much more, stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50%. Add Pathmonk to your website in seconds. Let the AI do all the work and get access to 50% more qualified leads while you keep doing marketing and sales as usual. Check us on pathmonk.com. Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guest. We have Eric from Personal AI, Head of Marketing with them. How are you doing today, Eric?

Eric Kramer: Hey Ernesto, good to be here.

Ernesto: It’s awesome. It’s great to have you on today’s episode. I’m sure our listeners are tuning in wondering what Personal AI is all about. So, let’s kick it off with that. Eric, in your own words, can you tell us a little bit more?

Eric: Yeah, for sure. So, Personal AI is really all about creating a digital twin for our users. Think about an AI model that’s trained on you specifically. It captures your personality, your knowledge, even your way of thinking. We can take a person’s data, like writing, social media, emails, etc., and train them all into your unique AI just for you. It’s like having a digital version of yourself that you can interact with, can answer questions for people, and even be creative on your behalf. I work with mine every day. The goal is really to have everyone given their own personal AI assistant. Ultimately, everyone in your company, just like they have an Instagram account, will have their own AI. In our kind of future, we see that even if you’re on maternity leave or something like that, an AI can be there and answer all the questions. If you want 24/7 access to your CEO or C-suite, that can be done with a personal AI. Now, really, it’s all about trust for us. So, ultimately, we want to take a slow approach to AI that has more control for the user built in, and that’s really what Personal AI is.

Ernesto: Absolutely important. All right, awesome to hear that from you, Eric, and for Personal AI. And so that way our listeners can get a good understanding of your company. Then what would you say is the key problem that you guys like to solve for clients?

Eric: Ultimately, it’s a problem that every single person on Earth has, and that is we want to give people more hours in their day. There are a ton of repetitive or automatable things that take up our time, which can easily be outsourced to AI—things like customer service that can be trained appropriately on exact responses and getting where they should be, and things like that.

Ernesto: Okay. All right. And so then, who would usually use Personal AI? Is there a vertical segment? Is there an ideal ICP there for Personal AI?

Eric: Yeah, for sure. Our greatest success right now comes from companies and individual people who want to use AI but are currently worried about the normal inaccuracies that come from large language models. So, people ultimately want a more secure, personally owned, and integratable AI that they can trust with their business. For instance, there’s been a lot of news out there that forced many lawyers to use us. There was a court case recently where a lawyer cited six to eight cases that didn’t exist, and he got in trouble with the judge. So, a lot of lawyers have come to us, which has been a great vertical. Stanford just did a study where they found that 68% to 88% of legal matters ChatGPT faked or made up. So, we have a lot of that coming to us because all the information is trained on you specifically or court cases or things like that for lawyers. We also work with health professionals who need a siloed, secure AI to help them with their practices. So we do that a lot, but ultimately, people who are chopping at the bit are credentialed or licensed professionals, people with status. If you have to deal with repetitive questions all the time or you have global access needs, like many C-level suites for international companies do, you need language access. If someone has a question in a foreign language, how do you answer that question 24/7? AI is the best way to do that right now. Anybody with a supply-demand mismatch of their time, anybody who’s got more time requests from them than they have hours in a day—these are perfect examples of people who like to use AI, and Personal AI is leading in this right now.

Ernesto: I would totally agree with you on that. Like you mentioned, that lawyer who kind of just went off the whim like that, trying to play it off, you know, it’s a little bit out there. But I’m glad there’s something like Personal AI to help them do their jobs properly, right, to be right and collect. So say I was a lawyer, how would I usually find out about Personal AI? Is there a top client acquisition channel for you guys?

Eric: As far as traditional paid and earned goes, we really stick to earned. Direct referral traffic kind of battles it out for us for number one. Organic is close. We’re trying to increase that organic reach as well. So we’re doing a lot of SEO, a lot of content writing, which has really been a major state for us. But a lot of word of mouth is really how we get a lot of our customers. We’ve done well by some people, and they’ve been sending us customers. So we keep trying to do that, and hopefully, referrals will continue to be our number one driver of business.

Ernesto: Okay, perfect. And so that way our listeners who are tuned in can visit you. They could always check you guys out at Personal AI. What role does the website play in client acquisition?

Eric: It’s massive. I think for any company now, someone is going to come to your website to make sure you look legitimate, make sure you have the right things, make sure they want to stay around. It’s going to be a touchpoint for sure. But attribution across the journey is a hard thing, as Pathmonk knows. Ultimately, we really want our website to be beautiful but also super informative and really boil down the problems for our individual users. So we’ve spent a lot of time, and we’re spending a lot of time and effort to make sure that happens.

Ernesto: Okay, great. So on that note, is there any tools or tips or methods that you would recommend to our listeners as far as website lead generation?

Eric: Yeah, a lot. I’ve cut my teeth in marketing for a lot of years. Do one thing at a time that your user cares about—number one, period. It’s just about why they are there, and understand that copy is probably half or more of the magic sauce. But good copy only comes from knowing your customers and really understanding what their pain points are and what they’re coming to you for. What are they looking for? It’s a huge thing to understand. Short content is sexy and has kind of been the standard-bearer in the social media age. Obviously, a lot of blogs and things like that are out there, but really, AI is changing how Google and others are surfacing content and pages. So staying ahead of that is going to be something all us marketers have to understand—really making sure that we can get as many sources of quality information out as possible.

Ernesto: Okay, perfect. Great for sharing that with us. Now, let’s switch gears a little bit, Eric, and let’s talk about you as a leader. You being the Head of Marketing there for Personal AI, what are some key tasks you focus on in your day-to-day work?

Eric: Anyone who works at a startup will attest that every day is different and challenging, and you do a lot of things and wear a lot of hats constantly. Ultimately, that’s what I love, and what I do a lot every day is write. I work with our founding team to get their messages out there. They’re excellent leaders and business people and builders, just quality people. Working with them and making sure they’re heard, because that’s kind of my job. Particularly, they’re really excellent people. I manage a newsletter and other campaigns, social campaigns. I work with a social media manager to make sure that stuff is targeted and deployed to the right people. I review a lot of analytics, Google Analytics, SEMrush, all those kinds of things to make sure we know where our traffic is coming from, where it’s going to, how they are finding us. Really reviewing that stuff religiously is something I do every morning. Customer research—we’ve got a really epic team now working on customer basics and talking to them and understanding. So, reading a lot of research, I read a lot of journals to know what I’m talking about in AI. As a new field that’s not so new but really emerging into the mainstream, staying ahead of where people are and what they’re talking about is all stuff I really love to do.

Ernesto: All right, well, it sounds like you have a full plate there on your hand, but you are really organized. Love to hear that. And in the between times, Eric, how do you stay up to date with all the marketing news, trends out there, strategies? Is there a preferred channel that you like to go with?

Eric: The signal to noise now is so impossible. You kind of have to find good aggregators, whether it’s people like you or other podcasters or newsletters. There are really great newsletters out there, particularly for AI now. I love history, particularly how founders have solved problems in the past. That’s always kind of how we do things today. I tend to try to absorb as much high-quality content as possible. A lot of free classes from Google—we also offer a ton of free classes on how to train your own AI. So I’ve been doing a lot of that research and understanding how my personal AI can benefit my team and the people who need me in my understanding every day. All of that kind of fits into my daily content intake and four years of 14 years of media kind of shaped that out.

Ernesto: Awesome. Great to hear that, then. Let’s switch to our next section here, Eric, which is our rapid-fire question round. Are you ready for them?

Eric: Let’s do it.

Ernesto: All right, perfect. First off, Eric, what is the last book that you read?

Eric: I tend to read two books at a time—one nonfiction, one fiction. My nonfiction was The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli, and my fiction is The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. Those are epic books, I suggest.

Ernesto: Excellent. Okay, great reads for our listeners. Next up then, is if there would be no boundaries in technology, what would be that one thing that you want to have fixed for your role as a marketer today?

Eric: Attribution is really kind of the ultimate thing that AI can help solve in today’s marketing that I’m really interested in understanding more because right now, the touchpoints before anybody’s purchase—the intent—are much more obfuscated than they used to be. There’s much more research done. Your first interaction with the customer is really rarely going to be your final purchase decision. So really understanding attribution is something that’s super cool. That would be an awesome solution—certainty of execution modeling.

Ernesto: Okay, perfect. Awesome. Next up then, is if there’s one repetitive task that you could automate, what would that be?

Eric: Meetings, if we believe they were trying. Imagine sending your AI, which can answer questions for you, to a meeting that can then give you back all the information that you need—not just getting a transcript, but actually being interacted with during the meeting. That is something that would make my life a thousand times easier and give people back 4 hours in a day.

Ernesto: Definitely. That would be really nice. I think just getting some back time, one, 2 hours is enough. So great to hear that still.

Eric: Getting things done and still getting stuff done is really important—being able to be in Mexico on a beach while getting work done is kind of the dream, right?

Ernesto: Exactly.

Eric: Yep.

Ernesto: That’s what it’s all about. Awesome to hear that from you guys. Lastly then, Eric, you have a lot of experience already in the marketing world, but what is that one piece of advice that you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Eric: Get highly focused on asking people questions—getting really good at that. I’ve always been told we’ve got two ears and one mouth. Really learning to ask questions that align with what they tell you. There’s a reason why economists don’t like questionnaire data and rather use data from actions. Also, go ahead and learn SQL and Python.

Ernesto: Definitely, right? I think those are some tools that everybody needs in today’s world and going forward. Well, depending on how technology is going to advance with AI and everything, but definitely some great advice there for our listeners.

Eric: You don’t even need history in running SQL and Python anymore. AI is going to do a lot of that stuff and get you there much faster. I’m jealous of kids starting today, their journey in the office.

Ernesto: Definitely. I mean, not just everywhere. My kid is in middle school right now. When ChatGPT came out, he was like, “Oh, look how fast I did this.” And I was like, “Wow, that was amazing!” I used to go and get a book and do my digging and sit in the library for a couple of hours.

Eric: So definitely pull the encyclopedias. That’s all I had—encyclopedias. And they were probably the same ones from the 80s. It’s crazy. The kids have access to such powerful tools today, and I hope teachers are using them wisely and teaching kids how to think.

Ernesto: Yeah, exactly. I think that was the only bad thing I saw. I was like, “Oh man, are you getting just the answers, or are you actually learning?”

Eric: AI is the death of mediocrity. That’s my take on it. Hopefully, we can all start from a better place.

Ernesto: Definitely. Awesome. Eric, it’s been a pleasure to have had you on with us today, but I do want to give you the last word. If someone forgets everything about the interview today, what is that one thing they should remember about Personal AI?

Eric: Yeah, we’re the trusted source for a customized AI. Everyone’s going to have one in the future. It’s like a website or an Instagram or social media. Having an AI will help you in your business, and let Personal AI help you figure that out. We’re here to help you train your AI or help you train your own AI. So either way, we’re here to help you.

Ernesto: Perfect. Awesome. Hey, well, thank you so much, Eric, for being on with us today. For our listeners, check them out at Personal AI. They’ll always be there—private models trained on personal memory, unique to every individual. Thanks a lot, Eric, for being out with us. To our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to our next episode at Pathmonk Presents. Thanks a lot, Eric.

Eric: Thanks, Ernesto. Have a good day.

Ernesto: You too.