In this thought-provoking episode of On the Brink with Andi Simon, we welcome Dan Nestle, a strategic communications expert and AI enthusiast, to explore the transformative role of artificial intelligence in marketing, branding, and storytelling. With over 20 years of corporate and agency experience, Dan has been at the forefront of digital and content innovation, helping businesses adapt to the rapidly evolving communications landscape.
As AI tools become more sophisticated, many professionals are left wondering: Will AI replace human creativity? Can AI-generated content be authentic? How can businesses use AI without losing their unique voice? Dan tackles these pressing questions, offering real-world insights into how AI can serve as a powerful assistant—rather than a replacement—for communicators, marketers, and business leaders.
During our conversation, Dan shares his fascinating career trajectory, from teaching English in Japan to leading global corporate communications teams. Now, as the founder of Inquisitive Communications, he helps organizations navigate AI’s impact on content strategy, storytelling, and audience engagement. He also provides a step-by-step breakdown of the AI tools he uses daily to streamline content creation, repurpose valuable insights, and enhance branding efforts without sacrificing authenticity.
We’ll discuss the importance of curiosity in embracing new technologies, the fear and hesitation many professionals feel around AI, and why adopting AI-driven workflows can save time, increase efficiency, and improve creativity. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer, an entrepreneur, or just starting to explore AI’s potential, this episode is packed with actionable strategies to help you integrate AI into your communications and branding efforts.
Get ready to rethink how you approach content in the age of AI, and learn why being human is still the most valuable differentiator in a tech-driven world.
If you prefer to watch the video of our podcast, click here.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
✔️ Dan’s Journey – From Japan to corporate leadership to AI-driven communications.
✔️ AI’s Role in Content Creation – How AI can be a strategic assistant, not a replacement.
✔️ Avoiding AI-Generated Dullness – How to use AI to enhance creativity, not diminish it.
✔️ Reimagining Old Content – Repurposing existing assets for greater engagement.
✔️ Top AI Tools for Communicators – Practical tools to streamline marketing and content efforts.
✔️ Brand Storytelling in the Age of AI – Keeping authenticity at the core of digital strategies.
Key Takeaways
💡 Curiosity is Your Superpower – Stay open-minded, explore new tools, and embrace AI as a co-pilot in your work.
💡 Get Hands-On with AI – The best way to understand its potential is by experimenting with tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Notebook LM.
💡 New ≠ Better – Instead of constantly creating new content, use AI to revitalize and optimize existing content.
💡 Brand Storytelling Must Stay Human – AI can assist in structuring stories, but your personal touch and authenticity are what truly engage audiences.
Top AI Tools Discussed
🔹 Notebook LM – Organizes and extracts insights from podcast transcripts, blog posts, and documents.
🔹 Claude by Anthropic – AI-driven writing assistant that adapts to your personal style.
🔹 ChatGPT – A powerful AI tool for generating ideas, drafting content, and enhancing productivity.
🔹 Midjourney – AI-based image generation tool for creating custom visuals.
About Dan Nestle
🔹 Founder, Inquisitive Communications – Helping marketing & communications professionals navigate AI.
🔹 Host, Trending Communicator Podcast – Recognized by PRWeek as one of the Top 25 Movers & Shakers in Communications Technology.
🔹 Global Experience – With 20+ years in corporate and agency roles, Dan brings a global perspective to AI-driven branding and content.
🌐 Website: beinquisitive.com
🔗 LinkedIn: Dan Nestle
📸 Instagram: @TrendingCommunicator
You will enjoy these other podcasts:
426: Time for Work That’s Worth It?
407: Shaping the Future: Dr. Emily Springer on Responsible AI in Business
420: Join Kevin Cirilli to Meet the Future
Additional resources for you
- My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights
- Our latest book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored with Edie Fraser and Robyn Freedman Spizman
- All of our white papers, particularly those on Blue Ocean Strategy
- Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants
Reach out and contact us if you want to see how a little anthropology can help your business grow. Let’s Talk!
From Observation to Innovation,
CEO | Corporate Anthropologist | Author
Simonassociates.net
Info@simonassociates.net
@simonandi
LinkedIn
Read the text for our podcast here:
Andi Simon 00:00:02 Welcome to On the Brink with Andi Simon. I know you come to hear us help you get off the brink. And that’s what we try to do by bringing marvelous people for you to listen to so they can help you. And I say these words so intentionally: see, feel, and think in new ways. Remember, the eyes are where we decide. So you need to see or hear and let your heart begin to take you into places that you may not have been before because you didn’t know that was a good place to go for you. But I’m really excited today because I have Dan Nestle and he’s here to help you see, feel, and think in new ways as well. So let me tell you a little bit about him. Dan is an award-winning strategic communications executive and communications technology leader. And you’re going to hear a lot today about how technology is changing the communications platform so that we can all remember, speak better with each other because at the end of the day, and we’re still trying to do communications between us and among us, and not just for us, it’s important he has a host of the Trending Communicator podcast, which was named to PR weeks Dashboard ‘25, in both ‘23 and ‘24. And he’s recognized as one of the top 25 movers and shakers in communications technology. This is such fun. He has 20 years of corporate and agency experience, and he brings proven expertise in corporate and brand communications, integrated marketing, content strategy, and social media. And I love the idea of brand storytelling. So in a world of AI and Chat GPT and all the others that have come out, you know, what does that do to our brand? And how is our brand now important, auspicious as our friend Mark Schaefer would say? And how do we make sure it really works in a way that communicates who we are and what we’re all about? I’ll say a little last note about Dan, while he was raised in New Jersey, he spent 16 years in Japan and speaks Japanese, a reflection of his adaptability. He tells us a global perspective. For today, I am thrilled to have Dan here to help you see, feel, and think in new ways in a world that’s changing so fast. You can’t figure out what’s new and what’s not. Dan, thanks.
Dan Nestle 00:02:14 Thanks Andi. And you’re setting the bar pretty high. I hope I can help people see, feel, and think in different ways because I think that’s my daily chore or my daily task is that what can I think and feel and see new today? What’s interesting and exciting today that can really help me and change the way that I approach my business and my life. And it’s important to keep that kind of learning and curious mentality. I think going forward to as you, as you step away from the brink, uh, as it were,
Andi Simon 00:02:45 Well, you know, I gave them your bio, but your journey as you shared with me is a very interesting one, particularly going to Japan. But among other things, how you spent 20 years in industry and now you’ve launched your own business and things are beginning to change, change for you. Share your journey with them, if you don’t mind.
Dan Nestle 00:03:02 Sure. And I’ll try to keep it as brief and as kind of succinct as possible. So I started off after college just teaching English and just trying to figure out where I was going and what my life was going to be like. I went to Japan because I majored and studied Japanese. And, um, I had no idea that I was heading towards a creative career in marketing and communications. It didn’t even occur to me. You’ll hear a lot of this theme of curiosity and of technology and new trends and everything that is kind of exciting about the professions that we’re in. And I’ve been sort of following that through my career. So I started off in that teaching and education world, but then I kind of pivoted over towards trying to make my fortune in Tokyo, as a recruiter, believe it or not. That led me to a corporate job that was horrifying. And, um, it was that horrible corporate experience where I was totally mismatched with the job. And here I am talking about curiosity and creativity, and somebody throws me on day three, somebody throws me the Excel Bible. And this was back along, this is turn of the century, about about 2001 where somebody said, you need to learn Excel. And I said, okay, where’s the training? And they chucked me this big fat book that said the Excel Bible. So I immediately said, this is not for me. I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and I thought, you know what, at that time I didn’t, didn’t have any kids yet, and I was thinking I’m going to do it myself. I thought what could I do? And I knew that I could write, pardon me. So I got these cards printed, said I was a copywriter, and started networking in Tokyo among the international community. People believed me. Luckily I started doing some copywriting and that evolved. And, you know, eventually that led me to one job and to one client after another led me to corporate communications and marketing. From that point forward, I have been ensconced. And so after about 20 years or so in corporate roles, a brief stint at Edelman in between, running all the way from basic marketing and PR all the way through to leading the communications teams for the Americas, for large Japanese companies. It’s been a wonderful journey and I’ve learned a lot along the way. And I was always pursuing what’s new and what’s exciting. And then part of it was for my own satisfaction and my own curiosity. But also I always wanted to kind of bring my team and myself to the forefront of the profession. What are communicators doing? What are they doing that could be improved and how could we help the company in the process? That led me down the road of communications technology and then ultimately AI. And with kind of a lot of my focus there, when you’re in corporate jobs, you don’t always have the rope you need to follow the path that you want to. Or maybe that’s a very mixed metaphor, but you don’t always have the wherewithal to go experiment like you want to. And ultimately, you know, in the last, about a year ago, a little less than a year ago, I was working for a large Japanese company and the economy being what it was, there wasn’t really room for experimentation. We separated very amicably and a few months later started my own thing, called Inquisitive Communications where I am helping people get comfortable with AI, mostly communications and marketing teams understand the future better. I’ll help them help guide them and hold their hand through this AI transformation primarily in the area of content. So that’s kinda where I’m at.
Andi Simon 00:07:18 Well, but, as a newbie in the entrepreneurial world, you have a wonderful background to bring to an audience who’s also not that far away from where you are, because what used to work in a corporate setting and was pretty comfortable isn’t necessarily going to work tomorrow. But the hard part, I mean, I specialize in helping people change and organizations as well, the hardest part is not knowing what’s new. And so we stick to the old because it’s comfortable, but maybe not either efficient or effective and the news foreign and the brain hates me. You know, the minute I say I help people change, they go run away the other way. Put me in a closet, lock me up. The world of chat and AI and machine learning and blockchain, the fourth industrial revolution is here. The attitude of most people is, well, it’s here for you, not for me if I can avoid it, I’m going to duck, sit under the table and maybe it’ll pass me by. I don’t think this is passing by, but I can talk about what I do with it, but I want you to talk about what you do with it and how your wonderful company can help people begin to, and the words we use, see, feel, and think in new ways because they really have to put their hands on it and see it work to feel its trust. Tell us, what do you help them with?
Dan Nestle 00:08:40 Well, first of all, what you just said there is so critically important is to put your hands on it. And the initial kind of response to AI or any new tool really is there’s a learning curve, or this is going to really affect my job. It’s like somebody’s throwing an Excel Bible at me. I’m going to run and granted things like the Excel Bible would thrill a lot of people, but it’s not for everybody. I think AI is a little different because I believe AI really is for everybody. I’m sure that line workers and people in hands on manufacturing jobs might feel differently, that’s a little bit separate from what we’re talking about. They might have a case there. But for most of us who are in professional roles, there’s something there for everyone. We get distracted by the bells and whistles and the news and everything that’s going on with the new functions and the new features, and the new this and the new that. And we get paralyzed by this idea that why should I even start if I’m not going to be able to catch up. In my job what I like to do is kind of help people understand that it’s not important for them to know everything, it’s important for me to know a lot of what’s coming, but even people like me who focus on it are not always on top of what’s happening. But that’s okay because what’s important is how can it help you. Now, what are the use cases that you’re doing in your daily job or with your team or on your own, in your own business where AI can be your really valuable, useful assistant. I think Ethan Mullet calls it your CO intelligence, something that can, that can really empower you and boost your work. And there’s a mindset shift that has to happen around that first. So you have to get comfortable with it. And that’s where I think my first order of business is just to make sure that the people I’m working with, my clients, and my customers are comfortable with AI. And that sometimes means training, it sometimes means an hour discussion. Sometimes it means days of handson, kind of practice. But believe me, if listeners out there really usually don’t take days to figure out AI can help you, I just want to put that out there. You get comfortable with AI and then understanding what your use cases are, then it takes you in different directions. I do help people and companies kind of try to put those use cases into play, whether it’s to discover what they are, or kind of work with them to fulfill what they already know their use cases are with AI workflows and processes and stuff. I’m having a blast with it. And the more I do it, the more I think that my focus is really best in the area of content creation and content development, especially for PR and marketing. There are so many misconceptions about what AI can and should do. And as you’ve mentioned Mark Schafer before, if we want to be audacious, the very opposite of audacity is dullness, and people are using AI to create a lot of dull, dull stuff. So how can I help you? Or how can you help yourself to stand out? I think AI is a boon in that area, and not a detractor. It’s not going to make your content dull unless you let it. It can do the option.
Andi Simon 00:12:26 I’ve been using this for a while now. I don’t even remember when I got it, I was just in love with it. I don’t need a staff anymore. But I still have a relationship with AI. That’s almost weird because I say, please and thank you. And sometimes I like what it gives me when I ask the prompts, and sometimes I don’t. And sometimes I upload something. For example, I’ll upload the sound from this or the text and I’ll ask them to come back and give me a short block for it and the keywords that are there and some title suggestions. And the titles are sometimes good for search for purposes and sometimes not. But they are much more efficient and smarter than my staff were. And it takes no time for me to say, well, I love that. I like that. I don’t like that at all. Thank you very much. Can you try again? And they’ve even given me some great images. Not always, but, and it’s not easy to modify their images, but there are others that will do images. And so I have really been able to redirect my company to being more effective. But it’s also required me to learn my way through it. I had a proposal due in a few days for a client, and I asked it to give me a proposal to do ethnography. And sure enough, it came out with not a bad one. And then I said, okay, now go deeper into each of the parts. And then it came back very cool. I said, okay, now what kind of survey could I create to do some data collection? I had quite an interesting work session about it. But, to your point about putting your hands on it, I mean, I know people who look at it and are scared, well, it’s no different than the staff person I had who scared me more. I mean, because their ability to understand what I was asking wasn’t as good as the AI’s ability to understand what I’m asking. This is sort of scary because it isn’t any different than that person, but it is very different from that person. But more thoughts, please take us to the next step.
Dan Nestle 00:14:33 Oh, well, you know, I think it’s interesting you’re talking about the idea that AI has been, it, he, she, it, whatever you think it is has been almost better than some of the staff that you’ve worked with in some ways. And, you know, it’s not a surprise because when you’re talking with, especially for people who have achieved a certain level of expertise in their life, there’s sometimes a gap and there’s often a gap between what is in your mind and what you want to do versus what your intern or your employee is able to produce. And sometimes there’s a lot of like churn in that whole process. And if you’re a single operator, if you run your own business, churn is not your friend. Time is really of the essence. If you’re in a corporate environment, there’s a much smoother learning curve in many cases. You have an opportunity in that case to instead of worrying about this knowledge gap between you and whoever’s asking you something to do, then you can actually fill that with either your own knowledge or AI or kind of to follow a process. But, to digress a little bit. I think it’s a similar thing. When I started the business, I couldn’t do what I do now without having the assistance and the collaboration of a variety of AI tools. I don’t know if it’s always right, but it’s always helpful from everything from creating my website to refining the copy that I write. I write a lot and I’m very picky about that. Everything from your basic use cases, like helping me write all the way through to helping me understand some legal issues or helping me to figure out what the regulations are in New Jersey because I’m in New Jersey for an LLC. and do I really need insurance. And the answer is, yes, I do. And you know, these other things that AI has really helped me with, it used to be you’d need to hire a business advisor consultant to do these jobs so I’ve been really pleased with that. But, you know, I think if you elaborate a little bit more on this, I think where you should be kind of integrating AI into your work, at least from a communications and marketing standpoint, is this whole idea of dull content. And I kind of want to push on that a little bit, if you don’t mind, Andi.
Andi Simon 00:17:10 Actually, I would because dull content isn’t good content.
Dan Nestle 00:17:19 Well, I have this feeling or this prediction if you want to call it that, because I never like to say I’m a futurist because I’ve been wrong more often than I’m right, but I think that this idea that AI is going to replace X, Y, or Z is not quite right. But on the other hand, it will be a kind of a mechanism through which, and forgive the metaphor, the weed is separated from the chaff. And if you are a great writer or if you’re great at fill in the blank, then AI is not going to replace you. It’s going to enhance you, but it’s not going to do any favors for somebody who isn’t very good at that particular role. It’ll make them mediocre. It’ll bring them to the level of acceptability and kind of competence that might be good enough for certain organizations. But if you want to stand out, you still have to be an excellent fill in the blank, in my case writer, or kind of technologist in some ways or a strategist. AI is helpful, but it’s not certainly replacing that. So when it comes to content though, because content creation really is core to so much of what we do, it’s how we build our personal brands. And for brands and for companies, it’s how they really reach their audiences. You know, the world is fractured, the audience and landscape is fractured. The media landscape is extremely fractured. The old ways of pushing out pushing out content, let’s just say a thought leadership platform or a white paper or some big kind of report used to be you post it on three things and you kind of put some paid behind it, and then you put up a lead gen form and voila, you’ve got the 40, 60, 80 300,000 leads that you need no more because everybody is, you don’t know where anybody is. So instead, a lot of companies just like, we’ll just create more content. And, you know, there is a numbers game there, I suppose, where you might get some results. But I think the key is to create, certainly create better content and take what you already have, because I’m sure that you have a lot and things especially that your audiences have already responded to. And figure out how to reimagine that, repurpose that, fix it, change it, or evolve it based on things that you’re hearing now into still unique content that offers great perspectives that offers your own point of view. Whether it’s a white paper or a blog post, or a social post, it doesn’t matter. So with AI, rather than just delegate your content creation to it, I think if you take a strategic approach and you figure out what your content strategy is. Who are the audiences I want to reach? Then work back into AI and say, alright, what do I already have that I can then use AI to radically change and enhance into what my audience wants now? And I think the vast majority of people, whether you’re a creator or a brand who have been around for more than a few years, have a lot of content that they’re sitting on and don’t know what to do with. So I think this is the next step. I think the next step is understanding new is not new and more is not the answer. The answer is really breathing life into what you have, but in a way that makes sense. And for that, there’s no like magic wand, you have to have some familiarity with what different tools can do, what different use cases you can, and what you can bring to the table. And I’m not saying you have to spend a lot of money on the tools. I’m not saying that you need to spend hours and hours or days and days on a learning curve. It’s not that hard. But to see the connections between and among the different capabilities that are now at your fingertips is a skill I think that’s invaluable. And it starts with curiosity too. Like, you’re looking at your old content and you’re saying, well, what can I wonder if I could take this and do something? Or what if I could do something?
Andi Simon 00:21:52 Fantastic. You’re raising a really important question though because the markets have changed. The question is whether the stuff I mentioned to you that I’ve done 427 podcasts and sometimes I listen to the early ones, and they were very different content than currently. I mean, we mature over time. We have hundreds of blogs. I’ve been in business for 23 years, we’ve been doing content for a long time. But you’re raising a very important question. How do we repurpose since search has made us an authority on. If you’re looking for a corporate anthropologist in New York or elsewhere, we come. If you’re looking for a Blue Ocean strategist there we are. I mean, I have to stay focused on things that are the three or four things I want. You know, I don’t care if I rank for everything, I just need to rank for some things. I need to be the authority that the search algorithm likes. But on the other hand, there’s so many other ways people read and videos are so amazingly important. But I, I think I’m going to ask you to share with the listeners some of the tools that you find very useful. For the repurposing. I’m curious about ourselves.
Dan Nestle 00:23:07 Well, I’ll do better than that. You might too. I’ll tell you exactly what I’m doing. At least I’ll give you a real honest to goodness example of how this has been working for me. Andi, it works really perfectly and sort of, especially with what you just said about having a repository of podcasts and of interviews and of blog posts. So I think Notebook, LM in particular, and we’re going to get a little tactical and granular here, but not a complex notebook. LM in particular has been a watershed moment for me or has brought a watershed moment for me in the world of my own creative journey. So taking some notes, go ahead. You know, it is not the only tool available, but it is widely available and there is a free version as long as you have a Gmail account with Notebook lm, you can create, essentially each notebook becomes a database of information and on any topic with a free version, I think you can have 50 notebooks with a paid version. Each notebook itself can store, I’ll only talk about the free version, can store up to 50 sources, and each one of those sources could be up to 500,000 words worth of content. So if you think about that, a transcript for an hour-long podcast is something like 20,000 words or something like this, it’s a generalization, but that’s a lot of transcripts if you think about that. Right? So when I saw this, I thought, Hmm, would it be great if I could take all my podcast episodes and really dig into what really has been said on those shows, but in a holistic and unified way. So, sure enough, I created a notebook and I uploaded all of my podcast transcripts, at least the recent ones that are on that since I rebranded to become the Trending Communicator. So let’s say there’s 23 Trending Communicator episodes. So all 23 of them are in a Notebook. So now each one of those episodes is an hour long plus, long form interview with an expert of note. We talked about Mark Schafer; he was on the show. We have other people in there. So now I can go to Notebook lm, which has all this stuff, and it uses the technology in Notebook LM as you know, you use it just like a regular chat bot, just like you would chat GPT in many ways, but it’s really relying on primarily on the sources that you give it. So almost no likelihood of hallucination or anything like this. So I can then ask questions or I can actually talk with my podcast. So what are the great, what are the major themes of the Trending Communicator, for example. And it gives me the themes that have been covered. Or I can say I want to write a newsletter. This week I saw something about the future of AI and the future of work with Ai. So please, what have my guests said about the future of work? And then it will pull out everything that my guests have said about the future of work or related to that topic. So it gives me a good starting point. So I take that content and usually I’m a little more specific about what I’m asking for. So I’ll take the output from a very detailed kind of briefing or note that’s really useful. I might ask it to pull out some more quotes because who has the time to go back into all your transcripts and find the quotes? Nobody. That’s why you do it in seconds with Notebook, I’ll take all that, and then I’ll go to one of my other AI tools, which I think is a better writer. So in my case, I like to use Claude, which is the Anthropic model. And Claude, I’ve trained Claude in my writing style and Claude has these wonderful things called projects, which you can set up. But even if you don’t have that with a good prompt and this content, now I can say I can get it to write a draft for my Substack newsletter or for just a LinkedIn post or whatever I want it to do, because I’ve trained it so much. The output it puts out is, I’m going to say 75% to 85% there. Like, it’s just about almost if it wasn’t me who’s really picky and kind of a perfectionist, I could probably publish it right from there. But I have to have my own kind of voice and like it better, it’s already in my voice, but I have to work with it more. So anyway, I take that content from Notebook, I move it over to Claude, I create this thing. I could do that a hundred times in 30 minutes. Now I don’t want to inundate anybody with crappy content, but I think that looking into your old content, in this case, the podcast for unique insights that you either missed or forgot, or hey, they could be even new and pertinent based on something you hear today.
. What a rich treasure trove that is. You’re sitting on a gold mine. So, you know, I did that with the podcast and now I have this kind of whole content engine running where I take the stuff from a notebook, I go to Claude, then I take the Claude stuff and I generate some ideas for prompts for images, as you were mentioning before. I’ll go over to Mid Journey and create an image or two. You know, I might take that and create a script that I’ll then bring over to someplace else and kind of start to talk and see if that makes a good video, which I’m getting into now. So the possibilities that it opens up are, are incredible. And I have not invested anything in new content, so I scale that up to a company or a team. And I think the possibilities are incredible. And that’s just one example.
Andi Simon 00:28:59 Well, but it’s a great example. Mostly because it’s real. It’s you, it’s what you’ve been doing. . I feel a little naked here because I don’t have Notebook and I haven’t used Claude. I’ve just used Chat GPT.
Dan Nestle 00:29:11 Which is, which is wonderful by the way, which adjective is great too.
Andi Simon 00:29:15 Well I think that part of it is developing comfort and trust. Part of it is knowing how to ask it for the right things. And part of it is knowing what your resources are and what the purpose is. But, but you have sort of blown my mind and said, Ooh, you’re very, you, you are thinking smaller. Think a bit bigger about what this can do and how it can help you. That’s right. Um, be the storyteller that you’re looking to become.
Dan Nestle 00:29:41 Yeah. Can I just add one thing, Andi? And that is, that you don’t need 50 sources. You could do that with three, you know, if you haven’t been creating long, if you have three decent things to talk about, it takes you in these great directions. I highly recommend people go there,
Andi Simon 00:30:00 But it’s wonderful. Well, we’re going to wrap up soon, unfortunately. Do you have a thought or two about brand storytelling in this world of AI and other things ? Give us a short version. Maybe we’ll come back and do a longer one in a few months.
Dan Nestle 00:30:15 I think the quick version is to be human and to be different, brand storytelling can’t be generic AI stuff because people see through it. I think you have to have the solid principles of brand storytelling. You know, having an actual story with a beginning, a middle and end a problem, and a solution or whatever your framework is that brings the reader or the viewer into a conclusive loop where they kind of come on your side, is critically important. AI can help you sketch out those frameworks and give you kind of some help with how you can structure a story this way, or you can come up with different controversies or whatever. But fundamentally, you have to inject the human element. You have to be raw and authentic more than ever before. But, beyond that, you have to know your audience and audiences because one story will only appeal to a fracture of what you thought it would before.
Andi Simon 00:31:23 Well, and maybe that was the same before. We just didn’t know the difference. But now we know so much more. It’s a very interesting time. Dan, give the audience two or three things you don’t want them to forget. I’ve been making some here apart from Notebook and Claude, but you know, you’ve given us a really important intro to how to use AI in communications development, content marketing, content development, a brand storytelling short, but really very dramatic. And to the point. Your last thoughts. What are the important things?
Dan Nestle 00:31:58 I always feel like I’m giving short shrift to the whole thing. There’s so much there. But, um, if, if you’re just going to take away a few things. Number one, the power of curiosity cannot be underestimated now. I think that’s where communicators and creative people and marketers have a huge advantage. Ask a lot of questions, and now you can get answers. So always start off with this, what if I could or wouldn’t it be great if, or I wonder if it would, if I can do this? And you’ll, the chances are that you can. So start with the power of curiosity. The second thing is to get comfortable with AI. You know, put your hands on it, find a couple things. If nothing else, get some free versions of Chat GPT and Notebook, and just play. You’re not going to hurt anybody or anything. I think you know that the third point is this idea and factually kind of works with this fractured audience pro issue is that creating new isn’t necessarily the right strategy. Um, look at what you already have, breathe new life into that. And that might take you into incredibly interesting directions.
Andi Simon 00:33:13 I think that is really super-duper, if they’d like to reach you for any purpose in consulting or speaking or whatever, where would that be?
Dan Nestle 00:33:21 Well, you can always find me on LinkedIn, Dan Nestle or Daniel Nestle, but it looks like the chocolate. I’m pretty much everywhere there. You can look for me at, beinquisitive.com, that’s beinquisitive.com. It’s Inquisitive Communications. I’m on most of the socials as DS Nestle. I’ve just started a new Instagram account called @Trending communicator. It has at the time of this recording one video. But there will be more because I’m working on a video now. The final thing I’ll say, coming very soon, I’ve been talking about this movie, this Notebook, LM to the podcast notebook. I’m working out a good framework that I think people can use to make that happen for themselves. Be on the lookout at my website, beinquisitive.com for the new content engine, so to speak. That’s the working pro. That’s the working title. It’s not going to be called that but think about it that way. How you can build your own content engine. I’m happy to help with all of that.
Andi Simon 00:34:30 This is so cool. So for my, wonderful audience, whether you’re watching or listening, haven’t we had fun? I always love to get off the brink with my guests who are taking us to new places. Maybe we’re still on the brink, but I think the times they are changing rapidly, and I don’t think we should fight them. We should enjoy the journey. You said something important, when we’re playing things, they seem so easy. And when we’re making them work, they seem so hard and play is really a wonderful way to experience what the new technologies are going to be doing. And they’re not going away. You’re not going back. So just enjoy the journey. I’m Andi Simon, I’m a corporate anthropologist and I help our companies and the people in them change. My three books are all on Amazon. You can find them under Andi Simon. And I love to talk about a little anthropology and how it helps your business grow. And my two books Smashing the Myths of Women in Business or Women mean Business and women do mean Business today. And they are leading without limits as they’re trying to build new companies. A little bit like Dan is fascinating, in new ways, often with lots of purpose. So we are here to help. If you need a little help adding anthropology to your toolkit, you know, don’t be bashful. Come find us. We too are on LinkedIn and Simonassociates.net is right there on the internet waiting for you. And I’m going to say goodbye. Have a wonderful day. Dan, thank you so much for coming. It’s really been a pleasure.
Dan Nestle 00:36:06 My pleasure. It’s been an honor. Thanks so much for inviting me, Andi. Appreciate it.
Andi Simon 00:36:09 I’m going to go listen to your podcast and learn a little bit more. And goodbye everybody, Have a great day. Bye. Remember, turn your observations into innovations and tell us all about it. Bye now.
