AI, Self-Awareness, and the Centroid Problem with Jennifer Hong

[0:00] Intelligence, the centroid, and why artists resist AI

Dan Korus: Welcome to the Kestryl Edge Podcast, Jen. Thanks for being here.

Jennifer Hong: Happy to be here.

Dan Korus: Yeah, thanks for taking the time to join me. So for those who don't know, Jennifer and I met on Substack. And Jennifer is one of those people where whenever you read or interact with anything of hers, you learn more. Jen writes a lot about human connection, AI, and a bunch of different things that I'm going to ask about. I want to take us back to one of the first Substack pieces you ever wrote, which is a little over a year ago, if I'm not mistaken. It's called A Beautiful AI Mind. You ready? Cool. So it opens with a line that's a real plot twist, and it's that intelligence is no longer ours alone. A year from that piece, having watched AI conversations evolve in real time, do you still think that line holds? Or has your read on what intelligence even means shifted?

Jennifer Hong: Yeah, let's talk about it. I actually wish artificial intelligence was not called artificial intelligence. I think it's a misnomer. The artificial proportion is correct. I just don't think what it provides is intelligence by a very pure definition. But if we set that aside and just say it's not gonna get rebranded at this point in time, then yes, we have to share what we think intelligence looks like today, and it's not just coming from other humans. If you want to talk about the arc of how it's moved over the last year, I think it's moved a lot, especially for people who are AI fluent. If you define AI fluent by skillful use of multiple AI tools, I think it's like half of 1% or 1%. It's a very small percentage of the population that you can even consider quote unquote fluent. But I would say most of those people, now it's less awe-inspiring and more where does it break. Let's actually try to make it break. It's a lot of stress testing, a lot of people experimenting and publishing the results, which I think is good. I know that AI companies are doing a lot of that research themselves, but it's not as if they roll out new models and say, here's your user guide and here's what to watch out for. You'll get some red team research and they'll say, here's the strange set of circumstances we put an AI model through, and here's what happened. Those are really press-worthy stories, but they're very isolated and controlled. So it's more interesting to hear from the Substack community what they find when they do it.

Dan Korus: Yeah, once people have actually stress tested it in a real-world situation that's applied to some sort of a particular goal that's creating value for someone. So if you wouldn't call it intelligence, what would you call it?

Jennifer Hong: I'm not sure, because the other things it's been called are probably understating it. There was a quote where it said it's just like a really good stochastic parrot or a really smart autocorrect. And there are things in those phrases that do feel spot on. But it's obviously evolved past that. I don't know that there's a pithy single word for it, but I will say, a collaborator and I ran our own experiment specifically on image generation. What we basically found was there's an aesthetic grade put on imagery that trained the model. And if it's stock imagery, that grades higher as aesthetically valuable. Maybe aesthetic is the wrong word to use. It's good lighting, it's publish-ready, it's high res, it's very controlled, sort of image. And it looks nothing like people or candids. So now if you ask it a pretty detailed prompt, it gives you what we were calling a centroid. It's basically the average attractive center of all of its training data. I was curious about it because it has a really hard time rendering my face. I've given multiple image generation models my image and just said, put me in this context or this environment or change this thing. And it keeps trying to change my face, even though it has a reference point. I think it's because that centroid is pulling away from the specificity of me. So how do you capture something that only knows how to output the average of what it's been trained? That would be what I named it. Centroid. Artificial centroid.

Dan Korus: I'm thinking about integration, right? Taking the area under the curve instead of being able to predict where it's going.

Jennifer Hong: Integration. It's the high point of the bell curve, and we're in the long tails.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Most humans are in the long tails.

Jennifer Hong: Yeah. And all the good stuff I think is in the long tails. Especially on the success side of it.

Dan Korus: Right, everything that's unique and worth looking at. So you started a newsletter with two posts about AI and Fear Conscious on day one, right? Your first post was A Beautiful AI Mind, and your second post was I Fear. I think it's a pretty bold opening and I wanna know, was that a deliberate thesis statement? Is this your manifesto? Did you have those two pieces ready to go? What was it like for you entering this sort of writing? Because you've been writing about the exact same topic for almost a year, even though your writing's evolved and your perspectives on it have evolved.

Jennifer Hong: Well, it's interesting because actually the first post I wrote was Training Your Dragon, which I think is post three or four. The whole impetus for me to write about AI is I was a ChatGPT user since its inception. I think it was maybe four or five months, or maybe it was even a year. I'm now losing track of AI years. It seems like it just came out, but it's actually been a bit of time now. I remember it was April, and I think it was a year and a half after it launched. OpenAI had done an update, and its model was super sycophantic, and they had to roll it back. That's when I learned that AI has a personality and a tone, and that you can change it. I felt like that was something really important and imperative for people to know. That's why I wrote Training Your Dragon. Everything has a movie frame, so that's why the titles are familiar. I didn't want to launch with that because I just felt like I had to tell people why I'm writing in the first place. So that was the first post. And then I thought, there are so many people I know that I consider super brilliant, amazing storytellers, responsible, conscientious people who are still highly suspect of AI. That's why I wrote I Fear, because I wanted to tell people about the personality and tone. But underlying that, I also want the people that I think are brilliant and responsible to be in the world of AI. I don't think the laws and regulations and the roads are paved yet. I think they're very much gonna be paved by the earliest people that are driving. And a lot of people are not driving right now, right?

Dan Korus: What do you hope those creatives will learn by engaging?

Jennifer Hong: They're not even necessarily creatives. They're quite literally science PhDs or MBAs. People are reluctant for two reasons. The creatives are reluctant because on a values front, they see the cultural theft that's happened, and then they also worry about being replaced. I agree on the cultural theft piece. The replacement piece I don't agree on, because I think it's just going to replace the middle and everything that's mediocre. If you are a truly creative and talented artist, you will rise above the centroid that AI produces. It can't produce anything truly novel. So if you're creative, you're fine. When it comes to people who are scientists and have gone through education and schooling and maybe seen other tech revolutions, I think when they first start playing with it, they see exactly how it goes wrong. And they don't think, it's because I need to modify, I need to do context engineering, I need to build an external business memory. They think this tool's broken. They think this tool just doesn't work. What's the hype about? They're immediately suspicious and distrustful of it. At least that's what I've seen in my circle of friends. A lot of them know they can learn it and come up the curve. They're just a little bit like, I don't have to right now. So I'm really just trying to encourage everyone I know to be in the game, be on the road, and help make sure that it stays bridled and responsible, because I do think we're customers of this product and we can all vote with our wallets.

Dan Korus: Yeah, that's good. What do you fear would happen if we didn't? If they weren't getting our votes, so to speak, or if they weren't getting our input, where could AI be in a few years that would be a worse place than if we invested in it? At least our time and attention.

Jennifer Hong: Yeah. So one of my later posts, I made the decision to switch from OpenAI to Anthropic. At the time, it's funny, I actually convinced myself by writing a post about I was comparing the different AI companies to car brands. I basically said OpenAI is like Tesla and Anthropic is more like Volvo. With Tesla, specifically under Elon Musk, they're very much moving fast. If they break things, if people die, I'm sure they're concerned about the liability and the legal piece of it. It doesn't slow them down. It's all about growth and trying to get to a one trillion dollar valuation. Which I kind of see similarly with Tesla and self-driving. If you go slower, people do not need to die. I liken Anthropic to Volvo because Volvo has always said that the car is a tool and it's the humans driving it that have to be safe. They came up with the seat belt and they opened the patent so that every car could use it. That was their philosophy. I don't know that Anthropic is as noble as Volvo, but anyway, I was writing these things and I actually convinced myself. I also did a brand diagnostic on all of them. I convinced myself in doing that diagnostic that I was more aligned with Anthropic. So I influenced myself in my own writing without knowing it.

Dan Korus: I think that's one of the beautiful things about Substack and having an online, I mean I almost think of it as an online journal. And it tries to be, because it values authenticity, and it values people for being themselves, and the community on Substack is very sensitive to AI writing and AI-generated thought. And I believe, I can't prove this, but I think the algorithm is as well, and it punishes people for that. So the community around Substack I think is a very great place to be thinking about things. And to post a half-finished thought or to write something that becomes a decision later and to be able to publish those decision-making processes, because I think the community is very receptive to that and wants to see people's thinking.

Jennifer Hong: Yeah, I think maybe because it's long form, I do think it rewards vulnerability and authenticity. I don't know how good those, I don't even know what you call them, they monitor and screen content and they try to discern how much is human-written versus AI-written. A lot of those tools I don't think work reliably. So I'm not sure how much credence to give this. But it was just published where they did an analysis of the platforms that had the most AI-generated content versus the most human-generated content. LinkedIn has the most AI-generated content. That might not surprise you. And supposedly Substack has the most human-generated content, it's over 70%. Maybe it's because the readers are rewarding the content that feels human, vulnerable, authentic, and then the algo learns. That's generating a lot of engagement, a lot of likes, it reiterates that that's what's important to the platform.

[13:30] Growing up a rebel and finding structure

Dan Korus: Yeah. So we kinda started on this AI kick and I wanna know if you'd be willing to give us a brief synopsis of your history. Maybe the biopic would have been good at the beginning. But I do wanna know, where did you come from to get to where you are now? What were some of the challenges that you had to overcome? I know you had a pretty executive college experience and then in the messages you also told me that you had gotten kicked out at one point, and so I was like, okay, who is Jen growing up through the ages?

Jennifer Hong: I grew up in California. My parents are immigrants. And it's funny, in some ways I feel like they're more American than Americans, because they're all about property, education, moving to the right place to serve their children's future. [personal detail removed] So I can only credit them that they made a really smart bet. I was pretty rebellious even in high school. I skipped fourth grade, so I blame it on immaturity. But also my two older sisters could not be more perfect on paper. To the point where when I would enter a high school class, the teacher would be like, the third Hong sister's here. And then I'd be like, surprise, it's me. Not like my sisters. I drank on a school-sponsored journalism trip and we all got suspended. Things like that. I think it was low stakes. My parents certainly did not think it was low stakes.

Dan Korus: How did you rebel?

Jennifer Hong: Back then getting into college was very much a meritocracy. I got into UCLA, my parents were like, you can't not go to Berkeley when it's the better school. The rebel in me wanted to move further away from home. I went to Berkeley, I had half a year's worth of credits, I got a hundred on my first calculus exam and I stopped going to class. And then my parents got a letter saying I was on academic probation and then they got a letter saying I was kicked out. So I think I turned it around, I guess, at around age 17. What's funny about that story is because now I have [family members] that are that age. So I'm thinking a lot about those times. I went in, I spoke to the college counselor, he looked at my record and he said, hmm, came in here with half a year's worth of units. I don't think the coursework was too demanding. You were probably just partying too much. And I was like, maybe. And he said, look, if you take calculus over and you get a B or better during the summer session, you can stay. So I took it over, I got an A, and I stayed and I graduated. So I feel like I got all of those rebellious instincts out of my blood at age 17, 18. It was relatively low stakes. I still graduated on time. I found a job. I started working three days after graduation. And then I got very serious once I started working. I think I'm still slightly contrarian and rebellious, but not like that.

Dan Korus: If you could go back, would you do it any different?

Jennifer Hong: Nope. I miss those years.

Dan Korus: Yeah. What do you miss about them in particular?

Jennifer Hong: I just had so much fearless abandon. It was just like living for fun. Just so free and if I had responsibilities, I wasn't tending to them. I mean, I think it's funny now because you asked me, you were like, are you type A or type B? Because we were gonna change the date of this, and you probably know I'm type A. I'm actually a pretty rigid, stringent, disciplined person. But there's a hellion inside wanting to break every rule too.

Dan Korus: What's your favorite rule you've broken recently? Or a rule you break on principle?

Jennifer Hong: Well, so I can give you two examples, one that's Substack related and one that's career related. I don't know if you've come across this writing, but a lot of people there will be almost sad and venting about their lack of growth, their lack of reach, and they quite literally look at themselves and they say, what have I done wrong? I've seen people write notes where they're like, please stay with me. I have so much good content coming out. And it literally breaks my heart to think that people are holding the onus of reach and growth as if it's a black stain on the caliber of their work or the frequency of their work. So that prompted me to say, here's how the algorithm works. Here's what changes they've made recently. Here's how it would impact reach and growth for the entire system. To basically say it's not your fault. You were doing what you do. It had been successful for you in the past. And just because it doesn't work today doesn't mean you did something wrong. It just means they moved the furniture around and they didn't tell you. So to me, it's decoding where the rules are. But then also saying you don't have to follow them. So that's one example.

[19:30] Breaking the rules of acquisition with Letterboxd

Jennifer Hong: And then in my work, we are quite literally trying to do something that's never been done before, in that we are trying to acquire Letterboxd through a values-first, mission-based Massachusetts public benefit org with community cooperative fundraising. Trying to find a different exit other than PE or IPO for companies where the original investors are looking to exit. It's completely audacious and it breaks all the rules of finance and investing and acquisition, but it's also what's completely necessary. People have asked me, if it doesn't work, what are you gonna do? And I'm like, it's fine, because we're gonna get closer to the solution. I actually think we already do have the solution. So I'm more of the mindset it's going to work. And then people are gonna have the template and model to follow to do it again with other companies. So to me, again, it's how does the system work? Decode it. It is inherently problematic and leads to bad outcomes. You have to know what the rules are in order to bypass, break, make new ones.

Dan Korus: Tell us a little bit more about the rules that you're breaking in your own professional career. Why is this a significant rule to break? Explain it to the audience as if we know nothing about company exits or the standard rules of startup growth.

Jennifer Hong: Yeah. Let's take a consumer packaged good example. Let's take Ben and Jerry's. Do you like Ben and Jerry's? What's your favorite flavor?

Dan Korus: Cherry Garcia, full stop.

Jennifer Hong: Okay, so you probably know their history and how their values have always been front and center, right? And that they've done charitable outreach, percentage of proceeds, cause-related marketing. It is quite literally part and parcel of their brand. And they eventually sold. As part of that sale, they were meant to retain some power over the company, specifically on the values front and the mission front. I think they did for a few years. And then eventually it got chipped away, it got eroded, it got diluted. Because guess what? That is a more expensive way to run a business. And also because the people who hold the money sometimes have a different agenda when it relates to politics. And so suddenly they don't want the product to convey a message that's different from theirs. So this is what can happen when you sell equity in your company. Even if you set the guardrails in a way that you think protects the values and inherent soul of the company, it still ends up being diluted or deteriorates because people that hold the dollars want to do something different. And then you know the phrase that now is in the popular sphere, specifically as it relates to tech and apps, is enshittification. So let's take Reddit as an example, where something is built and the community is actually the one that makes it. Actually we could just even take Substack if we want to do like a 2026 example, because it could be very much on its way. But basically the cycle is the same. Starts as a startup, might not be profitable, the community builds the product, that's what makes it interesting. That's what makes it compelling. Eventually the founders have to turn a profit or they want to grow, so they take outside money, and usually comes in the form of private equity. Nobody in the private equity world is gonna say, we love the community piece. We love your values. It's okay if you don't make money. They will quite literally say, we're a monetization machine. Let's figure out where to cut costs. Now that you have millions of dollars of eyeballs, what can we monetize? Can we start putting ad units in there? Can we start selling that attention? And suddenly the community-driven platform that you love and grew yourself, you have become the product instead of it being the product. So that is quite literally the cycle that needs to be broken, and everyone knows it. Every time you see acquisition news come out, just look at the social media backlash. Everyone will say the same thing. They'll say, why can't we have nice things? And don't you dare sell. Because they know what it looks like at the end of the game.

Dan Korus: So what are you doing that changes this somehow? What's the wrench you're throwing in the system?

Jennifer Hong: It's structural. And I don't want to take credit for it, because I'm helping the cause, but I didn't build the structure. It was the founder of Intrinsic. Her name's Elizabeth Joyce, and she basically spent her entire career researching this from an academic point of view, and then spent over a year working with Harvard Law's transactional school to build the bylaws and ensure that the entity had all the foundational structural pieces to basically allow for cooperative fundraising and also a means to sell shares in a company back to the community once angel investors or the first investors are ready to exit. So that it doesn't have to IPO or it doesn't have to turn to private equity for funding. That is putting it in the most simplest terms possible, because it's not simple.

Dan Korus: Very complicated, actually. No, it's good. It came across clear.

Jennifer Hong: Sorry. I was trying to make it sound very clear. It is very complex. It's beyond my ken of knowledge. That's how I understand it, but I don't even know all of the mechanics of what went under it. I just know how long it took and how many really thoughtful, well-educated partners had to be involved to get it right.

Dan Korus: Yeah, and it's an important mission and probably one that is very exciting to be a part of, because as a popular contributor on a community-built platform, Substack, you know firsthand what's at stake.

[24:30] An open letter to Substack

Jennifer Hong: Yes. So I don't know if you read my open letter. I don't even know what time of year it was. It was in January or February. Basically Substack has a Nazi problem. Well documented. It was covered by the New York Times. And they didn't do anything about it. They just shrugged it off. I think they put it under the guise of free speech.

Dan Korus: Tell us about it.

Jennifer Hong: But the irony is they have a terms of service, which should be considered a codified document. Earlier this year, it didn't happen to me until later, but friends of friends were being threatened with rape, murder, and they were having deepfakes made of them. They were complaining through the official channels that this was happening. And they got silence in return and form letters back. I was just mortified. I was just like, this is so wrong. This is not okay. So they had already started a petition and whatnot. And maybe because of my history working in corporate and working in marketing, I sort of knew what was probably going on behind the scenes. I'm sure it was a lot of legal conversations. It wasn't, we need to take care of our community and we should actually stand by our terms of service. It was more like, could we get sued by this? And if we did, what would be the downside? And doing some kind of fiscal weight of potential outcomes. So I wrote an open letter and I wrote it purely from the fiscal perspective. Because I didn't think they would listen to the values judgment. I didn't think they would just do the right thing and reaffirm their terms of service. So I basically said, you're at a hinge point, and when other companies choose incorrectly here, it adversely impacts their valuation. So why don't you do the right thing and your paper millions can become real millions? And bonus, it's also the right thing for the community. I didn't get a response. I don't think I will. I tagged every female executive I could find on LinkedIn. I posted it on Substack. I posted it on LinkedIn. And look, I've worked for corporate marketing orgs. I didn't necessarily expect that they would reply to me. I was just hoping it might move them. I tagged their investment team, but the politics of their investors are well known as well. So they're not necessarily ones to be swayed on the value side of things.

Dan Korus: But you still write. And you still write on Substack.

Jennifer Hong: I still write. And then I got threatened after I wrote that. Just strange men.

Dan Korus: Wait, who threatened you?

Jennifer Hong: They were saying things like, shut up, censorship, and far nastier than that. One person restacked it and just said piano wire, as if they wanted to jeer at me and stuff like that.

Dan Korus: First of all, that's disgusting. I think I've been very privileged to have not seen that side of Substack.

Jennifer Hong: I know it exists there. They would say you can mute, you can block, but technically you're not supposed to be threatening the livelihood of other members there. So yeah, it was ironic, because I wasn't saying anything about censorship and freedom of speech, I was talking about valuations. But people understood the implication of that and they didn't want to be quote unquote censored from threatening to murder someone.

Dan Korus: Well, they labeled you with an argument that they wanted to hear. And then were against you on principle. I wonder where they'll go from here, because I've seen only beautiful things on Substack. And I've got other things I want to talk to you about too.

Jennifer Hong: Yeah. I love Substack. I try to preserve it.

Dan Korus: I think it's great. I've met so many cool people through it. It's changed the way I think about how I'm living my life and what I'm doing. It's given me an opportunity to think through my thoughts. There's been things I've written and put on there that have been acts of therapy. And I think that's rare. It's very shitty that experience is being had by people out there, that people are receiving death threats and that Substack is just kinda washing their hands of it and saying, well, here's how you access the block button. It's on you.

Jennifer Hong: Well, to be fair, they didn't say anything. But everyone else was like, block, mute, report.

[29:30] Low-key Buddhism and letting go of control

Dan Korus: Let's talk more about you. So a lot of your Substack philosophy, would you describe it as Buddhist?

Jennifer Hong: I call it low-key Buddhism, because I don't consider myself a practicing Buddhist. But there were, what I fondly call, I feel like I had two midlife crises in rapid succession. And I tried talk therapy twice. I'm still a huge proponent of it. I don't know that it's necessarily the thing for me. I have friends who recommended books to me that came from their therapists. I read all of the books, and they're all Buddhist books basically. So I think that's how I got educated and starting to listen to meditation recordings, which were also Buddhist in flavor. I say low-key because I don't think I could ever sign up to be a monk. And I think I will always have attachments. I don't necessarily think having those attachments are realistic to let go of fully. But the basic tenets and principles I totally find really resonant.

Dan Korus: So for someone who doesn't read your writing, where does this show up, and what's a couple values that you would want to pass off to the average person?

Jennifer Hong: Well, I feel like I already mentioned one, in sort of knowing about the algorithm but holding it loosely. So that is a little bit of letting something go and accepting that something is the way it is and not trying to change the outcome. I thought letting go would be a really relaxing practice. And it's really hard. It's actually very active, because it comprises this concept of acceptance. And that's what we really struggle with. It's accepting that things are the way they are, that you don't control as much as you think you control. So those are some of the notions and concepts that I remind myself of. It is super freeing though. My favorite thing to say is, what's meant for me won't miss me. I'm generally a super impatient person. So I am very much working on my patience, because now I'm like, it'll happen when it's meant to happen. I've actually seen that play out where something I wanted to happen didn't happen as quickly. And then when it did finally come to fruition, I was like, this is it, makes sense. So you kind of have to go through the other side of it to recognize that. But those are sort of just in generalities, some of the basic principles that I try to live by.

Dan Korus: So for someone else out there who's also struggling with impatience, which couldn't be me, by the way. I never have that problem. Yeah, my editor will tell you I'm very impatient.

Jennifer Hong: I feel like we should ask your editor about that.

Dan Korus: For people who are struggling with impatience in their life, people who are struggling to let go, because I think that want for control is very pervasive, and especially today when there's a setting for everything and we do have so much control over our lives, especially our digital lives, how would you tell people to train these? How would you tell people to start embodying them? What does the practice start to look like?

Jennifer Hong: Yeah. Well, first of all, there are things we do control. And that's a really big component of it. So you can focus on the controllables. I'll put it in marketing terms. Let's say you're doing a campaign, and in any campaign you're working with so many partners, internal, external. You can control your own work and how well and thorough and on time you do your own work. You can't control your partners or other humans. So that's basically my philosophy. I tell people, in any org I start, I say I'm actually really responsive. The reason I'm really responsive is because marketing cannot move forward without other people. So I basically set the tone. I need someone to answer me because I can't finish the brief, the external communique, without input from other people. And so I'm giving you responsiveness, but implicit in that is expecting quick responses back. So a big part of it is just knowing what you control. It probably comes up a lot with managing people. I'm sure a lot of people you speak to who are managers, letting go of control and letting the team run and seeing how fast they can run is probably really uncomfortable. This is actually something I learned by sitting in a class at Haas. I didn't go to Haas, I went to Stern for business school, but I did apply. So I did sit in a class and I remember the professor was saying, he said two things that I remember, and this is decades ago. One was, if you're a publicly traded company, by definition, you can't be strategic because strategy is over the long term, and publicly traded companies are all about hitting quarterly numbers. And then the other thing he said is, in order to lead, you have to delegate. And in order to delegate, you have to trust. So that's something I've always remembered, that in order to be a true leader, you actually have to trust. And some of that I think is a leap of faith, because you might inherit a team and they're new and you want to trust them, but you don't know what their work product looks like and how quickly they're gonna get it to you. How good are they shepherding things through the organization? But that's a form of letting go, trusting someone else to do the work when you've had your hands in it before and you know exactly how you would do it and at what quality level you want it to be at.

Dan Korus: It's always kind of the leader's job to give trust before they get it. I really like to look at leadership as invitations to greatness and also invitations for trust. And that you have to accept your own invitation to greatness and your own invitation to trust first. And I love extending trust to teams and seeing how fast they can run on their own. Because I think it's so fun to just watch people become creative and take ownership of work, and then when they succeed it's extremely magical, and people start to care a lot more, and they start to show up in ways that they weren't before. And then your job shifts from this frontline delegation to more of a backline support. And that's really fun, because then you get to use your influence selectively and sharply to help block detractance from their work or helping them overcome any sort of hurdles that are in their way. Has it ever been hard for you to extend trust to a team?

Jennifer Hong: Yep. Totally agreed. Before crises, yes. After, less so. There's a line of demarcation in my career.

Dan Korus: Tell us about that line of demarcation.

[39:00] Crises, identity, and scar tissue

Jennifer Hong: I think it was 2019. I'm leaving New York. I'm coming back to the Bay Area. On paper, at this point, I've lived abroad. I've worked for some super well-known brands. I've moved up the career hierarchy. I was making really good money. [personal detail removed] I had all the sort of perks that come with what I would call a typical corporate executive life. [personal detail removed] I ended up selling and moving out to come to California. So I think for all intents and purposes, I was quote unquote successful. I land in San Francisco and it could not be more different than the culture that I had really thrived in in New York. I thought it was me. I was like, I've gotten too hard. I was in New York for 15 years and now it doesn't work with California anymore. I don't think it was that. I was accustomed to a certain caliber of work and it was really hard to find that again. But more importantly, I was so stressed all the time that I started having a lot of [personal detail removed]. And so, no doctor said this, but I was like, it's the stress. It was basically what I had put on myself to try to excel in an environment that is not conducive for me specifically. So that was crisis number one. And I don't know if you've ever gone through something like this, but these things always happen in threes. So it was leaving a job, I left a relationship, and then I had [personal detail removed]. So basically I was telling everyone, I was like, [personal detail removed]. The joke I made [to a family member], I was like, I think I'm gonna put it on a t-shirt. And he's like, banger, make it. But that was the first time that I was taking a really hard look at, I'd said what mattered to me, but now, rubber hit the road and I had to really think about it and then try to build a life that better matched that. So I had the shiny resume and all the toys. But it was not technically my definition of what a whole life looks like.

Dan Korus: Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. So you said that was crisis number one.

Jennifer Hong: You're welcome. Yes. There was a second one.

Dan Korus: That kind of applies. And we don't have to talk about it. I think, you know, this reminds me of one of the quotes that you have on your Substack talking about how perfect AI writing can be. And I think it's, no scar tissue, that's how you know.

Jennifer Hong: Yeah. Well, I have a lot of scars, literal and figurative.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Tell us about what came out of crises number one. What did you learn?

Jennifer Hong: The most interesting thing I learned is I didn't believe what I knew. And I wasn't taking my own advice. So the things I knew and would dispense to other people, when I was in a situation where suddenly all the optics changed and all the external validation anchors were gone, and they were all gone by my volition, by the way. It was the best decision of the circumstances at hand. But suddenly, I had always told people, you're not defined by your job, you're not defined by your marital status, you're not defined by your body. And suddenly I was like, what am I? Who am I? Like my identity felt completely in flux. So when I had to then live by my own words, it forced me to actually believe them. And then you make different choices when you believe things. It's easy to dispense advice, but when you take it yourself, it's actually a very different venture. The other thing I'll say is in Buddhism, this is like a tenet. Life falls apart and then it comes back together and then it falls apart again. So because you go through one crisis doesn't mean that you're done with your crises. But I think the good thing is they happen like concentric circles. So you might circle back on a topic, but the circle's gotten bigger. You're learning more this time and hopefully expanding as a person. So the second one was just the same themes upon the first. And I came out the other side. So I say don't get fixated that there's one particular outcome that's right for you. You should just hold on to the fact that you are resilient and enough of a troubleshooter that you can figure out whatever comes. Whatever it is.

Dan Korus: That's great. How do people learn to troubleshoot?

Jennifer Hong: Good question. I don't know. I think anything can be learned. Resilience can be learned. So I'm sure troubleshooting can also be learned. It might just be more of a mindset. And that's actually one of the things I do try to instill in my team. I think with marketing, it's particularly difficult because it's an industry or function that is built on perfection. I always say it's like the CIA. Your mistakes are well publicized and your triumphs are not necessarily known. When marketing's working really well, it's invisible. The thing I tell my team, they're always worried about making mistakes. Because our mistakes are printed. It could be in a catalog, it could be on a website. Digital helps, because you can change it. But screenshots can be made, or there could be something that goes viral for the wrong reason. There's a lot at stake and it's high stakes a lot. So I've worked with a lot of teams that are afraid of taking the wrong step. And the thing I always try to instill in them is, we can fix anything. We can always fix it.

Dan Korus: What are other things you try to instill in your teams?

Jennifer Hong: They're very marketing-specific. So one of them is, if you wanna be in this career, you have to be ready for a lot of unsolicited ideas. Because we are all marketed to constantly. Every day, a colleague's gonna come in with some mailer or something they saw or something on the internet and be like, why aren't we doing this? I think a lot of people think marketing's really glamorous. There are certainly components that are, and a lot that's not. So I don't begrudge people trying to play the role of marketer. I tell my team, when somebody comes to you with an idea, try to understand what they're asking for strategically. Are they saying we need more awareness driving? Are they saying we need to shift perceptions? Are they saying it's a conversion play? Why is this idea? And then try to answer that, because it could very well be that we already have something in place that addresses that. It could be that for that particular strategy, that's not the right tactic. Deliver them a better idea. So I basically tell them, what you want to do is demonstrate that you are a trusted marketing partner. So don't necessarily poo-poo their idea, but do dissect it and figure out what the real ask is and what the brand-right answer is. That's like a piece of advice. I also say, if you are just forwarding an email and you're not adding anything to it, just forwarding, hit the bricks. Because it is such an interdisciplinary role where you have to take information from multiple partners and then you usually need to synthesize it, repackage it, then give it to another partner. I was like, you don't get paid to forward emails. Take a beat if you find yourself doing that. Because by definition, you're not doing your job. That's not marketing.

Dan Korus: So in another life, [current employer context removed] it's very fast paced, there's a lot of different people involved, and if anything goes wrong for whatever reason, generally you shouldn't just say, hey, we're paused. Or hey, something's broken. And so I think the rules are the same, that whenever my team is sending information status, be it positive or negative, it should always come with proper context and an ask for help, especially if it's upward. I think that's something I really try to instill in people, because if you tell someone who can do something about it, hey, this is wrong, you're asking them to try and figure out what they can do to help solve the situation, and you're asking them to expend mental energy to figure out where their skill set might be useful in solving the problem. When instead you could just say, hey, this thing is broken, it's not gonna fix itself. Here's the two people that you could go talk to that aren't listening to me, and here's how you could go solve the problem. And then they have a number to call, a reason to do it, they know what the stakes are. So I think that's very much in line with your, you're not paid to forward emails.

Jennifer Hong: Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: There's languages that we have to use when we're passing information along, and that translation should be done by professionals who know both sides, in order to make things work smoothly, especially across disciplines.

Jennifer Hong: Good team advice. I think there's sometimes a deference and a respect where your team feels like the boss is the one that comes up with the ideas and they just execute them. And I always tell my team, marketing is the most fun function there is, because if it's brand-right and it fits within our budget, we can do anything. So I always say, come with ideas. It might not be the right idea for today, or we might not be able to execute it. But that doesn't mean we won't use it eventually. It is so much more fun to execute your own campaign idea than to be handed one and told to execute it. One of the things I saw in my previous company is they would try to split marketing strategy and marketing activation into two parts. And I just didn't believe in it. I said, if you are a strategist, it's not gonna deploy correctly unless you stay with the execution of it. And how are you gonna build your next strategy if you don't actually see how it works in the marketplace? And if you're the one doing execution, how are you gonna learn how to strategize if you're always just making someone else's ideas come to life? So I actually structurally changed my team once and said there's no longer this split. You're doing both. You might report to this person, but both of you are thinking about strategy and both of you are staying close to the execution. And marketing is one of those things where you need three eyeballs on something anyway.

Dan Korus: And did that structural change improve over time? What was the end result of that?

Jennifer Hong: Well, I left after two years, so who knows?

Dan Korus: Okay, got it.

Jennifer Hong: We could look at their stock price after I left though.

Dan Korus: Gen Lee's tank. Short it.

[48:30] Personal brand and the invitation to the party

Dan Korus: So one thing I want to talk to you while we're kind of talking about marketing and brand. And this is really interesting to me because it's not an area that I know a lot about. There's a lot of hype out there, especially in the solopreneur world. And people are looking at how they create value for themselves outside of their nine to five around building personal brands. I think it's a very hype thing to do right now. What's your take on this? Is it something that people should be focused on?

Jennifer Hong: I would say building a personal brand is like signing a prenup. Which is to say, you're building a brand no matter what. Whether or not you're doing it concertedly and intentionally, you're building a brand no matter what. When people don't want to get a prenup, I always say the laws of the state where you get married is your prenup. So having a prenup is just being concerted about it and intentional. Do you like what the dictates of your state says? Okay, then you don't need one. But if you want to amend it in any way, then you need to hire a lawyer and put that on paper. So you are branding yourself whether you want to or not. So would you rather take the reins on that or not? That all said, and this came up very recently. So I've met a few Substackers in person. There's one, Shannon Bindler, who, I was in Boston when I first started the newsletter and I came back to the Bay in late January. So we were having lunch together. She said, have you seen what so-and-so is doing on Substack? And I said, yeah. It's like I'm allergic to it because the commercial energy is just too much for me. And she was like, Jen, you're in marketing. You should be doing something to help us market ourselves, right? And I quite literally was like, no, no, no, no. I poo-pooed the idea left and right. In the course of talking about it very quickly, like within two to three minutes, I was like, if I were to do it though, this is how I would do it. And I basically was like, I would take all the data, I would build a dashboard, I would do an interview because the qualitative piece has to be there. I'm a little suspect of some of the Substack data. So that can't be taken at full face value. And I love a taxonomy. So I would do a taxonomy of what types of solopreneurs there are on Substack. And then I would confirm that with the participant and develop what their North Star or sort of the spine of their story is. And everything ladders back to that. Then maybe give them tactical recommendations born of that. And she was like, okay, so you're doing me first. And I was like, yep, I'm doing yours. She gave me an assignment and I said, thank you, I'll have another. So she was my first case and she's it's gratis because she's a friend. We split lunch that day. It might have been the two bloody Marys, I don't know. But I have never had so much fun. I was literally texting her. I'm like, this is so fun. I was like, wait till you see your dashboard. And then she got her dashboard. She's like, this is so fun to read. I was like, I know. So, I think that's when you know you're in the right place, when you are just thrilled and delighted with work.

Dan Korus: How much are you charging for this?

Jennifer Hong: And I'm doing three others. I literally was not like, I need to figure out what my paid tier is and this can be a paid tier. But I knew people were gonna be like, can you do it for me too? And so I also worked really hard with Claude on prompts so that people could get most of the way themselves. DIY. And so paid subscribers can see that methodology with all the corresponding prompts. And then I said, if you want to pay the founding member rate, I will do it for you. But my hourly rate is I think inaccessible to most Substackers. So I actually kind of didn't wanna do that. But I did think, some people would just be like, I don't use AI and I can afford it. So I did put that out there. Nobody's nibbled on it yet. So I did the introductory post and it included the whole origin story and the methodology for this. Because it was not born of me. It was a friend saying, you should do this and please help me. And then me having a lot of fun with it. And I've had growth, but not stupendous growth. I haven't been focused on growth or paid. I wanted to get more people using AI that I thought were brilliant. And I also wanted to demonstrate my fluency in AI. That was my main reason for having a Substack. So I'm sort of like, I'm not the model of a strong brand on Substack or necessarily like how you grow, because you suddenly have a very coherent message. I hadn't run the methodology on myself. So I said, I am literally the mechanic whose car does not run. Don't look at my car. It's not running. But I will tell you, I actually changed my bio today, because I thought, all this talk about the North Star is an internal-facing word and sentence. It's not your external bio. It's more that everything should ladder back to that and it's a good filter for everything you write, regardless of whether or not it's a note or a post. But I hadn't touched my bio since I joined, so it's different as of today.

Dan Korus: Did you change? Okay. Maybe I shall after this episode.

Jennifer Hong: Well you can go look it up. I can tell you what it was before and after. So before I think it said, how to human in the age of AI, marketer by trade, social scientist 24/7, and rabbit hole seeker. So that's basically what it said for a year. And now it says, devoted student of how the world organizes itself. Mischievous insurgent where it gets us wrong. Fractional CMO by trade, rabbit hole seeker on the fly.

Dan Korus: Nice.

Jennifer Hong: And the funny thing is I sent it to my friend, the one that I had lunch with, and the first version didn't say marketer. And she was like, you have to tell people you're a marketer. And I was like, the spiritual psychologist told the marketer to market that they market.

Dan Korus: Yeah. No, it's good. I wanna talk about emotional intelligence a little bit more before we wrap the episode. Marketing and emotional intelligence have this interesting little interdigitation. When you're marketing, you're taking the company's ideas and dreams and things that they want to sell and you're turning it into a version that makes sense to people. And that people identify in. And that people want to buy in, and they're like, yes, that's me. I identify with that. Gimme, gimme, gimme. Or no, that's not me, stay away. So I think there's like this innate understanding of people that happens in this. As someone who's spent decades in people and in culture, what's the hardest part of doing that? How do you learn to go do that?

Jennifer Hong: Some of it's probably innate in the sense that it's something that naturally interests you. And then I think some of it is pattern recognition. Having been in the industry and seen cycles firsthand, there's a little bit of benefit to that in the sense that you're like, it's coming around again, or it's sort of playing itself out in a similar way. Your identity is how you think you show up, or what you think constitutes yourself or your brand. Image is how others perceive you. And the gap is, if there is a gap, that is when you have a brand problem. And so a lot of marketing work is trying to close that gap. I worked at Banana Republic and I worked there during the pandemic. Probably most people know that brand as something you wear to work, maybe something you wear for travel, and a great option if you have a special occasion to attend. Maybe you're a guest of a wedding. So I joined about six months in advance of the pandemic. And then guess what? Nobody was going to work.

Dan Korus: We were all at home.

Jennifer Hong: Nobody was traveling and nobody was attending large events. So at that point in time, our identity was working against us. It's just not what people wanted. And so we did what we could, which was we took every soft tactile piece of product and put that on the home page. Because now it was comfort at home, became the new story. And every owned channel we had now told that story instead. So that's just an example, a very tactical example. But if you have a serious brand disconnect and a very large gap between your image and your identity, it is going to require wholesale change on every medium, from product to distribution to every single marketing piece of collateral. And all the luggage has to match. So you can't just change one thing. I'm very fond of saying, marketing is like the invitation to the party. You cannot hand-calligrapher an invitation and put it on beautiful cardstock and a wax seal put on it, and then hand-delivered to somebody, and then they come to the party and it's red solo cups and people playing beer pong. Which is a fun party, it's just different from the invitation. So everything has to match.

Dan Korus: Hear ye, hear ye, drinks to commence. I doth invite thee to thy domicile.

[58:20] The self-awareness gap

Dan Korus: So there's a stat that ninety-five percent of leaders believe that they're self-aware, but only ten to fifteen percent are.

Jennifer Hong: Next episode will be the beer pong episode. That's a high number.

Dan Korus: Right, don't you think? And so this is kind of the personal application of the reflection gap, that there's a difference between what we think we are and then how people perceive us, especially for emotional intelligence. So what would be your advice to people who wanted to build those emotional intelligence skills? How do you think they're trained over time?

Jennifer Hong: Hmm. Well, it sounds like first they would have to go through some kind of diagnostic that squarely tells them that they have some work to do on that front. If ninety percent of people, and it's funny, because you say that stat and I'm like, does Dan Korus think he's self-aware and has a good EQ? Does Jennifer Hong?

Dan Korus: The dashboard.

Jennifer Hong: I would probably rank myself pretty high. I don't know what the grading scale is. But then I'm like, god, am I just one of the ninety percent? There's no way that you and I are in that ten percent. Is it me? It's me. So I would want actually some kind of diagnostic. I love a personality test. I've taken them all. I would want some diagnostic that says, here's your emotional intelligence score. And I think probably emotional intelligence falls on a couple different parameters. Maybe I'm really good at emotional intelligence when it comes to like sympathy, but maybe I'm not with like empathy or something like that. I would want some hard facts on where my emotional intelligence score is. And then just don't tell me it's role plays to get there.

Dan Korus: I think a lot of it is, so there are really good diagnostics out there. And our company dabbles in those and I've taken them personally a number of times.

Jennifer Hong: What does it say for you? I'm so curious.

Dan Korus: So mine tells me that I have strong empathy but low impulse control. I'm strong at recognizing other people's emotions and being able to feel them myself. But because my impulse control is relatively low, I'll sometimes struggle to be able to pause before acting. And so I'll react emotionally rather than taking the time to get out of an emotional brain and more into a wise mind, where I'm connecting both sides of my brain and really thinking about a measured response. So those are some of the things that you can learn from these sorts of diagnostics. And I think your approach is correct, get the data and see what it tells you, and then understand where you actually have to grow, because a lot of this could be life circumstance. A lot of people who score low in empathy have a lot going on on their plate, and so they don't have, sometimes they could be a very empathetic person, but if you're experiencing burnout, you don't have the extra spoons to be able to be there for anyone else in any sort of meaningful way. And so then the answer isn't, hey, learn to be more empathetic, learn to take perspective, learn to be involved in people. It's more, take a breather and fill your own cups. That way you could be there for someone else. Obviously it's a lot more straightforward for things like active listening. Or I think the answer to impulse control is relatively one-dimensional, because it's learn to recognize when you have an impulse and then don't. Take your time with it.

Jennifer Hong: Yeah. Well, someone told me this years ago during crisis number one. They basically said, you need to know when you're triggered, and recognize that you're triggered, and then choose differently. And that all has to happen in a few milliseconds. And I remember her telling me this and I said, I only understand number one. There's no, how am I gonna do steps two and three and also do that in milliseconds? So I think that's probably pretty common, to feel your feels and the reaction slips out versus feel your feels and choose a different reaction. That's very human. But what you said reminds me, I read this somewhere, it was talking about work dynamics, and it said, is this person a jerk or is this person an asshole? And we all have the capacity to be a jerk at some point, because of the circumstances that you said, something extenuating. Everyone can get pushed over the edge and be a jerk. It's the assholes you have to watch out for who are just consistently problematic or troublesome, regardless of the circumstance. I always say people behave the way they behave because it's worked for them. Even when it's bad behavior. So it really takes things not working anymore.

Dan Korus: Yeah. So I've got four more questions for you. And they don't all have to deserve long answers if you don't have them. It doesn't have to be lightning. It can be lightning. Lightning optional.

Jennifer Hong: Lightning round, okay.

Dan Korus: What's good leadership to you?

Jennifer Hong: Well, I think in relation to what you operate squarely in, I think good leadership is when someone is emotionally intelligent and has high EQ. I think one of the leaders I work with right now has that a lot. She is constantly thinking of what people's upbringing might have looked like, how they had to move in the world and how that was different from her, and how that might color their positions and views on certain things. And she is almost bending over backwards to make sure people feel seen and heard, if they're giving recommendations and it's not the way she maybe wants to go. She is very precious with their feedback and their input, to not make it feel like it was for naught, that it was given and not heard. I also think a good leader is someone who's a bit fearless and willing to take risks that they can only take. In a way they're taking it on behalf of the team, but they're the only one that maybe has the standing or gravitas to do it. I think a great leader does that.

Dan Korus: Emotionally intelligent and fearless. It's a good couple bullet points. And talking about a boss who it seems like prioritizes making sure that their employees are feeling safe and trusted and heard.

Jennifer Hong: Yeah. The safety thing is huge. I try to instill that in my team. It's not easy.

Dan Korus: Yeah. What does it look like when you're trying to build safety?

Jennifer Hong: I mean mostly it's, things are gonna go wrong. It's almost like, just know it. Things are gonna go wrong and we will be able to fix it. And actually showing them that I care to fix it with them. And then I'm never gonna be like, you broke this. So I think when things go wrong, it's very typical for people to start the blame game. And I always say, first let's fix it. And then after it's fixed and we've told management and leadership that it's taken care of and no longer an issue, then we can sort of do the autopsy and figure out exactly what happened, but not with the notion that somebody did something wrong. It usually means there was a process failing or a miscommunication. So be tough on the issue and not the people.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Jennifer Hong: And figure out how it never gets replicated.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Trying to fix the system and not the person, I really like that approach. It's good. Because humans are gonna make mistakes and it's one thing to blame the person. Yeah, absolutely.

Jennifer Hong: We're super fallible. But we usually always have good intent.

Dan Korus: Yeah. And we just need our systems to support us.

Jennifer Hong: If we don't have good intent, then you probably have to fire that person.

Dan Korus: That's true. That's true.

[66:00] Advice for every seat at the table

Dan Korus: Okay, so third-to-last question. Pretend someone's talking to you and it's their first day of work tomorrow. First day in the workforce. What's your advice for them?

Jennifer Hong: Okay. Show up early. Just for the first two weeks.

Dan Korus: Why?

Jennifer Hong: Because science proves that you will always be known as the early person if you show up early in the first two weeks, even if you stop showing up early after two weeks. Versus being the person who stays late. Nobody sees you and witnesses you stay late. People witness if you're already in when you get in. That's kind of a joke, even though it's backed by data. But implied in that is, impressions are made really quickly and they stick. So be a little bit mindful of the way you're moving through the org. My personal take is, ask a lot of questions, or have a lot of questions and maybe hold on to them. You don't need to ask them all in the beginning because some will get answered on their own. But I think a good assumption for somebody to have, especially if they're coming in at a leadership position, is not to come in with ideas. Because there's a bit of hubris coming. If you're coming in and you're like, well, you should just be doing XYZ, like, no. It just means you haven't properly diagnosed the business. So you really have to assess and then you have to diagnose. And then you can start instituting changes. If you're trying to institute changes on day one, when you haven't even integrated yourself into the org, then you're making a completely uninformed choice. So it's diligence. Diligence doesn't happen in four interviews over eight hours with the company. You don't know anything about that company. So get to know the company, and figure out one actionable high-impact change that you can make, but after three months probably, not on day one.

Dan Korus: Yeah, that's good advice. So for middle management, team leads, people who are in the middle of their careers, what's your advice for them?

Jennifer Hong: Same thing where they're starting a new job? Or just in general?

Dan Korus: Same thing, maybe they're at the same job. Same job. Just at a different position in the company. They could be at their same job right now. What do you have for them?

Jennifer Hong: Big on, if you're in middle and you look at your boss, do you wanna do that job? And I think it's a pretty simple question. Do you want to grow vertically where you are? And if your instinct is no, then you need to start thinking about what the right role and career is for yourself. I think that's usually a pretty surefire way of knowing that you might need to make a shift. But if you are like, yes, that job's amazing and I would love to move into it, awesome. You're in the right place. Then my advice for them would probably be, do not expect to just do a good job and someone will hand you a crown that you'll just get recognized for it. You kind of need to be promoting yourself internally, you need to be having conversations with people and other teams, you probably need to have a little bit of an understanding of what the dynamics are and who the decision makers are and how those decisions get made. How growth decisions get made. Because it's gonna be different in every org. So you have to take that into your own reins and don't just expect that if you do a good job you will get promoted.

Dan Korus: If someone looks at their boss and says, I don't want that person's job, where do they go next?

Jennifer Hong: It happens all the time. I mean, look, people's priorities are so different. There are many times when I have thought, if I was a different person, I actually would not have left that company back when I was kind of going through my life crises and my body basically telling me the stress was too high. There was a part of me that was like, I can endure this. I've dealt with mercurial leadership. I've dealt with divas. I can handle anything. I've worked in a cuckoo industry. I think that was the finally moment where I was like, but do I want to? Just because I can doesn't mean I should. It's debilitating on my health right now. So it's different for every person. They have different priorities. Some people, the paper and the optics of the resume, they're gonna live in corporate forever. And it might be fine for them. So it's difficult to say, because knowing your priorities and pointing them appropriately is the answer. For some people they might be pointed just fine. Even if they don't want their boss's job.

Dan Korus: I think that's really awesome advice for people, because it's a balancing of priorities and figuring out what path is best for you. And that's such a great question to ask, because what a great diagnostic tool to figure out, okay, is this the right spot? And just because, it's just good. I like that advice. It's great advice.

Jennifer Hong: Well, so listen, I lived abroad for a bit and so I saw in action what it means to work to live and to live to work. And Americans live to work. Europeans do not. So some people, and I would say California culture and New York culture, like New York culture is like super hustler, super ambitious. Crème de la crème, high caliber, high quality. In California, they're like, it's 70 degrees outside. Let's take a sail on the bay. Let's get out of here at five. There's more to life than making sure the spreadsheet's ticked and tied at six PM. So in some cases, right? There's obviously startups and a lot of hustling that happens here too, but it totally depends on what you prioritize and what's meaningful to you in terms of your identity.

Dan Korus: Yeah. So turning our eye to the executive leaders and the C-suite, the rainmakers, the people at the top, founders, owners, etc., what's your advice for them?

Jennifer Hong: I think if you are at the top, it's so much about hand-selecting your team. And also actively choosing people who know things you do not know. That you have actually gotten arena experts. And maybe they even conflict with each other or conflict with you, but they are their domain experts. I think it's so much about handpicking and curating your team. And then I think for them, their role is to inspire. The ideas might not even come from them. They just have to be the ones that say it's possible. And their team might be the one that comes up with the ideas on how to make that possible. That's what I think, at the top, it's picking the best team possible. People that you can trust and who will bring dimensions that you don't think of. And then your job in turn is to inspire the best out of them. Especially if it's a large org, it's meaningful to have somebody who can get up there and say, we're gonna win. This is how we're gonna do it. And maybe it's a little out of the box and different. But if they can't carry that message and sort of give that rah-rah spirit, that's a little hard to motivate now.

Dan Korus: I think you're right, that it is their job to inspire and to be able to convince people that things are possible, and that being able to hand-select the team is an art that is cultivated over time and incredibly critical. Team building is an art.

Jennifer Hong: Absolutely. Totally aligned.

Dan Korus: That's great. Okay, Jen. Where can people find you? What's the call to action? How do they get involved, if they liked your ideas, and where do you want to send them to? We'll have the link in the show notes as well.

Jennifer Hong: Okay. The two best places to find me, and it depends on what you're interested in. I think if you're interested in AI and how it touches humanity and where it breaks and what it reveals about us, then find me on Substack. The name of my Substack is Natural Intelligence. It's a bit of a play on words because I do think there's a lot of beauty and perfection and actually mathematics in nature, and a lot of natural intelligence in humans. I actually think the biggest form of resistance is staying human in this era when everything is so machine-driven and algorithmically fueled. If you're interested in the fractional CMO side of things, then LinkedIn is the place to go. My name's pretty commonplace. My profile ends with a hundred at the extension. If you do Jennifer Hong, Ralph Lauren, Banana Republic, I will probably be the first result.

Dan Korus: Thank you so much, Jen.

Jennifer Hong: Yeah, that works.