Human Empathy in the Age of Automation with Bryan Kramer

Leadership to learn more. And if you are interested about your own path to development, take our free five minute quiz for enlightened leadership@susandrum.com to discover your superpowers and the roadblocks that could get in the way of effective leadership. Today we're focusing on human to human philosophy and how sharing powers the economy. And I'm happy to introduce Brian Kramer, called the Zen Master to digital marketers by Forbes. Brian Kramer is a renowned business strategist, global keynote speaker, executive trainer, and two time bestselling offer and Forbes contributor. He is co owner of Pure Matter, a Silicon Valley marketing agency, and CEO of H2H, an executive coaching company. Brian's first book, There is no B2B or B2C. It's human to human or H2H, started a global movement about humanizing business through simpler communication, empathy and celebrating our perfections and it sold over 15,000 books. And his second book, How Sharing is Powering the Human economy made the USA Today's bestseller list and sold over 40,000 books. So welcome Brian.

Wow, what an intro. Thank you so much. I really appreciate all the nice things and it's wonderful to meet you.

It's great to meet you. And we were just talking a little bit about where you live. Share with us the interesting decision you made. What Was it about 10 months ago?

Yes, we made the decision to move to Lisbon, Portugal. My wife and I, we became empty nesters the year before, not far before that. And, and we looked at each other and we said this is our window of opportunity if we ever had one. Parents are semi okay and there's no grandkids that we know of on the way, so let's, let's do something. And, and we looked at each other. We sold everything we owned down to 13 bags in our dog, put it up, put it, went through the Visa Pro process which could be a whole nother podcast. And yeah, we, we had our, our alignment conversation about how we were going to approach it together and what we're going to get rid of and what we're going to leave behind and what we're going to let go of and how we're move into a new country and be with that. And, and I remember we got here and we eventually arrived and I, we slept on an Ikea mattress because the place had no furniture and, and, and our bags and our dog. And I walked out in the back patio and I went, oh my God, what did I just do? And from that, I can honestly say though, from that point forward, every day got even Better and better and better and better. And I am just pinching myself for what we get to do and how we, how we pulled that off. I'm really proud of us. So I was wondering what you learned.

About yourself in that process.

Oh, man, so many things. I think, I think the biggest thing that we learned was, you know, gosh, I would say that letting go of. Of things was the most cathartic experience I've ever been through. And you know, we talk about like, oh, if I just clean my garage or if I just cleaned a room out, but we cleaned everything like, and we just, we just let go of everything except for a box for each of the kids and they. That they, we ship to them. So we kept everything that like really had to ask the question of does this serve a purpose in our life? And most of it was no. So I was surprised and learned how much I could let go. That'd be the answer.

I love that question. Does this serve a purpose in my life? You know, I think we think we, we need to have more stuff than we actually do. So, so amazing that it was so cathartic for you. Well, tell us about the H2H movement, the human to human movement. What does that mean? What's the philosophy behind it and why has it been so powerful?

Thank you. The reason that it was. It was received, I think, or, or well received, thank God in 2014 was because I was giving a keynote at Bloomberg west in San Francisco and the room was full of CMOs and executives and our market marketer executives. And it was the right place, right time. But also at the same time, it was just when social media really was sparking. Really. Meaning, like we're gonna have to reinvent the way that we have conversations as a marketing tool. And not just marketing, but what does this mean for the rest of the organization? And, and at this. And I just remember standing there and behind me on the screen was, was the exact words, there's no B2B. There's no B2C. It's HH. Human to human. And the reason that I had that up is because there is no difference to the customer. They don't care how your company works. They care about how the product is bought and that's all they care about. So also when you look at social media now, all of a sudden geofences are dropped. Anybody can have a con, anything, anywhere, anytime. So if my pizza is not delivered on time and I want to go online and I want to say bad things about my pizza delivery timeframe and I wouldn't do that because I was a former pizza delivery driver in college, so I have some respect for them. But if I did want to, I could put that online. So now all of a sudden companies had to worry about what other people said about them. And that was an awakening moment for brands. Now fast forward, this is table stakes. We think about that now and we're like, yeah, of course brands have to be careful, but they're still not good at it. Like there's still a lot of work to be done there. And now when you think of like human to human and what we can achieve, it's been around since door to, I mean well before door to door salespeople. But now all of a sudden we're having to get, we have remote teams and we have all these other AI and automation and bots and, and so you can rest medicine. So what does that mean? That means we have to work harder to have human to human relationships. But it's what everyone craves the most. And so if we know that connection is what everyone craves, then that's what we should be chasing after, not how do we automate more.

And so if it's about that connection, what tell us a little bit of what that means for executives and entrepreneurs, how they run and grow their business. What do they need to be thinking about? Perhaps differently than they have before.

Same. I will say it's differently. I just say the same thing is accentuated. And I, I, I personally, I broke it down and, and did some research on this and put it, put this out and I'll shorten it so that everybody doesn't have to read this part of, of the book which is around. In fact, I'll ask you some questions and whoever's listening, I'd invite you to think up your answer or even speak your answer out loud since we can't shout it out. I know it's going to be weird, right? But we'd love to hear. So the first one is, the first pillar is simplicity. So think of a brand that you think embraces simplicity. What brand do you think embraces simplicity?

Hmm, simplicity. I mean, pretty basic, you know, Apple I think is somewhat in terms of like how they're, if you think about their ads and how it doesn't really get into a lot of detail. It's just about this is what we stand for.

Totally, yeah. Oh, it's a great answer. And think about how easy it is to buy, like, you know, exactly what they sell. Like how many people can't spell out all the products that Apple really sells, like, it's really simple, yet they're the most complex company that's taking complexity and turn it into simplicity. I could not agree more. Then the next one's empathy, which. And this might be more like a customer. You might see it more often in customer service, but which you can see it in other ways too, like how they give back or. But what company do you think embraces empathy, like, stands out for you?

The. I'm. Why am I blanking the name? The car company that's the safest.

Oh, I know which one you're talking.

Is it Volkswagen?

Volkswagen.

Okay. All right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're really, in fact, over here, they're really good and they do a good job with that. And so, you know, empathy comes across in so many different ways. Right. Like, think about, like, Amazon delivers, has like, they don't question you most of the time. Like 9 out of 10 times, you can return a package globally. And yet. And that's empathy to me, because they're. They're like, they figured out how to care about your return and make it so easy.

Right.

And then the last one is imperfection. So things happen to every company, and when they happen, how do you embrace that? Can you think of a company that embraces imperfection? Really?

Well, things happen to the company or things happen to their customers, and they.

Or both. Yeah, either or.

Yeah, I. Gosh. Yeah. I don't know.

So Imperfection. Dove. Dove's a good one. Dove. Dove is in. Celebrates the imperfection of skin. Skin color. Yeah. And skin itself. Yep. In the way that they market and advertise. And they do a beautiful job of that.

I think also Athleta does a good job too, in terms of showing athleisure in lots of different sizes, lots of different colors, in terms of their models.

Totally. Yeah. I love that. I hadn't heard that one before. So you take all three of those and you put it into a person, and that's actually, those are the things that we get attracted or connected to other people for. We love imperfection, we love simplicity, we love empathy. And when we see that in someone else, we connect even deeper at a deeper level. So why wouldn't that be the same for a company? And if we can embrace the same things about being a human driven company, then that would drive us to be a more connected company with our customer or with the people that work for us. So. So those are the three things. Sorry to circle back in a long, long.

That's super helpful. I mean, I think those examples give a lot of richness to it. And I'm wondering how people will integrate this into what they're doing. Right. So with the power of AI, as you mentioned before, getting in the way of this human to human connection, like, I'll give an example. I know there's these bots out there that will reply to your LinkedIn message as if you think it's the person replying, but it's not. It's just an AI that they've set up. And so you, you talk about like, okay, totally lost the connection there. And how do you, you think you're replying to a human, but you're actually replying to a bot? And at that point, what's the purpose?

Yeah, you know, transparency in that area is not, not good right now. And that's gonna, that's gonna lose a lot of trust. It's gonna. I, I wouldn't want to do business with that brand as it wouldn't be a desirable brand for me to do business with if it's gonna disconnect from transparency of that level. I mean, you've also seen the opposite where they've done it well and they say, and they say this is, you know, a bot and they've named it a cute name, but they at least didn't hide that it was a bot. And you know, at the end, maybe we'll connect you with a human if, if we don't get through what you need. So there, I think there's ways to create and still have automation. I'm not a, I'm not a person here to say that we shouldn't have it, but where are the human moments of truth in everything? Are we trying to over automate so that we don't have the human moments of truth? Because those, if those go away, you will lose your customer.

Mm. Yeah, they, well, they won't feel seen for one. And you bring up a really important point is around the trust. Like, I don't, you know, start to trust. If you're going to put that bot in front of me and not tell me that it is, then I don't. What else will you do that I won't have any idea and not be transparent about.

Right, exactly, exactly.

And so tell us, talk to us about the. How sharing is powering the economy. That concept. And that was part of your second book.

Yeah, and in that book it was really neat because I did over 150 different interviews with all walks of life and really was chasing after the one thing that, which turned into a lot of different things, as every book does, but the main goal was really to figure out why do we share as humans and what is it that we all have in common? What's that consistent thread? And when I took all of the transcripts and threw them up into a word cloud generator, the biggest word that showed up was connection. And so the reason kind of boiled down again, saving you time from having to, you know, figure that part out of. Of the book, is that we all want desire connection less. You know, maybe you're the Unabomber, but. But for the most part, that's. That's what we're all after. And so, so now we know, like, if we're all sharing because we want connection, then what does that mean for us? And what we share and how we share, and when we share inside a company or when we, what we share on social media or what we share, what is it that we are, are able to share and peel the onion with our friends or our family? There's so many different levels of sharing and what we do, and it really percolates into every inch of our life. And so I just find that fascinating that, you know, we're working through what those communication levels are and how others are impacted from our communication.