In this episode
Patricia Rollins, Executive Director of Marketing at Thryv — an AI-powered marketing platform for small and medium-sized businesses — explains why the competitive threat to established brands is no longer only the traditional rival, but a growing population of hyper-specialized small businesses running on accessible AI. Drawing on a career that spans launching IBM Watson, leading digital marketing for Oracle CX Cloud, and building enterprise marketing at Smartsheet and Typeform, Rollins walks Greg Kihlström through what she calls the “boss boom”: the surge in entrepreneurship enabled by automation that lets a team of one or two do the work that used to require a department. The conversation covers where small businesses should start with AI, why hyperlocal trust is an advantage enterprises struggle to replicate, how to measure lead quality instead of lead volume, and the skills gap that Thryv’s own survey data shows is now the binding constraint on SMB AI adoption.
Key takeaways
- AI has collapsed the team size required to run a business. Rollins argues that automation and content generation mean an entrepreneur who once needed a team of many can now operate with one, two, or three people — which is what makes the entrepreneurship surge possible in the first place.
- Student career preference has flipped toward founding, not joining. Working with a school of business, Rollins found that nearly all the students she met wanted to work for themselves, a reversal from the earlier norm of aspiring to jobs at large companies like Apple or Google.
- Small businesses are embedded in daily life at a scale enterprises can’t buy. Rollins cites that 92% of Americans interact with a small business every day — the coffee shop that remembers your order, the dry cleaner that knows your name.
- Local trust is built from specific, unglamorous behaviors. Authentic brand identity, transparency, consistent customer service, sponsoring youth sports, and donating to community fundraisers are what make a local business stand out — not marketing spend.
- Start with the one problem you most need solved, not a full stack. Rollins’ guidance to overwhelmed owners: pick the single area of greatest pain — back office means CRM, growth means a marketing platform — and centralize the data there before layering AI tools on top.
- The highest-value AI applications are workflow-shaped, not tool-shaped. Her concrete examples: online booking that flows into a CRM with automated lead scoring and routing, and automated post-job confirmations, thank-yous, and review responses.
- Quality of leads beats volume of leads, and most teams conflate the two. Rollins says the discipline is defining the ideal customer profile, scoring and sourcing each lead against it, then concentrating spend on the channels producing the highest-quality leads.
- Post-purchase value is a sequence, not a single email. Immediate thank-you and onboarding tips, then educational content or a service reminder at 30 to 90 days, then loyalty offers, referral requests, and community engagement.
- The SMB AI constraint is training, not adoption. Thryv’s latest annual AI in Small Business Survey found 66% of small businesses use AI and more than half spend at least $100 a month on AI tools — but 7 in 10 say they need more or significantly more training, and many are self-teaching through ChatGPT, YouTube, and social media.
- Trust AI only where you already have judgment. Rollins relays a customer’s framing: using AI on tasks you don’t understand risks moving faster in the wrong direction.
Chapters
- 1:02 — Is your real competitor a wave of AI-powered small businesses?
- 2:33 — Patricia Rollins, Thryv: from family pizzerias to IBM Watson
- 4:54 — The “boss boom”: why nearly every business student wants to found something
- 5:40 — How AI makes a team of one viable — and where owners hesitate
- 7:34 — Hyperlocal advantage: 92% of Americans touch a small business daily
- 10:36 — The practical AI stack: booking, lead scoring, service automation, reporting
- 14:41 — Where to start when building a tech foundation feels overwhelming
- 16:16 — Measurement: ideal customer profile, lead quality, and where to reinvest
- 19:41 — The post-purchase sequence that drives repeat business
- 21:47 — Survey data: 66% using AI, 7 in 10 need more training
- 23:05 — What we’ll be talking about a year from now
- 24:00 — How Patricia Rollins stays agile
Why “a team of one” is now a real competitive category
The barrier that used to protect incumbents was operational capacity: doing marketing, sales, service, and reporting well required people. Rollins’ argument is that AI has removed most of that requirement. Automation and content generation let a solo operator or a three-person shop run workflows that previously needed a department, which is why entrepreneurship has surged rather than simply why software has improved. Her caution is that this is not frictionless — AI still reads as intimidating to many owners, and the useful posture is a blend: automate the repetitive work, and protect the time spent directly with customers building trust.
What enterprises cannot easily replicate: hyperlocal trust
Rollins points to a structural advantage small businesses hold. With 92% of Americans interacting with a small business every day, the relationship is high-frequency and personal — the barista who knows your order, the dry cleaner who knows your name and your volume. That advantage is built from authentic brand identity, transparency, consistent service, word of mouth, and visible community contribution: sponsoring kids’ sports, donating auction items to local fundraisers. For a large, distributed organization, the lesson is that recognition and reciprocity — not reach — are what produce the loyalty small businesses enjoy.
Where small businesses should actually start with AI
Rollins’ answer to owners who find the idea of building a tech stack daunting is to refuse the full-stack framing. Identify the one function causing the most pain. If it’s back office, that means a CRM. If it’s getting and keeping customers, that means a marketing platform — Thryv’s category, though she notes there are others — chosen because it centralizes the data that AI tools then act on. From there the highest-leverage components she names are AI website building, lead scoring, customer reviews, content creation, social media, and SEO/AEO for search visibility.
Two workflows worth automating first
Rollins gives two concrete examples rather than a category list. The first is staying booked: online booking through the website feeds a schedule, the lead lands in the CRM, gets scored automatically, and the owner calls the right accounts first. The second is staying ahead of the service curve: automated booking confirmations, post-job thank-you emails or texts, and drafted responses to reviews. Reporting is the third — she frames AI reporting as the layer that tells an owner what is working, what isn’t, and what could be done better, which is otherwise the first thing a time-constrained operator drops.
Measuring marketing when every dollar is contested
For a small business, marketing budget competes directly with operating necessities, so Rollins treats attribution as non-optional. Her sequence: define the ideal customer profile; capture and score every inbound lead (Thryv’s AI Lead Insight transcribes and scores each one); identify which source produced it — website, social, organic; then shift spend toward the channels producing the highest-quality leads and stop funding the ones that don’t. Leads then move into the CRM so the relationship is nurtured toward lifetime value rather than treated as a closed transaction.
The skills gap is the real ceiling on SMB AI
Thryv’s latest annual AI in Small Business Survey, as Rollins describes it, found 66% of small businesses using AI, with more than half spending at least $100 a month on AI tools. The constraint shows up on the other side: 7 in 10 report needing more or significantly more training to use AI productively, and the upskilling that is happening is a patchwork — asking ChatGPT how to use AI, watching YouTube, learning from social content. Rollins quotes Thryv customer Ken Cook of The Prepared Group on the discipline that follows from that gap: “The biggest mistake small businesses can make is blindly trusting AI. Use it only for tasks you already understand, otherwise you run the risk of moving faster in the wrong direction.”
FAQ
What is the “boss boom”? It’s the term Rollins uses for the sharp rise in entrepreneurship enabled by accessible technology. Her anecdotal marker: working with a school of business, she found nearly all the students she spoke with intended to work for themselves rather than join a large company.
How many small businesses are using AI? Thryv’s latest annual AI in Small Business Survey found that 66% of small businesses are using AI, and more than half of respondents spend at least $100 a month on AI tools.
What’s stopping small businesses from getting more out of AI? Training, not access. 7 in 10 surveyed said they need more or significantly more training to use AI productively, and most are self-teaching through tools like ChatGPT, YouTube, and social media rather than through structured programs.
Where should a small business start if building a tech stack feels overwhelming? Start with the single function causing the most pain rather than the full stack — a CRM if the problem is back office, a marketing platform if the problem is acquiring and retaining customers — so the data is centralized before AI tools are layered on.
What can enterprise marketers learn from small businesses? Hyperlocal trust-building at scale: authentic identity, transparency, consistent service, and visible community contribution. Rollins notes that 92% of Americans interact with a small business every day, which is a frequency and intimacy of relationship large distributed organizations struggle to manufacture.
How should a small business measure marketing effectiveness? By lead quality rather than lead volume. Define the ideal customer profile, score each inbound lead against it, track which channel produced it, then concentrate spend on the sources generating high-quality leads and cut the ones that don’t.
What does an effective post-purchase sequence look like? Immediately: a thank-you message and onboarding tips that help the customer get value. At 30 to 90 days: educational content, a service reminder, or a check-in survey. Then: loyalty offers, referral requests, and community engagement to sustain the relationship.
About Patricia Rollins
Patricia Rollins is Executive Director of Marketing at Thryv, a global AI-powered marketing platform for small and medium-sized businesses. Inspired by her roots as the daughter of small business owners, Patricia’s career has focused on equipping entrepreneurs with the technology and tools they need to thrive. A career-marketer and growth architect, she led the worldwide performance marketing team that launched IBM Watson and spearheaded digital marketing campaigns and events at Oracle CX Cloud. Patricia also accelerated the adoption of emerging technologies at Smartsheet, Typeform and Wellsaid, an AI text-to-speech provider. Known for blending creativity with data-driven strategy, she builds momentum for technologies that expand what’s possible.
Patricia Rollins on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rollinspatricia/
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Thryv: thryv.com
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Transcript
[00:01:02] Greg Kihlström: Hi, I’m Greg Kihlström, host of the Agile Brand, and here’s a question for you. Is the biggest threat to your market share a traditional competitor, or is it a wave of thousands of hyper-specialized small businesses powered by accessible AI? Agility requires not just adapting to change, but also adapting the forces driving it at every level of the market. This includes recognizing how the barriers to entry for starting and scaling a business have fundamentally changed. Today, we’re going to talk about the powerful, often overlooked engine of the economy, small business. We’re gonna explore how a new generation of entrepreneurs is leveraging sophisticated, accessible technology to compete and what enterprise leaders can learn from their nimble approach to growth, automation, and customer engagement.To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome
[00:02:33] Greg Kihlström: Patricia Rollins, Vice President of Marketing at Thryv. Patricia, welcome to the show.
[00:02:38] Patricia Rollins: Thanks so much for having me.
[00:02:40] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, looking forward to talking about this topic. but before we do, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at Thryv?
[00:02:47] Patricia Rollins: Absolutely. So I am a marketer for about twenty years. I am more of a revenue demand gen marketer, and it really all started with my parents who owned a small business. They owned pizzerias. So growing up as a kid, I was an entrepreneur at heart, helping my father with websites, fi- getting found online and, and all of that. So, as I grew up in my career in marketing, I then started working, at other corporations like IBM, where I spearheaded IBM Watson. And funny enough, I look back at IBM Watson, I’m like, “That was once, you know, the AI.” And so, I also worked, at Oracle, where I led digital marketing there for our customer experience cloud, as well as I stood up, enterprise marketing at Smartsheet. and then I also, was head of marketing at Typeform. So super, excited about, being here at Thryv because it’s actually bringing me back home to my roots of small businesses, and where I helped my parents with their small business. I’m also able to help, right, my husband’s, sisters with their, small businesses as well, as well as others around and, and being an expert in helping folks getting found online, helping folks, you know, grow in their business with our AI-powered growth platform, here at Thryv.
[00:04:07] Greg Kihlström: Nice. Nice. Love it. Yeah. Let’s, let’s dive in then and definitely, yeah, so you can, you know, kinda talk a, talk about this from, from a few different lenses it sounds, you know, from, from the IBM and enterprise, but also from the small, you know, from, from the, the small business angle. So that, that’s great. And I wa- I wanna start by just talking about the, the, they call it the, the boss boom, but, you know, just the significant rise in entrepreneurship and, you know, enabled by lots of things, but technology is certain- certainly one of those things. You know, from your perspective, what are some of the key tech and cultural shifts that have enabled this trend, and, and how’s it changing the competitive landscape for some of those
[00:04:52] Greg Kihlström: established players out there?
[00:04:54] Patricia Rollins: Absolutely. So as far as the boss boom goes, first of all, I love the phrase. I actually help the Washington, School of Business, and I was able to, sit with a lot of students in their school of business. And I’d say ninety-nine percent of them all wanted to be entrepreneurs, which to me, I think when I look back at my career and, and when I went to school, it’s like a lot of folks, right, wanted to work at the larger companies like the Apples and the Googles of the world. So it’s fascinating to see that actually students, as they develop their careers and what they wanna do, they all want to work for themselves. and they have some pretty impressive projects that they’re working on. So just wanted to start there with the story because that, to me, was very inspiring that students alone are, are looking at becoming entrepreneurs.
[00:05:40] Patricia Rollins: And I think the technology that we have with AI is, is letting us do that because a lot of it, right, can be automated. when you look at, what AI does as far as automations go and creating content, right, you no longer need a team of many when you’re an entrepreneur. You likely could need a team of maybe one or two or three. And so, I think as technology rises, you’re able to em-embrace entrepreneurship because a lot of it can be done, you know, through AI as well. But I know AI is also scary for some small businesses, and so I think it has to be a blend of both and figuring out, like, where you wanna start investing in an AI-AI and what do you actually wanna automate versus what do you actually wanna spend time with, with your customers and building trust.
[00:06:26] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:06:27] Patricia Rollins: But what I love is that, right, the AI-driven marketing software really helps… Like, having an all-encompassing software really helps new businesses, right, get found online through reviews, get found through Google searches, helps them attract more customers, right, into their business, helps them get more leads, and then, you know, keeps them from coming back.
[00:06:48] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, so definitely I, I, I know the power of [chuckles] some of these tools because it’s… I mean, you know, in my consulting work, I work with, like, Fortune 500s, but this podcast and the, you know, I have a small team. We’re a small business, so, you know, kinda seeing the power of being able to just do so much yourself or with a ve- with a very small team is, is, you know, I, I definitely… You know, I’m feeling that firsthand from a, from that small business perspective. I think another aspect of, of small businesses is quite often they have some deep roots and, and deep connections to their… where-wherever they’re located, you know, local communities and, and those local economies.
[00:07:34] Greg Kihlström: How does some of this hyperlocal focus give them an advantage in building things like customer trust and loyalty that, you know, an, an enterprise may struggle a bit with in, in some cases making, making such a strong connection? And, you know, what, what strategic lessons can a larger, more distributed organization take from that?
[00:07:55] Patricia Rollins: Great, great question. I think with small businesses it’s hard because they rely, right, on their local communities, like you mentioned. They also rely on obtaining trust of their customers. I feel like a lot of small businesses that I speak with also rely on word of mouth, as they start establishing relationships with folks to have return business. I think in- communities really do embrace entrepreneurs. like SMBs are everywhere, right? 92% of Americans interact with a small business every day. Like I’m sure, right, if you look at this morning, you went to your coffee shop. Um-
[00:08:26] Greg Kihlström: Right
[00:08:26] Patricia Rollins: … I’m sure they probably have remembered your order if you constantly go there every day, or your local dry cleaner. I know when I go they know my name and, you know, probably how many outfits I- I’m gonna be dry cleaning. And so-
[00:08:37] Greg Kihlström: Right
[00:08:38] Patricia Rollins: … I think in order, you know, in order for local businesses really to stand out, it’s like they need to have an authentic brand identity. So how do they feel, you know, genuine to that person? How are they transparent? How are they building trust? It’s all roots to their contributions in the community. It roots to their customer service. It roots to really building, building that, relationship. you know, I also look at even just with my own kids, right? They– We sponsor– I should say a lot of businesses sponsor, right, all their kids’ sports. They donate auction items to local fundraisers, and all of that makes them stand out, as they start continuing to build out their business. I think local is very important,
[00:09:23] Patricia Rollins: even as we do marketing here at Thryv. It’s like, you know, small businesses, but we’re also helping, right, small businesses being found locally in their areas, because that is their, their, their advantage.
[00:09:38] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about, you know, how some of these, these AI-enabled tools get, get adopted, and certainly, you know, very large companies have their own challenges with adoption, but you, you kinda touched on this earlier as, you know, small businesses they- they’ve gotta do a lot of different things and, and often with small, small teams that are, you know, again ju-juggling a lot of priorities, so don’t necessarily have a lot of time to try everything out there. Beyond, you know, and, and certainly there’s, there’s also hype around all this stuff, and, you know, it’s, it’s hard to escape the, you know, the hype part of this, but there’s also a lot of real tangible value if you can find the right, the right tools. So, you know, w-what are
[00:10:23] Greg Kihlström: some of the most practical, maybe high-impact AI apps that you see small businesses successfully adopting to automate things like workflows and, and improve customer interactions?
[00:10:36] Patricia Rollins: Absolutely. So, a couple of things. I think, you know, with AI, entrepreneurs, right, can research the competitive market, they can create pricing and inventory models, they can actually re- set up their, their business. another aspect of it is, just AI-driven marketing software. So, right, it helps businesses getting found online, winning more customers, helping them keep coming back, but that is, right, driven through an automated workflow. similar with Thryv. Thryv, right, is w- an AI-driven marketing workflow where we can build and manage websites, we can optimize their online listings. We have, we can develop their SEO, AEO strategy before being found, social media management, et cetera. And, small businesses
[00:11:22] Patricia Rollins: need to really understand, right, what is the one thing or two things that they are struggling with that they can potentially automate. And so, you know, here’s a couple of examples. you know, one is staying booked and being busy. It’s like how, how can we do that, right? You can use AI to basically develop that entire workflow, right? H- Getting booked online through your website, creating a schedule. The lead then goes into your CRM, and then it gets scored and automated, and you’re basically calling, right, the right, the right accounts and the right leads. That’s all done through AI, and it’s making yourself be more efficient, more reliant, more effective. So that’s, that’s one. another one is just, you know, remaining ahead of the service curve. It’s like business owners rely heavily on customer service and getting great reviews and having
[00:12:07] Patricia Rollins: repeat customers, so how can you do that? It’s, you could also automate, your service, right, by email. So after The job has been booked, right? Sending an email saying, confirming the booking. Maybe after the job is booked, you can automate a phone call, you can automate an email saying, “Thank you,” or, “Here’s a response, for you to respond back to a review.” So, you know, that, that is another way of, that you can automate. So I think it’s really just taking a step back and figuring out, you know, what are, what is the most important to you, and what are things in which AI can help you automate? and you know, Thryv does a great job at that. It’s an all-in-one marketing platform, for you to, manage all of it all in one spot. And then lastly is reporting. Like,
[00:12:52] Patricia Rollins: reporting is another one. It’s like reporting with AI, it actually tells you what’s working, what’s not working, and things that you may c- you know, you may be able to do better.
[00:14:41] Greg Kihlström: For those that maybe are a little more, let’s call it technical, the, the idea of a, a small business building their own tech stack may not be daunting, but for many it is, right? And so, you know, a lot of this stuff is, again, they’re, they’re busy doing very different things all day and, and building their business around that, but, and yet, you know, they, they certainly need the, the technology foundation. What would you say, I know you mentioned some, some of the core things from, you know, from a few different perspectives that, that are helpful there. What would you say are, you know, the foundational tools that, you know, managing critical functions that, that businesses need to start with, you know, rather than thinking, getting
[00:15:26] Greg Kihlström: overwhelmed by building this whole complex infrastructure?
[00:15:31] Patricia Rollins: I’d say again, just focus on the one area you need the most help with and start there. If it’s back office, focus on, right, your CRM. If you wanna grow your business by getting and keeping customers, you likely need a marketing solution like Thryv, but there are others, because your data is centralized in one spot, and then there, and then you’re feeding right strategic AI tools within. with an example to grow, like AI can be most direct and critical in components such as AI website builder, lead scoring, customer reviews, content creation and building, social media. So I’d probably look there, as well as AEO and SEO. In order for you to appear in search, right, you need to make sure that you are starting to follow right best practices there.
[00:16:16] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. So of, and then, you know, certainly measurement is a, is a key component here for, for lots of reasons. I mean, obviously, you know, any, any business needs to drive customers and, and repeat customers, gotta, has to drive revenue. But, you know, whether small, small or large, I would say marketing dollars are, you know, are, are, there, there’s never, too many of them [laughs]. We’ll just, we’ll just put it that way. But, you know, for a small business, this can be really challenging to try to figure out, okay, how do we allocate some of those marketing dollars versus things that need to get spent on, on other critical, critical items. How do you advise an organization to approach measurement and analytics to make
[00:17:01] Greg Kihlström: sure that what’s being, what money’s being spent on is directly contributing to some of those tangible business goals, like customer acquisition and revenue?
[00:17:13] Patricia Rollins: Like ROI is everything. I think when you look at a small business, a marketer, anywhere, it’s important not just to bring the leads, but you need to understand the quality leads, which are quality leads and which aren’t, so that you could actually drive more revenue. Sometimes people conflate volume over quality, and to me, you really need to hone in on your ideal customer profile. Who is that customer that you’re trying to reach? And really identify leads that focus on your customer and, when you focus on the customer, you bring the right leads, which then brings in, you know, additional revenue. We do have tools like AI Lead Insight, so as every lead comes in, it’s transcribed and scored so that you actually know, right, who your ideal customer profile
[00:17:58] Patricia Rollins: is. it’s clear which source it came from, so it’s great to know where these leads are coming from. Are they coming organically through your website, social media? And then as you bring in your highest quality leads and the channels, you start learning where you wanna invest and spend more money on and optimize. And then you put these leads into your CRM, so the relationship is nurtured for lifetime value, and you can let them know when you have promotions and, and whatnot. so, you know, I think it’s a, you know, marketing is constantly evolving and, and optimizing, and I think when you look at the return on investment, you just need to, you know, pour money and gas on the things that are working. the things that are not working, you know, don’t bother. But also look at it as, like, a, a constant continuous
[00:18:43] Patricia Rollins: life cycle. You need to continue to nurture your prospects, provide them value, giving them information for them to, you know, repeat coming back to you.
[00:18:52] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, and that, that repeat part is… I mean, you know, you mentioned the, the dry cleaner anecdote and, you know, it’s, it’s powerful when a, a business, when somebody recognizes you and, and yet even for, you know, even for a small business with less customers, it’s hard to do that, that personal one-on-one, but which means, you know, you’ve gotta focus on ways to automate things and, and build that lifetime value in, you know, using automation and, and other methods. How are sophisticated small businesses tracking and, and nurturing those relationships, some of those post-purchase, like you were mentioning just now, to repeat, you know, drive repeat business, drive advocacy, and, you know, what are some of the
[00:19:38] Greg Kihlström: metrics they can use to, to gauge success there?
[00:19:41] Patricia Rollins: Absolutely. So when I look at this for a post-purchase journey, I really look at how do you give your customer, your prospect value? It’s like no one’s gonna click on that email, right, if there’s nothing in it for them to, to go click on it. And what can you do to make their life easier? What can you do, right, to provide value? So, you know, just a couple of immediate thoughts that I have when I look at customer life cycle, especially from an email standpoint, it’s like immediately post-purchase, the minute that you’re finished, let’s say, with a job or they’ve purchased something, it’s like you send them a thank you message. It could also be a text message. You send them maybe onboarding extruc- instructions on how to get started. It’s like, “Hey, I just installed your, you know, your water heater. Here’s a couple of tips and tricks, tips and tricks
[00:20:27] Patricia Rollins: for, you know, for you to, for you to get started.” also providing folks with how to get started, you’re the expert. Giving them tips into how to get value from your product or service is completely, is completely relevant after they’ve purchased something. Then you start looking at maybe 30 or 90 days later, maybe send them a webinar or some educational content, maybe a reminder that they’re due for a service, or perhaps you may wanna do a check-in survey. But you’re just continuously keeping them engaged and then, you know, as things continue to progress, give them some offers, loyalty rewards, community engagement, referral requests. So just going above and beyond reminding customers you exist. It helps them achieve their outcome, but
[00:21:12] Patricia Rollins: also it helps you, right, be in the know, as well as, you know, continuing that relationship and trust with them that we spoke about earlier.
[00:21:20] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. So looking ahead, certainly there’s, there’s, there’s a lot of, uh- of things that small businesses need to keep in mind as they, as they evolve and as they’re gi- have tools to, to be able to compete with even larger competitors. But, you know, what do you see as the next major hurdle or next major opportunity for small businesses in the digital space?
[00:21:47] Patricia Rollins: So Thryv’s latest annual AI in Small Business Survey found that 66% of small businesses are using AI. So that’s 6 in 10 are using it daily, so investing in it and seeing returns. I’d say more than half from the survey are spending at least $100 a month on AI tools, which is great, but 7 in 10 say they need more or significantly more training to use AI, you know, productively. So the solution for filling the skills gap reflects, right, a patchwork, I believe, for, for upskilling, and they’re turning into- they’re turning to tools like ChatGPT to ask how to use AI or YouTube or social media assets. So to me, I’m like, the skills gap is concerning, but then you also look at, you know, a cou- some states
[00:22:32] Patricia Rollins: are like, “I’m tired of hearing about AI. We know that’s the future.” but what’s great is we have one of our customers, Ken Cook of The Prepared Group, and he said it perfectly in my mind. He said, “The biggest mistake small businesses can make is blindly trusting AI. Use it only for tasks you already understand, otherwise you run the risk of moving faster in the wrong direction.”
[00:22:54] Greg Kihlström: Hmm.
[00:22:54] Patricia Rollins: So with that, it’s like businesses that invest in AI tools and training really need to maximize it, and have it define what Main Street looks like, right, fi- five years from now.
[00:23:05] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Well, Patricia, thanks so much for joining today. I got a couple last questions as we wrap up here. first one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we, that we would definitely be talking about?
[00:23:20] Patricia Rollins: Like, I’m thinking it’s the continuation of efficiency with AI. Frankly, it’s automating some things. I sometimes joke with myself, I’m like, “Hmm, you know, the marketing role, will look a lot different, I think, in a year from now, with all of the AI technology out there and all the things you can, you can optimize.” So, you know, that’s, that’s where I’m at. but you’ll- you need to continue to learn and stay consistent and, you know, stay up to, up to date with the brands, and I think publications like yourself, in doing this podcast, right, allows you to stay ahead.
[00:23:52] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Love it. And last question for you, what do you do to stay agile in your role, and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[00:24:00] Patricia Rollins: I’m a curious person. I’m always learning. I love to get my hands dirty, so I’m constantly plugging myself in to write newsletters, communities, team building. so I’m constantly there, you know, to stay ahead of, of the curve. And, and talking, you know, with experts in the space, I think allows me to stay ahead.
