BizTech Superhero

Joshua McNary [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the Biz Tech Superhero, the podcast that empowers you to unleash the technology superpowers within your business. I'm your host, Joshua McNary. I'm joined by today's superhero, Susie Dillon, a content marketing expert and chief content officer of her firm, Digital Artisans, based in San Francisco, California. Susie loves to create content and tell stories, and her company, launched in 2025, helps companies get started telling their story, tackling particular storytelling initiatives with ease and flair, and make their stories shine. Suzy has built her practice on extensive experience in the tech space, including working for the likes of Adobe, intuit, Intel, and PayPal. Today, we plan to talk about business, storytelling, content generation in the age of AI, the tech landscape, and more. Suzy, welcome to the show.

Suzy DeLine [00:00:55]:
Josh, thank you so much. It was such a treat meeting you at the fractional conference, and I'm so glad we get to catch up and nerd out just a little bit more.

Joshua McNary [00:01:04]:
That's great. Yes. We met at the FRAC conference, the fractional C suite conference for those fractional executives that are helping people throughout the country. Awesome event. And you're one of the awesome people I got to meet. So I've met you, but our audience has not. So can you tell folks that are meeting you for the first time a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Suzy DeLine [00:01:24]:
You bet. So, fun fact. I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin and then went to school at Northwestern as a theater major because, what can I say? I'm a bit of a ham. And then after graduating, really fun job at Encyclopedia Britannica. Remember that? I do, Yeah. I was, as a lifelong kind of tech nerd, I had to reach out for some help with digitizing video, and I was supported by these wonderful tech people at Intel. So I worked with them. They're like, you should come work here.

Suzy DeLine [00:01:59]:
Why don't you get an mba? So I did. I got an mba and then I went and worked for intel back in the 90s. Pentium processor. It was such fun. So I worked for them for about 10 years. Took a little break over in Hong Kong to have babies, start a theater company. But then when I guess, who does it?

Joshua McNary [00:02:16]:
So it sounds like a great story. We could talk about that for a whole hour, I'm sure.

Suzy DeLine [00:02:20]:
Yeah, it wasn't very tech forward, but it was great. When I came back to the area, I worked for Intuit and again, going from hardware to software. Fascinating and fun. And then ran a few programs over there. And then after Intuit, I did a stint back at Intel. And then I was on this bike ride with my dear friend Karen Atkinson on this bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles. A bit of time together and she evangelized the heck out of me. She said, susie, you have to try HubSpot and inbound marketing.

Suzy DeLine [00:02:54]:
And I'm like, inbound marketing. But Honestly, back in 2015, inbound marketing, SEO HubSpot Academy does such a great job of teaching you the basics of SEO, of how to manage audiences and CRM. It just tickled every nerdy spot within me. They did a good job on content strategy, but I went back to Northwestern and got a certification strategy because it was a whole different thing than the sort of marketing I had been doing. Program management. Content strategy is storytelling. And again, I am a ham and a theater nerd. It just all my parts came together when I learned about end to SEO and content strategy.

Suzy DeLine [00:03:39]:
With that in my tool belt, I did a program right back into it. Then I was brought in to do a similar program over at Adobe, brief stint in VMware, but then over to PayPal and that was my last big engage. Learned so much. I am now I've decided to be self employed to work on projects that really inspire and motivate me. And that's Digital Artisans. We do all sorts of digital things for really cool companies, either starting out or just needing that little extra bit of help to get their stories out.

Joshua McNary [00:04:14]:
What a great story from a storyteller, right? You've had a fun journey and continue to do so. That's why you're here today, to share some knowledge and experience as being a superhero in tech in your own world. Okay, tell us a little bit about Digital Artisans Tech stack, your tech stack, what you're using. You mentioned HubSpot earlier as a tool that you've used, but tell us a little bit more about the kind of technology you're using in your work as you are helping your clients.

Suzy DeLine [00:04:41]:
Yeah, so the two main tools that I use, my last job at PayPal, I was in charge of managing customer and developer advocacy. Again, it was a voice of customer program and I was introduced to this tool called MarketScale. And MarketScale is about user generated content at scale and they're designed primarily for gaining video input, whether it's customers, whether it's partners, whether it's developers, advocates. It's also used a lot for internal training and HR and employee engagement. So it's just fantastic platform. And it's really, it's, it's. We hate to say AI first, but honestly it is built from the ground up on the Gemini tech stack that when you gather content, you can then do so much with it. It's not just video.

Suzy DeLine [00:05:32]:
It can help give you ideas for other ways to use those stories. And of course, I was hooked. So after I left PayPal, I am a market scale guide. So if anybody wants to know about market scale, I have an in. So that's one of the things that I do. And then the other tool that I use a lot, believe it or not, is wix. I personally, I have a partner in crime, Karen, my SEO from the bike riding. She runs a firm that they are WIC experts.

Suzy DeLine [00:06:01]:
They will set you up, they'll do your SEO, they'll do your content plan, but I use it primarily as my content calendar. Once we set up your value proposition on a website, I say, okay, now that you've started to tell your story, what is your vision for telling your story over the next six months? And which voices do we need in that? So Wix is actually, I used to use HubSpot for this when it was all about inbound marketing and lead gathering. But we are no longer in the world of SEO, we're in the world of geo. Right. We need generative AI to find you. And it's not about keywords, it's about the whole story. It's about a variety of voices. So to be GEO enabled, whether it's video, whether it's audio, you need a lot of voices and you need authenticity because GEO recognizes other AI generated content.

Suzy DeLine [00:06:56]:
So anyhow, those are my two main things that I do and it's such fun and I've got some really interesting clients, but I have room for more clients. So, Joshua, thank you for letting me be here.

Joshua McNary [00:07:07]:
Yes, absolutely. That's part of being on the show is so we can make sure people know what you're doing. And with that in mind. So with those tools and of course the geo, whatever we're going to call it, with regards to trying to be seen by the new way of search, the new way of finding which is our generative AI tools, okay, everyone needs that. But with regards to market scale and then combined with your experience in being seen in AI tools, who is your target right now? And not that this is a sales pitch for you, but from a standpoint of understanding how your tools are fitting into that.

Suzy DeLine [00:07:38]:
Yeah. So I have two main types of organizations that I serve and the first one is, for lack of a better term, mission based organizations who just really, they have a thing that they do really well. They have found Their calling, which is to say product, market fit and they just need a little bit of help to get going. So yeah, people who are on a mission and just don't have anything in place yet. And we don't worry about tools, we worry about the stories, worry about what will resonate, what will help them find their audience. And the tools there are right tools for whatever they need to do. And then the other group that I help, and this is going to seem surprising because I was surprised to find it out, but large organizations frequently will have all the resources in the world, but no expertise and no one who knows how to gather stories. So I'm not going to point any fingers except actually if I can.

Suzy DeLine [00:08:38]:
Let me just share a story of my very first, one of my favorite projects and it was my first content nerd project. It was at Intuit. The program is called Firm of the Future and we kicked it off in 2016 because we said, hey, it was the beginning of SaaS, right? Intuit had a huge books user base who was very happy to buy their CD every year to get it upgrade. And they weren't too keen about moving to online. It was a different feel. They didn't get the value of it. Who did get the value of it? Accountants. Accountants loved having the access, having real time, frankly, which is what it did for clients.

Suzy DeLine [00:09:19]:
So we started this content program and it was a contest to begin with. PR came up with the idea. It was called Firm of the Future and accountants would film themselves talking about how great books online was and how it helped them grow their practice, which of course fomo. Other accountants saw this and said, okay, I get it, I see it. I was brought in because it was a pretty decent cash prize and they picked four winners. They're like, okay, what do we do with these winners videos? Oh, and by the way, what do we do with these other hundred videos of people who worked quite as camera ready but who had great stories? So we put together a solid six month content calendar that work through all of Intuit's many communication strategies. Being contacted by and I would like more people who have all these great customer stories and just haven't quite figured out how that works. What do you do with this great untapped library of advocates? So every large SaaS company has a customer advocacy board.

Suzy DeLine [00:10:23]:
And again, these are people who love you, who are the peers of your ideal contents. Every customer advocacy board manager should be calling me and saying we have these stories, what can we do with them? And yeah, and I can optimize how we Capture them. I can optimize how you use AI to analyze the most effective use of this content. And then I can. I won't be the person who works with your brand group on how to use them. Obviously, that's not what I want to do. But I can just make things so much easier, so much more effective, so much more satisfying. Yeah, I.

Suzy DeLine [00:10:58]:
I love to help.

Joshua McNary [00:11:00]:
I just saw an article. I feel like it was like the New York Times or something recently, just this week, we're recording this. In December of 2025, they were talking about storytellers and organizations trying to find storytellers. And this is interesting too, in the context of technology, because there is the reality that the technology landscape with artificial intelligence seems like it's going to push us humans into a corner in a way. There's a lot of concern, existential threat stuff long term. But even in the near term, we're seeing a shift in the way the job markets are being approached. But what you're talking about is the idea of merging the ideas of artificial intelligence using those tools in ways that they're great at categorization and pulling out the best stuff, using it to find the right thing. You're doing this 10 years ago in more manual forms than traditional content marketing ways.

Joshua McNary [00:11:47]:
But that's a vein I think maybe we could talk a little bit about is the idea of how we are using these tools to actually make our human creative aspects that you do more powerful than we could before and more influential with those stories than we could back in the old days when we were doing it in the LI.

Suzy DeLine [00:12:04]:
Is it? Yeah, exactly. Again, I started 10 years ago doing this and just every day I'm so excited to come to work because I feel like I'm doing it better. And that's such a good feeling.

Joshua McNary [00:12:18]:
That's great. So now let's jump back to the market scale thing and the idea of video. This show here, we're recording it and it will be published as audio. We talked about that before we started recording. I know you do some podcasts as video and I know market scale. You mentioned that they. That's part of the. That technology's hook is it's video and then how you derive it into other forms.

Joshua McNary [00:12:39]:
So maybe talk a bit more about that technique and how then that plays out in a tool like MarketScale.

Suzy DeLine [00:12:45]:
Yeah. So the two things that, as I mentioned, MarketScale has a lot of groups that it can serve, but the two ways that I've just been so delightful. So first of all, I started Using it as my support at a big developer show for PayPal. And we were able because you can do a combination of it just makes it really easy for all the people there using their iPhones to capture content. So I had 10 videographers at that show and we talked to 40 people over three days. And that's a lot. And it just gave us so much. And it was the first big developer conference we've done.

Suzy DeLine [00:13:19]:
Again, just magical to be able to so easily get all of the voices that you wanted. We talked to developers, obviously customers, small businesses who were there supporting the conference, and then executives. We had quite a lot of executives there. So we captured a lot of really good insights. But then the podcasting that you mentioned. So again, podcasting is does the world need another podcast? And maybe the world doesn't. But does your organization need to be sharing things on a consistent basis in a long form basis? Because honestly, long form content people in the age of TikTok people deride its value. But honestly there, if your company makes something that is unique and special, you should be able to talk about it as a human once a week and have a lot to say.

Suzy DeLine [00:14:13]:
But what's neat about the podcast is, for example, if this is going to be a 15 minute podcast, the market scale tool lets you super easily turn it into short clips that you can then TikTok it lets you super easily turn it into all sorts of printed media. They've got the AI tools in there to help you write faq, knowledge base, social posts, blog posts. It's just, it's so efficient, it's so sensible. And it was HubSpot who thinks they invented the world. The idea that you capture content once and then multipurpose. Oh no, it was Neil Patel who said you must multipurpose your content. And this is just the best example of how it's done. Obviously there's many tools that do it well, but this one, you know, for my nerdy money, it's, I won't say game changer, but it's just best in.

Joshua McNary [00:15:04]:
Class and tools evolve too. This is the best in class tool at this time and we've seen tools come and go. HubSpot had their time and they're still obviously a massive player. They're great in marketing space and have other angles on things, I think. So I just throw out there for those that are listening. I use a tool called castmagic to do some derivative products of this show. So some of the things that you'll see promoting this show will come from this being Transcribed, and then, of course, that being put into derivative products. So there are other tools out there that's probably a more niche tool, more specific to text, generation of content from the video and transcript versus what MarketScale does, even though I haven't had much experience directly with it.

Joshua McNary [00:15:40]:
But based on what you're describing, it's probably a little more niche. But there are many tools out there that can fit that. Even ChatGPT could potentially do aspects of that for you. But I think where I want to take this comment is that there's the idea of the best in class tools, the tools that are very highly correlated to what your need is. And then there's the tools that are more generalist. And of course, there's a lot of artificial intelligence tools out there right now. I just mentioned ChatGPT as being the king of them, at least at this point. Although Gemini and many others are starting to do some more unique things that are maybe surpassing them.

Joshua McNary [00:16:10]:
But they've got the generalist tools. Then you've got the kind of niche tools that maybe market, scale or cast magic fall into. Can you talk about any of your experiences using those different types of tools in this content space, in the storytelling space? Are there things that maybe you would use the frontier model tools to actually produce content for?

Suzy DeLine [00:16:29]:
So are you asking me if I use any of the pocket knives, the Geminis? Yes, I am, because that's how I think of them. They're pocket knives, They're Swiss army knives. They can do everything. Whereas Ella. Ella is built by marketers for marketers. So actually, can I just. I put a little test. I put some of the AIs to the test last week on a project, not before.

Joshua McNary [00:16:49]:
No, absolutely. Whatever you think is useful to the audience, go ahead.

Suzy DeLine [00:16:52]:
All right. So for a family Christmas card, we have traditionally used the photo. So we would traditionally have used last year's Christmas photo in front of the tree. Our kids have changed a lot in the last year. We also capture a family picture at Thanksgiving, all of us together in front of this same painting. And I said, okay. So I asked Chat, I asked Gemini, and I didn't ask Claude. Claude does a lot of writing work for me, but Claude is shit with images.

Suzy DeLine [00:17:19]:
I don't know if you've ever tried it. It's disturbing what they give you back. So I took that image of the five of us and I said to Chat, I sent the Gemini, and I said to Canva, I said, hey, you put Santa hat on these people. Don't change anything else about the Picture, but just Santa hat us. And yeah, Gemini did it. It's my family Christmas card and it did a great job. And I'm like, oh, my God. It listened to me chant over, performed, it did the Santa hats, but it tried to improve our appearance and it definitely uncanny Valleyed us.

Suzy DeLine [00:17:56]:
It was crazy. And then God bless Canva. Canva does a lot. I love templates. Canva is fantastic for building your brand templates and just pop. But can I just say, for that particular request, we've all seen the creepy AI thing where it gives you extra hands and feet and it like, instead of putting Santa hats on all of us, it like made eight of me with a Santa hat on with like extra arms and legs. And one of these things that I can't unsee. And I think it kind of just speaks to how I think about those Swiss army knives of AI right now is that Gemini was just very kind of, I gotcha.

Suzy DeLine [00:18:37]:
Get it done. Didn't try too hard. Thank you. Chat tried too hard. Bless its heart. Improving us beyond usability. And I really don't know what's going on in Canva right now, so I can't comment. But yeah.

Suzy DeLine [00:18:54]:
And in terms of my dear beloved Claudine, she is actually my go to when I do. I don't know if you. I do have her help me write my daily LinkedIn posts. Just whenever I'm thinking about, I'll say, claudine, I'm thinking about this. Here are the articles I'm citing. Pull what you think are the strongest bits. She'll do that and I'll say, okay. And then, you know, I write the intro, I write the filler.

Suzy DeLine [00:19:16]:
But she's such a great research assistant. Claudine is unparalleled.

Joshua McNary [00:19:23]:
That's a great story again from the storyteller to tell us where we're at with regards to these models, these frontier models that we have in front of us here while we're recording this and that evolution just even over the last year. That story you just told would have been moved around probably if you'd done this experiment a year ago, right? And we know it would have been because the technology is progressing so quickly. I know I've used various tools over time. I do suggest to many people out there that are listening that are exploring artificial intelligence to maybe get comfortable with one model that you are comfortable with, whether it's ChatGPT or Gemini, because you're in the Google space or whatever and stay in that lane to a degree until then, you can figure out what works for your business model or your workflows in a way that makes sense for you. As you stated, Claude's a great tool for writing, for instance, so that's something to keep in mind. But also there's tools out there like Monica AI, which is a platform application that will let you have access to pretty much all of the main frontier models in one place. And you can even hit magic buttons to do compare and get it to pump out results for each at one time. I haven't used it recently to know what it's doing with regards to images, but at least from a text perspective it has been able to do that.

Joshua McNary [00:20:33]:
So there are tools out there like that if you want to do comparative analysis on these things. But I love your story and I appreciate that from a standpoint of helping us think about that. And that's also where then going back to what you're talking about earlier with the niche tools, what do you find them? And they're the right fit. The lights start going off like it like these tools have for you. And you were discussing them earlier.

Suzy DeLine [00:20:52]:
Yep. Touch. Fun, isn't it, Jeff?

Joshua McNary [00:20:55]:
It is fun. Technology is fun for its own sake. And then we're currently in a time now that there's very quick movement, a lot of ethical concerns, privacy concerns, various things that even five, ten years ago would have been unheard of outside of kind of sci fi. So it's an interesting time, that's for sure. It's fun. It's interesting. I've always thought technology is fun, but we're at a time now where it's fun and intriguing.

Suzy DeLine [00:21:20]:
Quite right. Good stuff.

Joshua McNary [00:21:23]:
What do you think about the tech landscape from your perspective? You're in San Francisco, you've been adjacent to technology, all these companies over the years. You've been around in that community for some time.

Suzy DeLine [00:21:35]:
So yeah.

Joshua McNary [00:21:35]:
Maybe give us a little perspective from, from those that aren't on the west coast as to what your perspective is as a practitioner in these spaces and what your crystal ball might be thinking going forward with regards to technology and artificial intelligence.

Suzy DeLine [00:21:51]:
Yeah. So I've got two points of view and first I'll share. I think you've heard mine just about how I've had decades of experience doing it without AI and I just really find that AI makes it better and more fun. And then the other perspective I have given my age and stage of life, I have gotten very purposeful about mentoring new college grads and just seeing their again digital natives. Right. Grew up with social media, grew up with the Internet, grew up there's been. While they were in college, AI was a thing. And the good colleges really recognize that there are things that they spy with while still safeguarding the experience of education means that you're learning and understanding and not just hacking or gaming the system.

Suzy DeLine [00:22:40]:
So I've seen them come out of college with a really thoughtful appreciation of what AI is good for and not good for, which I think is fantastic. They have that appreciation, that ability to just be so flexible and nimble. And frankly, they're getting jobs. So I know there's a lot of concern about new college grads, but marketing majors, business majors, economic majors, computer science majors, I'm seeing them get jobs. So I can't speak for the rest of the country, but things are pretty good here.

Joshua McNary [00:23:11]:
Great. That's good to hear. I think we hear a lot of negative things and concerns. Right. I was at my local meetup here that we do on Artificial Intelligence Week, and there's always someone that comes up in the conversation. So it's good to hear that from where you're sitting, where a lot of the innovations are happening and is really driving forward, at least here in the United States. Let's stay positive. I know I generally have a positive outlook on where this technology is going to take us, because I've seen other technologies in our lifetimes also maybe be scary at first and eventually become useful and we can't predict everything.

Joshua McNary [00:23:41]:
But I do appreciate that comment and a little bit of insider perspective from out there.

Suzy DeLine [00:23:45]:
And can I tell you one other funny story? And I won't attribute it because I'm a little bit making fun of somebody.

Joshua McNary [00:23:52]:
Okay.

Suzy DeLine [00:23:53]:
And so an executive that I worked with, and I won't say which company needed to put AI in place before the end of the year, and they said something to the effect of, for all of the programs running next year, instead of hiring a director, why don't we put AI in charge of it? And so the people in the room said, great idea, Bob. What does that look like to you? And essentially what Bob described is exactly the right approach, that by putting AI in charge, you actually need somebody to build the AI to match the AI, to communicate the output of the AI. The way he phrased it was just everybody going, huh? But instead of people pushing back and saying, Bob, what you're talking about is you're talking about it wrong. People were generous to this leader who knew what he wanted, and it's just the way he asked. It was so strange. But he got to the right place by the end of the Meeting you.

Joshua McNary [00:24:53]:
Have good people around you. That tends to happen as well, right. That you get a back and forth that allows you to find the solution. And we are definitely in that landscape right now with regards to technology, trying to find how to apply these solutions as they quickly change. Because if we talk again in a year from now, so much will have changed. I'm sure market scale and the various tools that we talked about here today will have made that much more leaps and bounds in these different capacities. So we are getting close to the end of our time. So I want to end with the final question that we ask all of the people that we have on the show here, which is, what is one actionable tip that you would give businesses looking to better leverage technology?

Suzy DeLine [00:25:29]:
I have two tips.

Joshua McNary [00:25:31]:
Okay, that's fair. Go ahead.

Suzy DeLine [00:25:32]:
Yeah. First of all, don't do it alone. Right? There's people like Josh who do this and, you know, for whatever need, just reach out honestly, get feedback, don't think you should be able to, and just don't do it. So that was one. But secondly, my tip is beyond technology. And every six months or so, look at your story, look at your business and just say, am I telling my story? And if not, everybody's a storyteller, and not everybody's going to reach out to me and hire a storyteller. But there are tools that help you tell your story and whatever your story is. Just go to something as simple as a Google search bar, which now has Gemini in it, and say, hey, look at my website.

Suzy DeLine [00:26:17]:
What do you think of what do you think is my story? And then see if what Gemini tells you back is what you think you are.

Joshua McNary [00:26:25]:
And those tips, I appreciate the little plug for me there. But whether it's technology selection or in the case of storytelling, reviewing that storytelling, these things are only going to become more and more important to be doing regularly six months or what, and being up on that with regards to how we're approaching it as business people and as individuals. Because if we're not, we're going to be left behind rather quickly because someone else will be doing it. And that is one of the things that's inevitable with AI Revolution. Someone's going to do it here in the United States, elsewhere. And so we want to be pushing forward with that, regardless of necessarily having all the answers to the questions as we go forward.

Suzy DeLine [00:27:00]:
Right.

Joshua McNary [00:27:02]:
All right. This has been great. Where can people find out more about what you do, Suzy?

Suzy DeLine [00:27:07]:
Oh, absolutely. So I have a website, DigitalArtisans Biz. Yes. It's a throwback. And yes, I love it. I'm not getting rid of my biz. And then I'm on LinkedIn, Susiedeline and happy to chat. Happy to provide feedback.

Suzy DeLine [00:27:24]:
And Josh, thanks so much for having me on. This has been fun.

Joshua McNary [00:27:28]:
Thanks so much for being here. It's been great. All right, folks, that's it for today. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast on any popular directory. Tell a friend about what you've Learned here on BizTech Superhero and subscribe to my e newsletter@mcnarymarketing.com subscribe. Thanks for listening. I'm Joshua McNary and I hope you will join me again next time so you can learn how to become a BizTech superhero. Bye now.