Episode 91 - Sheryl Barbosa

Erik Martinez: Hello and welcome to the Digital Velocity Podcast. I'm your host, Erik Martinez, and today we're diving into an exciting conversation around how artificial intelligence is transforming sustainability, especially for direct to consumer businesses where sustainability and profits can go hand in hand.

Today's guest is Sheryl Barbosa, an environmental scientists and a sustainability expert who helps brands navigate the intersection of innovation, technology, and environmental responsibility. Sheryl, welcome to the show.

Sheryl Barbosa: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

Erik Martinez: I am so excited [00:01:00] and my audience is probably getting tired of me talking about all my wonderful, heroic cohorts. Sheryl was also part of my heroic group and it was such an amazing experience that, it's been a source of strength and learning for me since going through that whole process.

I'm so excited to have this conversation with you.

Sheryl Barbosa: Me too. I'm very much looking forward to it, especially considering AI is new to the scene, in air quotes. It's been around for a long time, but really in this form. It's new and so I don't think, I hear many people talking about this, so I'm excited to really be able to talk about it and dive in.

Erik Martinez: Yeah, well this is a very different take on AI, which I think is hugely important for businesses. Our listening audience is heavily skewed towards the direct to consumer industry. And, we got packaging and we got lots of different things. I grew up in the direct mail industry, lots of paper use and there's so many different environmental impacts.

And as a direct mailer, you know [00:02:00] that the more direct mail you put, the more waste there is. And we're always trying to figure out how to identify the most targeted group of people so we can reduce that waste. Reducing that waste by 1% translates into significant profits for the organization, and it also has a positive environmental impact.

So it's really interesting when you start thinking about the whole process. Making paper all the chemicals and the water usage and all those things, all the way out to the distribution of direct mail through the use of trucks and fuel. And so, if we can save just a little bit there, we have both positive environmental impact and we have improved profits for our organizations.

So it's a really interesting topic. But before we dive into that whole thing, Sheryl, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Sheryl Barbosa: Absolutely. I would love to. So I am an environmental scientist by career. I've been doing that for over 20 years [00:03:00] now. And I have really developed my career in a way that I now sit at this intersection of sustainability and what I like to call the prevention part of the environmental industry because you're looking at your footprint. You're looking at what you're doing to help.

Stop the problem before it starts. Right? And also how that involves with your systems and your processes and maybe even core parts of your business structure, depending on what you're physically producing. And also, started my career on the other side of that, which is what I call the reactive side of things, which was cleaning up other people's messes.

So if there were things that like got spilled into the environment or put out there that could impact our health as people. Coming up in figuring out what happened, fixing the problem, and trying to prevent it from happening again. So over my career, I've had this amazing experience too across many industries and also different [00:04:00] business sizes.

I have worked with companies that are, sole proprietors all the way up through publicly traded fortune 50 size corporations, and then universities and academics and nonprofits. Seeing how all of these pieces of these industries work independently and together and how they can all align with each other and in support of the environmental health as well.

So, it's a really great space to be in and AI is going to change the landscape by leaps and bounds as long as people are open to using it. And I know to address the big elephant in the room because it's all over the media. Is the environmental impacts of using AI. There's always that people are like, "Oh my God, it uses so much water and electricity every time you query something", or so on and so forth.

And while that's currently true to a point. A lot of those systems recycle what they use, [00:05:00] especially from a water perspective. They're not, pulling more and more out of a resource, but also we can then use this tool that we've created to make that a better operation so that we don't use so much.

And it also gives you an appreciation for being intentional with how you're using these types of tools. 'cause that's what they are. And being able to use them in an intelligent way and not just going, "Hey, , make my dog look like a person."

Erik Martinez: Which is fun by the way.

Sheryl Barbosa: it is fun. Yes. So it is baby steps.

And that's, especially with sustainability, what I remind everybody, no matter what size organization you are, no matter what you're doing in this sphere, it's always baby steps. 'cause we can't get from point A to point B by making these giant leaps. You need progress. And so that's a part of it.

And not to let certain things prevent this progress from developing. And AI is a part of that.

Erik Martinez: A couple weeks ago you and I talked about the idea that data centers, which are a primary consumer of [00:06:00] power. And the need for power to power these AI engines. I think you're talking about how, companies like Google are using AI to make their data centers more efficient and reduce the strain because it costs them money too. At the end of the day, there has to be a profit incentive for a business, especially a for profit business, to do what they do. So yeah, they need more data centers to run their AI tools, but they can use that AI also to figure out how to maximize their power usage.

Make it more concentrated. Which actually reduces the impact and mitigates the effects. Everything works together in our ecosystems. And I think that's one of the misconceptions that people have is that there's just one side of this. There's just huge power consumption, but there's nothing on the other side.

So can you tell us a little bit about. How you see companies using AI [00:07:00] to help counterbalance some of the things that AI might be causing issues with.

Sheryl Barbosa: Absolutely. To even start with what you just said and address that too. AI is really good at making systems and operating processes very efficient and iterating that, and almost continuously optimizing. And from a physical perspective, especially data centers, they're just big boxes, whether it's a giant building or trailers or whatever.

So the beauty of that is oftentimes a lot of these owners, the data center owners will put solar on the buildings. On the property, they will have battery backups because that's the other thing as well, is with the data center, you don't want them to go down because then that's your revenue thing is now not working.

It's not generating you any revenue. So if there is for some reason a failure in like the power grid system, say like your regular power goes out, thunderstorm, whatever they oftentimes will have a lot of these renewable resources there, like battery backups and so on and so forth to help offset, any kind of [00:08:00] activity that happens in that way where the power goes out.

And it also compliments, it's not only producing energy for that particular facility and offsetting, but any extra is going back into the grid anyways. So there is this beauty of this picture of they're able to leverage this piece of property, this building, this physical thing as many ways as they can.

And that includes renewable energy resources as well. And then when you take that into business in general it's really advantageous to optimizing your operations. Regardless of what that is, and from a direct to consumer perspective, could be anything from really being able to target those people that are actually going to put their hands on your mailers or your physical items that you're sending out.

And also being able to figure out, especially magazines, they're very expensive to produce. And I'm sure you'd get this, everybody does around Christmas or the holidays, you get like. 15 different magazines or more from [00:09:00] companies that you probably haven't shopped with in years, and you're like, " I don't even wanna look at this."

I don't have kids anymore. And this is all children's toys, and it ends up in the garbage. So for companies to be able to use that in AI in a way to limit that, it has all those benefits from an environmental perspective of reducing your production which then increases your profit margin and reduces shipping and all of those things that we discussed about earlier from that perspective.

And, if you're a direct to consumer company like there's Allbirds or Casper, which is a mattress company or even the food subscriptions that we get. If they're able to lighten the packaging just a little bit or reduce the routes or even discover other local businesses that can provide supply for their supply chain. That is going to help reduce their logistics, their packaging needs, all of those things. And when it's even just by a small [00:10:00] percentage, even 1%, it makes a huge impact for them and their bottom line. And also from an environmental perspective, it's thousands of tons of waste that's not going into a landfill anymore, or waste that's then being recycled properly and turned back into reuse.

Or being picked up and being reused by, say, a meal delivery service or something along those lines. And then it helps those companies connect with their community that they're operating in a little bit more personally. And that helps your customer loyalty, it increases your sales and so there's a personal connection and trust that then gets developed, which is a beautiful thing and fantastic for anybody's business.

Erik Martinez: Yeah, absolutely. It was interesting. I was sitting at a conference in Boston and the gentleman from the post office came on to do a presentation about what the post office is changing and there's a lot of frustration in the direct mail industry in particular as postal costs have gone up.

Well, I mean, it has to, right? Fuel costs have gone up, [00:11:00] postage has to go up to compensate and there's some debates on, how fast and the impact on the direct mail industry. But one of the things that was really fascinating in his talk, if they're actually able to implement this plan, was you were talking about routing and they were working on kind of this master plan where they did some very interesting analysis about how they're running their trucks out to the various locations because at a mandate that they have to hit every address every single day, every service day. They have to have the ability to do that.

And so they were analyzing these routes where, trucks were going out from, let's say a Kansas City sectional center to a small town in Kansas post office, and they would send out the truck in the morning and it would come all the way back to the sectional center. And then they would send out a truck in the evening to go get that day's mail and then make it all the way back. And sometimes those loads were less than full. Instead of routing that truck to [00:12:00] go out once a day. Then the next day when it runs it route pick up whatever became new.

And so it's just simple things. But that's a thing that, an AI looking at the data could help figure out like, Hey, here's a better routing pattern, and it doesn't actually decrease your ability to deliver the mail within these service standards.

Sheryl Barbosa: Yep.

Erik Martinez: And so it was a fascinating example of how logistics can be better.

Sheryl we just talked about a couple of examples where we're connecting sustainability efforts to brand value and revenue, but why are businesses struggling so much with this? Why are they wrestling with this concept? Because it seems like it makes business sense to do. So, what are the big challenges that they're facing?

Sheryl Barbosa: It definitely varies from business size to business size. But for the most part, I think there's the apprehension around using AI. [00:13:00] For example, if it's a small business, if they're wearing multiple hats. This is just another thing to have to learn. And so I think they're just like, this is what works, has always worked. And it's very difficult for them to even find the time to explore other options and that's, a concern.

And I know a much bigger concern for larger corporations, is the privacy when working with AI. And being able to ensure that what you're putting into it isn't ending up in the hands of potentially everybody.

With that being said, there are a lot of companies that have closed AI. Within their own systems, they'll have their own AI itself. That's an iteration of like chat GPT but also even within chat GPT and as this becomes a more normal, regular thing and there's a lot more instruction around it.

There are ways to tell it, to keep it closed and make sure that you're retaining that information from a, personal perspective. If you're concerned you know about that being public in some way, shape or form. I think that's [00:14:00] a big thing.

And then the other thing is just honestly, it's a matter of understanding what you can create. And a lot of people I see get frustrated 'cause they don't know it's a tool. And so what you put into it is what you're getting out of it. So if you put garbage in, is that famous saying you can get garbage out. And then when people are prompting and they don't understand how to ask properly or they make this compound ask where their one prompt is asking to do seven different things at once because they don't know they get frustrated with it and they're like, that just doesn't work.

So it's a lack of understanding and I think that's starting to come forward. And I think there's certain people that may never get it 'cause they're just not tech savvy, whether it's a personal preference or an age thing or any genre of people. 'Cause I know people of all ages that struggle with it. But it's just a matter of understanding how it works as a tool and it's not difficult to do that, but it does take a little bit of extra learning and some people just don't want that [00:15:00] capacity. And if you don't know how you can use it, you can't really see it as a tool. And I think that's honestly the biggest barrier right now.

Erik Martinez: Yeah, I think one of the common misconceptions that I see is like, it's the one stop shop for everything. I Was doing a project last night that, if I were to calculate out the number of hours I would spend to do this manually. This was a 15 hour project if I were to do it that way. I spent, three or four hours yesterday. And we'll spend a couple more 'cause we've gotta do some validating just trying to get the AI output within a tighter set of parameters. And what I think a lot of people don't quite understand is in order to do that, you have to iterate.

It isn't just blurt one thing out and it's gonna give you the magic answer. You've gotta work with it and iterate and while the tools are getting better and the AI is getting better, it still got a long ways to go.

I was actually having a conversation with a friend who's [00:16:00] an engineer and he designs parts. And he was saying, we've hired this company to help us do some of our CAD work. And he's like, they're not quite getting it yet. And I go, well, are they training the data? Are they training the AI on how your process actually works? Or are they just taking your data and going here, chew the data up with all these other examples?

And when you go to some of these companies websites, they're talking about 10 different industries. Okay, well that makes you wonder like is the tool actually targeted at what I'm specifically doing and trying to accomplish? And I think that's what you're trying to say. So now let's take that and apply it to the world of sustainability. 'cause I think one of the other misconceptions is that sustainability is a bad word in business,

Sheryl Barbosa: Yes.

Erik Martinez: Right? I think it shouldn't be because I think a lot of businesses have realized, hey, if we do these things, like when we cheat and we get caught, [00:17:00] we have to pay fine.

And those fines are not typically big enough to dissuade the behavior. So there's gotta be a stronger, more tangible value. You do this every day. So what are some of those examples that businesses can really make a case for sustainability within their organizations and what are some of the small things that they can do to make sustainability cool?

Sheryl Barbosa: Yes. So a part of, well, I'll throw some metrics out there and that'll help ground people into the why I guess. So as people age and the people who are younger are getting older and they're moving into these spaces where they're gonna have money to buy things and and shop with you or buy houses or anything of that nature.

And as some of, I'm a millennial, as we get older and we get into places in our career where we have even more money to mess around with and make purchases with, and so on and so forth. That's changing the landscape. And [00:18:00] so, the metrics, it's like 75% and from even an employee perspective, 75% of the workforce is a millennial and Gen Z and I believe 88% want to shop with their values and buy things that are noted as sustainable and genuinely better for the planet.

And there're you're gonna get, it increases customer loyalty. It triples it from a operational perspective, when you're pulling sustainability into what you're doing and you're talking about it you increase your employee retention astronomically.

I think that. Typically, a traditional company loses about 12 to 15% of their employees in a given year. When you have a focus on sustainability and there's a lot of reasons why this happens, which I won't dive into 'cause that's a whole different podcast episode.

But it takes that employee retention rate and you're only losing about 2% of your employees. So that's saving thousands of dollars right there. Depending on average, I believe about an entry level employee that you're [00:19:00] paying $50,000 a year when they leave. You're losing about 30 to $40,000 in just them exiting.

And that's just any typical company. But from the perspective of physically using it as a tool within a company. It can be something as small as being able to gather data about, if you have single use items. Whether it's a type of mailer that you're using or packaging or even just the filler within a packaging you can use it as a resource to help you find green alternatives that help it pull data from an expense perspective to make sure it's gonna make financial sense for you in a much quicker way than somebody going out there and trying to hunt and peck through the internet and find this stuff and so on and so forth.

And it allows you to take a look at those micro optimizations. So if you have inventory, you might be able to feed it in your sales from the year prior and have a better forecast of your inventory so you're not holding [00:20:00] onto extra of what you don't need. And, potentially if it's something that is perishable for some capacity, you're losing money on that. So that really helps save in that way.

If you have a brick and mortar location. Obviously a lot of people know about like the energy savings. But it's something that allows you to not only find these things, but the big thing I always tell people that gets lost a lot of the time is the stigma that sustainability is expensive because the products are more expensive, which is not true.

Actually, when you think about, the greatest example is to go containers. When you go to a restaurant, they're usually foam. Some kind of styrofoam. But they've also have these pressed paper ones. Well, the fiber ones used to be more expensive for a very long time. Now because styrofoam is a petroleum product, so when petroleum prices go up, so does the cost of styrofoam. And everybody are so used to ordering those, that they don't think anything about it. And the styrofoam containers are actually more expensive now [00:21:00] than the pressed fiber.

So that's something that, if you don't wanna have to keep revisiting, there's ways to be able to set up alerts for things like that. So it can notify you and send you an email when it runs a certain task for that day. And it could be something like that. But also, you're looking at, you need to tell this story. You're doing the work and you're not seeing the ROI because you're not telling anybody about it.

You're just making a change. You're just changing your toilet paper to something that's more natural. Or, you're changing your shipping and mailer stuff to something that's compostable, things like that. And yes, the person, when they get it, they see it and they go, oh, that's nice, but talk about it.

And you can use AI to help you talk about that. You can use it to help you post on LinkedIn or any other media channels you're on, or even just to talk about it within the context of your company. Because if you're expressing that. It's a feel good thing that everybody can get behind and it helps boost morale.

It helps [00:22:00] everybody feel like they are a part of a bigger purpose within that company. And what that does too, actually is create this cycle of peer accountability in a way. There's a level of that. If you have an office and within the office, people being mindful of that, but then they start paying attention and it's top of mind.

So they might see, okay, we get this kind of printer paper, so next time let's grab this instead. And it starts to echo throughout the organization. And then it has all those intangible benefits, which is, having employees that want to stay. They don't just leave after a year of being there.

And they're being more mindful of the choices they make, and they get to take that home with them too. And then they'll come to you with ideas. You don't have to task people with it. They might say, "Oh hey, manager, somebody mailed me this the other day and I was taking a look at it and I noticed that it's completely compostable and it's something different than what we've used before and I just was curious and noticed that it's [00:23:00] actually cheaper than what we're using now."

It creates this ripple effect team feeling throughout the organization. So there's both physical, tangible, here's your return on ROI investments but there's also the intangible that are born from that, that you get to use, that you can leverage AI to help you tell that story without having to put more on your plate.

Erik Martinez: Well, and I think what you just described is really the process of identifying opportunities. And I think one of the challenges in using AI today is we have been somewhat conditioned to believe that we can use AI in our work to make us faster, more efficient. And all of those things are true, but what are we faster and more efficient for? What is the objective that we're trying to achieve?

And what you just talked about is like, hey, can we be both? Can we use sustainable products in our processes, whether we're printing, mailing, using copy [00:24:00] paper, whatever it is, and can we do that and save money at the same time? Like, that's the question we're trying to answer in this particular case, if we really think about it. What things can we do and can use AI to help us surface it.

It was interesting, I was talking with a buddy of mine, he's an attorney, and I was talking to him about utilizing AI in his business and it's like, "Oh, there's a lot of uproar within the bar about whether law firms should be allowed to use AI." And I'm like, "Well, they're using it, right?" He goes, well, we've seen, plenty of examples of misquoted or mis sighted case law. And I said, "Well, true, but you're thinking about it from that standpoint. I'm like, that's where your attorneys experience and brilliance comes in."

But think about the research. I'm defending a case or I'm prosecuting a case, whatever it is, whichever slide you're on, can you find the case law that makes sense. Can you find the [00:25:00] precedent that you can use in your argument that you wouldn't have found without using AI as part of your research process? And again, that's not asking it to write the brief or make the argument that's just helping you to identify some things.

So if we start thinking about the outcome in mind. Going back to the direct mail scenario, I have a lot of clients. I started in the direct mail industry. I've been mostly in digital marketing for the last 15 years. But what I can tell you is my direct mail clients want to be more digital.

Sheryl Barbosa: mm-hmm

Erik Martinez: And I get that because they're like, everybody's on digital. Well, no, not everybody's on digital. There's lots of offline ways that people and direct mail is a part of that ecosystem. But what you're seeing is postage costs increase. We're seeing a decrease in circulation, which makes sense.

The industry has heavily focused on trying to figure out how to mail less and get [00:26:00] more. And I think, this is one of those cases where a combination of traditional statistical modeling and leveraging AI to predict patterns of behavior within the customer base. Because the one thing we can't do very efficiently right now as an industry is say, you know what? Sheryl buys on these cycles, she buys from me on these cycles, but if I could say, Sheryl buys on these cycles and Eric buys on these cycles, and John over here buys on those cycles. And we could be a lot more predictive. We could be a lot more intelligent about how we promote to you and what channels we promote to in, whether that's print or digital.

And I think that's one of the things that we're trying to do. But as we do that, even digital advertising has a cost. Right. And it's not just the spend. We're still using servers and we're still consuming power, and we're still doing a lot of things [00:27:00] electronically.

Way more efficient than what we used to have to do. You just have to make a phone call or we'd have to get into our car and drive to the local store and find whatever it is we were gonna buy. So we've made a lot of this stuff more efficient, but we've created different challenges in the same process. Can you tell me a little bit about what you're seeing in the businesses that you work with. What their customers are saying? You mentioned earlier that Gen Z and millennials are expecting more of this.

Sheryl Barbosa: Yeah.

Erik Martinez: Right. That's a trend. But what are they expecting specifically, what are the things that really matter to them as a group from your experience in the businesses that you work with?

And how are they addressing those challenges?

Sheryl Barbosa: Yeah, so, I'm glad you asked this question because every so often I go back through what I know, like what I've researched and refresh it and whatnot, and the percentages always keep growing in the positive way. Because [00:28:00] of the digital world and how prevalent it's become part of all of our lives.

What they're finding more and more, interestingly enough, even with the generations from now with Gen Alpha, 'cause they're starting to become teenagers, is there's this desire to have physical, tangible items. In your hands way more than before. Have it be more intentional and directed at you as an individual.

But it's also the sense of community and shopping with their values. Because things have shifted especially in my generation, I'm like an elder millennial, so I'm at the beginning of that generation. But it's this understanding, okay, things have gotten way more expensive.

So spending my money, I'm going to do it very intentionally. And they're slowing down actually in a way. They do leverage AI to make these decisions now as well. They want to shop with their values. And many of them, especially from an environmental perspective, [00:29:00] want, it's almost an expectation now that companies are doing something sustainable.

And that's why also why I say to these companies, talk about it because people need to hear it. Because if they don't, they will actively go, "I'm not gonna go there", or "I'm not gonna buy that", or "I'm not gonna work with that company. " And so there's this huge push with shopping with those values.

And ironically, even though things are more expensive they will pay, about 60% more. For a product, if they know that it's in alignment with their values and morals. So what they're creating is responsible for the environment that it's intentional.

So it's interesting 'cause everybody, like you said, they're moving to digital, but you can absolutely use that to better understand your customers who are interacting digitally to then intentionally send out mailers. So you're sending out fewer. But they're speaking the language of that person you're sending them to.

And so you're going to get a far better response and probably a [00:30:00] purchase than you would if you just fan mailed everybody. Because as somebody, in a former life I had my real estate license for a while, a number of years ago and whatnot. And I remember that discussion around like, postcards don't work anymore. Everybody just throws 'em away. No one even looks at them. So don't waste your money. And it's true.

A lot of people, 'cause it was just this like- you're just throwing spaghetti at the ball and maybe long of averages you'll get a couple people that buy 'cause it resonates with them. But other, like, oh, I needed a leaf gutter guy. Like, okay, great. Perfect timing. And , the service provider can come out and, get the business, or I was gonna get shelves put in my closet. Great. But for the most part it's not very targeted.

So it's almost, in a way, it allows you to be more targeted. And that's what we are looking at. 'cause I know I have the time now. It's like if I wanna get organizers put in my closet, let's say, I will take the time. And especially now with AI, which makes it easier. To find a company that's either using a material that's green and sustainable, maybe it's plastic that's been recycled from other plastic products instead of that [00:31:00] compressed wood, something like that.

Almost always looking a lot of local. That is huge. Localized. So being able to especially if you're in communities, whether it's just you and your small business and you're in one community or you're a national company, everybody operates in a community. Where you're sending those mailers, that is a community that you're operating in.

So being able to connect with them and source that in some way, shape or form, with your business, whatever that means. That's huge. And mentioning that. Saying we work with local small businesses or we support local small businesses. It doesn't even need to be that you get money from them, but if you're giving back into the community, that's huge.

And sustainability plays a big part in that, mainly because Gen Z and Gen Alpha, so you're looking maybe thirties, down to teenagers and younger all realize like the world is literally on fire right now. And it's a big thought in the front of their mind. And so having that intentionality with whatever you [00:32:00] do, if you're gonna mail out mailers, great, but get super specific on your market if you know you're hitting a certain age range and this is what they care about. Great.

Use AI to do that. Use AI to parse through all of that information and data. Whether it's your own or you're sourcing it, and then your marketing team, or marketing app or whatever you're using. You can help really refine what that looks like and what the message is saying so that you're speaking their language.

So then that optimizes your sales, but also allows you to be very targeted around how much you're spending just to get the word out. And honestly interesting this morning, I just had this discussion weirdly text messaging seems to be honestly the most effective thing as of late, which is interesting because it seems a little more analog than like a fancy app or website or whatever, but it's like right in front of your face.

And you're not always checking your email, but you are always checking your text messages. And that's, just another [00:33:00] route where it is better for the environment and in a way 'cause you're not mailing things out. But also, it's something that you're connecting, you're making these connection points with your customers or potential customers.

So being able to leverage that and using AI to leverage that is huge. And getting that data and information in your own hands for those markets of people that are my age in their forties and younger.

Erik Martinez: Yeah, it's really interesting. Earlier this year I had a conversation with a lady, her name's Jeanette McMurtry, and she really approaches marketing from the neuroscience human behavior perspective. And I can't remember the exact stat, but it's something like, 95% of all our decisions are made emotionally.

Sheryl Barbosa: Yep.

Erik Martinez: It's really interesting because you sit there and go, we have data-driven reasons to do something. As a business, I'm hearing a stronger reliance on data-driven decision making, and yet the consumers on the other side of the equation are buying [00:34:00] on emotionally driven behaviors. And what you're really talking about is like, we've gotta appeal. The way we get better response rates or higher dollar value from whatever campaigns we're running, is to appeal to that emotional side. And have AI help us, which sustains our need as a business to use the data driven side to dig into that data and really identify what are the emotions that people want to trigger.

Sheryl, as we start to move the close I'm curious about something. What are you most excited about AI and sustainability? In the future of business.

Sheryl Barbosa: I'm excited about, the creativity that's gonna be born from that and what that means for, not just sustainability and watching that grow and watching people be able to adopt sustainability in ways that really helps them, that's strategic for them. But also just how it's going [00:35:00] to provide this level of creativity and community as well.

I think that. It's going to help us shift from this less bad or like very hypercritical, almost, negative mindset to something that's are actively good. We can look at it and go, okay, how can I use this? One of the quotes I say is, let's use your business as a force for good. And AI can be the same so that you know you can. Bring benefit to, it's a win for everybody, for you, for your customers, for everyone. And you can do it in a way that. Helps create this net positive impact. So, whether it's from, monitoring your routes and optimizing those and then, if you need to tweak 'em 'cause somebody calls outta work or whatever, then it's great.

And also, the nerdy part of me is like, well, cool self-autonomous vehicles will have AI built in for sure. So, eventually we'll get to a point where delivery will just be done by a computerized vehicle.[00:36:00]

Erik Martinez: Probably not the drones that

Sheryl Barbosa: No, probably not drones

Erik Martinez: Probably not the drones. It's actually funny I was talking with my engineering friend and we were just talking about this very concept that, this autonomous. AI integrated into our society on a day-to-day basis is coming.

And I can tell you I had a fairly recent experience where I was driving across the country, rented a car, and it had, some pretty advanced lane sensing tech in whatever. And it didn't quite drive itself, but there were periods where it's like, dude, are you, keeping your hands on the wheel and I'm like, yeah, my hands are right there. But it was doing such an amazing job of keeping me in the lane far enough from the car in front of me. Anticipating curves.

It was really incredible. And so one of these days I would love to be able to turn over that driving. I'd probably drive versus fly more frequently if I could spend my time doing other things than just watching the road.[00:37:00]

Sheryl Barbosa: Yeah, I have a Tesla and I have like the cruise control that adjusts. That's been around for a while, but it's not the full self-driving, but they call it auto steer. So it's that lane departure mechanism that effectively Yeah.

And my car that just did an update and it'll slow down for curves in the road. And it's not perfect. I did have a trial of like the full self-driving and it was really cool, and weird. It felt weird, but it's not perfect yet, so it's still got some time to get there, but it's gonna get there.

I think because of AI and how quickly things are coming, these developments are gonna happen exponentially. It'll seem like leaps, but there are baby steps involved. But it will seem like leaps from one thing to another, because it'll be just such a huge change.

And I think that a lot of people need to get comfortable with change and still maintain a safe level of, what's going on and so on and so forth. But, one of my favorite examples is, there's areas that they consider food [00:38:00] deserts in cities because there's just, there's no grocery stores nearby, just the way the development worked out.

And so places have started doing vertical farming. Farming in buildings or in containers or whatever. And because of AI. And AI being able to literally run the whole system and know one to water and how much to water and what to cool and all this other stuff. They're able to create a lot of produce that can then go out to feed the community and actually alleviate some of those issues in those areas where there are food deserts.

And you can't fit a huge grocery store, but at least you can have like that corner convenience store. That veggie stand or things like that, and giving more access to more of these things that we wouldn't have if we didn't have this technology available to us.

And we're doing it in the most sustainable way possible. And that's amazing. It truly is life changing. It's unbelievable.

Erik Martinez: Well, Sheryl, thank you so much for coming on [00:39:00] today. It has been so much fun having this conversation because I think, like I said, sustainability sometimes has a bad rap, and I think you're one of the first people I've talked to in quite some time who has a view of sustainability and technology working together.

And I think that is very cool and it's very applicable to the types of work that the businesses I work with do. Right. They're very tangible things, and they can be just small steps. They don't have to be like, change the world. We're not gonna go from, x to emitting zero overnight.

But we can take small steps towards that and improve the quality of our workers' lives, improve the quality of our businesses, and improve our profits at the same time. That to me is, I think the fundamental thing. There's gotta be an economic incentive to do that, and I think the technology opens more of those economic incentives than we've had available to us prior to this point in time.[00:40:00]

Sheryl Barbosa: Absolutely.

Erik Martinez: So thank you so much. If somebody wants to reach out, what's the best way to get ahold of you?

Sheryl Barbosa: Absolutely. So, I have email do you have show notes that go with the episodes? We can

always put everything, email, website, all of that in those show notes. I've got my consulting portion of my business is Green Her Earth. And we can put my email address in there and my website address in there so people, if they're driving or whatever wants to work with me. I am always excited and looking forward to. Like I said, I've worked with companies of all different sizes in all different industries.

And so I'm always up for a good challenge and love working with people who are there, who are in that mindset that wanna, use their business as a force for good and just optimize and make themselves better, make their business better, make the world better.

Erik Martinez: Awesome. Well, it's been amazing having you on. I've enjoyed our conversation. I'm sure we could dive into this for forever. And get into the nitty gritty and get really nerdy. [00:41:00] But we'll save that for another day. So that's it for today's episode of the Digital Velocity Podcast. Thank you for listening and have a great day.

Narrator: