Web3 CMO Stories

Why Winning with AI Starts with Business Outcomes, Clean Data and Putting People First | Sandy Carter | S06 E01

• Joeri Billast • Season 6

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The ground is moving under our feet, and that’s exactly why this conversation matters. We sit down with Sandy Carter to unpack a practical path through the AI hype: start with outcomes, feed models with clean, structured data, and never skip the human change that decides whether an initiative sticks or stalls. From executive playbooks to frontline tactics, we get specific about what works, what fails, and how to build trust when synthetic media blurs what’s real.

We dive into the convergence of AI and blockchain and why verification is becoming a core product feature. Deepfakes and misinformation are not just PR problems—they are customer experience problems. Provenance, identity, and ownership give teams a way to show their work and earn belief. Then we turn to discovery. SEO still matters, but GEO—generative engine optimization—is stealing the spotlight. Executives increasingly ask LLMs for the “top five” solutions and stop there. To make that list, brands need credible signals in the places models pull from: thoughtful Reddit threads, up-to-date Wikipedia entries, technical explainers, and answers crafted for natural questions, not just keywords. We talk tactics, from UTMs for answer engines to content designed for prompts, entities, and clarity.

The future is humans plus machines. Agents collaborate, robots learn by watching, and even a pizza-delivery humanoid sparks new questions: if the robot selects the drink, who does the brand persuade—the family or the agent? As homes and workplaces adapt to new hardware, marketers will build for both human preference and agent defaults. Through it all, Sandy’s message stays grounded: align AI to real business value, protect what must remain private, open what should be discoverable, and communicate clearly so people understand the why, the how, and the benefit.

This episode was recorded through a Descript call on November 26, 2025. Read the blog article and show notes here:  https://webdrie.net/why-winning-with-ai-starts-with-business-outcomes-clean-data-and-putting-people-first/

If this conversation gave you a roadmap for smarter AI strategy, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick 5-star review so others can find it too. Your feedback shapes what we explore next.

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Speaker:

AI is only as smart as the data that you bring to the table.

Joeri Billast:

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories Podcast. My name is Joeri Billast. I'm your podcast host. And today I'm joined by someone who barely needs an introduction. Hello Sandy, how are you?

Speaker:

I'm doing great. We're having a great day today, I have to say, both weather-wise, business-wise, and personal-wise. So can't ask for anything better than that, right?

Joeri Billast:

Guys, if you don't recognize the voice, we have Sandy Carter here on the podcast. Sandy is one of the most respected voices in AI, blockchain, enterprise innovation. She's chief business officer and head of Go to Market as Unstoppable Domains. And she shapes industry thinking through Forbes and a digital economist. And she's one of the only two people. So actually, only Mark Schaefer came three times on the podcast, Sandy. And you are the second person that came for the third time on the podcast.

Speaker:

That's amazing. Thank you so much for having me.

Joeri Billast:

Yes, welcome. Happy to have you, Sandy. Let's dive directly in there. You've held C-level roles across AWS, IBM, and supportable domains, and now uh global AI leadership circles. What is the deep pattern that you see that maybe most leaders still miss about how AI and Web3 are reshaping the business models these days?

Speaker:

Well, I think that a lot of business leaders think that it's something magic and they get super enthralled with AI, or they think, I've got to do an AI project. When in reality, AI will change everything about our lives. It is changing everything today. So there is no doubt about that. But you have to approach it in a similar way to how you've done other transformations. So, for example, it needs to be linked to a business outcome, not just the technology. I see all the time, and I wrote about it in my book, AI First Human Always, where people get enthralled with an AI project. It's not an AI project, it's a business project. You're doing something to improve your business, make it more cost effective, drive new revenue, open new markets. You're doing something for your business, and you happen to be leveraging AI to do that. The companies, the people who understand that, it's super important. Um, secondly, you have to understand it's about the data. AI is only as smart as the data that you bring to the table. I was just talking to someone the other day. It was quite funny. They said, I wanted to create an AI agent to evaluate all my losses. Now that's good, right? He's starting with the business problem. He wants to figure out why he's losing deals. I asked him, Do you have the data stored in HubSpot or Salesforce? He's like, no. Do you have it in spreadsheets somewhere? No. Have your sales rep to have been tracking it manually so you can get to the data. No. Well, that's not a good place to start because there's no data there. You have nothing to base it on. Guy isn't magic. It's not going to magically figure out why you're losing deals. It's going to work with the data and the input that you give it. Finally, I'm still seeing leaders focus on the technology. In an AI project, you've really got to focus on. There's been several reports from Mackenzie and Deloitte that said most people are spending 90% of their time on the tech, 10% of the time on the people. I don't think that's right. I think for any transformation project, you've got to look at how you are leveraging your people. Your people are still your strongest resource. How are you leveraging them to make changes? And I have a great example I love to tell. Um, there is a there was a project in, I think it was Malaysia. Um, and the project was looking at putting these mood jackets, you know, like you used to have a mood ring, putting these mood jackets on people and using it to make their workplace a better place, testing the heat, the lighting, people's moods, like how they're doing. Do they need music? Do they need food? Do they need a coat? What is it that they need? And they spent nine months on the technology and they spent one week explaining it to the people. And so you can imagine what happened. The project failed. It didn't fail because the technology's not good or the motives of the people doing it weren't good. It failed because they did not think about, okay, how do I roll this out to the people? How do I let them know that it's anonymous data? How do I let them know my goal is to make the workplace better for them? How do I let them know that I'm collecting the data, using it in AI, but I'm not looking at productivity. So how do I communicate all those things? For the leaders and the managers on the manufacturing floor who did that, their products were successful. The rest, not successful. I think people are thinking that AI is so magical and so different that I don't have to do the normal steps. And you do. You really need to look at what's working today, what data do you have, what business challenge are you trying to address? People, people, people. My book is AI First, human always, human always, because I still think people are the ones who understand what's going on in the marketplace today.

Joeri Billast:

Absolutely. And I love that people are scared that AI will replace them, but it's not an or story, it's an end. I also have my new book, The Future CMO, where I speak about trust too. AI assisted me in writing the book. It's not doing it for me. One thing I read, I think on LinkedIn, you said about bubbles. I think you said bubbles fuel innovation. How should founders and marketers interpret today's AI bubble without losing strategic clarity?

Speaker:

When I was writing this article for Forbes, I thought it was really interesting that everybody keeps talking about this AI bubble. Some people talk about a compute issue or a compute bubble that's happening right now. In reality, I think any of these bubbles that are occurring may or may not occur, who knows, are really going to fuel innovation. Because if you think about the past, what people do is when there is a bubble, they think differently. They innovate faster. They look for different ways to articulate what they're doing. And so I think a bubble can be good. It's not always good, but it can be good in what's happening in the marketplace right now. We saw this with dot-com. We've seen it in, you know, even before dot com bubble popped. I just think there are so many opportunities to kind of innovate your way out of it, uh, if you would. And for me, that's what's so magical about this time. It's moving so fast. I think faster, at least for me, I don't know about you, it's moving faster than anything I've experienced in my career. Would you agree with that?

Joeri Billast:

Yeah, absolutely. It goes so fast. I love tech, but every day there is something new.

Speaker:

I have two daughters and they love Alice in Wonderland. In that book, Alice had to travel twice as fast to stay in place. I feel like I'm doing 10 times as fast right now to stay in place. And so what you really have to figure out mechanisms to feed information to you, but know that everybody's behind. Like it's not just you, like everybody's behind. If someone tells you, oh, I got it all covered, I know everything that's going on. There is no way today that you can have everything covered. It's just not possible. There's so much happening. I even wrote an agent to help me stay on top of it. And I keep having to update my agent because there's new more news sources coming out. I think the big thing though is to always remember, you know, first principles. You're running a business, you want to generate revenue, you want to reduce your costs. I mean, first principles apply. Um, and so if you keep thinking about that, okay, first principles apply, first principles apply. I think you can have good business outcomes using the technology, even if you're not first in the race to know it all.

Joeri Billast:

Yeah. It's about the value that you bring, your services, your products, not about the technology behind that. We've seen it in Web3, we've seen that no in AI. I was at Web Summit, every business they have like AI somewhere in their business.

Speaker:

Before, when we were in the Web3 bubble, everything was about Web3 blockchain. You had to have it in there. I do believe, though, I will tell you, and I even cover it in my book, that Web3 is going to partner closely with blockchain. There is such a trust gap today that's going on in the market. People don't trust what they're seeing. They don't trust the data, they don't trust the pictures. And that's something that blockchain is incredibly great at is doing that trusted verification, right? Making sure you can identify who owns what with the clarity of ownership. I think that that is going to come into play. And I think leaders who look at that, it's going to be very, very important. And in fact, we just did a list of the unstoppable women of web three and AI. And we were looking at the list of the top most inspirational women. And one of the interesting things we saw this year, last year we saw women were in web three or they were in AI. This year, the majority were in web three and AI. Like they were working on a project that involved decentralization and AI, not one or the other. And I thought, wow, what a what an interesting phenomenon that now we're seeing both of these come to play, convergent. I was reading an article from a futurist, and her comment was trends are made when convergence happens. That's when things really start to get fast. And I think that's where we are today in terms of the technology, that trend of combining the two together.

Joeri Billast:

No, I was at SBC Summit at the same venue, actually, where Web Summit was. Gary V was giving a keynote there. I met Gary. By the way, Gary will also come on the show next year.

Speaker:

Congratulations, he's so funny.

Joeri Billast:

Yeah, he's so, and he's also direct. You know, I went to Gary, and Gary also gave a talk about AI, and he also talked about Web3, and he made actually the same point. He said the problem is now these days, everyone can make a video about me doing things I never did or I never said. And for him, he said blockchain is a solution that you can, you know, prove it's actually true.

Speaker:

It's interesting because one of the things that happened that really brought the point home to me, and I know probably a silly example, but the Pope, you know, I don't know if you remember the Pope with the Pope in the bomb and puffer jacket. And it went viral. Millions of people saw that particular picture of him. And after he started getting so many likes, millions of likes, he came out and said, That's not me. Because, you know, he was a pope. He's he's passed on now. So, but he he was a very humble pope. He was a very frugal pope, very much interested in people who were disadvantaged. And he didn't want anybody to think that he had spent thousands of dollars on this puffer coat. And so he came out and said, That's not me. That's AI dread, that's an AI generated picture. Well, a week later, I went to Los Angeles and we were doing this red carpet for an AI and blockchain event, and it was cold. Like Los Angeles is not supposed to be cold, and it was freaking cold. The only thing I brought with me was a puffer jacket. I put my puffer jacket on. I had this beautiful dress that I wore down the red carpet, but I had to wear my puffer because I was freezing. People took pictures of it, and when they posted them, everybody said, Oh, that wasn't you. That was AI generated. Why? Because the Pope a week before had just had that picture posted and it was fake. So I think we're dealing with both sides of the same coin right now, fake pictures being posted and people not knowing if it's true or not, but then real pictures being posted and you don't know whether it's true or not. And that's where I love blockchain that can provide that trusted verification, saying I'm Sandy and I verify that that picture is me, versus not having any way to tell. And I think this trust issue, it's so important right now. So important.

Joeri Billast:

Yes. So this is really important. Like I said, I mentioned it also in my book. AI is evolving so fast. Another thing, let me say this. The guy from Singularity, the CEO, he was at Web Summit. He was I've also recorded a podcast with him. It came already out. Yeah, you can check it out. Is the guy from Sophia the robot? He was explaining all of that. I know you also are interested in robots, you humanoids, and so on. Um, I'm curious to hear uh what signals that tell you we are in a new era of humans plus machines, machine collaboration.

Speaker:

Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, in the past used to tell machines what to do. We would program it and say, do A, do B, and machines would do it. Today we're in the era of agents where we partner together and they learn and they, you know, then come up with an answer. Could be creative, could not be creative. It's kind of kind of an interesting phenomenon. But I think here, and some of it starting today, is we're gonna have AI that comes out in a physical form of a robot or a humanoid or just the piece of hardware that's very, very, very specialized. I think the model changes once again, because robots learn by doing. I just did an interview with Dr. Um Adil. He has a company, and the company focuses on hands, just hands for robots. Uh, super complicated. It's the hardest thing to get right on a robot because think about how many motions your hand does, what it can do, how it does it. It's the hardest thing to get right. The original focus of robots was just moving, right? Can you move from here to there? Much simpler than figuring out dexterity, manipulation of a hand. And I was asking him, how did you train the hand? And he said, we train the hand by watching the other hand. And so it's a different learning model. It's learning by watching and doing. I was just with a company who does robots or humanoids for the elderly. And they were telling me that the robots learn by watching. They were in one retirement community or assisted living community, and the whole vibe or the whole culture was calm and so and very empathetic. And so they were treating the people in the assisted living with that calm demeanor. They imitated what they saw. And then in another home, it was more aggressive. It's like, you're gonna get up today and you're gonna walk, right? You're gonna do it, you're gonna move. And the robot started imitating that. And then I was also scared because it then made me think, what if the robot sees somebody abusing someone? Do they copy that? Yeah, they do. That's what they do. I think one of the cool future careers will be training robots, figuring out how do you train a robot? Because it's not just knowledge now. Now we're talking, we're talking about how you how you have empathy, how you respond, your culture. It's a whole different ballgame. And so I do think that this is very interesting as we move forward in how how does how does this occur? And then, you know, another challenge that he was telling me is we were talking about, you know, all, you know, Christmas is coming up, the holidays are coming up. So there's lots of gifts out there. In fact, I just saw an advertisement for this dog. It's a robot dog that kind of watches and learns the environment and then, you know, responds to that environment. And we were thinking, okay, so if the robot dog goes with the child in the bedroom, goes with the child here, follows and watches the child, who is watching the data? Like who gets that data? That data could be really harmful in the wrong hands. And again, back to if you have an abusive house, does a dog start trying to bite the child because it senses that hostility? There are a lot of things I think we haven't thought about yet that are coming. And then if we relate it back to marketing, because I know your podcast is about marketing. I was in Silicon Valley and I was invited to one of the garages where they're developing a humanoid that comes and delivers a pizza. And I love that they're doing a lot of beta tests and they're testing it out. So the humanoid knocks on the door, delivers your pizza, you pay the robot, but it comes in your house and then it sets the table for you, serves you the pizza, pours you the drink, waits patiently while you finish to eat, picks up the plates, go take some, does the dishes, cleans everything up, and then leaves the home. And he was telling me, you know, I was like, what are you learning so far? And he said, Well, first we've learned that the architecture of a house matters because the humanoid, so it doesn't tip over and hurt a dog or a child, has to have a base on it. And a lot of the houses in Silicon Valley don't have wide enough doors. So we brought in a whole bunch of architects in Silicon Valley. So the next phase of houses that are built will have wider doors, wider hallways, so you the robot can come in. And at the same time, we're working on a smaller base so it can get into the houses that are there today. And then he said, we were thinking about it as the robot's pouring the drink. The robot chose Coke over Pepsi. So then he was like, wow. So now is Coke and Pepsi are they gonna sell to me, the robot company, instead of the family? Because I now am selecting the drink or washing the dishes. Is PG now gonna market to me, the robot company, or are they gonna market to the family still? Like, is all this gonna change? And then right after I visited him, I saw Walmart had started a division of people that are figuring out how to market to humanoids, robots, and agents, not to people. They still have their people marketing, but how do they market on that side too? So, anyway, I think there's gonna be for all of these, you know, whether it's AI or blockchain or robots, I think all of these are gonna have implications that are gonna be far reaching into the way we market, the way we live, our safety practices, our privacy, which is Back to trust again as well.

Joeri Billast:

Yeah, back to trust. And again, you mentioned data. As marketers, we use a lot of data and realize how much data is out there, you know. We had social media, we have websites, all the cookies, but now we have AIs like ChatGPT perplexity and so on. People are a bit scared, you know, what to do. Where is the data going? Now you have the browsers, the Hatas browser, the comment browser. I'm curious, what is the message, maybe, Sandy, that you can bring to our listeners? Should they be scared about the data, or is it already too late? The data is already spread around.

Speaker:

I think that question is a hard question. So let me unpack it a little bit. I do think a lot of data has already been scraped. I'm an author, you're an author, our books have already been scraped for content. There are lawsuits out there, but I think the data has been scraped right now. But if you're going to put up a website, there are now tools that you can use to block scraping of your data. For example, there's a startup called CrowdGen AI. They use blockchain that provides an invisible watermark over your content on a website or a picture or a video that disables an LLM from scraping that data. So if you've got confidential data or you know, things you haven't patented yet and you don't want everybody to see, you can protect it. Cloudflare also is doing some interesting things for their customers where your data is not being scraped. Now, there's positives about that. Nobody can take it, nobody can steal it. There's negatives to that. Not being searched, not being tagged, not showing up in Claude or Chat GPT. I do think as marketers, we need to think about how do we want our data being used? Where do we want it to show up? And how do we make sure that we're protecting the things we don't want to show up, but showcasing the things we want to. I also think for searchable data, and I don't know if you've done a podcast on this yet, GEO versus SEO. I mean, GEO is moving faster than I predicted. I really thought it was going to do really well, but just not take away so much share. Um, recent report came out by McKinsey that showed that most executives today they will go and they'll say, Hey, I'm looking for a CRM tool. I want it to have these characteristics. Hey, ChatGPT, give me the top five choices. And that'll be all they look at for an RFP, those five choices. So if you're a marketeer, how does your data get into the Clauds, the Geminis, the GROCs? And they're all different. There's no standard. They all look at different things. How do you get your data in there? One interesting thing I found at our company is that a lot of the data pulled by LLMs came from Reddit. And so I hired a person who, and all he does is focus on Reddit. We started a subreddit for Unstoppable. We figured out all the subreddits that hit my customer base, were in all of those subreddits. Now, when you go to Chat GPT, Perplexity, Grok, Gemini, and type in our name, you'll see a lot of stuff coming from Reddit. Wikipedia page. I mean, see how many times those tools pull a Wikipedia page. So we, for the first time in our history, we're founding in 2018. We now have a Wikipedia page and we get pulled from there. So all these data questions right now are crucial for marketeers to really figure out and understand how they're going to use that data to help their customers get value and understand an acquisition, you know, that they should be one that they're looked at.

unknown:

Yeah.

Joeri Billast:

Yeah, it was a question, but I mostly look at the positive side of things. We are marketers, we use our book as a business card. I see my blog, for instance, like in one hour, all my pages are looked at. I see this in that analytics. But yeah, that's also, you know, then I show up and actually I have clients coming to me that they say, you know, we are not clicking, we don't get any visits anymore from Google. It's because Google is already replying in the AI answers. And then a discussion that I have sometimes with traditional marketers that they say, Oh, we need to look at the SEO and so on. But yeah, that's because then it's I need to explain to them that the world has changed and that it is sums a hard message. And if you explain this to people who have always been doing that, and then suddenly it changes.

Speaker:

Yeah, it's really fascinating. I've talked to SEO marketers, and they're used to using keywords. This is my keyword. I've got to own this keyword. But when you get to an LLM, you're not owning a keyword, you're owning a prompt. It's different. It's like figuring out how your customers or your potential customers pass that question. Today, I do feel like you've got to do SEO and GEO. I think it's it's coming further over to GEO, but they are different. Like they are different. If you're successful at SEO, it does not mean that you're going to be successful in GEO. I was just playing with a tool the other day, and I said, hey, let's look at some big companies, an IBM and Amazon, and they rank super high on SEO. And then we went to GEO, not there. So you can't apply the same principles to both. You really have to be smart on all of these tools for sure.

Joeri Billast:

Absolutely. I've been contacted by a startup still in stealth modus, but yeah, building something to measure where is actually the traffic from and what can you change and how can you measure it's building, it's testing because as you mentioned, these different tools don't work the same way, how everything is showing up. So definitely we'll have probably more conversations on my podcast. I already had a few about it's always about the topic, you know, that comes because it's something that is top of mind.

Speaker:

Um sometimes it's very practical and something you can do like right now, and it shows impact right now. I mean, we're already tracking UTMs from the LLMs, from all the generative tools. So you can see impact right away. I mean, it is a good place to start because most people do SEO. Um, and so teaching, and and there's some really good tools out there too. So if you want some CEOs and founders to meet, let me know to talk about their tooling that's out there because there are some really good tools that can help you identify where you're gapping in DEO and what to do about it.

Joeri Billast:

That's great. Lots of things to talk about. Then the podcast episode with Sandy, is there any message you want to bring to our audience based on your experience, your book, or something else that we can have hope for the future?

Speaker:

Yeah, I mean, I would say a couple of things. One, I think it's all about convergence. Just like my friend the futurist said, that's when trends really start to matter, is when you start to see convergence. And we're starting to see that convergence right now with blockchain and AI. For markers, I would say don't get frustrated with artificial intelligence. There's so much you can do, there's so much potential there. You've got to figure out how you use AI agents to supplement your teams, how you do GEO. It can be done. So don't give up, don't get frustrated. Everybody's behind. You're not behind. You're not the only one behind. So, you know, just hang in there, look at the data, look at what's happening. And then I think my final message is don't forget the people. If you look at my book, the title of my book is AI First, Human Always. And this right here, I fought hard to keep in the book. They're like, just do AI first. That's what all people want to hear about. And I know that's what people want to hear about, but this is really the secret sauce. It's the human always part that's the secret sauce. I think marketeers who keep that humanity, who who have that creativity, I think they're gonna be the best marketeers. You can use AI in everything you do, and I do, but don't lose that human connection using your people and helping to drive forward as well.

Joeri Billast:

Very positive message at the end, Sandy. I will put the link to your book in the show notes. I would say people that are listening to this podcast episode or that that are reading your book, are reading my book, they will already be ahead of the crowd, Sandy. Well, if I want if yeah, there is a place or maybe some place, other places where you want me to send my listeners to, where would that be, Sandy? How can people be in touch with you or follow your work?

Speaker:

Yeah, so if you're interested in chatting, I'm all over LinkedIn. Please note that my connections are full. So if you try to connect with me and you can't, it's not because I don't like you. I can't connect with you. I've maxed out of connections. You can follow me and message me, and I'll be happy to help you out as much as I can. For my company, Unstoppable, we are also on LinkedIn and Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. If you want to learn more about blockchain and how blockchain can help you, how a domain can help you with your branding, please reach out to Unstoppable as well. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast and for um, you know, just allowing all these messages to go out there and your listeners to get so much value from what you're doing as well.

Joeri Billast:

Yes, thank you, Sandy. There are two other episodes about digital identity and so on. Sandy has been two times already on the show. I will put the links also in the show notes if you want to learn more about. Sandy, it was really a pleasure to have you on the show.

Speaker:

My pleasure, thank you so much, and thanks everyone for listening.

Joeri Billast:

Guys, what an amazing episode! Always a pleasure to have someone like Sandy on the show. So much wisdom, so many golden nuggets. So I'm sure this episode will be useful for people around you. So be sure to share it with them. Other marketers, founders, family, friends, please share the link with them. If you're not yet following the show, this is a really good moment to do this to hit the subscribe button. If you haven't given me given me a review yet, if you give me 5 stars, this will help me reach an even bigger audience. And of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care, bye.

Head Shot

Joeri Billast

Host
Contributor

Sandy Carter

Guest