AI Got Boring | Trinity Nguyen | Full Battery Media

In this episode of the Full Battery Media Podcast, I sat down with Trinity Nguyen, CMO at UserGems, to talk about AI, marketing, storytelling, and why being human matters more than ever. Trinity works every day in the world of AI for go-to-market, outbound sales, and ABM, but what I loved most about this conversation was how much we kept coming back to authenticity, lived experience, and real human connection.

We talked about how AI can help businesses cut through data, prioritize leads, and produce content faster, but also how easy it is for brands to start sounding exactly the same. Trinity shared a powerful idea that taste is “lived experience plus judgment,” and that hit home for me because the moments people connect with most are rarely the polished ones. They are the real ones.

This conversation is about using AI without losing the human story behind your brand.

As AI content becomes more common, do you think people will trust polished content or real, messy, human stories more?

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

So many of the big AI companies here are now hiring a chief storytelling officer, which is a crazy title. Yeah. Yeah. It's like how do you get people how do you cut through the noise? Because in the in the age where developing software becomes so easy, a lot of the software companies or just companies in general, they're most disappearing, especially on in tech. So then how do you cut through the noise? How do you get someone to like at the end of the day when they look at the choices, which one they would pick? And it's usually brand. And as long as, again, humans are on who makes decisions, the emotion side of things will come into play. Like, do I like that company? Do I trust that company? Do you think I can count on them after I sign this, like, docusign a contract? Um, so yeah, storytelling is a big part of it. And it's not like an overnight thing either. It's something that's gotta build over time. Just because one day you show up and show me your authentic life and I had no idea who you were. I'm just like, that's random. And then you move on, right? So it has to be consistent over time.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Welcome everybody back to the Full Battery Media Podcast. I am your host, Sean Trace, and I have an awesome guest with me today. Can you tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Uh happy to. Uh hi everyone. My name is Trinity Nguyen. I'm the CMO at UserGems. We are the AI Command Center for Outbound and ABM. So I live and breathe AI for GoToMarket. Happy to be here. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

That's great. Talk to me about how you got down this path and how did you go down this this this new new AI path as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Oh, where where do we begin?

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

How back are we going? Well, I basically I've been um I've been at UserGems for six and a half years. I was I was the first business hire. So you can imagine like almost every role in the go to market team I gotta do. My background, though, originally, my background is more on the product marketing side. So on the strategy, competitive, positioning, messaging, all that. And uh then joining UserGem is kind of like I have to learn the other parts of marketing lady management, content, SEO, and also doing um prospecting myself as well in the early days. So that's kind of like the snapshot.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

That's awesome. Well what what is UserGem and how does it use AI in just easy, simple terms?

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Um easy simple terms. I mean, you can think about it like where the AI brain for your outbound and and like outbound sales and then marketing. What that means is it's like a one place where you get aggregate all the data you have and then it figure out who you should go after, when and why, based on if they leaving like some signals out there, like showing that they're interested or looking for solutions like yours, and then help your team figure out like how to find them, how to reach out to them to cut through the noise, and then making sure the team work on those and advertise to them. Hopefully that was easy.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

It is, it is, it is, because I think that one of the things that I find is so helpful from AI is that the ability to cut through noise. And I think that when you're looking at a bunch of data and you're trying to figure out how do I organize this? And I mean, and I we're not just talking about data of like in life, we are overwhelmed with information, like cleaning your room. You're looking at a room and you're like, where do I start? You know, do I start here or here, here? But yet actually, if you were to analyze things really, really, really like well, there is an optimal way to do things, whatever it might be, whether it be in marketing, cleaning your room, whatever it might be. But we yet getting through all of the extra information. And like, and I I pick cleaning your room because I think it's something that people can relate to. It is a simple thing that's actually still quite difficult. And it's difficult because you've got so much noise stuff that's all over. And like when you're talking about marketing, where you're talking about outbound sales or anything, there's even more noise. You know, you might get someone like, hey, can you tell me about that? How do you you have four different people, it's random, but number, four different people who ask you about a product. Who's actually gonna buy? Who's actually important to focus on? Because that's hard to know. But there, if you can get enough data, I think it's easier to know, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

Yeah, it makes sense. And I think in the past, if we go back like 20, 30 years, I think data was hard to find. Um, but now I would say in the last probably five, six years, like data is so accessible. And now with like the AI thing, it's just so easy to build something to find a certain data about your market. So it's actually data is not hard to find. Accurate data is hard to find, but I think the harder thing is like, how what are you gonna do with all of that data? Like you said, in the cleaning the room, you just have so much going on. Like people have finite attention span and finite amount of time that you can get your work done. So, how do I prioritize the one that's gonna give me the highest yield?

SPEAKER_00 5:40

One of the things that I I work with many businesses doing content. And it's an area that AI can be really useful because you're trying to figure out what to share with people. And like, there's so much, there's so much out there that you could share with them. Like, what's actually gonna make a difference? You know, and I think that like one of the things I love to do is use different tools to analyze what are messages that might be able to connect with people? Because, you know, you can be throwing stuff out there, but if you're not putting the right stuff out there, then you're not gonna convert. You're not gonna turn those listeners into clients, you know, you're not gonna bring people into your ecosystem.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Yeah, a hundred percent. I think now it's easy to produce. Like if we're not careful, we just turn into like an output machine. Anyone can crank out a hundred uh content pieces, but that doesn't mean that you're gonna get the result you want. So it's actually interesting because now we kinda have to slow down intentionally to actually think and pick which ones we want to produce because production is so much easier, cheaper, faster. So right.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Well, I think that it I got to go to this really, really, really cool party last night with my wife. Um and my wife gets me into parties that I wouldn't normally get into, which is cool. And so we went to this very fancy party. I I don't know if you know it, but I'm I'm I live in Ho Chi Minh City. I'm based in Saigon part-time.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

And I'm from Ho Chi Minh City.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Where? Where were you from?

SPEAKER_01 7:17

District one and district three.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Yeah. Okay. So that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Which party did you go to then? Now I want to know.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

We went to the Taekom party, and he had this beautiful Taekwondo is this designer, and he's got this most Oh beautiful villa. It was beautiful, like absolutely beautiful, stunning. He's this amazing architect, and his house was just stunning. And there was so much there to see, and there was so much interesting stuff. And yet, what was really fun to me was that my my everyone was creating content. Everyone there was creating content. Like it was people were getting followed around and people were taking pictures. But like, I think what was really fun was the like people connecting it. And so I took some pictures with some of my wife's friends, and we were just cracking up because uh we found a funny story, and it was just it was very real. And then, like after the party, my wife went to the airport and my daughter called and she's like, Dad, how do I print this thing? I've got a class. And I was like, Oh goodness, like her tutor was online. I forgot to print the document they needed for the class. So I jumped on a motorbike taxi and I'm just going across, I'm in this suit going across town on a motorbike taxi so I can get home fast as I can to print some document for because any type of taxi, like regular taxi, is gonna take way longer. Got home in 10 minutes. And I snapped a picture of me on that motorcycle taxi going, this is a super nice party I went to tonight, and this is me getting home right now. So I think it was just fun to be real in that moment. And I kind of love that because I can use AI tools to conceptualize things. I can use it to help me do grammar checks to kind of format and really shape my pitch and my story. But those moments, if you can find those beautiful moments, it's really fun, you know?

SPEAKER_02 9:09

Yeah. No, I love that. Um, yesterday I wrote a post on LinkedIn because people have been like debate, I don't know if it's debating, but they just like taste is what matters in the age of AI and everything. And but then no one really knows what taste means. So I try to like figure out how to describe it. And like to my best knowledge, the way I defined it is more like taste is lived experience plus judgment. Right. And and that, and that experience you just had is a lived experience. You were in that, and that's why it's authentic and that reflects your taste. And that's why people resonate like with it. So I think yeah, AI can help you idea and produce it faster, maybe like, I don't know, coming up with a caption or something. But that photo of that moment and the reason why you want to share it is because it's your lived experience. So that's cool.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

I love that. I love that. It's so true, you know? And I think that that's lived experience is like what you get to the root of something. And I think that the coolest part about that party, it was so many cool things. But one thing, my friend knew him well, and she was like, Come upstairs, I'm gonna show you guys the bath bedroom. We went up to the bedroom, and everyone was looking at all the fancy things. All I noticed was the cutest little puppy. I like they had this adorable little poodle, and that poodle got he got he got a little haircut and he got a little wash for this party, and everyone's looking around the room, and I'm like, You come here, you adorable little thing. And he had the cutest little collar on. And I was like, those types of things are to me. If you walk into a room and I ask you, I can't see what you can see. So I'm standing outside the room, and you're gonna go in the room, and then your assignment is to come out and tell me the one thing that was special about that room. What are you gonna tell me? Like there was a great you ever see the movie Cash with uh Joaquin Phoenix about Johnny Cash? Great movie. But he's sitting there, and there's one scene where he looks at Johnny Cash, and it was like young Johnny Cash, and he says, Okay, if you get hit by a truck and you're laying in the ditch dying. It starts dark, but it's a beautiful story. And he says, You're laying on that ditch dying, and you've got one song to sing before you meet God. What song are you gonna sing? What story are you gonna tell? And I think that's that lived experience. That's that, and you know, do you know what? Whenever I meet people, you're gonna understand this. I talk about this on the podcast all the time, and you're gonna be the only person who gets this. For foreigners, what is the craziest thing about visiting Vietnam?

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Crossing the streets.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Just crossing the street. Like crossing the street is literally hands down. Like I saw I was driving down uh Tren Hung Dao yesterday, Tren Hung Dao in Kakmang Tang Tong, where they cross, like that big intersection. And there was a man and his wife, and they were just like waiting, stop, go. And I looked at them and I was like, you just gotta go. You just gotta go. There's not a perfect moment. You gotta go. And he's like, Are you sure? I was like, just go. I said walk slowly, and they walked, and they got across, they got across the street, and they went like this, you know, big thumbs up. And I was like, I I knew you could do it. But like, and I see all these influencers that are making videos, like, I'm gonna show you what I did in Vietnam. I crossed the street. But I tell people who are not from here, they're like, What do you mean that's an interesting thing? I was like, Because it's different. Lived experience.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Yeah. No, that that experience, I think it it never gets boring. Whenever you see tourists in Vietnam, you definitely see the same situation. I just take a leap of faith. It'll be okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Right. I want to go back to what you said though about lived experience plus judgment and and and being what creates taste. Like, why does that matter in marketing today?

SPEAKER_02 12:59

Because everyone sounds the same if you don't have taste in them. Because it's so easy to use AI to produce a lot. And AI is trained on a certain set of data. And we all have this access to the same set of data. And AIs also have like this strong blind confidence. So when it gives you the answer and output, it's like really like has a strong conviction. So it's very easy if you're tired in the day, and you just need to like put this post up, this piece of content out there. You're like, that sounds good enough. But absolutely that's why everyone now sounds the same. It's so easy for people to spot AI generated content now. I'm not talking about the M-dashes. That it's like old news.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

It's the it's the way people talk. Like, I'm here to tell I work with financial advisors a lot. And there's always like, I'm here to tell you why this is the absolute best account that you can have for retirement. Like, okay, well, that was AI generated right there. Like instead of, all right, guys, I'm gonna tell you something. Uh I wish my grandma knew. The other day I had this guy on, and he was like so cool. He came onto my Growing Money podcast, and this guy had been like with big banks and finance and investing for a long time. Now, the cool part was when one of the big banks wanted to create the strategy for how to invest, he wrote the manual for the bank. So this guy really knows what he's talking about when it comes to investing. But do you know when I asked him a question, what made what he said so much more powerful for me? He stopped and he said, Well, Sean, I don't have all the answers, but this is the advice I give my family. And I was like, oh, now see that that's the advice I want. This guy who's written stuff for banks, I don't care what he's telling the bank, I want what he's telling his family, because that to me has even more weight than anything else.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

Mm-hmm. Agree. Agree. Yeah, I mean, like it's it's goes, it goes back to the authenticity, right? Because then you feel like I know the person, I trust them. I mean, it's all about it's funny. All the things we talk about is like circling around like being a human, like an actual person, even though we talk a lot about AI and that we use AI a lot. And I live in this world, I'm in San Francisco, so you can't even avoid running to like AI every 10 steps.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Right? That's the wild thing. My family lives up in Napa. And so my wife and I will fly over. She has shows here and she'll go to sing and I fly with her and make videos and stuff. And then I'll fly back. Do you know who my wife is? But who's your wife? Fung Vi Idol. Cassie, Fung Vi.

SPEAKER_02 15:46

Fung Vi Idol. Oh, okay. I think I've heard it. I'm really bad with pop culture, but I think I've heard her name.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

But we fly over, we sing. I'll edit that part out. But we fly over for shows, and then we will come back to Vietnam afterwards. And like every time I'm in San Francisco, AI billboard, AI billboard, AI billboard.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

And I'm just like saying it's like everywhere. And at the beginning, it was creative. Like there are people like trying to test out like this super intelligent thing. And now it's so boring. As a marketer, I'm like, gosh, this place is just like, where is your creativity? Like, all the billboards look so boring.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

I had a guest come on my podcast recently, and she's her whole thing in LinkedIn is AI. I'm gonna talk to you about AI, how to get ahead in AI, AI this, AI, this. And when I had her on the podcast, I said, talk to me about your story. And she talked to me about resilience and how she moved from America from Colombia to the US, had a child in the US, then moved to Dubai, and now how she's living in Dubai as a single mom and becoming an entrepreneur and working there. And she talked about resilience in her life. And she messaged me afterwards. She says, those posts did a million times better than anytime she's talking about AI. And I said, Well, because everyone else is doing the other. That's all everyone's doing. And like you're so much more original. Your story, you're from Colombia, moved to the USA, had a kid, and then moved to Dubai. That's really interesting. Talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 17:16

Yeah, it's uniquely yours. And as long as humans are the ones who consume the content, we're gonna root for knowing the other person. I mean, that's as simple as that.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Right? I never thought about that. As long as we're the ones consuming the content, we're gonna really root for the other person. And I want to ask you about that because a lot of companies are producing massive amounts of content now. It's it's easier. But why does so much of it still feel empty?

SPEAKER_02 17:42

I'll take a step back before I answer your question. I think a lot of time we like to like just pick black and white. Like either this or this. But I think like at speaking as a marketer on the B2B side, I think you can do both. So there are two things. There's authenticity, like that's uniquely yours and taste and reflecting like your brand or your personality. Like that per that woman from Colombia to Dubai. But then there's but then there's also the you need to understand how AI thinks and finds and recommends solutions. And it doesn't care about your personality because it doesn't relate to you. But what it's looking for is um credible knowledge. So as a company, like from the business side, we have to do both. Like I have the brand team that we pay focusing on like the taste, the personality. But I also that same brand, like 50% of their time, it's thinking about like how do I categorize content? How do I prioritize pieces of content that people are looking for, and how do I optimize it so that if someone's searching in Claude, for example, or GPT, it can easily find information about me. So making it easy for like the middleman, aka the AI. So like you have to do both. So I think the the slippery slope when we feel like, why is there so much AI slops out there with no personality? Is because people forget that it needs to be both and they do one or the other. Like they tend to like go into like all AI generated, and then they put it as their brand. That's a that's a mistake, and that's why we're like, what the hell? Like, we're humans. I don't want to read the stuff that you optimize for the machine. Keep that on that side.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Right. I love that because it's like, I want to hear about your, again, lived experience. I want to hear about how you I just my last podcast, we were talking about financial, like uh fixing your financial life. And I talked about one of the most weird moments of my life. So when I was a teenager, not weird, but it was not my favorite. We had a German shepherd that was one of the most beautiful dogs you could ever have. He was big and beautiful and strong, but he was also big and beautiful and strong, and he had an attitude. And he so we were like, we need to take this dog to dog training class. I was this skinny little 13-year-old, really skinny, really small. I'm standing at the top of the hill holding this dog with two hands, and then he's like, Let's go. Boom! And he dragged me down this hill. Boom! I'm like falling down the hill. I get to the bottom of the hill, and I just am like looking down there, and the dog trainer comes over, grabs the leash from me. He's like, Are you okay? And I use that as the example for trying to fix my finances because sometimes you get into a bad situation. But the reality is, I don't know how many other people have been dragged down a hill by a dog, but I have. And it was very much something that was relevant at that moment to me. So I think that, like, I don't know. I think if we can have more people being more honest, it goes further, you know? And I think honest being, just talk about your real self. I used to like, I lived in Vietnam a long time, and I remember this one couple went to the club. It was like 2002, and they were always at the club. And I'm my friends with DJs, and they were working, and I would go see them in the club. And I saw this couple, they were like high rollers. They had bottles of all of the top finest, like top shelf liquor at the club every night. And I was like, man, they are rich. They are spending a lot of money here. But then one day, I uh I was eating some huty on the side of the street, my friend. After the club had closed, we were just eating some hutyu, and we were just sitting there. We saw this couple pull up. They they pulled up and they pulled into the smallest house I have ever seen. It was not even a house, it was just like a box. And I was just like, but that's like the perfect representation of so much of the internet to me. You got all these people that are like showing the flash, you know, but the real experience is not it, you know?

SPEAKER_02 21:45

Yeah, no, that's true. That is so true. Like the whole like content creators on like Instagram, TikTok, especially Instagram, because it's like trying to portraying this aspirational lifestyle. And so many are actually in debt. That is insane.

SPEAKER_00 22:02

I crush it seven days a week. And when I'm doing this, that's why it's like for my personal finance podcast. When people are like, Sean, you seem like you have your life together. I'm like, no, I'm a mess. But I'm I'm learning, I'm figuring it out step by step. But I think that like the best example of this last year, I get to my question, but like the McDonald's CEO who was taking the big bite, and he was like, you know, it's this tiny little bite. And then he was getting roasted by, I think it was uh Wendy's. Like one of the other brands was just roasting them ruthlessly. And what came out of that was like people trusted Wendy's after that because they were just like cracking up like the rest of us. And I don't know. I I I think all publicity is good publicity. So I think McDonald's still came out ahead, but that guy, poor guy, you know. But like, I want to ask you this like, what actually makes people trust a brand creator or whatever in 2026?

SPEAKER_02 23:03

Who I mean there's a cliche answer of, well, if you show your true story, kind of like the the good, the bad, the ugly, not just always this flawless perfect lifestyle, then people will resonate with with you better. They find it's like, oh, I can resonate. I feel like you are part of you're similar to me, so yeah, I trust you. But I feel like that's probably it. I think like on the like content creator side, I don't know if you noticed, but they're a trend of creators have so many followers, way, way, way more than a lot of the polished folks. And their videos are actually not polished, they don't look polished, they just talk about their life, and somehow the following is insane. So I feel like people just want to not having to pretend or try so hard, they just want to find someone that look like them, act like them. The house is a mess like them, but somehow they kind of figure things out.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Yep. I 100% agree. And if you were here in the room, Eilani, come here. Come here, pop in here. I'm sitting here, my wife is traveling, I've got a little person right here. Just poke your head in. She's wearing her pajamas, but she's right here. And so, like, we are the reality of it, right? Like, my reality is like, not like I think everyone's like, you have such a nice podcasting setup. I'm like half the time my daughter's sitting there watching Mr. Beast or something. Sometimes we'll be studying, hopefully, we're studying. But like, I think one of the realities is like you just gotta lean into like the messiness at times because the more messy, it it's real, you know? And I think it's real. It's real. The other week, um, she, ever since she was a baby, has this thing. She'll get a cold, starts in the nose, it works into her throat. So it's like over a two-week period, she uh coughs, and then she gets gaggy and vomity. It has been since she's a baby, every time she gets a flu. And one of my highest performing posts on LinkedIn was this. So my daughter uh was so sick, and when she gets gaggy and vomity, she projectile vomits at night. So I my wife is traveling, I'm laying on the ground, and all of a sudden I hear it just hits me from top to bottom. Horrible, awful, not fun. And I go in and my mom was like, How are you doing? I took a selfie of myself, absolutely destroyed at 2 a.m. I was been up like since four. It was a long day, had worked that day. And then I posted that on LinkedIn. I was like, all right, everyone's posting about their wins, but this is where I'm at right now. People were like, dude, thank you for posting that. That is the most, that's something that I can connect more deeply to. And I didn't think it was gonna do well. Yeah, I thought it was gonna flop. But people were like, dude, I can relate to that. You know, I love David Goggins. I love watching him run. I can't relate to Goggins. I'm not out there running 23 miles every day going, are you soft? You're soft. I'm like, I'm soft. I have a hard time waking up early, man. I am soft. Yes, David. I am soft, and it's nothing I can do about it. I try to be hard. I woke up for the gym and I'm like, I'm so tired. I'm gonna sleep 10 more minutes. Like, I'm trying, man. But like, I don't know. It like I just love people being honest.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think like people now don't really care about like get getting up at 4 a.m., cold plunge, whatever, whatever. Right, right. So BS.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

It is. Well, I want to ask you this because you know, do you think storytelling is becoming more important as AI content as becomes more common?

SPEAKER_02 26:45

Yeah, 100%. I mean, so many of the big AI companies here are now hiring like chief storytelling officer, which is a crazy title. Yeah. Yeah. So like, how do you get people how do you cut through the noise? Because in the in the age where developing software becomes so easy, a lot of the software companies or just companies in general, they're most disappearing, especially on in tech. So then how do you cut through the noise? How do you get someone to like at the end of the day when they look at the choices, which one they would pick? And it's usually brand. And as long as, again, humans are on to make decisions, the the emotion side of things will come into play. Like, do I like that company? Do I trust that company? Do you think I can count on them after I sign this, like doc you sign a contract? Um, so yeah, storytelling is a big part of it. And it's not like an overnight thing either. It's it's something that's gotta build over time. Just because one day you show up and show me your authentic life and I had no idea who you were, I'm just like, that's random. And then you move on, right? So it has to be consistent over time.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

This is me authentically eating a hamburger when I've never done this before on video. Like it just doesn't go. Like, I think that one of the things, like, I, you know, I'm originally from not originally, but like I grew up for a large part of my life up in Napa in the Napa Valley, which is wine country. My parents worked at a university. I don't want to make it sound like we're we're Napa. No, no, no. My family was like working class, my parents worked in a university. My brother's still there, my family's still there. But now I have another podcast called Barrows and Roots Podcast, which I talk about wine. It's one of the nice perks is everyone gives me these lovely bottles of wine. It's phenomenal. Um, but when I'm up there, one of the cool things I'm doing this fall is I'm I'm filming a documentary. And it's gonna be a documentary, but it's actually just a bunch of different vlog episodes that I'm gonna go to all of these different wineries and film one day of their harvest. Because harvest, I don't think people understand how hard harvest is. It's about three weeks of going from like 4 a.m. till you know 2 a.m. These people on these crazy long days, they barely sleep and they're just there for this time and it's exhausting. But I'm gonna be going and filming that. And people ask me, why would you want to film that and not why not do all of these cool things like film our tasting? And I said, Because to me, what's way more cool is to see the amount of crazy work that goes into making me this beautiful drink that I want to drink, you know. I mean, when I think about like all of the people who worked their butt off at insane hours to cut all these grapes and then all of the process that goes into it, that to me connects me to that product way more than beautiful drone shots or you know, some AI and AI generated influencer, which is what I see some wineries doing. And I'm like, no, I don't want to see some fake person drinking your wine. Show me real people having your wine.

SPEAKER_02 29:48

Yeah. No, people love seeing the process of how, like, for lack of a better f term, like how the sausage is made. And you're 100% right. Like, if I see how much hard work you put into it to get the end result, I will naturally appreciate the end result more. If you just show me the ending of like the tasting and all these beautiful people, it means nothing. So I I like that. I like that story a lot because most people don't get a chance to see the harvest. So yeah, no, I think this is it would be a good one. Which wineries are you filming at?

SPEAKER_00 30:20

I've got 12 wineries that have all invited me in. So I am going to my be busy as hell, and I just have to keep all of that wine away from my mom because I know everyone's gonna give me a bottle, and my mom just I have to hide it at my brother's house and only bring back two bottles of wine in Vietnam at a time, is what I can bring. So yeah, just gotta hide it from my mom because that's gonna be tough.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

It's gonna be fun.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Yeah, it'll be awesome. I'm super excited, and everyone's really, really cool. And I'm actually, so I can get a really cool story arc. I'm gonna start the documentary off in um Bakersfield, not the Napa Valley. I'm going down to Bakersfield because one of the people that does all of the root stock, like they they take the vines, and she owns a giant greenhouse where they're doing like over a million vines a year, and they plant they because in America, you want to hear something wild about wine? So they want to get all these varietals from Europe, but one of the problems is that in the US, there is a uh a pathogen in the soil that the European vines can't resist. They have no resistance to it. And so they have to match it with a different type of vine from the Americas, the grapevine that was indigenous to this region that can handle that pathogen. And that's what they call rootstock. Now, rootstock from around the world has different qualities. Some rootstock grows really big and gets these very vibrant, like grape custers and stuff. But different root stocks are good for surviving things. So I'm gonna go there and watch them. They graft it in. So they take the root of one and they put in the top of the other and then they splice it together, and then it grows from that base of it. And so I want to start off like where your wine truly begins, the beginning of the plant. And then I'm gonna go all the way to bottling, and someone's gonna let me film bottling and film this process of bottling wine. And so the steps between, right?

SPEAKER_02 32:16

Yeah, no, this is cool. I could see it as a Netflix documentary, actually. And I feel like the wine industry in the US will probably fund this if you do it right.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

They need it because they need it.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Because yeah, they need it. Yeah, the wine consumption has gone down a lot. Like the Gen Z doesn't drink as much and all of that. But I have a question for you, completely off topic, but like on this one. In your documentary, like I love drinking wine. Um, and I'm like, Yeah. But the part that a lot of people who travel a lot saying is that in the US, wine has um more chemical, just for the preservative side of things. So US wine tends to give worse hangover. It's also sweetened, more sweetened compared to European wine, just for like the palate, easy to drink, that like you know, mouthful, all that. Like, would you cover that? Because I'm I feel like if anyone, if I'm watching it, I'm like, that's the question I have in mind. Like, why are we adding that in?

SPEAKER_00 33:11

I want to well, that is something I'm interviewing a lot of interesting see, and that's the authenticity though. Those are questions asked. I am interviewing a lot of winemakers, and I haven't brought that up yet. Because I haven't had a chance to interview like French winemakers and you're in Italian winemakers and and and and uh you know all types of European winemakers. So that is an interesting one. But I there are a lot of natural wine people that make, you know, natty, they call it natty wine, and they make all types of natural wine. And so there are some people that are making really cool, clean wine in the US. So what I notice is on that one, I notice a difference between uh small and large production. So I that really large wineries have much higher margins they have to, you know, protect. And so there's more that's done to kind of industrialize it, you know. But smaller wineries are really careful about their products.

SPEAKER_02 34:04

So I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Yeah, I don't have these answers.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

Yeah, yeah. Well, but that's what you that's that's for your documentary, yeah. Because I heard somewhere that um Europeans wine when they import it to US, they are required to add a certain preservative just to preserve so that wine doesn't go bad. That's how it started. Yeah, as part of the import regulations. No, that's true, but if you can uncover that that's a good idea. I have no idea.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

But this is something I have to ask people, right? Yeah. Well, yeah, one of the things that I find is interesting, but there is so many different ways things are done. I and I know I'm this is not my wine podcast, but I'm geeking out on this. Like, I found out that there are different labeling regulations in different countries. So California America, we label by grape, and that's part of the regulations. Like this is a Zen, this is a cab, this is a Merlot, versus European wines, it they're more focused on the place. This is a Bordeaux, this is a, you know, um Champagne, you know, whatever. It's by the region, less by the actual grape. And that's fascinating to me because when wait here in Vietnam, we have a lot of French wine. And I'm just sitting there looking at the labels, and I was like, I don't know what's in this. I don't know if it's gonna be something I like. So yeah, it's it's very different. But it's fun, right? But this is this is the real stuff to get into, and that's why I love podcasts as well. And it makes me feel like I'm doing part of a good thing, spreading real conversation. But I want to ask you one more question. Like, you work in AI every day, but you still talk a lot about humanity and intentionality. Why is that balance important?

SPEAKER_02 35:44

It's like, why is it not? Right?

unknown 35:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:51

I have no idea. Like, like, why would someone I mean there are companies out there that's like promoting stop hiring humans and they believe that AI will take all the jobs away and there's nothing we can do about it? And I'm like, why? Like, we I mean I know why, because it helps with your company's valuation and you get a lot of VC monies. But besides that, if money is not an issue. Why? Like, why are you so anti-humans? Um, so so with that vein in mind, it's like AI is a tool, it's an incredible tool, it's a super intelligence, but the ultimately it should benefit us as humanity. I'm pro our species. And I think that's basically it. And that's how my content, our brand's gonna be. We love AI, we AI forward, but we love humans more.

SPEAKER_00 36:41

That's a mic drop moment right there. I don't I don't have anything to follow that with. That's beautiful. But where can people go to find out more about you and what you do?

SPEAKER_02 36:50

Uh on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. So just Trinity Nguyen on LinkedIn.