Jam Mayer

Resources

(00:32)
As this is the first episode, I'd like to share the reason why I call myself a Conversologist. To give you some context I'll share you my story. Hopefully this will help you to understand why I coined the term.

Being an adopted child, I've always felt that I didn't belong. I was surrounded by a family who wasn't like me at all. They didn't understand my motivations, my creative side, why I love to perform or shift and learn new things, which some call an early adopter. Why I had so many ideas or how I can even uproot myself from one country to another without any support and willing to go through the challenges.

Oh, it was hard, believe it or not, comfortable with change and determined to make a life for myself as Jam. All my life, even up to this moment, it felt like I was hitting walls all the time. During my career, I've butted heads with some people. Sometimes I stood my ground, but yeah, but even in my personal life, my family or some friends, I'd still butt heads with them. Not that I wanted to be mean or anything. It's just that I had different thoughts.

(01:51)
I just spoke my mind and had a different perspective. I also didn't understand why people wouldn't speak their mind truthfully, probably for fear of being judged. I also think it was cultural. This, of course, eventually made me tired, and I became a quiet person. Being an extrovert, that's kind of weird, because extrovert people normally aren't quiet. It also made me question the usual script that my family would tell me. My mom, my dad, or even my sister or my siblings. They'd say, you're probably like your father, who, mind you, I've never met, so I can't say that as a fact, not even them.

So I tried to look for other people like me, who would appreciate how I think, who would think that I'm not crazy for thinking of out of the box solutions. And right now I call them no box solutions. That's probably another episode. To make things more efficient or make people better. So instead of people, I fell into the world of the digital space, technology, and the Internet. Yes, it became my closest friend. This is where I found my comfort zone and my happy place. I sought for conversations with people online, strangers who little that I know would actually appreciate what I had to offer and what I had to say.

(03:26)
So blogging was my first touch, and I loved it. I found a medium where I could write my thoughts and the potential of having other people read it and comment on it was awesome. I mean, this point when I started blogging, I had a nine to five job. I was in the call center industry where I honed my skills in human connection. Apparently, I had the knack for it, climbed the corporate ladder in the shortest time possible, had a successful career, and shared my experience within the cloud through blogging. I knew by the end of that stint, I wanted to do more with technology and people. You know, I love talking and I could talk your ears off. Probably. My closest friends would say that, but I don't want to bore you. But, I also know the value of listening.

Anyway, so I found social media and the customer journey so fascinating. It was truly an arena that I wanted to be immersed in. I wanted to know what made people talk or comment, how they would engage with, of course, the use of technology both in business and their personal lives. Now, with the personal lives side of things, some people are like, oh, you're a real life stalker.

(04:52)
But don't worry, I don't stalk for gossip or anything. It's just me being a curious cat, inquisitive and all that, and just seeing how people interact online. And if there was even a difference, if they were a different person offline. Again, probably another episode. But it was truly the art and science of conversations. It reflected the art, the creative side, the idea generation, how people commented, innovation, the problem solving and all that. And of course the science behind it, which is the analytics, the data, the logic, the technology behind them.

So I love social media, so I love digital. I also love being a scientist. Yes, I could probably tell myself and tell you guys that I consider myself a scientist, yet also I wanted to be a journalist and even a trainer, which is the front facing side of things. I studied. I experimented on digital tools and solutions to make things better. And through the years, up to this day, I see that more and more people have disengaged, unfortunately, reliant on the technology that pushed messages and was all one way and people just started. And this is very true in marketing, right?

(06:17)
And people just forgot about how it is to be human. How to have a simple conversation that would actually even change their lives. So fast forward to today with AI and chatbots. Again, technology at the forefront. It is getting worse. Even with a talk about conversational marketing or AI or conversational AI, we are far from getting back to the human element. Everyone is still just so fixed on the functionalities of things. So this makes me so frustrated. I still am. It has made me shut down a few times throughout my life. And very recently I was taken out of my happy place and people even wondered why I wasn't online anymore. Why I wasn't speaking out. I became a different person. I was a person who just had nothing to say.

Well, I say enough. Enough is enough. I need to go back to my happy place. And this is the reason why I'm starting this podcast to start a conversation around this topic and truly connect with likeminded people like you. To hear what you have to say, both the good and the bad, right? So before and just to wrap up this episode, I'd like to kind of answer the question - what is a Conversologist?