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Interview Script
Host: Dr. Bill Lampton, Business Communication Expert.
Guest: Gina Carr, CEO of Stark Raving Entrepreneurs and AI Specialist.
Bill Lampton: Hi there! Welcome to the Business Communication Show. I’m your host, Bill Lampton, the Biz Communication Guy, once again bringing you communication tips and strategies that will boost your business. Yet, this is not a solo act. I bring you those tips and strategies through a guest, a highly qualified business communication expert. Today, I am so delighted to introduce you to Gina Carr, the visionary CEO of Stark Raving Entrepreneurs, where she empowers leaders to harness AI-driven tools for transformative marketing and sales strategies.
With an MBA from Harvard and an engineering degree from Georgia Tech, Gina—affectionately known as the Tribe Builder—specializes in cultivating passionate communities of raving fans. As a dynamic international speaker and serial entrepreneur, she’s founded multiple successful ventures, including an award-winning real estate firm and a chain of community magazines. I knew her way back then when she was in those ventures. Gina, formerly the CEO and speaker curator of TEDxDuPree Park, now resides in Orlando, Florida, with her fiancé, Terry Brock. She’s an advocate for animals, freedom, and plant-based living. Her zest for life inspires all those around her, including me, for a long time, I can assure you. So, let’s now welcome Gina Carr to the stage! Hello there!
Gina Carr: Hello there! I am delighted to be here.
Bill Lampton: Well, it’s terrific to have you here. As the introduction qualified, you’re a highly credentialed guest who has mastered business communication for a long time. Gina, many of our podcast viewers and listeners are entrepreneurs. Some are long-time entrepreneurs who started, as you and I did, about three decades ago. Some are new entrepreneurs—a few of those by choice, some because the business they were in no longer included them. For all of us who are entrepreneurs, I think of your MBA in business from Harvard University. Judging by what you’ve learned as a highly successful entrepreneur, what are some of the business and communication tips that you would give today to those who are entrepreneurs? How do they make it?
Gina Carr: Well, that’s such a great question and something that I think many entrepreneurs ask themselves every day: what is the key? What am I going to do? What will make me successful?
I would say the number one thing is that you really need to be clear about who you serve and what problem you solve. And as much as those are important, why you do that is also important to you, because there’s going to be a lot of ups and downs on the entrepreneurial road and you’re going to need to be clear so that it comes across to your potential clients as well as sustains you.
You also need to be very clear about how you are going to make money, how you’re going to monetize. That may sound obvious, but it is not. Especially for people who are coaches, speakers, authors, people who are in professional services—but they’re not so much traditional professional services like an attorney or an accountant—how to price those services, I think, can be tough for a lot of entrepreneurs.
And then my final main tip here might be a surprise, but it’s going to be: work out. And I say that because I know that it’s important to have that at least one nugget of your day—and I think it’s important to exercise every day—one nugget of your day that you are in total control and that provides stability and confidence to your life that comes across through so many other aspects of your business. It’s like powering up my battery on my phone; I need to charge it every day. It’s like a power-up session for your body and your mind, and I find if I do that, it really helps me in every area of my day, especially in my business.
Bill Lampton: I would echo, underline, and emphasize everything you said. First of all, to be clear about what we are offering and to be able to state it with clarity. There are many wonderful consultants who can help us refine and define how we state our mission.
It’s important to have help from others on that. Gina, this takes me back to the first year I was an entrepreneur. I remember so well having lunch with someone who also was a member of the National Speakers Association, and I knew that I needed some advice from him. So, I took along a draft of my website. He looked at it, and of course, with pride of authorship, I was thinking he’d say, “Oh, this looks great, this will be a real winner, you’ll attract clients.”
But what he said to me was, “What you’re doing is just presenting your credentials,” which is a mistake that many entrepreneurs and even seasoned business people make. I put my degrees, I put clients I’d had, and it all focused primarily on my qualifications. But you and I have learned, and marketing experts have taught us, that as you say, it’s not so much who we are, it’s not so much what we’ve accomplished, but what really counts so much is: what can we do for other people?
What is our service? How will they benefit from being with us? And I would like for you to give us some further tips on the business of pricing. There’s a wonderful expert friend of mine in Atlanta named John Ray; he specializes in helping people on their pricing. And one more note on that—I remember also, Gina, near the start of my consulting, speaking, and coaching career, I had somebody say that they would represent me in a speakers bureau. That sounded great. So I gave them my materials and then, after a year, nothing had happened. I called him and I said, “What’s the problem?” And he said, “The problem is you priced yourself so low everybody identifies you as a beginner.”
So, give us some guidelines on pricing, please, and tell us how we get the courage and the fortitude to state that affirmatively without apology.
Gina Carr: Oh boy, that’s a real tough one. I have certainly learned a lot about pricing over the years and generally, I tend to be too low on the pricing scale. So, I have actively worked to learn from people who are charging more and to confidently present a price that is probably higher than I am comfortable with.
I think if it doesn’t make you feel like “ooh” when you say it, you’re probably pricing yourself too low. So, to your example of speaking in particular, speakers come out and they say, “Well, if I’m a brand-new speaker, yes, I should price myself on the low end.”
For professional speakers—let’s just throw out some numbers here—generally, that would be in the $2,000 to $5,000 range. Even though that sounds like a lot of money—it is a lot of money for an organization to pay—for the professional speaker, for the ones who have more, it’s not just experience, it’s the background of the person who is doing the speaking and what they bring to the table.
You were talking about earlier, what is that change that they help people make? What is that transformation? So, the transformation and the years of experience not necessarily as a speaker, but as an expert doing whatever it is that you do, could translate to right out of the gate a speaker could be in the $7,500 to $10,000 range or, if there’s some celebrityhood to it, in the $20,000 range for a single keynote.
So, I hope that that’s helpful. It is hard to say and you really do need to do some research. I’ll tell you one of the ways that it’s making it easier for me to do the research when I’m making a proposal for a new service or to a new client: is using my AI tools, which I’m very big on, using AI tools—artificial intelligence—to say, “What’s a price range for this service? What do you think of this? What should I be asking for this?” And give me different levels, which in the past, that would have been hard for me to come up with, but because of AI, I can come up with those levels.
And I do like to go back to a prospect with different levels of opportunities—a high, medium, and a low—and really give some options because you don’t know. A lot of times people will choose the higher price even though you think, “Well, that’s crazy, why would someone choose that?” It happens a lot.
Bill Lampton: Well, they choose the higher price because they see the value in it. They choose the higher price because they know it’s going to make, as your introduction used the word, a transformative difference. And by the way, Gina, I couldn’t ask for a better transition to our next topic because you mentioned artificial intelligence.
I know that over the past several years, you have been, along with your fiancé and business associate Terry Brock, not only learning artificial intelligence and how we can use it, but you’ve been teaching it ardently. Now, for those of us who maybe know the term and we’ve heard how some other people do it, what would you give as great starting points for really getting so involved in artificial intelligence that it not only makes your work easier, but it makes it far more productive?
Gina Carr: Well, just think of AI, and let’s just talk about ChatGPT, which is one that many people have heard of and most people think of AI as ChatGPT, which it’s so much more than that. But even just ChatGPT is your new 24-hour, seven-day-a-week assistant that never goes on vacation, never needs a break, and never needs a raise.
They can help you with so many things personally and professionally. Just personally, let’s just look at an example from a few months ago—maybe it was a year ago—there was a problem with our toilet. And we used our ChatGPT to turn on the mode that allows the ChatGPT phone to look into whatever you’re showing it and said, “Hey, what’s the problem here?”
And it identified that it was a flapper problem. We ordered a new flapper for less than $10 on Amazon and then we asked ChatGPT to help us learn, show us how to install it. And so we saved ourselves hundreds of dollars, and that’s a personal issue. I use it all the time with recipes and those sorts of things.
So, those are on the personal side. On the business side, I mentioned pricing of services, writing those proposals, thinking of what would be the name of a new workshop or the name of a new service. My goodness, I do a little demo in some of my presentations where in about five minutes, I go all the way from the idea of a product, naming the product, developing packaging, developing the marketing plan for the product—things that would have taken months in the past can now take about five minutes, and they’re really, really good.
Bill Lampton: It is, it’s very much like a hired assistant that is so incredibly cost-effective. My favorite—and of course, I know you and Terry have mentioned, I think it’s Grok and some others—the one I use probably the most is Perplexity, which is sort of a confusing title because Perplexity sounds like you’re confused.
But for an example of how I use it, let’s say I’m going to write an article or I’m going to do a YouTube short video. And I might ask Perplexity, “What are some famous quotes on this topic?” And then I’ve got some highly qualified, credible resources familiar to the public that I can quote. Now, of course, one thing that you and I and many people who are in the business communication arena would emphasize is that there’s an ethical problem involved, and that is that if you go to ChatGPT or if you go to Perplexity—the amazing thing about it for anyone who hasn’t used it is the second you get through typing your question, the answer starts being typed—one of the ethical problems here is that people will get a large printout of information and then they’ll just copy and paste that and publish it as their own.
I suppose you’ve had to warn clients about that, Gina.
Gina Carr: Yes, actually, I just was doing that yesterday with a client, and she was worried that she’s using AI too much. After reading the sample that she shared, I think she probably was. And so what we talk about in our program—and Terry Brock, my fiancé, coined this term—he calls it “UIs.”
You take your initial story or your videos or whatever and you get AI to help you with that. If AI generates it initially, you still need to review it, you need to add your own stories, you need to ask it to make it more formal, make it shorter, make it more humorous, make it sound more like you.
And the more that you feed it—that is, you’ve loaded in your own videos, your own transcripts, your own articles that are in your pre-AI voice—then the more it’s going to come back in your own voice. And AI has the ability to organize the thoughts very well, the ability to just polish and make things sound much better than what I sound initially. I’ll give it what I want it to say, but it makes it sound a little bit better. So, that’s one way to use AI.
Bill Lampton: It is, for those who may not have ventured in that direction yet. Gina Carr is a great resource for teaching AI because she’s been doing that for several years. Gina, we mentioned in the introduction that you are known as a tribe builder. In just a few seconds, we’re going to come back and talk about that.
(Brief break with an ad for Bill Lampton’s services)
Bill Lampton: Hello again! You’re on the Business Communication Show with our distinguished, highly qualified guest, Gina Carr. Gina, I remember as long ago as 20 or 25 years, I interviewed you one time about your term “tribes.” Now, tell us please what a tribe is, how we develop it, and what are the benefits?
Gina Carr: Well, a tribe is nothing more than a group of people that have bought into a particular philosophy or movement or leader. Typically, there is a leader that says, “Hey, let’s go—we’re at Point A, let’s go to Point B. This is how I think we need to go there, and do you want to follow me? If so, here’s how we’re going to go.”
And building a successful tribe includes communication channels such as you have this great channel right now. So, you are a tribe builder, Bill, whether you think of yourself that way or not. You’re teaching people how to communicate professionally, how to communicate better. And so it’s so helpful.
People are saying, “Do I want to communicate better? Well, yes, I do.” Well, watch Bill’s show. Bill is going to communicate with you through his show and other posts that he’s doing in the social media world and in the digital world. And so that’s one way that people have joined, not officially but effectively, they have joined your tribe and they are learning from you about how to communicate better.
This is one of the so powerful ways to build a tribe because then you develop trust with the people who are following you. And when you want to help them, serve them, or work with them, they are more likely to know you better and to more easily make a decision as to whether they want to follow you to that next step.
And as we talk about business here, is that next step a paid opportunity, is it a free opportunity? There’s a mix and match that you’re going to do as a tribe builder to help people. And often it is going to be a paid opportunity because you can serve people better when you’re making the money so that it allows you to serve people more.
Bill Lampton: I don’t mind admitting some of the mistakes I made early in my entrepreneurial career. And probably the most blatant mistake—I wish, Gina, that I’d heard you talk about tribes before my first six months—because not knowing any better, I just picked up the phone and started calling people and telling them how fortunate they would be to have my services.
But you and I know another benefit of the tribe is that it’s so much more effective when we have formed a tribe and we’ve associated with those people and they know what we do and they’ve benefited from it, and they become our advocates. It’s far more persuasive to have someone else talk about our credibility and the benefits of working with us than us doing it ourselves. And then a second thing I would say about tribes is we learn from those people. We learn business insights, we learn about leadership, we learn about networking.
I would imagine as you look back, since you started out as a tribe builder, the reason that you are, in my judgment, very high in the pinnacle of success is not just because of your own doing, it’s because of your tribe.
Gina Carr: Oh, completely. There’s an old African saying: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” And so that is definitely a fundamental philosophy for me of tribe building. Because of all the people that are in my life, including you, including Terry Brock, including the amazing members of our Stark Raving Entrepreneurs community that I’ve had the honor to serve, I’m able to do more. I’m able to impact more people, I’m able to serve a lot more people, and that makes my heart sing. That makes me happy. And I just want to help people have better lives.
Bill Lampton: It’s just not a solo way to success, is it?
Gina Carr: Not at all. And with AI tools and the agentic AI tools that people these days are having full suites of executives that are working for them that are all artificial, they are all AI agents.
This is something that’s going to happen more and more. People are going to be able to build bigger companies with fewer real employees—in real-life employees. But the ones that they have now, they don’t necessarily need to fire them or lay them off, they free them up from tasks they were doing that were filled with more drudgery, that were boring.
The AI can do those tasks now, and so the human can do things that are more creative and things that are going to be better for bringing in more business. And so it’s a win-win for everybody. That’s part of why I’m so excited about it.
Bill Lampton: That’s a wonderful point for you to emphasize because so many who hear about AI think it’s gloom and doom for their careers. It’s not. It’s an opening to new skills and to new opportunities. And when people take the training that you and Terry Brock and other experts offer, they can have a far more productive, lucrative, and service-oriented business.
Time for one more question, Gina. You are a veteran professional speaker. I remember we were in the Georgia chapter of the National Speakers Association back in the late 1990s. So you have been an in-demand speaker, even internationally. In just a few sentences, what tips would you give to business leaders—what are the two or three keys to highly effective speaking?
Gina Carr: Well, one is to be clear on how you want your audience to be transformed when you’re done. What is the position? They’re at Point A and they’ll be at Point B after they have heard you speak. So what is that? Be very clear on that.
Another key skill is to engage the audience. And as we’ve been speaking here, I’ve been using my hands, I use head gestures, I use smiles, I use voices lower, voices higher. Those are engagement techniques that mostly I do naturally, but I do work on those.
And they’re much more engaging than the speaker who sits here and just talks like this in a monotone, right? So variety! People want variety. Exactly. So those are some of the main skills. Connecting with the audience and then actually selling.
If you’re going to be a professional speaker and you want to get paid to show up to speak, you have to be able to sell yourself as a professional speaker. It’s a joke in the business that you’re actually a salesperson who gets to get on stage every now and then and give a speech.
Bill Lampton: Yes, it doesn’t just happen, does it?
Gina Carr: It does not.
Bill Lampton: Gina, this has been a highly informative, helpful, and interesting conversation. I refer to the Business Communication Show not as an interview but as a conversation with an expert, which I’ve been fortunate to host today. I know that there are those who would like your contact information. So please share that with us.
Gina Carr: Well, easiest way to reach me is at ginacarr.com—G-I-N-A-C-A-R-R dot com. And then also, I’d love you to check out my community: starkravingentrepreneurs.com. That’s a great place to find us. And I do have a tool that is available for free. It’s called aitools4biz.com—AI tools the number four B-I-Z dot com. And that has some of my favorite AI tools that I’m using right now and that we have videos on there that help you know how to use those tools better. So that’s a free resource for your community that you can share with your folks.
Bill Lampton: Hey, free is everybody’s favorite word, isn’t it? I think so. I am going to order that and I encourage our viewers and listeners to order that. I know it’s going to be highly resourceful.
And now that Gina has given her contact information, I’m happy to give mine. First, my YouTube channel: Bill Lampton PhD is the way it’s listed. I have been producing educational videos on the area of communication since 2007—don’t look at any of those earlier ones, please. And in the last eight years, most of my videos are for the Business Communication Show. So you will, by going through and, by the way, while you’re on my YouTube channel, please subscribe there.
And then my website—since my tagline is Biz Communication Guy—logically my website is bizcommunicationguy.com. And while you’re there, you can subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t done that already. I welcome phone calls with no obligation for an exploratory call to talk about your communication challenges and problems and how I can assist you with them.
And then I want to give credit to the co-producer of this show, Mike Stewart. Mike is based in Nashville. His website is localinternetpresence.com. Mike Stewart and I met, Gina, at the Georgia chapter of the National Speakers Association in the first year that I was getting going. And Mike said to me, “Have you got a website?” And I said, “Yes.” He said, “Does it have sound on it?” And I said, “No.” And of course, then we started out in print but we needed to get to sound, and now we include video. So localinternetpresence.com, I certainly encourage you to check with my long-time associate and long-time mentor, Mike Stewart.
Gina, this has again been so intriguing, so informative, and such a wonderful pleasure to host you. What nugget of a minute or a minute and a half would you like to leave with our viewers and listeners?
Gina Carr: Well, I love Stephen Covey’s philosophy or one of his principles of: begin with the end in mind. And I think it’s important to think about—at your eulogy, what will people say about you?
And so think about that as you are planning your life for today and for the next year and for as long as you are going to be on this planet. Life is hard—and not in a bad or a sad way. Life is hard; choose your hard.
If you want to be an entrepreneur, it’s going to be hard. But being an employee is also hard, and doing nothing—sitting on the couch watching TV all day—is also hard in other ways. It’s going to be very hard for you in financial and health and mental health and all of those ways.
So, I just want to encourage you: begin with the end in mind, choose your hard, recognize that it’s going to be hard. But which hard is going to make you happier right now? What are you willing to go through—whatever the pain is—for the gain that’s going to make you the happiest and fulfill your life?
Bill Lampton: Reminds me of a great piece of advice I heard years ago: they call it W-O-R-K, not P-L-A-Y. And we do have to do the things that are difficult. We have to do the things that might be unpleasant.
Learning AI is not something you’ll do in one afternoon, but it will bring dividends when you get into it—you’re amazed already at what can happen. So thank you, Gina, for being our wonderful guest today. I’ve looked forward to this opportunity and keep your calendar handy because I know we will call on you again for the Business Communication Show.
And to those of you who have been with us today on the Business Communication Show, we invite you to be with us again next week for another business communication strategies and tips session. Thank you. I’m Bill Lampton, the Biz Communication Guy.
