%20copy.jpg?width=609&height=321&name=Episode%20%239%20-%20Erica%20Salm%20Rench%20(Sidecar%20AI)%20copy.jpg)
In this episode of Chamber On!, host Matt Appenzeller, President and CEO of the Southern Ohio Chamber Alliance (SOCA), sits down with Erica Salm Rench, Chief Marketing Officer at Sidecar AI.
Matt and Erica discuss how Sidecar AI is helping chambers, associations, and nonprofits harness the power of artificial intelligence — from upskilling staff and streamlining operations to building confidence in using AI tools responsibly.
Tune in now to hear how Erica and the Sidecar AI team are empowering organizations of every size in the AI era.
Matt Appenzeller
Hello and welcome to the Chamber On podcast, the go-to podcast for small employers and local Chambers of Commerce in Ohio. I'm your host, Matt Appenzeller, President and CEO of the Southern Ohio Chamber Alliance, more commonly known as SOCA. We are an alliance of 130 Chambers of Commerce in Ohio, and today, we are very excited to have the Chief Marketing Officer for Sidecar AI Erica Salm Rench as our guest. Erica, welcome to the Chamber On podcast.
Erica Salm Rench
Hi everyone. Thanks so much for having me, Matt. I really appreciate it.
Matt Appenzeller
Absolutely. So the last time we saw each other was back in May when you spoke at our annual meeting.
Erica Salm Rench
Yeah.
Matt Appenzeller
I'm sure you're spending a lot of time on the road, doing more public speaking these days on this, this hot topic.
Erica Salm Rench
I did a bit in the summer. Yes, not too long ago, I spoke at ASAE’s annual conference, and it was such a hot topic. There was standing room only, and we had to turn people away because people are so hungry for this information.
Matt Appenzeller
I know it's, it's an enormous, it's not just a topic like challenge, it's a trend. It's, it's everything that's sort of happening in the workspace. But I don't have to tell you right that right now. So why don't you tell us about Sidecar AI, and really the problem that you guys are trying to solve in the marketplace?
Erica Salm Rench
Yeah, absolutely. So Sidecar has been around for some time helping associations with their leadership challenges, management challenges and kind of all things Association. But it's really as of the past year and a half, two years, that we've really found our perfect niche, which is AI education. And our purpose at Sidecar is to educate 1 million association and nonprofit professionals on AI by 2030 so it is at the core of what we do, figuring out how to help associations, chambers, nonprofits, harness the power of AI to upskill their staff, enhance their operations, help their members and member organizations be happier and get more from their resources. And that is something that we, you know, really seen the market respond to over the past year, especially because people are ready to get started with AI, but they don't quite know where to start, and education is a great step one.
Matt Appenzeller
That's right. So, when you're out there talking with associations, or, you know, having them as clients like, what are the most common problems, and how acute are those problems that they're having?
Erica Salm Rench
I think what we hear most frequently is folks, well leaders specifically say, our board wants us to get started with AI, but we don't know where to start. So we help them. We help them with that, starting by getting educated. But one of the other things that we do particularly well, and what sets us apart is staying on top of the latest information. So myself, our Chairman, Amith, who I know, you know, and other folks on our team, our educational leaders, they really we make it our business to read about this stuff and listen to podcasts and stay really tuned in, so that we can then synthesize that information for nonprofits, because there's so much out there, and people are looking for a trusted source, and we try to be that for folks when they feel like they don't know how to cut through the noise.
Matt Appenzeller
Right. So you’re Sidecar AI, located on the web at Sidecar.ai So yeah, tell us how the company got started, and then also how you got started with the company.
Erica Salm Rench
Yeah, absolutely. So I believe that Sidecar dates back to about seven or eight years ago. But really, we've come into who we are in our identity over the past couple years, as we've helped folks navigate, navigate, AI and then as far as when I got started, so Sidecar is actually a member of a greater family of companies called Blue Cypress, and I've been with Blue Cypress for almost eight years now. The first seven of those, I spent the majority of my time with a company called rasa.io
and I led the company for three years, leading ahead of my Sidecar work. And we did, we did personalized AI newsletters for nonprofits, and we have all different kinds of organizations using them. And I always say we were kind of doing AI before it was cool, because we were talking about AI for personalized email content, and people were like, AI, what killer robot? What does that even mean? What does that even mean? So we actually, I remember early on in our branding, before I was the COO of the company, we, we, like, took AI out of all the marketing because people, it was just too much. People were, they didn't it was, it was too crazy a concept. You know, we eat, sleep and breathe this stuff, but not everyone did seven years ago. So we were very careful with how we marketed it. But now, of course, we very much say we use AI to personalize your email and newsletter communications. But anyway, Blue Side Cypress is an umbrella company over RASA Sidecar, its own consulting organization, several other SAS organizations and other service organizations that all have AI as a central focus.
Matt Appenzeller
So right now, you're working Sidecar is working within the association space. So, you know, can you give us an idea what kind of associations you're working with, or, or maybe, which ones seem to be the most successful at picking up what the message that you're trying to convey?
Erica Salm Rench
Yeah, that's a great question. So we work with organizations of all shapes and sizes, or specific, most specifically associations of all shapes and sizes, ranging from, you know, just two or three staff members all the way to, you know, hundreds, or in some cases, 1000s of staff members. So, so really, anyone can get started in our platform. Now, where we see folks have the greatest success is when the leaders who initiate the relationship with Sidecar say, okay, I'm going to make this a staff initiative. Internally, I'm going to motivate my people, whether that's a day off, they complete all of the learning courses and get their certification. We have the AIP certification association, AI professional that you can get by completing the core coursework and doing some other requirements. So we see the most success when this becomes like a team-wide initiative, whether it be through incentive or just other factors related to change management, like, hey guys, this stuff isn't going away. It's here to stay, and in order for you to be an employable person in the future, if you want to, you know, continue to be competitive in your professional life, you need to get educated. And in order for our association to move forward, we all need to get educated together. And so that's when we see the most success.
Matt Appenzeller
Yeah, that's right. So, well, it's really interesting, like you and I last saw each other, like five months ago.
Erica Salm Rench
I can't believe it's been five months.
Matt Appenzeller
Well, my question is, like, how much has it changed in the last five months? I mean, it's changed an awful lot. So, I mean, as it relates to small business, and I know I'm asking you to look in your crystal ball here, so I'm not going to hold you to anything. But like, where do you see the use of AI going from here where we're at right now?
Erica Salm Rench
Yeah, I mean, the hot, the hot, hot topic right now is agentic AI. So instead of, you know, just getting in text outputs or video or or audio outputs from your LLM’s, actually getting them to take action on your behalf. And Amitha always says, like, it doesn't have to be the razzle dazzle, right? It's automating the mundane. And so I think we're going to see a lot of movement toward that, figuring out, you know, where folks spend their time that is mundane, wrote, non-creative work, non-strategic work, those are going to be the processes that are really ripe for disruption and ripe for agentic automation. And you know, right now, a lot of the agent tools, like, they're approachable for folks like you and me, but they require, like, a little bit of technical savvy, and I do see and but in six months, it's not going to be like that. In six months, I really do think a lot of these agentic workflows are going to be a prompt away.
Matt Appenzeller
So okay, so if I'm hearing you correctly, like right now, the way that I see it, I feel like, you know, large businesses with large budgets have an advantage over small businesses with smaller budgets and fewer research, fewer people really, to get all this stuff done. So are you saying that you know, in the next six months that that's going to be evened up, or how's that? Is that what you're saying?
Erica Salm Rench
Yeah, oh yeah, the price of compute is going to continue to decrease, and so it's not, I don't even think it's going to be as much of a cost barrier. It's going to be, I said change management a lot, but I think it's going to be a change management situation and getting the right folks on the bus, people who know how to scale these systems, because one off use cases are very, very approachable. But the question is, how do we adapt these really effective one off use cases for a much larger team, and make sure that everyone's kind of rowing in the same direction, and so I think, yes, these systems are going to be not like, unaffordable for for small organizations, but it's finding the talent of people who know how to like, kind of adapt them across the system.
Matt Appenzeller
Right. Well, hopefully the upcoming workforce, young folks will be able to, you know, fill that void some.
Erica Salm Rench
I hope so.
Matt Appenzeller
We talked about this, yeah.
Erica Salm Rench
You're not going to be entirely just left out of the workforce, is what I hope.
Matt Appenzeller
Right, right? So we talked about a little bit about my next question the last time we spoke, but let's talk about some of the safeguards on AI. Like, what safeguards would you like to see, not just for businesses, but also for individuals as well?
Erica Salm Rench
Yeah. I mean, you know, the question of deep fakes is something that it just completely astounds me in terms of what's the safeguards that aren't out there. So I think when you and I last spoke, I was playing around with Gemini and Chat GPT and for for the most part, just five months ago, if I, like, uploaded a photo of myself, and I said, you know, do these things to change the photo, but like, make it me, most of in most cases, or in all cases, they wouldn't make it me. It would look different. It may be like I'd be wearing a yellow shirt instead of a black shirt, but it wouldn't be my face. Close, but nothing like you would, if you knew me, you would know that's not me. But now, I mean, Google just rolled out another tool called Nano-Banana, a new image generation model, and it will take a photo of me and replicate it exactly with the modifications that I prompted to do. So I'm kind of like, well, what happened to these safeguards? So I don't, I mean it, yeah, it's, it's kind of the Wild West, because all of these companies want to win, and they want to be the best, and they want to, you know, there's obviously demand for me being able to upload a photo of myself and modify it as needed, or upload a photo of something else and modify it as needed for other marketing pursuits. But, but like, where are the safeguards? They're not incentivized to put those in place.
Matt Appenzeller
Yeah, I think you're right. I think right now, your phrase Wild West, I think this, that's exactly where we're at on this is that, and I think the companies are, you know, they're just going to do it first and ask for forgiveness later, right, right? Unfortunately, I think that's where we're at. So let's talk about the Sidecar certification programs. So is it just one certification, or is there like a series of products that you can use, you know, talk to us about that and help us understand that.
Erica Salm Rench
Absolutely. So we have at the core of our offering, so we have a lot of free resources. We have our events, but at the core of our offerings is our AI Learning Hub, and you can either access that at the team level, so we have hundreds of organizations that have their entire staff in there, right and then you can also access it at the individual level. And both of those ways, depending on the plans you purchase, get you access to the AAIP certification. So the association AI professional, and right now it consists of a core set of courses, so a core curriculum, in addition to exams and submitting some assets in order to get certified. Now we envision a world where those certifications, there are more certifications. There are specialized ones. There's obviously going to be an ongoing commitment to remain certified at the core level. So we do, because there's been such incredible demand for it, we do anticipate kind of having it branch off and having additional certification offerings.
Matt Appenzeller
Well, I think you've shown a lot of foresight here. Because I think one of the, certainly, the industries that would want certifications are those associations, you know, and this, it's just kind of how the nonprofit world works, right, when it does that, right? So I think you've shown a lot of foresight here. Your role as the chief marketing officer, you spend a lot of time, as you mentioned in speaking engagements. What are maybe the top two or three things that you're hearing out there, and how much of that is let me sort of couch the question this way, how much of that is sort of has an underlying excitement, and then also, how much of that has, maybe, like an underlying nervousness or fear?
Erica Salm Rench
Yeah, absolutely I, I think I just disproportionately hear from the people that are excited, like the people that are excited tend to like, seek out my sessions, right, right? But I will say that during my years at RASA we are, I would much more more frequently encounter the people that were nervous and scared. I think because RASA was such like a clear application of really streamlining a workflow. And so like, if you're the newsletter person at an association, and you spend your entire day, kind of like doing some clipping online and finding an article here and an article there, and like compiling it all and trying to figure out a great one size fits all, content makeup for your newsletter, like that, that changes dramatically when you use a product like RASA. And so I think there, I think people are nervous for their jobs. I think that that causes a lot of hesitancy and hiding from the reality. And so even though I don't talk to those folks as much. I just feel like I happen to have conversations with the people that are excited about it. I know that they're there because I know I talked to them in years prior.
Matt Appenzeller
So how do we encourage those who are hiding, as you would say, maybe even in a little bit of denial? How do we get them to take the first step into learning more about this, right?
Erica Salm Rench
Yeah, I'd say, even if it's not Sidecar, just find a trusted resource, because they are out there. There are some really great podcasts out there, the Google Deep Mind one I listen to, obviously, our podcast Sidecar Sync. I listen to Marketing AI Institute’s podcast now it's just called the artificial intelligence show. So find a trusted resource, and if you don't know one, if you can't easily find one, ask a tech buddy of yours, like, what do they listen to? What do they trust? Do some research. Find something that you can tune into at least once a week, just so that you can start to have a baseline, and then maybe you'll be ready to kind of dive into coursework and learning, but just start listening to what's out there and what's happening and what's changing, because there has never been a time, I mean, in my life, I think in anyone's life, where the rate of change is so fast, so if you don't start to tune in and get an idea, it's you're really going to be left behind. And that's never been more true.
Matt Appenzeller
Right? The analogy that I've heard, I can't even remember I first heard this, but I've heard it several times. So you think hundreds of years ago when the Gutenberg Bible was published for the first time, you know, and people you know were had, had listened verbally, you know, to the sermons of the day, and now they could actually read it. And just think of the explosion and communication that happened, right? Well, that's kind of what's happening here.
Erica Salm Rench
Yeah, printing press, where you could, like, deliver print and mass too, yeah, absolutely it's, it's, it's a revolution, for sure.
Matt Appenzeller
it is, it absolutely is. So I guess my next question is twofold, right? So number one, are Chambers of Commerce some of your clients? And then number two, why should Chambers of Commerce choose Sidecar AI?
Erica Salm Rench
Yes, we definitely have chambers in the platform. I think there are two main reasons we've kind of touched on these a little bit why you would want to go with Sidecar. One is because we take all the AI information out there and digest it for nonprofits. So we have that bent. We know that you want to keep your members and your communities engaged, and that's the number, you know, the number one driver of the groups that we work with. So we think about AI from that perspective and from your perspective, whereas a lot of the resources out there are good, but they're but they're more general. And then the other reason is that we, like I said, we make it our business to stay on top of this stuff, and we keep it fresh. We publish new content pretty much every single day. We have a use case library now of, I think, about 100 videos. When you and I last were together in May, I think we just had, like, 12 or 13, and now we have almost 100 ways where you can kind of take the learnings and then actually apply them with these tools in a lot of cases, you know, low or no cost tools. So again, making it really, really applicable for folks.
Matt Appenzeller
So what's the number one question that a small business owner or maybe Association leaders should ask themselves about AI if they haven't currently started using it?
Erica Salm Rench
I think how it could help you spend more time on the strategic pursuits and the highest value tasks, and how you can rid yourself of the low value wrote stuff that really bogs you down, and figure out how to apply it in those ways.
Matt Appenzeller
What a great answer. Erica, thank you so much for being on the Chamber On podcast.
Erica Salm Rench
Thank you for having me.
Matt Appenzeller
Absolutely, this is such an enormous topic. I mean, we keep calling it that, but it's more than a topic, but, but helping, thank you for helping us dive into it today. So I do have one last question. Every guest, okay, so every guest on the Chamber On podcast has to answer the following question. So Erica, who is the greatest rock and roll band of all time. Is it the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, or Led Zeppelin?
Erica Salm Rench
Beatles. That was easy.
Matt Appenzeller
The Beatles.
Erica Salm Rench
Yeah.
Matt Appenzeller
That was easy for you.
Erica Salm Rench
Led Zeppelin's great rock and roll too. I'm not a big Stones fan. I know I'm going to alienate a lot of people by saying that, but the Beatles are so classic. So many eras like they invented the era even before our friend Taylor Swift came around. But yeah, I have listened to them since I was a very, very small child.
Matt Appenzeller
Very cool. Well, there you can, I feel like you can make a compelling argument for all three. Jim mark one up for the Beatles there and to our listeners, thanks for tuning in. If you want to learn more about Sidecar AI and the services they offer, please visit their website at Sidecar.ai. Also look out for the Sidecar Sync podcast, and once again, Erica, thank you so much.
Erica Salm Rench
Thanks for having me, Matt.
Matt Appenzeller
Absolutely. Make sure to watch out for our next episode. But until then, everybody, Chamber On.
Erica Salm Rench
Bye everyone.