EP277 Is AI Going to Take the Gift of Failure Away? asks Julie Cole

Episode description Julie Cole and her co-founders started Mabel's Labels in a Hamilton basement 23 years ago, back when customers were still nervous about typing a credit card number into a computer. They figured out early that they weren't really running a label company - they were running a tech company that happened to make labels. Nothing off the shelf did what they needed, so they built it themselves.

Which is why her read on this moment carries some weight.

She's watched every technology wave since. She's not a skeptic and she's not a cheerleader. She uses AI, has a clear personal rule for when she will and won't, and is clear about where companies are getting it wrong with customers. But she circles one worry: young entrepreneurs are now building in a day what took her team six months in that basement, and she isn't certain the lessons survive the shortcut. She's worried AI is going to take the gift of failure away.

Also in this one: the LinkedIn post that made her furious, why she has two full-time people whose entire job is email, what her funeral-director son has to do with AI-proof careers, the Air Canada chatbot case, and why turning up in person has become a strong marketing strategy.

About Julie Cole Julie Cole is co-founder and Senior Director of Mabel's Labels, the Hamilton-born company she and three co-founders launched from a basement in 2003 and grew into a household name. She's a recovered lawyer, a mom of six, an award-winning entrepreneur, and the best-selling author of Like a Mother: Birthing Businesses, Babies, and a Life Beyond Labels. She's a regular on Canadian television and a fixture at women's entrepreneurship events across the country - which, as this episode argues, is not incidental to how she's built the brand.

What we get into (00:33) Why a label company is actually a tech company

(01:03) Hamilton, 2003, and the fact that there wasn't a nerd among them

(02:24) Susan's shoe labels, and a core memory involving a three-year-old choosing fonts

(03:08) Watching kids grow up through the icons they pick

(04:02) Twenty-three years of technology waves - what's different this time

(05:26) Six months in a basement versus one day now. What gets lost?

(06:45) You can't put your head in the sand about this