#376: The Capability Revolution: Why You’ve Been Using AI All Wrong (and What to Do About It)

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast, the number one podcast for freelance writers, copywriters, and solo marketers who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. With over 1.3 million downloads from listeners just like you across 101 countries, you may not know this about me. I've talked about it some in recent episodes, but it's not something that I really talk about too much or go too in depth into. Last year, I did something I hadn't done in about eight years or so, and basically I started taking on writing clients again. A limited number I took on two, to be specific. But the story behind this is that in 2016, I let go of my last writing client and it happened very organically. So I had been focused since 2012 very much on coaching and putting out online classes, courses and workshops out there. But a lot of my focus since 2012 has been in business coaching, and I still had a few clients left. Writing clients, that is. I little by little started letting go of them for one reason or another. Either my contact left the company or we just mutually agreed to stop working together. Whatever the case was 2016, what happened there is that this client was somebody I'd been working with for a long, long time. The company got acquired and we just found that it was a good time for us to part ways. I didn't want to continue to pursue them through the company that had acquired them. But long story short, I found in 2024 that I wanted to kind of get back at it, and I wanted to start working in a limited fashion with writing clients. But I wanted to do it differently this time around. I wanted to approach it more from the consulting side of things while providing some marketing execution in the way of writing. But I didn't want to lead with writing. I had been focusing exclusively on coaching writers for nearly a decade by this point, and I wanted to test my marketing and lead conversion expertise in the real world. So I landed to home services clients through a connection, somebody who connected me to these people doing free growth audits for these companies that show them the gold mine of untapped opportunities they were sitting on. Both audits turn into retainer relationships, which is great news. But here's the problem is we got into the actual work, right? So now they knew what they needed to focus on. They were on board with that And a lot of this involved some consulting work, some planning, some writing. I realized as we got into it that they needed some things that I had never done before. More specifically, they needed brand positioning, Sprints, they needed messaging platforms. They were specific for home services. Companies had done some of this work. I've done quite a bit of it for freelance writers and copywriters and solo marketers. But I hadn't done this specifically for the home services industry. They needed strategic frameworks that I'd only heard about but never executed on my own. Now, eight years ago, eight, ten years ago, I would have said, man, that's not really what I do. And I would have referred out that work. And frankly, that would have probably been a stumbling block because they would have split up the engagement to a point where it wouldn't have made sense for these clients to hire me if I couldn't just provide everything. What changed this time around? Or let me put it to you another way, what could having unlimited leverage do for you and your business? Unlimited capability. When I say unlimited, this is more of a concept, not literal. But if you could have 10x20x, I mean, at that point you're kind of getting into unlimited territory. If we treat it as a concept, what could that do for you, for your income, for your business, for your security in terms of your business capacity to continue, to keep moving forward, to keep growing, and for you to grow your income doing again, great work for better clients? Because here's the thing, that's where we're essentially going and that's what we're essentially talking about here. The ability to have access to an unlimited amount of leverage in your business. To explain this further, we first need to talk about something I call the capability ceiling and why your experience might actually be capping your income. So let me ask you something. How many projects have you turned down over the past year or two because you felt they were outside your wheelhouse? I'm not talking about projects you couldn't do well. I'm talking about projects you declined because you didn't feel confident in your ability to deliver exceptional results. Maybe it was a white paper in a technical area or industry that you never touched or you didn't really feel comfortable with. Perhaps a client needed help with email sequences when you primarily write web copy. Or maybe someone asked for competitive analysis when you've always focused on content marketing. Or maybe the client wasn't exactly sure what they needed and and you didn't have the confidence to sell a road mapping engagement to be able to sit down and do a full assessment and to determine what would be the most important stuff item, deliverable strategy, initiative or campaign that would give them the biggest results the fastest. Here's what's fascinating. We built our careers around saying no to these types of opportunities. Think about it. We called it staying in our lane or maintaining professional standards or focusing on a niche. And we convinced ourselves that narrow expertise was our competitive advantage. And you know what? For years, it worked. Clients respected specialists. They paid premium rates for deep expertise. The market rewarded writers who could say, I only work with SaaS companies or I focus exclusively on writing direct response copy. And don't get me wrong, they still do. Specialized experience to focus background, strong domain expertise. All those things still matter. Okay, so this episode is not about. Oh no, forget about all that. I've been telling you that for years that it matters. It doesn't matter anymore. No, it still does. But I want you to pay attention to the nuances here of my argument, because that's really where the gold is. Something fundamental has shifted in the past two years. The psychology behind our no responses. When we turn down those opportunities we felt were outside our wheelhouse or we weren't comfortable with. I want you to think about the psychology there that used to make perfect sense. When a client asked for something outside her experience, our brain immediately started calculating risk. Oh my gosh, what if I deliver subpar work? Or what if I can't meet their expectations? What if my reputation is damaged by taking this on, not being able to deliver? So what do we do? We would politely decline and refer them to someone else. We protected our professional image by staying within the boundaries of what we had already proven to ourselves that we could do. The problem is that those boundaries have essentially become prison walls. While we've been protecting our reputations by saying no, well, we've been just kind of staying in our lane again. Our competitors are starting to find ways to say yes. And every project we decline because it's not our thing. That's revenue. That's walking out the door, often into the hands of writers who aren't necessarily more experienced, but who are more willing to figure it out. I want to say that again, that revenue is starting to walk into the hands of writers who are not necessarily more experienced, they're just much more willing to figure it out. That's huge. Think about the hidden cost of this approach. You're not just losing the immediate project revenue, you're also to expand your skill set, naturally. And you're training clients to see you as someone with limitations rather than someone who can solve their problems. Even worse, you're reinforcing your own mental model that your capabilities are fixed, at least fixed in the short and midterm. That basically what you're telling yourself is what you can do today is what you'll pretty much always be able to do. And the older you get, let's face it, the more set in your ways you are, the more fixed you are in what you're willing to step into. And that's where the real trap lies, because I'll explain in a minute, AI is quickly changing the landscape of the creative services industry. It's not only shaking things up like never before, which is forcing many, by the way, to just hang their hat and either retire early or find something else to do for a living. Something those two things alone. I've never seen so many instances of that happening. But it's. It's also forcing writers to rethink their businesses. It's forcing them to rethink what they offer, how they offer it, how they present it, and how they showcase and talk about their value. So here's what I've discovered over the past year, working with coaching clients and through my own experience, again getting back out there, working directly with clients on helping them convert more opportunities into customers. The capability ceiling is about much more than just industry expertise or knowing how to tackle different project types. It's actually five different types of gaps that are quietly constraining your businesses, and I'm going to walk you through them because I know so far, hopefully you're following along with me and you're kind of getting an idea of what this is about, where I'm going. But I want to give you more concrete examples because the details do matter here. In no particular order, let's start with what I would call craft gaps. So these are When I say craft, I'm talking about the craft of writing. So writing techniques, formats or styles you avoid because you've never mastered them. Maybe you're wonderful at SEO focused blog posts, but you're intimidated by case studies. Or maybe you excel at B2B copy, but freeze up when asked for something more creative. Each format you can't confidently tackle is a project type you're automatically eliminating from your pipeline when you think about it, and not just when a client asks you, but also when you see an opportunity for a client to do something different but you don't bring it up because it's not something you do or you feel comfortable offering to them. The second gap is what I might call efficiency gaps. And I think this is the one where a lot of AI discussions are centered around. But these are workflow and processes that could dramatically improve your speed and quality. But you stick with slower, more familiar methods. Think about how long you spend on research or how you structure your revision process, or how you organize client feedback. Many riders are operating at no more than 50% efficiency simply because they've never optimized their workflows. Huge area of opportunity here to close those gaps. Third are what I might call industry gaps. So these are entire sectors that you won't touch because you don't understand the business model or the regulatory environment or customer dynamics or all the business drivers. So SaaS, healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, each industry you avoid cuts off a significant portion of potential opportunities. Now, don't get caught up in the whole, well, that's this, I don't know that industry. And you know, this is the guy specialized here. I'm not suggesting that you need to go broader, okay? I'm just talking about sometimes staying literally in one lane can hurt you. Fourth, domain and topic gaps. Now, this is different from industry expertise. I'm talking here about specific issues, products, technologies, or subject areas that make you uncomfortable. Maybe the industry is fine, but you got someone you're talking to who's launching a new complex service and you don't feel qualified to write about it because it feels very abstract or it has too many moving parts or whatever. Or maybe they need content about supply chain optimization. You've never dealt with anything related to logistics, or maybe you feel comfortable with the client services, but now they're targeting a new industry, a new vertical market, and you've never written for that audience and you feel very uncomfortable saying that. Yeah, I can go ahead and take this on. Fifth, I would call these process gaps. These are business development and client management capabilities, for example, that you might lack. Things like conducting discovery calls that uncover real prospecting client needs, presenting strategic recommendations with confidence, presenting a new framework to change the conversation that you're having internally with a client, or maybe structuring proposals for larger, more complex projects. Many writers are excellent at execution, but weak at positioning themselves for higher value work. So process covers that and much more. And finally, there are strategic gaps. These are the advisory conversations you deflect or avoid because again, you don't feel qualified to provide that kind of guidance. Strategic guidance, for example. So when clients start asking about market positioning or competitive differentiation or campaign strategy, you redirect a conversation back to writing because strategy feels like someone else's job. And, you know, let's just face it, the word strategy doesn't help. Nobody can agree on exactly what it is. It causes many freelancers, especially writers, to freeze up because they don't consider themselves strategists. So I try to avoid that word at all costs. I prefer to talk about advisory guidance, but sometimes we just need to mention it because, you know, it is one word that kind of unites us all and at least we can sort of know what we're talking about. But the brutal truth about these gaps is this. Each of them is costing you projects and costing you income every single month. The writer who can only work in familiar industries is competing for a fraction of available projects. The writer who avoids complex formats or domains or topics is limited to simpler, lower paying work. The writer who can't have more higher level strategic conversations will always be seen as an order taker rather than a trusted advisor, an indispensable resource. And in today's market, being seen as an order taker is a recipe for declining rates and shrinking opportunities. Because every month that goes by, the core function of writing copy and content is being commoditized. And I hate to say that, but it's the truth. And I need to just tell you exactly what I'm seeing, where I'm seeing this thing going. I don't think I'm wrong. I see all roads leading to a place where just the craft of writing, that act alone, those deliverables in and of themselves are going to be rapidly and already being rapidly commoditized. When you follow the current nascent trend to its logical conclusion, all paths lead to one scenario. And that is that most writers won't be able to make a good living running their business the same way they always have. It's the old saying, right? What got you here will not take you there. And that is the truth. Now here's where everything changes. What if I told you that every single one of those capability gaps could be filled not through months of training or expensive courses, but through strategic use of AI tools that you probably already have access to. So let me give you some specific examples from my own experience with those home services clients, because again, this is what really opened my eyes to the possibilities. When they needed a brand positioning sprint, I didn't panic and refer them to a brand strategist I would have just a few years ago, but instead I asked Claude to walk me through proven brand positioning frameworks. I asked it to help me customize these frameworks for home services companies and then even roleplay potential client objections so I could prepare responses. Now, there's more to it than that. It wasn't a single prompt or a single question. But the point is, I had access to a tool that opened up an incredible amount of knowledge and leverage to me. When a client needed competitive analysis, I didn't spend weeks trying to figure out research methodologies. I had ChatGPT help me develop a systematic approach for analyzing their competitive landscape, complete with evaluation criteria and presentation templates when they needed messaging platforms. I didn't guess at industry best practices. I just used AI to understand the psychological triggers that work in home services marketing. Help me identify the unique value propositions that would resonate with their target customers, and then just guide me through structuring messages that actually convert. Now, here's what's really remarkable. The quality of work I deliver to these clients wasn't just good enough, it was exceptional. My clients were thrilled with the strategic thinking that I provided, the thoroughness of the analysis, and the practical applicability of everything I gave them. And the reason? There's actually two reasons why that was the case. Number one, I wasn't just winging it. Okay? That's a very important distinction. I don't want you to think that I just looked something up, I had no idea what it was, and I just copied and pasted into a Word document without knowing what the heck I was doing. I wasn't winging it. I had access to the collective knowledge of experts who'd been doing this work for decades. I could tap into frameworks that consultants typically guard closely. I could get feedback on my thinking from what we could call tireless advisors running in a server somewhere who never got impatient with my questions. And number two, and here's the key. I'm not a total newbie. Sure, I hadn't done a brand sprint before, but I've been in the field of marketing for long enough to know what's good and what's not so good when I get an output from an AI. So yet, one more reason why I wasn't just winging it. I wasn't taking things at face value. When I would work with a prompt and I would see a resulting framework or formula idea, I have a pretty good sense of what will work and what may not work as well for my specific situation. Or if I'm not sure, I at least know what questions to ask of the AI to help me better understand what it's suggesting. And you know what? I'm not alone here. I don't have any just special skills or experience or education that you don't already have. In other words, what I'm saying here is that you and I know enough to have a good sense of what words that I keep using over and over again in this podcast. You and I have a good sense of judgment, discernment, taste, and with those abilities, plus a high IQ thought partner that has access to a limitless store of knowledge and pattern recognition capabilities, my own capabilities go up easily and I'm being conservative by 10x. In fact, I would argue that I now have unlimited leverage in my business and so do you. Now, I want to be clear about something. This is Again, there's a lot of nuance in what I'm saying here, and I don't want to be misunderstood. I am not talking about AI doing the work for you. I'm so tired of this discussion that I keep seeing online, this very binary argument about use AI or don't use AI. And the assumption in that argument, either overtly or subtext, is that if you use AI, it's doing the work for you. Not at all. We need to get away from that discussion. It's completely unproductive and and it's not going to take you or me where we really need to go. Okay, this is about what I'm referring to here in this whole episode. And everything that I'm about is about AI removing the knowledge and experience constraints that used to limit what you could confidently take on. Think about those five capability gaps that I mentioned earlier. AI can help you master new writing formats by providing examples, templates, real time feedback, that sort of thing. It can optimize your workflows by suggesting more efficient ways to go about the work, more efficient processes, and then help you automate routine tasks. It can give you instant expertise in new industries, where or topic areas by providing deep background, by giving you key terms, jargon and strategic insights that you need to be aware of. It can make you knowledgeable and much more fluent in complex topics by breaking them down into understandable components and helping you ask the right questions. Most importantly, it can help you have a confident strategic conversation by providing frameworks, data and perspectives that make you genuinely helpful to your clients. It's like having instant access to not just one thought partner, but rather a panel of 10, 20, 30 or dozens of world class experts on a variety of topics and domains. So you can probably start seeing why the mindset shift is so profound here, because instead of thinking what do I already know? You start thinking what can I confidently figure out? Instead of is this in my wheelhouse, you can ask, can I deliver exceptional value here? Instead of, I don't do that. You can start saying, let me show you what's possible with AI on your side. You can start asking yourself a whole new set of questions that are way more productive and can take you to wherever you want to go. So how do you actually make this transition? How do you go from operating within artificial constraints to confidently expanding your capabilities? Well, the key is to stop thinking defensively and start thinking systematically. Most writers, I have found, approach AI randomly. So, for example, they'll use ChatGPT for a quick research task here, or they'll ask Claude for help with a headline there to help, maybe edit something or write a first draft of this part of the article. Or they'll read a newsletter with AI tips and hacks and sample prompts. But this kind of scattered approach that most people take doesn't lead freelancers to develop a systematic approach to expand their capabilities. Everything is piecemeal and fragmented. The writers who are really transforming their businesses are taking a different approach. They are methodically identifying their biggest capability gaps and then using AI to fill them one by one. So here's what this looks like in practice. Instead of avoiding complex projects, they're using AI to break them down into manageable components. Instead of declining work in unfamiliar industries or again, domains, they're using AI to rapidly develop working knowledge of new sectors. Instead of referring out work that involves some advisory or strategic work, they're using AI to keep that in house, to develop their own strategic thinking capabilities that enable them to deliver that part of the work. The beautiful thing about this approach is that it creates a compounding effect. And this is really important. Basically, each new capability that you develop makes you more confident in taking on the next challenge. Think about it. Each successful project, because you went ahead and had enough faith to say, I can help you with that, knowing that you have in your office access to dozens and dozens of the best minds in the world or in history about all that information. When you have that, you can confidently or at least muster enough confidence to say, I can help you with that. When you get a yes and you finish the project successfully, you can now build on that track record. You now are in a different plane completely of confidence and capability. What does that do? Well, that opens doors to even bigger opportunities. And you can probably start seeing how capability expansion takes a compounded or geometric path, not a linear path. And you can probably also see why I'm so excited about this, because this is not a One time win. This is not about winning that next project. This is about opening up a whole new different portal, okay? Whole new, different portal is going to take you somewhere completely different. Each win opens up a massively valuable experience for you, which makes it easier to land the next opportunity, which creates a compounding effect that takes your business, your income and your confidence to a whole new level. And here's what's really important. You don't have to change your professional identity to do this. You're still a writer. You're still focused on helping clients communicate effectively. You just no longer artificially limiting what that can look like. In fact, I want to make something very clear. This isn't about becoming a consultant or a strategist unless that's what you want to do. And if that's the case, great. You can probably see that there's all kinds of possibilities here, and never in history have you had this opportunity to actually do that and get there confidently. But this is not necessarily about that. This is about becoming the kind of writer who can say yes to opportunities that align with your goals and your interests, regardless of whether you've done that exact type of work before or written about that specific area or that type of product or that industry or in that format. The competitive advantage this creates, as you can probably see by now, is massive. Because while other writers are turning down projects because it's just not their thing or they don't have the confidence to say yes, you're confidently taking them on and delivering exceptional results. While some of your competitors are stuck in narrow areas of specialization. You're building a reputation as someone who can handle complex high value challenges. And the key thing here is that you're building a business that's resilient and growth oriented rather than constrained and defensive and has a limited shelf life. Because here's the thing, the writers who keep turning down opportunities because it's not their thing are going to be at a greatly increased risk of going out of business. I hate to say that I'm not an alarmist and of course I don't have a crystal ball, okay? But as I continue to look at our industry and at our profession from first principles and how it's rapidly evolving, it's clear to me that there's going to be a lot of pain over the next two plus years. So I want to leave you with a closing thought. Six months from now, you'll either be operating with the same capability constraints that you have today, or you will have systematically expanded what's professionally possible for You. You'll either still be declining projects because they're outside your wheelhouse, or you'll be confidently taking on work that feels exciting and financially rewarding. You'll either still be seen as someone with limitations, or you'll be known as someone who can tackle complex challenges and delivers exceptional results. The choice is yours. And again, you have to decide what specific configuration makes sense for you. There's no one size fits all here. Everyone's different. You have your own set of core values, purpose, vision, and you need to take all that into account. I'm not here to promote this idea that you should say yes to everything. That's what you're still thinking. You've missed the key point. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I feel strongly about is this. The tools to make that transformation, whatever that looks like for you, are already available to you. Your experience doesn't have to be your income limit anymore. Your expertise doesn't have to define the boundaries of what's possible. And your past doesn't have to determine your future earning potential. The writers who understand this, who start systematically expanding their capabilities now, these are the writers who are going to thrive in the next few years. The ones who stay locked in their current constraints are going to find the market to become increasingly difficult. You thought it was hard, now you thought it was challenging, now it's going to get harder. Here's one simple action step to get you started. I would urge you to identify your biggest capability gap. Is it an industry that you tend to avoid? A format that you've never mastered or felt comfortable with or just completely shied away from? Is it a type of strategic conversation you tend to deflect? Whatever it is, I gave you lots of ideas here, I hope. I just want you to pick one gap that if you were to fill it would immediately open new opportunities for your business. And then I urge you to start experimenting with using AI to fill that gap. You might be surprised at what becomes possible when you stop limiting yourself to what you already know. And speaking of expanding capabilities systematically, I've been working on something that I'm really, really excited to share with you. It's a comprehensive system for helping writers like you methodically build the expanded capabilities and the competitive advantage that the market now demands. This is going to be a game changer. In fact, I haven't been this excited about something new that I'm launching in a long time, and I'm going to be making a special announcement about it next week. So keep an eye out on your inbox. If you've been feeling like you need a more systematic approach to staying competitive in this rapidly changing landscape, you're going to want to hear what I've been building. I think you're going to get excited. You're going to see what it can do for you. Until then, start thinking about those capability gaps. The market is rewarding writers who can fill them and unfortunately, and again, I hate to say this, but the market is punishing and will continue to punish those who can't. Well, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the episode and just a quick reminder to grab your free copy of my latest book Earn More in Less Time the Proven Mindset, Strategies and Actions to Prosper as a Freelance writer. You can get your free copy@b2b launcher.com or you will also find the detailed show notes to this and and all my other episodes. Enjoy and have a great day.