Suzanne Taylor King -- AI Inspired Entrepreneurship

All right, super happy to be here with Suzanne. We met via LinkedIn, via our mutual friend Gord, Gord Isman. And so thank you, Gord, if you're watching this, for introducing us. And we just had a great time before we started recording talking about entrepreneurship and the systems that we're creating in our business. Suzanne is like systems queen, or at least the the high level of thinking about the systems.

I like planning them. I don't like building them.

Exactly. Yeah, no, but you strategize them. And I was very pleasantly surprised to hear what all that you're doing. And so I just wanted to have you share with the folks here watching anything you want to share in terms of how you think about systems and examples of the systems you've built because Just, I mean, as I was listening to those, I'm like, wow, you must have a team of 80,000 people.

It's literally just me and a really great automation.

Like a developer, you know, developer, technical person, right?

Yeah.

Which is, which is, which is sort of like the, the, the really the future, right? It's like, it's like the, the, the executive and then the technical person.

Yeah.

And, and the more and more so the executive can have AI handle a lot of not just, you know, detailed systems planning, but also even the execution.

Yeah.

We're not, we're not quite there that AI can handle all the execution. We've just been talking about that. Mm-hmm. But I think by end of, end of 2 years, I'm guessing, you know, it's, it might be this year.

You know, I, as, as we're talking right now, my Claude cowork is finishing an email sequence for me, a new nurture sequence. It's doing all the promotional materials for my 3-day workshop, uh, that I'm going to have in like 6 weeks.

Yeah.

Uh, so all the emails, all the posts, very little editing will need to be done because it's so programmed in my voice. So I feel like, dare I say, the use of AI has actually made me more time wealthy for connections and having real conversations because the busy work that used to keep my fingers crazy all the time is now, you know, I feel like I have this executive level assistant sitting right next to me and I'm just passing tasks.

Yeah.

So it's been really fun to explore that space for me. And I think I might be a little ADD anyway. So knowing that there's 3 projects going over there, right now helps me focus here.

Yeah. No, it's, it's really cool. I mean, you're really, you're really doing it because I mean, as someone who knows AI and uses it myself, as I heard you talk about the systems you have, you're like, okay, Suzanne's really doing it, you know, really, really great. So give us a sense of the programs you're running. I mean, the sort of the, the offers you have, I mean, what you're simultaneously doing is really hard unless you have AI taking care of a lot of stuff.

I, I think so. Well, I— everybody says that. So anybody who knows me says, well, how do you produce so much content? And I have 3 coaching groups going right now. I— and there are 3 separate groups of people, but they all interact in the same school community. There's content that goes there. There's content for LinkedIn. Uh, I have a very, very active Substack. Membership, um, which is kind of the, the entry level, uh, to my world. I write 3 different newsletters every week. Um, I—

and a lot of this is using AI.

I mean, it's all, all of it.

All of it. Yeah, because you, you've already trained the AI on your voice, on your writing voice, so that when, when you, when you plug in an idea, um, how much do you have to Like, how do you— so yeah, tell us a bit about this. How do you brainstorm with AI, or how much do you brainstorm with AI? Do you use dictation? Do you, do you still—

I love that. Yes, I do. I would say my AI newsletter is written in a persona that I created. She's made up. Her name is Evelyn. She is a 1950s housewife who drinks martinis smokes cigarettes, and she's really funny, slightly drunk, and she reports on AI.

Okay. Okay. And I definitely want to put that, that link below.

I don't know where it came from, honestly, but she's kind of like a combination of my mother, June Cleaver, me, and I just wanted a personality where I could show my sense of humor, right? Because I tend to be a little sarcastic when it comes to things.

Yes. Yeah.

And share some cool martini recipes at the bottom of the newsletter. Because that doesn't really go with my brand, but it goes with her brand, right?

Interesting. Interesting.

And now people are like, is there gonna be a cocktail recipe book? I'm like, yeah, get ready for Christmas. It'll be ready. Um, so I, I think my authenticity piece, you know, because of AI, because I can produce more content, because I can, um, really have something that's programmed in Evelyn's voice. I thought, well, if I could do that for a persona— so she led to me creating personas for other people. Fun.

Yeah.

And she led— okay, what, I'm gonna have a cocktail recipe book? Now another revenue stream, fun. So for me, it was all about the creativity piece of it. And I had a conversation with a dear friend, Tim Windsor. I was on his podcast and we had this really meaningful conversation about eudaimonia, Stoic philosophy, positive psychology. And I thought, could I use AI to write another newsletter about the intersection of Stoic philosophy, modern business, Napoleon Hill, and all of these, like, different ideas that are all saying the same thing, right? So I got on chat and I said, I'm exploring the intersection of Napoleon Hill's First Law of Success with Stoic philosophy and Ray Dalio's, uh, book Principles, and how they all intersect for the modern solopreneur.

Yes.

And what it gave back was this, like, beautiful piece of my brain where things all connect.

Yeah.

And then I just kept going. I just kept exploring, well, what does that mean? And what does this mean? And what would the Stoics say about that? What would my dad say about that? So when I brought in— I have a couple custom GPTs that are different people, a Stoic philosopher. One is my dad. And my dad passed away in 2010, but I still I have a GPT programmed when I need his advice, which is so good.

Yeah.

And so how did you—

how did you— I guess you, you fed in what you knew about him and—

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And how I knew he would respond to me in past situations, you know, about being an athlete, um, You know, he was very stoic anyway, um, not a lover of affection or platitudes. Um, you know, he wouldn't good job me if, if it wasn't true, right? So it's just a very truthful GPT that, um, I bring into a conversation just to give me the real deal.

Yeah.

And so I think the combination of that and my natural storytelling abilities that I explored and broke down. Well, what makes a good story? How did I get good at telling stories? And what does that look like? And then bringing all of that together, it was pretty natural that AI could do a good job of bringing those individual pieces together.

Yeah, that's amazing. And so you produced another— that was your second newsletter, and then you have a third one.

And the third one is— it was AI's idea. So this is so good. The Eudaimon series is exploring all those intersections of Stoicism, Napoleon Hill, and that spawned a conversation with Tim, who started the conversation in my head and a coach of mine, Gordon. So now we get together once a month and we talk about one of the editions, right, in a live video, like podcast.

Yes.

Fun. Like we're having all of this fun doing these things. And that's always key for me is if it's not fun, I don't want to do it.

Right.

And I, I wrote the 4th or 5th edition of the Udaimon, and my chat said to me, this feels like a passion project for you. Would you like to explore what 12 foundational, like, pieces of content would be? And I was like, I already know what they are. Like, I already had my core feeling about the 12 guiding principles of Suzanne, right? Like, what does that look like? What are those foundational pieces for me as a business owner that have always been in place since my first business? Okay, well, I start typing, and then I start talking to it and just riffing on my ideas about life and business. And, oh, you know, I learned to be curious through my own healing, medical healing story. Oh, I learned to be resilient through losing my mom, then losing my dad, and a month later, losing my soulmate dog. And, you know, so what, what grief taught me, what entrepreneurship taught me, I didn't care if anybody else was going to read them, honestly. It was for me, cathartic, of course, right?

Yeah.

And AI helped me. I'm not a great writer, I'll be honest. Story structure, you know, hook, story, transition to whatever you're selling or whatever you want people to take action on— not good at it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

AI is great at it, of course. So yeah, yeah. And it helped with the speed of output. Yeah, I would say it cured my overthinking. Yeah, yeah, you know, um, so that, that part's been exciting from a content creator perspective to anything that lights my fire. I'm having fun, and then it's cutting procrastination for me because it's not going to take me 4 hours to write something. It's pull this GPT, pull this GPT, pull the story, pull the idea, And then let the thread get written.

Yeah, that's amazing. And, and just to, we've only touched on your content strategy and then you also have offerings. Like you were telling me, you've got, you've got 3 coaching groups, membership programs. One is basically $100 a month, another one's $300 a month, another one is, you know, $1,000 a month. You've got programs that you're running, you've got, you know, in some of those groups, hundreds of members or, you know, and so what, that's what AI is making possible with, like you said, just making you more time wealthy than you've ever been, which is really amazing. And so, and you mentioned that you like have, you use Notion, you have a second brain in Notion that's been where you dump all the ideas, inspiration, maybe, you know, templates or whatever in there. And then, but you also use Claude. So tell, tell us about which tool you use Claude frequently. You use Notion. But, and you said that you're a part owner in a GoHighLevel agency. You've got all these things going on. I'm like, this is amazing because, because yeah, and AI is definitely helping, but even before AI, I'm sure you were able to, you were like handling it.

Well, before AI, my Notion was a hot mess. Okay. It was kind of like a storage place for me of, you know, programs, ideas. I have a productivity library. I have a prompt library, you know, all kinds of things from me, from other people. And I was on a call a week ago with one of my AI friends, Rob Cressy. And he said, oh, I use Notion for my second brain. I said, I love Notion, don't really know how to set it up. And he goes, you don't have to. And I said, what do you mean? He said, tell Claude to do it for you. And he sends me a screenshot of how his second brain is set up, you know, all collapsed, just the categories. So it's literally his AI second brain. I fed the image to Claude, connected Claude to a brand new Notion, you know, just signed up for a new free account. 10 minutes later, it was all set up for me. And I was like, oh, the game just changed right now. Right now the game changed when I said it's all set up and I said go create a build section to store all the things I've built for clients, all the 90-day plans, all the resources, create a subcategory for my coaches group, and send everything I've ever created with you, Claude, there. And 20 minutes later, I, I go to cook dinner and I come back and it's all done.

Yeah.

And my husband said, We're having dinner early tonight. And I said, yeah, because I onboarded a new assistant that's doing stuff for me.

Incredible.

Yeah, it's so fun.

You're doing all this and you're cooking dinner. That's, that's what's also incredible. So, so, um, if you were to say to somebody who is just getting started, right? Like, can imagine, okay, they're inspired by the possibilities.

Yes.

And then they're getting started and they are a, they are a coach. They've created some content, but they're feeling overwhelmed by all this stuff. What would you say are like the most important things to know as they get started?

Well, for one, it's totally normal.

Yeah.

And most most people that I'm talking to, uh, aren't using AI at all. Yeah, um, it's right around 95% of people are not. You know, they might have a free ChatGPT account.

Yeah.

And I say, number one, look at your business and what is taking up the most time. And maybe that's a look at your calendar. Um, maybe it's a look at I still use a paper planner as much as I love digital things. I like the idea of writing things down. And when you really think about your business, what's taking the most time away from actually talking to other people, potential clients, potential referral partners, or getting out into the real world, making dinner for your family, having lunch with a friend, You know, why did we become entrepreneurs in the first place? For me, it was the time freedom.

Sure.

But I actually built myself a job.

Yeah.

And, and now I feel like the last 3 years I have gotten back to the freedom aspect of what it means to be an entrepreneur. So look at the tasks that are taking the most amount of time. And then explore AI tools for those tasks. Don't go looking for tool first. That's where you get shiny object. Oh, this tool can do this. Well, if you don't need that, don't learn it, right?

There's unlimited tools, and that's the problem.

Oh, there's unlimited tools. Like, don't even look at AppSumo, please. Yeah, don't even look. So I think So that's number one is, you know, what is it in my business that's occupying the most amount of time? For me, it was content creation. So that's where I went first. The second is to what do you like doing in your business? For me, I love speaking. I love meeting people. I love being on podcasts. I love hosting my own podcast. Well, I don't want to get rid of those things, right? So what, what do I— what can I use with AI to accentuate those things? And there's, there's been a couple little tools that help me put more videos out there or make a talking video of my persona Evelyn for her newsletter. Wow, that, that was a cool learn to take a cartoon image and make it talk for my newsletter, that was worth my time because of the laughs I get, of the attention I get over it. So for me, it was, what can take more time off my calendar? And then what makes sense for learning? I looked at learning all of these tools and learning all of this different thinking to be a little overwhelming. And so creating a system for that. So now I have my Notion, you know, idea bank. I have my, oh, things I want to build someday bank. And then, you know, really looking at how can I learn faster? So that's where NotebookLM came into my life. I mastered it. I started teaching workshops on it. I started showing all of my clients how to use it.

Yeah.

And now I have a notebook for every topic that I teach on, that I speak on. And half of those knowledge bases aren't my information. It's from YouTube or blogs.

Yes.

Or articles I've read and thought, that changed my perspective. That's going into the LinkedIn notebook.

Right? Yes.

And so now these notebooks, and I have one on ChatGPT, one on Claude, one on NotebookLM on a notebook.

Yes, sure.

One on Gemini, one on Claude skills, one on AI in general, one on automations. And there's hundreds of them.

Yeah.

And as I come across new information, if it's something I'm going to go back to or I'm interested in, I put it in the notebook for that topic. I don't watch hour-long YouTube videos. I don't read mile-long blogs.

Yeah.

I put it in NotebookLM. And say, tell me what I need to know from this video.

Yeah, totally.

So again, another tool knows me really well, and I'm able to absorb more knowledge quicker. And I feel like I get paid to learn from my client, which is amazing.

That's fantastic. I'm going to make sure in the links below, I'll put your LinkedIn. Here is your—

Yes.

Platform of choice. I'll make sure I put that in there and then your website as well. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, you're so welcome. Keep rocking. It's great. Yeah.

I think once you get started and you really see the potential of what we're talking about as a business owner, it's exciting.

Exactly. You know, there's in the news, and then we're gonna conclude in just a minute or two. In the news, more and more it's AI is taking jobs. AI is gonna make us all, you know, without work. And I basically say, well, nobody knows the future, number one. Okay. Mm-hmm. Because some, some people say AI is gonna create way more opportunity than there's ever been before. I tend to side on the abundance side of things cuz nobody knows the future. You might as well think more positively.

Right.

Um, But I say this, no matter what the solution is, step 1, observe the entrepreneurial people in your field, the people you respect and admire, and watch what they're doing at all times, right? Whatever the current climate is, watch what they're doing. What offerings are they making? How are they creating content? What are they— how are they interacting with their audience? What are they offering their clients? What tools do they seem to be using? Step 1, observe. Step 2, try out the tools and the offers and the content formats that intrigue you from what you seem to be working. And then step 3, notice what works for you and double down on that.

Yeah.

You know, I'm like, if you just do that, there is no economic technological climate that will catch you, you know, catch you, without opportunity. You always have opportunity. Yeah.

You know, so, and if we, if we think about, you know, I don't know how many years ago the Pony Express delivered mail. Okay. Well, that job went away.

Right.

I remember when the fax machine— Oh, yeah, of course, came on to the planet.

Yeah.

And I was working in a dental office and was used to— if we had stuff to send to another dental office or the hospital or whatever, yeah, we picked up the phone and I called Matt the courier and he picked it up and delivered it for us.

Yeah.

And then the fax machine happened, right? And I was like, I don't want to use that. I— that's stupid. I don't want to do that. Um, it was a pain in the neck to learn.

Yeah.

And at the time, all of my charts for my patients were paper.

Yeah, yeah.

There was nothing in a computer. The schedule, you know, to schedule your next appointment was on paper.

Sure, of course.

And, you know, because I'm old, like, like old school stuff here.

Yeah, of course.

And when computers came Yeah, uh, I was very resistant to it. And, you know, flash forward 10 years, Match.com drops on the scene. I'm single. I'm like, I'm not doing that.

Yeah, right.

And yeah, I ended up doing that.

I met my wife online too. Yeah.

Oh, did you? Well, there was no pictures on Match.com when it first launched.

Okay, well, that's probably good, actually.

No, I don't know.

Love is Blind.

Uh, I'm not sure about that. I went on a couple of those dates. Um, and I just think at every tech advancement, yes, jobs change.

Sure, absolutely.

Some go away, but there's also tons of new ones.

There's always been more new ones than, than the ones have gone away. And hopefully, hopefully the same this time. We'll, we'll see. But, uh, yeah, keep, keep watching. So that's why I like talking to you, Suzanne, keep us inspired. So thank you so much.

You're so welcome.

Thank you.