You Won't Break Claude's Heart: Gian Schauer on Playing With AI

Hey, Club Jam! Welcome back to The Human Side of AI, and I'm Flora, your host. Today you're meeting Miss Gian, a Club Jam member who joined me from the mountains of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Gian spent years in corporate communications before she went looking for something more creative. What she found is Fierce and Sweet, a kids clothing brand built on the simple idea, let kids pick their animal first and their favorite color second. Love it. Snakes in pink, bunnies in bold colors, critters with a little attitude, and so much fun. We talk about how she uses Claude, who she calls Claudia, along with Obsidian and a handful of connectors to stay organized and ahead of the holidays. Plus a giveaway idea that might come straight out of Jam Club. Yeah, that is, if you remember, this one's for you. And if you're not yet, come find us at jamout.ai. Let's get into it. All right, Gian, yeah?

Correct.

Well, that's a beautiful name. Where are you calling from?

I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Awesome. Great.

Up in the mountains. It's beautiful here.

Cool. How long have you been there?

6 years. Before that, we were in Northern California. And before that, many, many, many, many, many, many years in Boston and New York. But I'm originally from North Dakota.

Okay. Closer to your roots.

Yes, exactly.

Well, how did you find yourself in Club Jam?

So, um, I had signed up for a SCORE event that, uh, Jam spoke at, and she made connections that I had already been working with separately. So I had already been digging around in Obsidian,

uh,

because I have a writing background and I was looking at that for some writing organization. And I've been working with AI for my business. And the fact that she combined them, a big old light bulb went off in my head. And I said, I have to follow this person wherever she goes. So that's how I came to Jamf.

You know, that's honestly such a common story. Like, that what you just shared is such a similar I've heard that, um, on so many of these. It's really cool. So, uh, a few, a few light bulbs on, on my head. Um, you mentioned your business and I want to hear about that. You also mentioned writing as if it's a separate, separate thing. So tell us a little bit about, you know, how you spend your time.

Sure. So I came— I come from a corporate background. Um, I was a journalism major, uh, worked in corporate for many, many, many, many, many, many years, way too many years, um, doing corporate communications, strategic planning, that that kind of thing.

Okay.

And change management was a big one. And started to then do some contracting work, consulting work with that. And I just got burned out from it, just got totally burned out from it. So I had always done some creative stuff either for corporate or in other areas of my life and decided I was going to do some T-shirt designs. So I started with something called Women Warriors, and I found some— quite frankly, I was tired of hearing boys will be boys. So I started to find some women warriors who were girls being girls back in history. And that didn't do very, very well, mostly because I didn't know what I was doing.

What would it have been?

Uh, just, I didn't know the selling. I didn't know putting things into a system. Uh, I watched some webinars and tried some things. Um, it was my first time on Shopify, so I was learning along those lines. Um, but I was using AI to, uh, create my ideas. So I've got some limited, um, sort of design stuff and wanted to take it to the next level. So that's where I started playing around with AI and was enjoying the outcomes. But it was taking me a long time. It's taking me a lot of prompts and a lot of, you know, redos. And when it came to the sales and social media, I Didn't have a system together. I was really struggling. I was also trying to still do some corporate work, some consulting work. So I wasn't putting the time in that I needed to. I have a 3-year-old granddaughter. And I have an only daughter, an only child, and now she's got an only child. It just— something went off because we were, we were starting to talk about some things. And someone in her life, very close, a little girl, is really into snakes and reptiles and everything. But she's also into princess dresses. And doing something with her mom, she was like, I can't, I can't do it. I can't find anything for this kid. You know, all of the snake and reptile stuff are like— green and brown and dark blue, and she wants to wear pink and yellow and stuff, and she struggles. So I kind of had that in the back of my mind. And then I read an article that animals in children's media are overwhelmingly represented where the predator is male. And the prey is represented as a female.

Whoa.

And I, you know, my feminist side got really irritated. And being a mother and a grandmother, I got really irritated by that. And I started digging into it. And so I started with making some designs based on my daughter's little friend. of sort of snakes and reptiles, but it got bigger than that. I realized that, well, little boys are kind of left out of it too. I've got some grandnephews that, uh, their mom has bunnies and they have bunnies and they're little boys and they love bunnies, but all the little bunny things are on pink and, and yellow and lilac.

Isn't that silly? That's so silly.

It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Because so I, I came up with this idea, you know, because nature isn't gendered in that You know, wild animals are not gendered in that way. So I came up with this idea that I called Fierce and Sweet, because you can be both fierce and sweet when you're a kid.

For both genders.

For both genders.

At all ages.

At all ages, right. So the other piece of it was, you know, why can't you just pick your animal first? I happen to like crocodiles. I happen to like, you know, bunnies. And then pick the color that you like.

Cool.

So that's the premise behind this. I'm struggling a little bit with the concept of gender neutral because gender neutral comes up with this idea of it's beige, it's gray, it's a tomato or it's a banana. It still isn't capturing the personality of a kid. So I'm— I started to play a little bit, and I've come up with gender unbiased. I'm still playing around a little bit with that. Um, but I, I, uh, stopped working on my, um, Warriors and started putting my energy into my Shopify site for, uh, Fierce and Sweet. And, um, The timing of finding Jam and finding how AI could do so much better for me was perfect because I was just starting to use the Shopify AI to do some things, but I was still playing around with AI and, and, and that. And connecting all of this was so invaluable to me. I had a lot of writing because I've got blogs for my gender unbiased line, and I had blogs for my women warriors too, but it wasn't as planned. It wasn't as strategic. And so the combination of having things in Obsidian and building skills in Claude, and I call her Claudia. Claudia. Because as I've mentioned to anyone that will listen, I'm— I was kind of tired of listening to men and I just wanted to, uh, have a girl.

You're in good presence. I am a mother of 2 warrior daughters and we live in the jungle in Panama where my little girls probably know more about most snakes and reptiles than most little boys. So like, you are in good Good space here. I'm so on board.

Yes. Yay. Yeah. And, you know, why shouldn't, you know, and why can't you still be in pink?

And they are.

Pink is my granddaughter's favorite color. And she's, her big thing now, she's got the snake. Buffalo is a very big deal right now for the little girls. So yeah. It's a, it's kind of a generic snake. It's, I'm, I, when I first did the first batch, I didn't quite put the details around where it came from. Then I did a Southwest Critters, uh, because I live in the Southwest and, um, we have a whiptail lizard, which is native to New Mexico. That's fun! And yeah, and it's really sweet and cute and I'm getting some really great traction from, from folks in this area. Um, so yeah, so now I'm going to get a little more detailed into the types of critters that we have, right? So that kids can have a little learning.

So if anyone is as impatient as I am, um, and they're listening to this and they want to just like find your, your site now, where do people find it? Tell us a little bit about like where you are with your business.

So I've got a pretty substantial website called atfierceandsweet.com. Uh, I've got— I'm on social media. Uh, Instagram is, you know, To Catch the Moms. Facebook is To Fetch the Grandmas. And, um, I've been on TikTok, but I've been having a bit of a challenge to get on TikTok Shop because when you sell children's things on TikTok Shop, they require that you, um, certify that things are safe for kids.

They

don't care about adults, but they— which is great. Um, and I've submitted all of that stuff. I'm just kind of in a little holding pattern. Okay.

Yeah,

yeah. Um, but my website is, is up and running and That would be a great place to go.

I've also— Oh, I'm sorry. Continue.

No, go ahead. Go ahead.

So someone goes to your website and they get to pick their animal first.

Correct.

And then their color.

Yes.

I love it. Okay. What were you about to say?

Well, I was going to say along these lines, I've also found that there are some shop local marketplaces to post my things on. And AI has really been helpful in helping me Make those connections, helping me, you know, write an appropriate description that fits in those areas. And then a really cool thing that I brought up in one of Jam sessions that I found in her give—what was it called? Go giver. Her go giver section of the classification classroom was I asked for some ideas for giveaways, and Claudia came back with making. coloring pages from my animals.

Yeah.

And I was like, that's amazing. So right now I have a coloring contest going on. Okay, I'm joining. I have sent the coloring pages to some different preschools, like my granddaughter's preschool and preschools in my area, just to, you know, kind of, here, here's a little something. You don't have to sell anything. Just here's the images. Um, you know, and it's a great marketing thing because the critters still look like my critters. Uh, and that's what I do call them. I call them critters.

I love this. Okay. This is so fun. So in the back of my mind, I'm like, of course she was, has a journalism background. Like this makes so much sense, right? Because it's, you're still finding the story in this. And so, so you, you mentioned this corporate America and it, and it, and Talk to me a little bit about kind of how that journalism background played into your role in corporate America and how you feel like it's playing a role into your prompting with AI and you developing the story of your critters and your business.

Yeah, so I think journalism taught me to do the research and you know, write with balance.

Yeah.

And when I went into corporate America, I didn't necessarily start out doing a lot of writing because they just need, you know, people doing grunt work. And but the editing component and the attention to detail and the, and the finding, figuring out where to find things, figuring out what people want to hear about translated very well. I worked with as a bit of a liaison between the C-suite. So, I worked for a lot of CEOs, CFOs, chief risk managers, that kind of thing, and the rank and file, the next levels under them. So, it forces you to understand audience.

Yeah.

I was constantly talking to the execs about reaching their audience in a different way, the things that the audience knew or didn't know. I was constantly working with them on, you know, what— how they needed to present themselves. And going into my own business, you know, I hadn't thought about it till you asked me the question, but definitely I'm still thinking about audience. What do they want? You know, like finding this little girl a snake in pink, you know. was feel, you know, finding what the audience wanted, but then also communicating to the executives or the parents or grandparents, like, you're missing an opportunity here. There's something that you're not seeing when you go into a store or when your child is, you know, telling you that they like snakes, but they also like pink. And you see that you're frustrated, but you're not really thinking, what could you do about it? So. So I think that's how that corporate piece helped.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And listen to your kids, right? Like, listen to your kids. And what you just said was that, right? Like, listen to your kids. Like, they want to like the snakes and the lizards, and they want to still wear the pink. And like, it doesn't have to be— you don't have to classify them in any sort of section. Just listen to what they want and listen to what they're asking for, because they deserve that. These are little tiny humans who like, really know themselves. So let's not take that away from them. I love that.

That's right. That's, that's absolutely right. And you want them, you want your little girls to be strong. You want them to be fierce. You also want them to stay sweet. You want your little boys to be sweet, but also stay fierce. Like, like, this is not this. I'm not trying to say all boys have to wear pink and now all girls have to wear blue. That's not what this is at all. Yeah. Listen to your kids and listen to what they're interested in.

Well,

and maybe that, you know, and we're, I'm selling a lot of pink bunnies too. And that's okay. 'Cause the jackrabbit, by the way, the jackrabbit has a bit of an attitude and that, you know, like the little face has a little attitude.

Well, and what I'm hearing from you, when I hear you talk about your brand and the story behind it. I'm like, the gender aspect is actually not a key player in this conversation. Like what I'm hearing is you're wanting kids to feel heard and like that. And, and that doesn't have to put them in a bucket, you know, like you just— oh, I love that. Okay. So this is so exciting and I'm obviously going to jump off this call and go order stuff. This is so exciting. So, so you mentioned Obsidian and you mentioned, you know, Claudia, talk Tell us a little bit about your, your tech stack and like what—

I still would like to do a little bit more cleanup out there, but I had started using Obsidian way before I met Jam for some writing projects. Um, so now I've got— yeah, so now I've got my business stuff on there. Um, and I've also now got some of my volunteer stuff on there because I was, um, uh, just an aha like a week and a half or so ago. I went, I'm getting behind on all this volunteer stuff. And oh yeah, I've got this wonderful tool. So I use Claudia, um, I used ChatGPT, um, and use AI, um, to help me with my designs because they do a much better, uh, uh, much better work than I found Claudia to do. Um, but I have some, a bunch of skills set up including marketing, social media, uh, wholesale, because we're trying to do sales. Amazing. Wholesales. And I use that and I've got some projects set up. I'm still trying to figure out projects, you know, like kind of where projects are. I know things are evolving so that they're starting to talk to each other a little bit. I haven't used code. And I know when I sit in on some of the Jam stuff, everybody's using code. I'm not afraid of code. It's just I kind of started in this one direction. You can't Right. I have— right, I host 3 different websites. Um, one is, uh, 2 are on Shopify, my 2 stores on Shopify, and one is with WordPress. And my volunteer stuff is with WordPress. I've got social media stuff and I've got some different tools for that, but I've got all of these connectors now and I am So thrilled because my connectors are helping me stay organized. I used to get up in the morning and be dreading that I had missed something, I had forgotten something, I was behind on something. And just having that organization and those connectors to remind me— I've got one connector that just scrolls my work email to find invoices and finance stuff because I was always feeling like I was missing stuff there. Mm-hmm.

What a peace of mind.

Oh, it is such a peace of mind. And my husband is working as my intern now because he's retired. And he's driving me a little nuts. But he's a finance guy. So I can throw this in front of him. And he doesn't feel like I'm forgetting things or I'm losing things. Yeah.

Amazing. I'm honestly so impressed to see this pivot of yours, right? Like, what a cool shift. So you mentioned Women and Warriors. Earlier, and you said that you still have that blog. So what, what is, what does your content plan look like for that now?

So my goal after I get through holiday selling season is to revamp my Women Warriors. Um, I had been doing blogs. Um, so the kid blogs are fun and easy. You know, they're about the statistics. They're about like right now I've done a gift guide. Uh, the Women Warriors blogs were about each particular warrior. And kind of a background of theirs. Some of them were about connections of— I'd come up with this archetype of what kind of warrior you are. Some were strategic, some were more connected to the people that they love. So I want to revamp that and come up with some different ideas. I'd come up with some really obscure Okay. And I think that was part of the issue that people hadn't heard these names before. So I want to kind of rethink that. And now that I have a better— I've got a team with me with Claudia, so I can maybe help break that down a little bit and have a little better success with them after, you know, in 2027.

This is, this is so cool. So, so, so thank you for talking us through that. I'm, I'm curious when AI really became available to the masses and it sounds like it might have aligned up kind of with that timeline you were talking about earlier when you were just like spending so much time like revising prompts. And I mean, I feel like that's really relatable for a lot of people, a lot of listeners. You know, you talk to me a little bit about, you know, were you, were you excited when AI came out? Were you a little like hesitant? What would you, what would you say to people

So I say this all the time. People were worried about computers when they first came out, you know, like PCs. People were worried about, you know, will kids be able to learn if they're using a computer? We— I talked to my husband about this because right now the big argument is about the water use and all of these big, you know, industrial-scale farms. warehouses for data centers. And I said, well, back in the day, computers used to take up a whole warehouse too. A big room would take up a whole warehouse. And finally technology caught up and it got down to a computer on your, on your phone.

Totally.

And so I am hopeful that that warehousing and water use and all of that nonsense will, technology will catch up in how to make that more efficient and more effective. The other quote I love to say is, and I forget who, this scholar was, but there's a quote out there in history that said, if our students start to use this, they will forget how to think. And the this was the invention of a pencil to write things down. And it just reminds us that even way back when, like, you know— Our thinking has evolved, our, you know, how we retain information has evolved. And are there pluses and minuses? Absolutely. But let's try to focus on the positive.

Totally. And I actually just on my Friday interview prior was with an environmentalist and we talked a lot about this. And I'm a big believer in you can't really solve a problem if it doesn't exist, right? Like now we know there's a problem and okay, great. let's, let's solve it, right? And I, I'm— I, I love it. So, um, okay, so what are you most excited about going into this holiday season with, with your brand specifically?

Right. I am most excited that I've got a plan.

Cool.

That I've got, um, that I'm ahead. Like, it's still October, you know, um, that I'm not struggling with this on, you know, Thanksgiving evening, you know, um, and that I, I'm most excited that I've got a backup. Like when I was doing this with my Women Warriors, I was in a vacuum. I was kind of doing this all by myself. I was a part of a couple different, you know, not so much school communities, but, you know, maybe webinars or following a couple of folks. But I didn't have someone to just day to day ask questions and help me solve problems. That's what I am most excited about, that I've got something, someone, Claudia, to help me through this. And that it's going to, you know, it's going to pick up. It's continuing to pick up. So that's what I'm most excited about.

Do you think if you had told yourself even 10 years ago, this is what you would be doing right now, would you have believed yourself?

Not at all. Not at all.

And do you think you could be doing it without how you're using AI? Do you think it would be where it is without it?

No, no, no. I, I am not an artist at a level that I could be doing these things. I've had some interesting ideas But AI has brought me to the point of being able to fulfill those ideas, to make those ideas come to life.

Is your daughter and granddaughter so proud of you?

They are so excited. They are so proud. My granddaughter— well, my granddaughter, I'll occasionally say, OK, here are my new animals. Pick an animal. And now what color? And my daughter's trying to get her to not have everything in her wardrobe be pink. You know, so we're switching it up a little bit. Um, but yeah, she's picking all the cool animals and stuff that we don't necessarily think, you know, like I wouldn't have, if I'd have been in a store, I wouldn't have seen that animal and said, oh, I should get this for my granddaughter. But the fact that she just chose it is amazing.

I love it.

Um, yeah.

Cool. Okay. And then what is one thing you want to share with someone that's just like, maybe on the beginning stage of kind of that shift into starting their own company or in their beginning stage of starting to play with AI? Like, what is, what is something that's kind of on your heart right now that you want to share with, with the right, you know, the right person who needs to hear it?

I would say play with it. And I— you're not going to, you're not going to break the heart of Claude. By giving him or her something that is not feasible or is kind of weird. You've got somebody who is not going to judge you in AI and just put it out there and they will give you feedback on is this something usable or not. They'll give you, you know, the research that you you might need or you might have already seen. I, I ask things all the time. I got an email this morning, uh, from another newsletter, and I threw a section of it into Claude and said, what do we think about this? And they gave me some good feedback, like you could ignore most of it, but you know, here's something you could pay attention to. And I think that's helpful for somebody starting a business because you can be so overwhelmed by so many things, and to an objective person just say, nope, still focus on these 3 things. I, I think that's really going to be helpful for somebody just starting out a business.

Well, I think you're doing something really, really cool. I wish you great success, um, you know, in this season and, and next. And I'm excited to see what comes up— Women Warriors and, and, and every— all the other projects you're working on. And I, I know You know, I know, I know, I know they'll be fruitful. So thank you so much. And then, you know, last, last thing, let's say we connect in 6 months. Where do you think AI will have taken you and your business then?

So in 6 months, I should also have my other, my Warrior line up and running in a different way. I should have many more things automated, workflows and things like that. And Be, be selling a lot more and, and looking for that next level in whether it be wholesale, whether it be other areas. And by the way, um, I'm working with infant and toddlers, but I've gotten in line, um, for elementary school for like youth, youth sizes too. So, um, they'll have a little bit different, you know, maybe the same animals, a little bit different, uh, tagline and things. Because, um, nobody in elementary school wants to be called itsy bitsy when you've got a spider on you, you know.

Okay, fair.

You know, so yeah, so that's where I can see myself.

This was such a refreshing shot of creativity. And I just, I'm so grateful that we were able to jump on. And I messaged you earlier and I was like, oh, I guess we're rescheduling. And it was me 30 minutes early. So I'm so glad we were able to connect. And thank you for your time today and for sharing.

Thank you, Laura. Yeah. And good luck with your little girls.

Oh, definitely. Little girls, they're the best. I'm biased, but they really are.

I understand. I understand.

Cool. Thank you so much.

Take care. Bye.

Bye-bye.