Tech Meets Business Impact with Jess DeRose

Jessica DeRose, welcome to the show.

Well, thanks. Jessica DeRose. So formal.

Well, you know, I was gonna say Jess, because that's what we do, but when I was like, looking at everything, I'm like, you're rolling with Jessica now. Now I have to say I'm very, very happy to say that I knew the first edition, which was Jess Glazer.

She's still there. It's still Jessica.

I know she's there. She never leaves. But this is, this is. This is new and approved new new new edition. V. V2, V12. Where. Where are we at?

I don't even know. I don't even know. But I'm actually not DeRose. I never legally took his name.

That's right.

Yeah. And we've been married 10 years, so it's not like new. But for anyone listening, if you're confused, I changed my Instagram, actually shut my Instagram down, started a brand new one with a completely different name. And it was all very intentional.

Let's actually talk about that really quick because I remember, I think we were sending audio notes back at that time and you were like, I'm gonna do something crazy. I love crazy. At the time, you know, the girls are watching Frozen and stuff. So of course that was the first thing I could think about. What, how did all of that go? Because obviously there's some name, there's some interesting name things happening here, but like, in a world where we know, gotta build a personal brand, if that's what you're trying to build, what did that do for you? Like what, you know, how did that change kind of shift business?

Yeah. I think if anyone is listening right now, you likely have gone through some sort of a personal development journey on of your own at some point in your life. And we've all gone through different identity shifts and evolutions. And so at the time, I was in one of my identity shifts, maybe a crisis, I don't know. But I had built up my entire online health and fitness business under my name, which is Jess Glazer. And I had a lot of success in the fitness industry. A lot of tv, Today show, all that type of stuff, magazines. And so I was very known in the fitness industry as Jess Glazer, which again is my name. And when I got into business coaching in 2018, I had a lot of success there pretty quickly. By 2020 was really, it was a fabulous business and I was doing a lot of Speaking and come 2021, moving into 2022, there were just some things in the industry that I Didn't feel aligned with. You know, the industry boomed during the pandemic. And by industry, I mean coaching as well as digital marketing. So with the big boom of the industry, and it's kind of an unregulated industry, there were just things that I didn't really like that I was seeing. And I didn't want to be associated with certain people, certain trends. So I kind of had this shedding that I felt I wanted to go through where I wanted to start fresh and new for a couple different reasons. One, I didn't want to be associated with any of the things going on in the industry that I thought were out of integrity. Two, I wanted to prove to myself not that I could grow an account again. Quite opposite, actually. So I really found my worth in awards and accolades my whole life. So the more awards, accolades, milestones, financial wins, the more I kind of felt valued. And so it was a good challenge for me as I was going through some personal development stuff. Hey, can I start a brand new account from zero and be okay with it not being a big account? Not that my account was huge, but I had about 27, I think 27,000 followers. So it was decent beginner. And then also I work with so many beginners in business, I would get a lot of pushback of like, well, you don't understand, you don't, you don't get it. You don't know. You have a lot of followers. And so it was sort of this experiment at the time. Let me start from the ground up. Let me start at zero. Let me get back in the weeds and let me detach from anything, whether it's identity or person, and let me just see what happens. And so initially I started my new account, which by the way, it's a new account, it wasn't just a new handle. And I started it and it was just Glaser, but it was just spelled different, you know, had a dot instead of an underscore or whatever. And I'm like, well, this is silly. It feels the same. And I feel like if anyone wants to find me, they're going to find me. And if they don't even realize that I'm on a new page, they're not going to realize because it looks so similar. So I said, all right, let me shift it, let me change it totally and be okay with if I can't be found or my articles don't get linked back to me. So I went with Jessica, which I'm 40, I've never been called Jessica in my life. I don't like.

Except for then on this podcast. Yes.

And DeRose is my husband's name, which, yeah, we were married 10 years ago and I never, I never legally took his name. Not for any reason. It just kind of never happened.

Kind of busy, right?

Yeah, I got her busy. My to do list. I don't know. So the irony is I took this handle of I am Jessica derose, which I am not Jessica derose. I'm Jess Glaser. And what has it done? I mean, it taught me a lot. That was about three years ago, I think two and a half, three years ago that I did that. Yeah, it taught me a lot. It taught me a lot in, in my worth. It taught me a lot in what matters. The interesting thing is I actually have been turned down for a couple of gigs here and there because my following is too small. So that's been an interesting thing where you're like, what? Like, I'm. I have so much experience and value to add, but okay, whatever.

Doesn't. Don't things like that just drive you crazy?

It's like, crazy.

I was listening to so our, our Friend those House. I was listening to one of his recent episodes. Sorry, I can't remember the guest name, but he was a, he's a money mentor and he was starting to talk about how when he was going on dates, how the women he was dating would start asking him about his credit score and he's like, are you kidding me? He's like, what the one number that you want to judge me by? Like, why is it going to be that? Right.

A weird thing to ask.

And, you know, I, I want to talk about some tech stuff and I want to talk about, you know, how, how you've been able to now get to the fact that like your flagship program, we're getting on the 20th run, that you've been able to do this. You do anything 20 times and I think you learn some stuff to do, let alone do it over the course of how many. How many years? And this is your actual business. But it's just, I love, I love that story because it's like, it's almost like zero based budgeting. You're like, okay, how do I just cut and start again and find what works for me and find what doesn't work for me. And I, I feel like as a programmer over the years, as a software engineer, I do that a lot. As a technical person, I'm like, this just isn't working. I gotta walk away. I gotta go for a walk. I Have to think about it. I have to try a different approach, like being willing to throw something away. So I mean I, I applauded you then and I applaud you now for, for taking that and let's, let's actually turn that into like maybe really what I wanted to get to today when we talk about. You do know how to build businesses. You helped me build mine. Like, what are, what are some of the things that you've seen come up over these years for people who either starting out, starting over, or just want to add a little fuel to the fire? Like what are some of those key things that really are just working?

Yeah. So starting out, I think the biggest thing is getting out of your own way. We self sabotage with all the excuses and look, there's reality too, but it's too saturated. I don't know enough. He's already, he's doing it better than me. She's prettier. They've been doing longer followers, all the things and I think really they're just self sabotaging mechanisms so that we don't have to take action because it's much easier to, to sit in the discomfort of where we are than it is to get uncomfortable and do something new. So I think that's a huge pitfall that people fall into. I also see, and I know you didn't really ask for mistakes, but I do want to just dive into a few of these things.

Yeah, bring it.

There's this thing called uninformed optimism. Okay, so uninformed optimism is exactly what you think it is. It is when you're looking at something that you haven't done yet. It's new, it's shiny, it's exciting. And you have this optimism, optimistic feeling of like, this is going to be great, it's going to be amazing. I can do it, he can do it. I can do it, she can do it. I got this. Right, so you have this uninformed optimism. You then jump into it and for context here, that would be building the business, showing up on social media, getting into marketing, playing with AI and you start to do this journey of it. And quickly you're like, whoa, there are pitfalls, there are detours, there are challenges, things come up. And then you go from this uninformed optimism to move into informed pessimism. Okay, so we move from an optimistic approach, which has no data, to all of a sudden now we have a lot of data and we're pessimistic. So when the challenges come up and things seem to get hard and it gets dark. Then we fall into this trap of, what's the point? I can't do this. I want to quit now. We collective humans fall into that trap. We entrepreneurs and creatives tend to not fall into that trap of quitting. What we do do, though, is, is we look outside of ourselves and we find the next uninformed, optimistic opportunity. And so we get to the hard part where things aren't working or they didn't go as planned. And all of a sudden we see, but Jim Carter is doing this other thing that looks so interesting and exciting. And if I go and I pivot and do that, or I leave behind what I was currently doing and I go do this new shiny object thing, then that's going to be fun and exciting because you have uninformed optimism. And so a mistake that a lot of people make in their journey is that they're constantly bouncing from one thing to the next to the next, whether that's switching your niche, the type of launch you do, your messaging, and if you're constantly switching, then you don't have a foundation to stand on. So when you said before we're going into our 20th live round of our signature program, that is true. And the crazy thing is we actually only run it once a year. Had we still been running it four times a year, we'd be on class, like 30 something. We've been running it almost eight years now. And people will ask me, well, isn't that boring? And the answer is, yes, yes, yes, it is. It actually is sometimes boring. And so my business isn't here to entertain me. My business is here to serve others and to put food on the table for myself and my team members. And so I don't have to have fun all the time in. In. I want to have fun in my business, but it doesn't need to be my fun. Right. I can approach how I do it differently, but the more I can just do the same thing over and over again, it's like working smarter, not harder. And I can see what's working and what's not. And it gives me the opportunity to enhance things in my business and double down on what works and what doesn't, as opposed to being scattered with all this uninformed optimism, ultimately leaving me totally just like scattered, scattered efforts is. It's going to equal scattered results, right?

Yeah. Such a good perspective because nobody talks about it that way, right? You always hear the, am I either building an empire or am I building a lifestyle business? And one may say that it's hard to have an in between. It's either you're going all in, you're trying to build the next Uber, the next Facebook, or you're trying to enjoy every piece of it because you've chosen that lifestyle. You're actually kind of bringing up this, this interesting middle perspective where you have the best of both, but you're actually okay with lacking the one thing that makes it go all in one way or another. Like, so what you're saying is, like, the 700 bookmarks on Twitter X that I have in the last, like, four days of all the shiny AI stuff is actually part of this problem. Why are you screaming in my face right now? And why is that so true? And I already know it? And God, it's so. It's so difficult, right, to distill the noise and to just focus on the foundational things that, that make it happen. You. You talked about the shiny things. I fall victim to that all the time. I roll out a little side project. I. I see something at 7:00', clock, and I'm like, I got 30 minutes. I could actually build something really quick. And, you know, really all I want to do is go to bed at 7 at night. Like, what are, what are, what are some of the shiny things that you actually may have seen that were worth kind of, kind of falling into in this case? Like, has there been anything that's come up for you that you're like, wow, that's such a unique way of doing it with that perspective of, this is a business, this is what you're growing. Like, you're, you're building it for longevity, but, like, you were willing to kind of lean in and try a few of those things. Like, have you found anything that, that you just love?

Yeah, I mean, this is not a layup for you. This is the truth. But technology, 100% technology.

Well, we are on my podcast for a prompt where we talk about AI and tech. So, yeah, I'm here for this.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we can only do so much, and a lot of us don't to want, want to have team members or we're not in a position to have team members, and that's totally fine. Either. Either side of the same coin is fine. I do have team members, and still technology has absolutely changed the game for us. Our efficiency, our productivity. Also, just like, the ability to create and, and the ideas that come. And I know we'll probably talk about AI, which is a really, really fun tool, which, by the way, is not new. I think people have this misconception that there's little robot AI things that do exist. But a calculator technically is like an artificial intelligence tool, right? Like, it's. Things like this have been around, but technology streamlining systems, optimizing things, making it easier, automating. These are like big fancy words that we're throwing around. But what it means is I don't have to do as much manual labor, and neither do my team members. And so that has been huge. And then also communication, right? We use. We use technology to commute. I mean, we're on virtual right now. We use technology to communicate. My team and I slack back and forth throughout the day and these little things that once felt like a shiny object or maybe even like a wow, that's nice for him. I don't think I can do that. Have actually empowered me and everyone in my company to work smarter, not harder, and just be more efficient. And it's incredible what we can get done now. That used to take, you know, 10x the amount of time.

Yeah, let's keep going on that. So what's. What's that one thing that really pushed the needle whether, you know, whether it was AI doesn't even have to be. But I know if it's. Even if it's not AI, like, we're finding ways to, like, kind of bring that in, to almost mash it up and being like a super application or a super opportunity. Like, like, what's that one thing that really actually did let your team work smarter? Or as another way of even answering it, has anybody in your team actually come back and been like, holy hell, now we can just do it this way. Like, we don't have to go hire somebody for that. We don't have to sub this out. We actually can just build an entire automation or a flow. I want to. I want to kind of like, I want to pull in a little bit deeper.

So there's two things that come to mind. And, like, we have so many fun things that we do with technology, but the two that I think have absolutely changed the game for our business. First and foremost, we use Monday.com, so Monday.com is a project management tool. You can use Trello Asana. There's so many ClickUp what that has done for us, though. It has systematized every single thing that we do in the business. So let's just break down for context a launch. People will say things like, I'm in a launch, or I need to build a sales page. And we all make this mistake, right? You put it on your to do list, you're like, okay, build sales page. And then every day you look at it and you're overwhelmed, you're like, build sales page. That's a lot. When you break down what building a sales page actually requires, okay. Beyond even having to pick where you're building it, it's like, what's the headline? What's the sub headline? What's the call to action? What are the deliverables? Who is it for? What's the copy? Do you have to get on Canva and make any cute images? Do you have to collect testimonials and screenshots that you're going to then put on the page? So there are like 55 steps before you can just build, build said sales page. Which again, is why we get overwhelmed when we see something like that on the to do list. Because you know in your brain that it's more than just build it. And we sit there with the cursor blinking. We don't even know where to start. So what something like Monday.com has enabled us to do is take every single task, like building a sales page, break it down into those clear 55 steps, then break that down even into clear phases where it's like, okay, there's actually going to be three. Three different phases. Assign different people on the team. And if you don't have a team, this is arguably more important for you to do this stuff. Okay, because you are solo. But we'll break it down and be able to assign it to whomever. Now, the. The key here is when it's a repeatable task. Onboarding clients to our signature program, building, landing pages, going through launches, things that we do over and over and over in the business. Once we have our board, our Monday board set set up, all we do is go in and duplicate the board for the new project. And then you never run up against those moments where you're like, I forgot that I had to make a cover photo for my Facebook page. Or like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe I forgot to do this thing. Now I'm scrambling to get these Canva images done for my Instagram stories. When you have this process laid out and you use technology, and of course you can do pen to paper if you wanted to, but technology allows you to do it so quickly. We literally clone previous projects, turn them in for our current projects, and then Lauren on our team, who's in charge of all, like, the operations, she'll just move things around. We'll sit there and decide, do we want to do that again this year. Now we're going to delete it. Do we want to change it? Change the order of it? And here is a pro tip. If and when you're using a project management tool like this, or even if you're pen to paper, when you do a debrief of your launch, of building a sales page of the funnel, make your changes or at least write notes for yourself. Then do not wait until you come back around to the project. So, for example, that signature program that we only launch once per year, if I waited, we ended the launch and we're like, oh man, this thing really was terrible this year. This particular thing that we didn't launch, that didn't work. If we waited until a whole year to remember that, or sift through notes somewhere to find that, there's a chance that we could miss it, right? So we always go in when the launch is done. We clone it right away for the following year, title it and date it, make sure it's, you know, 20, 26. And we just start to go in and kind of delete and move and change things right then and there. So when we approach it again a year later, three months later, two weeks later, we know exactly what we're going to be doing. And so it just creates a process for everything. And it's so easy to just clone assignments, change things. And now what we do is we're not building anymore. We're just tweaking and enhancing, tweaking and enhancing. And the second part of it is kind of like one in the same. It's using Zapier, which I'm sure there are other platforms like that as well. But basically it enables our platforms to talk to one another. So we really can remove the manual labor of. Okay, when someone buys on this platform, they're going to actually receive a product on that platform. But those two platforms don't really talk to each other. Zapier can come in and help them talk to each other. And then we get notified in Monday.com, like person received their thing or, you know, whatever, so and so left the membership or payment is due. And so everything is just automated. Everything is automated for us.

Everything as it should be. But now let's, let's actually rewind. Think about class number one the first time you did it eight years ago. What's changed? Everything. Everything, Everything. Right? And can, can we just like, break the myth for everybody that you figure it out as you go? Right?

Totally.

We. We don't expect that you have to have it all, right? The first time. If you're building a business, if you're creating a funnel, if you're setting up a launch, you may not even know that 55 things have to go into it. And if you did, you're like, I don't know what. What they all are. Right. So what's the mindset around being able to want to, like, lean into figuring it out along the way? Like, you. As. As the leader of your business, you have to set that precedent for your team.

Yeah.

You know, did somebody come back and say, hey, we should actually make this template and we should adjust it along the way? If they did. Awesome. Or did you find it your responsibility to be like, you guys? The only way we're going to grow is if we optimize this along the way.

You know, like, I'm a visionary. You think I said that? No, it was more like, girl, because.

I. I know some of the players on your team, which is why I wanted to give them the nod first.

No, I give credit where credit is due. It was absolutely my team being like, hey, you're great. And, like, what you've built is amazing, but you're a disaster.

Like, get out of the way. Yeah.

You can't find anything. And I'm like, what do you mean? It's all right there. And they're like, no, it's in your head. So interestingly, the. The first time I really was introduced to this, this idea of I can plan, I was a school teacher. Like, I can do planning. I don't like it maybe, but I. I can do it if I have to. I definitely am more of a visionary. And I learned this reading through books like Rocket Fuel and Scrum and Traction and, you know, all those great books that kind of differentiate, like, visionary and integrator. So I had brought Lauren, who is my coo. She's my integrator now. For five years, I had brought her on the team to be an executive assistant. And at the time, she was literally, like, going to the post office, returning things at stores, and sometimes helping with random things in the business. We're a couple weeks in, and she's helping me plan a retreat for my elite mastermind girls. And she was going to book my flights. And she said, okay, what is your preference on flying? And I was like, getting there. What the hell kind of question is that?

Losing luggage, not waking up at 2pm getting there.

And she was like, no, everybody has a preference. Like, what's your preference? And I'm like, I don't really understand. And this is like quality of your questions will determine the quality of your answers. Right. So she started to lay it out for me and she said, well, is there a particular airline you always fly? And I'm like, well yeah, United, because there's a huge hub in Newark and I always was going to LA a lot. That's the best one. Okay, good. Is there a time of day you like to fly? I was like, obviously the morning. Like I want to get there. I don't mind waking up early. I want to get there and have as much of the day as possible. Okay, first class or regular? I don't care, regular, whatever. Which side of the plane do you would like to sit on? I'm like, what are you talking about? She's like, no, you have a preference? I said, well yeah, obviously the left side. Because I like to work on my computer and I'm a righty and I like to have my elbow obviously on all these. Right, exactly right.

See the pattern forming?

Yes. And so she's like, okay, so you have a process. You prefer the aisle on the left side of the plane and you like to fly in the morning and blah, blah, blah. She's like, this is a process. We have to create this so that if I leave one day or anyone else comes in, or even your own self, you can just go into that Monday board if you will and like repeat that process. And so bringing team on was probably the, the, the light that shined on a lot of my cracks and holes which is why we get mentors and what team members do. And yeah, it was kind of like, hey, you're doing great. But also there's like you're trying to fill a bucket of water with a hole in the bottom. So like we could keep playing that game or I can help you fill the, fill the, you know, fill the hole up first and patch that crack. And it was like, oh, okay, if I can get my ego and move that, get that out of the way. Cause I've built this big multi seven figure business by myself. It's like if I can remove my ego and say, you know what, you're right, you're better at this than I am and I, and I really could use the help, then what are we going to be able to build? And so that's kind of where it all started. But one last thing I'll say real quick is a lot of times we look and we know, we know this logically, but we look at someone's, call it business body, I don't care bank account relationships and we're looking at the chapter 20. Literally. This is chapter 20 of our signature program. And we expect that we're going to start at chapter one and it needs to look that way. It's this weird thing that we do to ourselves. And if I go back to number one of the signature program, there were no, there was no team, I didn't have coaches, there was no system or process. This is embarrassing. I'm a school teacher, retired school teacher. We have 150 page book that goes with it with our signature program. And I didn't even have a damn syllabus during the first round. And that wasn't even created until round three or four when a client was like, hey, if you're open to feedback, like it'd be really helpful for us to have a syllabus. Syllabus so we know where we're going.

Something to follow along, right?

And it was in that moment that I had this light bulb of like, wow, how did I, the teacher, not give you a syllabus? Like, how embarrassing. And so I quickly turned around, you know, a 10 page workbook and then over the years it's grown. But the key there again is remove your ego. As our friend Chris always says, ego is your biggest overhead. Because I needed to be able to take that feedback. And so asking for feedback constantly with my clients as well as my team members and is how we've been able to constantly tweak and iterate and get to where we are today. But we're just, we are always taking the feedback and we're like, okay, cool, that's, that's information. That's all it is. It's fact. It's not fiction. It's not a story. It doesn't mean anything about me. It's just facts about the business. So let's take it and move forward.

And you have to be intentional about asking, right? Because very few people are going to reach out and tell you those things. It's like I remember, see, I saw this meme the other day and I guess something about it, it's, it's like, you know, like where they like somebody starts typing. You know, it's like you say this, I say this is one of those.

Yeah.

And it was like, startup founder, my business is going okay. And then it was like, advisor, you're building what your customers want. Right? And then it was like startup founder, dot, dot, dot. And then it was like, advisor, you're building what your customers want. Right. You know, it, it's very similar in the sense that it's like the other thing that I realized that you've just done great is you've evolved the program based off of what people need, what the industry warrants, what, what technology is available, things that now can be replaced by automations. They should be. Not everything has to be part of every flow. But if you get stuck with where it was, how do we ever expect to evolve the program? And that also comes with, like, your customers are businesses who are building for their customers. Right. So you're also trying to help them think about, like, the customer's customer. So there's all these dynamics that go into it and that just leads to overwhelming, like so much. Right?

Yeah.

Like, when I was part of the program, you know, there were points where I was just like, okay, I don't want to do this piece, you know, and you would have to be like, jim, get off your ass. Do that thing was like, okay, yes, Jess. But so many black people would fall off, you know, and it's just, it's. It's so hard because you see the best in what's possible on the other side of it. So my question for you now is with what is available with AI, Right. Like you were saying, like you guys were leaning into it. You're using as well. Have you either seen the tide change where more people feel like, because they have a few more of these tools that just weren't even really available a couple years ago, that you're actually seeing people able to do more than they think they were capable of, or are you. Are you kind of seeing that that might be in the horizon with this next class that you're running?

Yeah, I think there's a few brackets and I think that's always the case. If we look at the technology adoption curve, they talk about like you're an early adopter. That was Gary Vee on social media. Right. Early adopter. And then there's like the laggards, and it goes on and on. It's a bell curve.

Early majority, early Jamari.

Exactly. It's a bell curve. Yep. Which, by the way, is going to be with everything. So you're saying that's what happens. There's a bell curve with that? I think there are different buckets that people can fall into when it comes to AI. I think there's a lot of people, whether they're in our industry or there are baby boomer parents, there's a lot of people who are maybe fearful of it or confused or they're just, you.

Know, it's like, don't know where to start. Yeah, exactly.

Like, I don't want to go down. I don't even. I don't need to learn something new. It's too much. And then I think there's people who are dipping their toe and they're like, oh, this is cool. And they use ChatGPT, like Google, and that's fine. And then there are people where I would say myself, where I'm not an expert, but I'm definitely further along. I've been using tools, AI tools for a couple years at this point. I mean, my brother's also in that industry, so I've been introduced to it much earlier and kind of understood how it can help my business. So I would consider myself a pretty good prompter. I think I'm a really good prompter. Again, ask better questions, get better answers, and the quality of your questions are going to determine the quality of your life.

Get a better output. Exactly.

Exactly.

Right.

And I. And I find a lot of joy in that. I think it's really fun because it's like solving a puzzle for me, you know, figuring out how to prompt better. And I think being a teacher, that was also one of my strengths, where it's like, okay, clearly that kid in the back whose eyes are glazed over, like, didn't get what I was saying. So I have to say in a different way on the fly. And so I do think it's one of my superpowers. And so I've really enjoyed that. And then you have people, of course, that are really in it, like yourself, who are just looking at people who don't use it yet, and you're like, oh, my gosh, like, what are you. You have. We could use a calculator. Like, you don't have to do that in your head anymore, you know, like.

We'Ve got smartphones seeing the best. Right. On the other side. I'm just wanting to try it.

Yeah. And I think there's a misconception in our industry. Two things. One, it's cheating. People think that using AI is cheating. I'm not sure why or how, but maybe it's three things. One is cheating. Two is it's impersonal. So, like, well, you can tell that that's a robot. And it's like, well, if you're not good at prompting it, then, yeah, it might not sound like you anymore. So that's something that we can fix. And then the third thing, there's this conversation which I'm curious on your opinion because you're.

You're.

This is Your world, this conversation of AI, like taking over jobs and the way that I see it, and I could be wrong, this is my opinion. My mom is an artist, so my whole life she was an illustrator. She did me medical illustrations. So imagine she, in the 70s, did an illustration for Disney, and she walked into Disney's office and she gave them this thing that she had been drafting table for two weeks. She drew a teddy bear, colored it in, it's brown, and they were like, this is great. I would love a blue version. So she would have to go back in the 70s back to her drafting board and, and recreate the whole thing and make it blue. Now, if a young whippersnapper came in there with like Adobe Photoshop, which is a tool, there would be like, okay, cool, I'll make it blue right now in front of you. Do you want blue checkers? Blue stripes? Dark blue? Light blue? What shade of blue do you want? In fact, we could just pick a blue and they can be more productive, more efficient in less time. Because it's a tool that you're now giving a professional who knows how to use it kind of like a, a, a like laser level for a construction person. Like, it's, it's a tool to amplify what your mastery is. So I don't know that it's taking jobs. I think, yes, in a sense it could be, because also you could work smarter, not harder. I'm like, do I really need that person on my team or can I now just do that thing?

Yeah.

But I do think if in the, in the hands of the, of the professional who understands how to use it, it's giving them more opportunity. Like, I look at my mom and I'm like, man, if you had, if you had Adobe Photoshop, like, what you could do now, you know, it's crazy what she could do. If she's willing to learn the tool, that's it.

You, you have to be willing to want to try. So in her case, I think, I think drawing the parallel to the exact terms that are used is helpful. Right? We have artificial intelligence. And the key is breaking those into the two, the two words that go into that phrase. Your mom has intelligence as, as an artist, she, she understands the creative process. She knows how to build, she knows how to put together, she knows how to talk to clients, she knows how to make a sale, she knows how to deliver. She knows how to be open to feedback. Right? Artificial intelligence takes a world of information and knowledge and then consumes that. But you have to ask for it. It's not, we're not yet at that point the industry is working towards AGI, asi, like artificial general intelligence, where these things now just happen. It is creative. AI isn't creative right now. It is just a mashup of, of your inputs and it gives you a desired output. It's a reflection of what we, where we're at. So what it does is it augments us. I don't think it replaces it now. Yes, it is replacing jobs. Absolutely. There are jobs that are now going to be just completely wiped off. But you know, you're a teacher or you're, you know, retired teacher. Imagine if you were teaching math and then all of a sudden the calculator came out. Right at the time teachers protested like, oh well, people were never going to know how to do math again. And you lose all this, this, this standardized ability. Do you imagine going to your CPA or your bookkeeper, like checking in on like, hey, where are my taxes? We're like, oh, I need about two or three more months. Why? Well, because I'm doing everything longhand because it guarantees accuracy and everything. Like, are you kidding me? I'm gonna buy you a $10 calculator and you need to finish this right now. How much am I paying you? Another example, think about like the invention of the tractor. Did we stop buying lettuce? No, but can you imagine how much ahead of lettuce would be right now if the tractor didn't exist and all of the farm workers had to still harvest all this stuff by hand? So yes, it is going to replace jobs, but I think before that it's going to create so, so many more. And the, the most important piece of this is whether or not your mom in this example is willing to use it to see what it can do for her. And it's such parallel to where we're at in business. You know, given the opportunity, I would love to be sitting in person with you having this recording. But you know what? Technology offers ease and convenience and the ability to still have a great conversation. It's not exactly the same, but what it does is it, it gives us these opportunities that otherwise would be non existent. But the beautiful other side of that is that when we do have those in person experiences, those I'm going to start completely from scratch and build it all the way to completion myself. There's a sense of gratification that you're just not going to get from a large language model from working with an AI tool. And I see how much of that really rolls into what we do in business. There are some things you kind of don't want to use AI for. And that's okay.

Totally.

Because those things should bring you joy.

Totally. And there's also still a lot of, like, I don't want to call them glitches, but there's still a lot of glitches, for lack of a better term, where I'm like, oh, that's not. Like, I've told, I've told my chatgpt. I'm like, do better. Like, that was embarrassing, really.

You know, some of my chats are just so. I'm just like, nope, do it again. Yes, sir. Right, exactly. But I mean, still, the upside here is how great is that opportunity?

Yeah.

You know, when, when we were building our businesses just three, two or three years ago, having to do all of this stuff, let's just say by hand or hiring somebody or subbing it out or any of these things. I mean, you know me, I was, I've been coding since I was 16, and I think about it now and I'm like, where AI can actually just knock out code and applications, like, all of this is growing so fast. I'm like, I can't believe that for a majority of my life I coded every single letter, number, space, dash, line function by hand. Like, I, I, I. That's not even a sentence that I feel like I would have been able to say a few years ago, let alone for the majority of my life. So when we realize just how quick it's coming, the question is, okay, well, it's no longer if it's when, and when should be yesterday.

Well, it's kind of like, what's the saying? Like not or get off the pot. But it's kind of like the, the bus is moving.

Like, the train's moving. So, yeah, that one works.

Yeah. Like, you're either going to choose to, like, understand it and jump on and play around with it or not. And I'm having, I think it's fun. Like, I love to use, you know, whether ChatGPT or Claude, like for brainstorming and for ideas and.

Yeah.

Kind of just bouncing sounding board, like bouncing ideas back and forth. It's not always write me this full sales copy because I don't know that it's, you know, always how I want it to be. But also when you, when you brief your chat and you give it that kind of like, here are all the elements of my brand and my voice. And you, you upload so many different things. I mean, we've used it for emails and pages, and no one knows people are. We wrote an email a couple years ago. It was very meta, but we wrote it with ChatGPT and talking about ChatGPT, and then the next day sent an email was like, ha. That email was chatgpt. And we were like, inundated with people. Like, oh, my God, I had no idea. That sounded just like you. And I'm like, that's. That's the point though. It's so. But even launch timelines, like, we can plug in. And that's where it's interesting, the whole job thing. I mean, we did it for the upcoming launch that we have. We plugged in. We're like, okay, we know our timeline and our dates. I'm not going to give it to you yet. Based on everything you know about, like the launch vehicle, the program, the people, the enrollments, the goals, what would you do? And like, it just spits it out with dates and timeline everything. And you're like, huh, that's interesting.

Okay, nice.

Yeah, Yeah.

I don't like this thing. Can you change that and do it again? It's. It's incredible because, like, if you. Like a Neanderthal, if you had to actually sketch it all out, you know, put it up on a whiteboard again, you know, these things just, they. They give us some of our freedom back, which. Which is great. And in a more competitive than ever space. Right. This, this is why I really wanted to kind of go deeper on this with you is I'm. I'm excited for what this is going to do for up and coming businesses, because it's the tools that I wish I had when I was first learning and things like lessons learned is a real phrase. Right. There are things that both you and I will never do again moving forward, but we also just don't take time to keep receipts. You know, like, there was this thing. I don't do that. So just having this ability to be able to like, give somebody a guide maybe at 3am when they're not, you know, when a mentor or a coach or somebody isn't available. Yeah, it's huge. And you don't have to just rely on one person. You actually have like a collective. I just, I just see this as such an asset moving forward. And I'm so glad to hear that you're leaning into it for your business as well as you're teaching some of these things.

Yeah, well, and content creation too. Right. I think we're so focused on like, ChatGPT, which is one of a million different Platforms. But how about what we're on right now, right? Squadcast or Descript. Like, there's all these platforms that, for video, for editing, they cut your stuff up for you, like, spit it back out, give you reels. I mean, it's unbelievable what is out there.

Yeah, I can't wait to take this and throw it on one of my AI tools and see what it suggests. Would be a really good clip to be able to put out on social. And you know what? There's going to be plenty that are going to. I'm not going to like, but there's going to be a few. And I'm like, wow, I never would have thought to go and find that segment or even just as simple as it is. You know, we're, we're talking for about an hour. Does anybody want to go back and rewatch an hour of them talking ever again? Like, who actually loves going, rewatching, like old Zoom recordings and stuff? I like, avoid it like the plague. So there's, there's also this upside of newfound opportunity in working with the tech and the things that you already have that we actually just have already written off. You know, are you like me? You've got like a folder of all kinds of old Zoom crap that you're just like, that's just going to sit there and I'm going to act like it doesn't exist. And you know what, if my hard drive crashes, I wouldn't miss it. But these are now assets that we kind of wrote off and now we realize, wow, I actually could use that. I just have to be willing to test something, to try something, to. To see where it nets out. These are, these are the fun things that I'm excited about. That again, I wish, I wish I had. But now we have them, so we just have to choose if we want to use them.

I love it.

So you graciously invited me to come and do a guest session for, for your next round. I'm super excited about. Let's actually just like, talk ahead about that from our conversation and what you're trying to. You're kind of getting from the vibe of, you know, what you see coming. What do you, what do you think people are going to want to hear, to learn maybe kind of like some of the key things we talked about here, so I can think about it, but maybe we can give a little hint is like, like, what could come. What do you, what do you see this, this next class of people who are coming together where, where they're either going to feel A little too overwhelmed or where they're going to see a little bit more optimism.

Like.

Like what's on your heart that you think this next round is really get the hang of some AI stuff.

Yeah. So the journey for someone coming into our signature program, it really is a to Z soup to nuts. And I hate saying that because it just feels so big and it's the truth.

But it's validated. Yeah.

Because I went through it as well. It's the truth. The goal is, or really the transformation is that you're leaving with your group coaching program or your course launched out into the world. You're actually starting with your clients while you're still in the 12 weeks with us. So we help you with the onboarding, but starting all the way at the beginning, we're making sure you're setting up, you know, a bucket with no holes in the bottom. So your business bank account and your LLC and all that type of stuff is getting done. And of course, we move through the foundations into marketing. And I think, Jim, that is where. That is where everybody gets really overwhelmed because the marketing aspect that we're teaching is organic social media marketing. So no ads. So there's an element of. Of needing to show up on social media, learning how to promote yourself, how to sell, how to create content. And that for a lot of people gets really sticky because we're also simultaneously having you build your email list because we don't want to just focus on social media. So I think the marketing department, the marketing kind of era is where people get really stuck because we. We come up against limiting beliefs of not being good enough. I'm not a good speaker. I don't want to show up. I have this aversion to, you know, I'm allergic to Instagram, like, whatever it is. I think that's where I'm most excited for you to come in during the marketing phase and kind of walk through, what do AI tools look like in your marketing and promotion? Social media? How can we make your lives easier? I don't want you editing a reel for 45 minutes either. Like, I don't want you spending an hour writing a caption. That's not what I want. Business.

Yeah.

Yeah. But it happens. And so I think really the marketing, before we even get into the sales chapter is. Is where I'm like, most excited for AI.

That sounds like a lot of fun. That. That sounds exactly like what I was hoping you would say too, which is. It's like, what are all the time suck things that, you know, if we could just consider those good enough so we could move on and work on the big things. I'm really glad to hear that. That's what you're also excited about in this is now having some new opportunities to show people who are going through this that we just maybe didn't have, you know, a couple years ago as well.

Yeah, love it.

Well, and you have a free event coming up as well. Talk a little bit about that. And when is that date? Because I want to put that link in the show notes as soon as you open that up. Because I don't think anybody can register yet. Is that right?

Correct.

Okay, tell me a little bit about that for everybody who's listening.

Awesome. Well, thank you. Every year we host a large virtual event. It's totally free. It's called Digital Business Evolutions Live Experience. That's the name of the company. It is a three part live experience. It's not a webinar, it's not a masterclass. I'm in a big studio, we make a big party out of it. And it is a three part live. However, it's run across two weeks and it's very intentional that we do that. So nobody has time to be on back to back days hours of content. Like we have things to do.

So true.

And even if we find the time, then I know better than anyone you're not implementing the stuff that I'm teaching you. You're just consuming it. And we do not need you to consume more. We have consumptionitis, we've got infobesity. We need to take action. So the three days are split, spread across two weeks very intentionally so you have time to catch up, watch replays and do the homework that we give you. Again, this is a totally free event. We're basically walking you through the framework of the foundations, the marketing and the sales that we take have taken thousands and thousands of clients through before. During the live experience, you have a follow along workbook. We run contests. I actually do bonus trainings on the days where we don't have the big live experience. We do hot seat coaching. So I coach people in there for free. We have a whole community. There's prizes. It is a big hoopla, rah rah fun event. The kicker is we don't sell anything. There's no pitch at the end and it's not a bait and switch. So it really, truly is us just giving it all away for free. Because I believe when we have a solution to a problem, it's our responsibility to share it. Otherwise we're Robbing people of the opportunity for transformation. And I also know how humans work. 99.9% of the people who consume will not actually take action. So I can give it to you. It's totally fine. Take what you want, leave the rest. So we run this event every single year. We have a couple thousand people that come. It's a really fun event. The very first day, the first live training is March 20th. Oh, and it's for. Let me, let me just tell you, by the way, we have everyone in there from. I'm in the ideation phase. I think I want to start an online business to seven figure business owners. And it's really for the coach, the service provider, or like the course creator, content creator, online business owner. Can you come if you have a brick and mortar? Absolutely. Can you come if you have an agency? 100%. But we're focused on like digital products and coaching is really where we focus. But we have people of all different backgrounds, niches, and levels of business. And we even use it every year because we do it every spring. We use it sort of as a spring cleaning for our own business where we're like, okay, let's go back through all the important things. So we have people. This will be our fifth year running this event and we have hundreds of people that are coming for their fifth time. Time. Third time. Fifth time. Yeah. Because they just, they know how important it is to kind of take a beat for a second, zoom out and, and really clean everything up.

So any level of business, really, it's kind of just come as you are. Even if you just have an idea and you kind of want to get it off the ground. Something like this for you.

Yeah. We've had people launch their idea in the two weeks and make money. Like we've had people have $10,000 launches in the two weeks off the free.

During the free program.

Yeah. Yeah.

Amazing. How good does that make you feel when you can see stuff like that happen?

Our, our whole, our mantra on the team for this event is our free event is better than our competitors paid event. And we have hundreds and hundreds of people that have said that. We have screenshots, like hundreds of people that have said, I paid 5k for a mastermind, I paid $500 for a content course. And this is like far better. And that, that's our goal. Really? Truly.

And those are the receipts you get?

Yes.

I love it. All right, well, this was so fun. I'm so glad we got a chance to catch up. I wanted to ask you these questions Anyways, because it's been a while, so I'm so glad we got to share this. Where can everybody follow you and just learn a little bit more about what you're up to and then everybody just knows. Well, I'm going to have that link in, show notes and everything that I can. I'm also just going to send it out to my email list. So if you're on the list, you'll get a link to this just as soon as it comes out.

Thank you. Thank you. I am everywhere you can find people these days, but I hang out most on Instagram and I am Jessica DeRose. That's what it is. So the handle is I am Jessica DeRose. Come say hi. Slide into my DMs and let me know you came from this podcast. Just say the word, Jim, and I'll know where you came from and we can start a conversation there. But yeah, I hang most on Instagram and I'm just super grateful for, for you and for you having me on and for this conversation. Certainly, certainly technology is like amplified my work now that I'm a mom and I have significantly less time.

Isn't it the truth? And you will just continue to feel that people ask me and Valve, you know, like, does it get better? We're just like, no, you just get stronger.

Great.

You just need to figure it out along the way. Well, I'm super grateful for you, Jess. First of all, just the fact that we've, we've had such a strong friendship over the years since we first met. We've supported each other, we've challenged each other, we've hired each other over the years. But more importantly, just grateful to call you such a dear friend and somebody who just cares, who really, like, puts the time in to want to see people thrive. And now that you have your newest additional full time commitment as a wonderful mommy to Mila, just excited to see how that, how that evolves for you, for you and Mike over the years.

Well, thank you. I'm right back to you and I appreciate everything about you and our friendship and just the conversations always.

All right, until next time. See you soon.