Finding Brave Epis 322: How to Powerfully Market Your Small Business with AI, with Alan Stern

Hello everyone, this is Kathy Caprino and welcome to my podcast, Finding Brave. I've created the show for everyone who longs to create something bold and brave in their life, to rise up, speak up, and stand up for who they are and to reach their highest and biggest visions. Each week I'll be speaking with inspiring guests from all walks of business, leadership, entertainment, the creative arts, and the entrepreneurial world. And they'll be sharing their intimate stories of finding brave, and offer their best strategies for building your most rewarding, joyful, and meaningful life, business, and career. Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Finding Brave. We are now in the new year when this comes to you. I hope it's off to a fantastic start and everything is going the way you're wanting. And I am so, as I say every, every time, I'm so, so excited to have our amazing guest, Alan Stern, who has been so helpful to me in the past few months. And, you know, whenever I'm speaking to an expert in a particular domain, uh, and it's so helpful to me, I cannot wait to share it with you because I know, uh, it's going to pique a lot of interest and you're going to get a lot of support from today's call. Alan, thank you for taking the time. I'm so excited, so excited.

So much for the opportunity. Is this the first podcast of 2026?

It is not. I mean, we are recording almost at that point, but we have one more coming out before, before this one. So close, close. Alan, thank you. Thank you for being here in the midst of all our reveling and holiday partying. And we are talking, we're talking about a lot of things, people, but we are talking about how to leverage AI for your marketing and small business and branding needs. And there's a better title for that. But Alan's gonna tell us exactly who this is for in a minute. But you're gonna get so much out of this. So let me tell you about Alan. Alan Stern is a dynamic speaker, DJ, I gotta love that, marketing expert with nearly 20 years of sales and marketing experience in retail and service industries. Passionate about helping small businesses thrive. I know that you are, Alan. Alan teaches how to leverage AI and freemium apps to create a big impact with your marketing on a small budget. And we have to love that. Driven by the belief that people buy from a person before they buy from a brand, his unique approach helps audiences blend humor and education to create marketing that builds trust and truly connects. And you know, you live and breathe this, Alan. I, I, I know it because that's how you are with me and in, in all the materials and workshops I've seen that you give. This is really you at your core. So thank you again for joining.

Welcome. Really appreciate the opportunity to, to jam out with you a little bit and, you know, pour my skill set into your audience. So thank you.

Wonderful. I'm going to ask you a million questions. So at the start of it, with all the— tell us exactly. You were talking about solopreneurs. You're talking about small businesses. People that are dealing B2C, business to consumer. Um, what would you say is the biggest problem you help people solve that we're going to be talking about today? What is the problem that they're coming to you that they need your help with?

But yeah, ultimately it's how they can make a big impact with their marketing on a small budget. Like, to oversimplify it, my professional background's rather unique if you think about it. Majority of my working years have spent— have been spent with me owning a DJ company, which I started in the late 2000s and still do today, and selling cars. Unrelated fields outside of the fact that I had to get really good at marketing at the individual level. And what I found is there was a huge need in the market to start teaching this, because if you take a look at the owner-operated business, the independent sales rep, the solopreneur for lack of better words, Oftentimes they're too small for marketing agencies to work with, and it doesn't make the agencies bad. It just means if you're selling done-for-you retainer marketing services, there's a huge audience for it. So what I've found is when the whole world zigs, huge opportunity to zag. And why not share done with— I'm sorry, do, do-it-yourself marketing made possible because of AI. Wow.

So before AI, What were you doing? I didn't ask you that. Like, before AI has such robust capabilities that help us, were you helping people with marketing but in different ways? Personal branding, that kind of thing?

So I was, I kind of started a business out of accident. So again, getting back to, you know, on, on the professional side, let's just talk about selling cars. You know what, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what business you're in. We're all kind of selling the same thing. Trust, expertise, and an end result. Now ask yourself this: do the words trust and car salesman usually belong in the same sentence?

No. And why is that? Why is that?

I mean, there's endless amounts of— there's endless amounts of reasons, um, you know, but if you really think about it, lack of transparency and amount of time to buy something. So if you were to go and look it up, 87% of the world dislikes something about buying a car. That's a huge opportunity because if you can show somebody how to be part of that 13% that enjoys it, you now have a customer for life. So what's interesting is I started marketing myself using humor on social media because us as consumers, we go on social media so that we can be entertained, right? The challenges is us as business owners, what we do is we go there to sell and promote our business. So if we're here to sell and promote and the audience is here to be entertained, there's a huge disconnect. So I actually ended up buying a course back in 2020 on how to market using memes, like literally picture with a caption, making somebody laugh, turning it into an advertisement. And what I realized along the way is I was learning basic graphic design and marketing that somebody can do in less than 2 minutes. So I actually started teaching that, which then evolved into the HEAT method, which, you know, we can talk about at a later date. But the whole idea It's basic graphic design for people that don't have a background in marketing, but using it to ultimately build their personal brand.

Wow, what a journey. What a journey. So run us by the HEAT, the HEAT method that you teach, and then we're gonna dig into AI, how it helps with personal branding, how it helps with execution in terms of content. We're gonna get through all of it, but tell us what your HEAT formula is, if you would.

Yeah, so the HEAT method has 4 parts: humor, education, adding value, and trust. And what happens is, is if you blend all 4 of those in your social media content strategy, you actually have the ability to meet somebody in person one time, connect with them on social media, and based off of what you post, they warm up to you over time. So starting with the basics, humor is important for a few reasons. For starters, when people laugh they tend to remember what made them laugh. And in a world where we see between 4,000 and 10,000 advertisements every single day, this is how you create a message that sticks. But I want you to think of it like this, and this is actually how my whole business started. Here's the power of this. Before somebody reads something, they scan. According to Facebook, we spend 1.7 seconds on a piece of content from our mobile device. So look at it like this. If you were to envision a picture of a burning dumpster fire, pretty, pretty powerful visual that stops the scroll. And if you were to throw a caption over that that says, "How it feels when you buy a car without calling me first," just like that, you turn that into an advertisement that your audience may share. And if they share it, they just pass along your business card, but they did it in a cool way. So the idea with humor is not so much to sell something. It's to create a connection because before people buy from a brand, they buy from a person who represents a brand. Then we shift into education. The idea is this: when you sell, you break rapport, but when you educate, you build it. At the end of the day, we exchange money to solve problems. So if you can use education by giving out helpful rule of thumbs on how somebody can help solve a problem or get out of a situation, now what you've done is you've created trust and you've actually implied, hey, if this happens, call me. When this happens, here's what you do. And now by combining humor and education, what you've done is your audience says, hey, this person's not all business. They're actually cool. Like, I'd enjoy spending time with them. But all jokes aside, they can help me. Adding value is simple. You know, when you give value, you create goodwill. Free goodwill creates trust. But what's interesting is when you introduce something of value to somebody, they associate that value with you. Key point here is however many thousands, tens of thousands, millions of people, whatever the audience is who listens to this, if they find value out of this segment and you introduce, in this case, the HEAT method or any sort of AI tactical stuff that helps them, they associate that value, although it was provided with me, You're the one who introduced it to them because we're using your platform and free value creates trust and nobody can sell you better than a satisfied customer. And as we know, people do business with those who they know, like, and trust. So the idea is to get somebody to warm up to you over time by combining humor, education, adding value and trust. That's the HEAT method.

I love it. And, you know, I'm thinking about the humor part. If you look at all the stuff I do, humor is not a big part of it. What is the research? You know, I'm— I didn't prep you on this question, but I'm guessing you might know some. Um, yes, I understand that we're entertaining. How big is humor a part of that entertaining in your view? Is it really critical? Because I better get going on it.

Well, it all depends on the audience. You know, the reality is you work in a much more serious field, you know, when it comes to career coaching, when it comes to financial advising, when it comes to attorneys. Humor may not be the best approach. However, if you do make a like lighthearted joke that shows your personality, there's a huge opportunity to turn a, let's just say, historically maybe somewhat boring industry into something that is exciting. And you can absolutely do that. And if you're like, hey, I'm not funny, AI can be hilarious and I can give you some easy wins on that.

Oh my gosh. Interesting. So the key point is make a connection with this person where they see a real person. They see, ah, I'm getting the real view, not some varnished. One thing I, I just, this is a pet peeve of mine. I don't see it as much as I used to, but you know, when people, I know that they were taught this, when they're selling something, they wanna make it look very aspirational. So there they are with their yacht and their massive house, and they're walking through their massive house. I'm so turned off by that because I'm not gonna hire you because you made a million dollars, or I'm looking at your yacht. I'm very turned off by that. Is that still a thing? Are people still doing that as much as I used to see?

You hit the nail on the head. It doesn't work. I mean, take a look at it like this at a very, very simple level. We live in a world now where AI is gaining momentum every single day that goes by. So we have these robots that will outspeed us, outsmart us, maybe even outskill us. But what they won't do is they won't outconnect us. And that connection comes from two human beings. And if you take a look at it, especially with AI, We live in a world right now where when we're on social media, we really view the highlight reel of somebody's life. Everything is the perfectly worded sentence. It has every picture and video has the perfect filter. The reality is what people actually want is raw. That's why you see a lot of these influencers and a lot of these brands, they're actually running advertisements now without a production crew. They're doing it with a selfie video on their phone. Why? Because it blends in and it passes the fake test that you were just talking about.

Interesting. So interesting. All right, so let's start with, um, the personal branding piece. Now tell us about how you think AI is just, you know, so, so powerful in helping us with personal branding. Tell us about it.

Yeah, it's interesting. You may hear that and say, wait a second, AI, personal branding, like these two don't belong in the same sentence. Again, getting back to that comment that I made, you know what, Information's everywhere right now. We're not just going and Googling something. We can go on ChatGPT and use it as our thinking partner. So information is abundant. But one thing that the prospects don't want is they don't want it more information. They want to deal with somebody who gets it. So what we can do is we can leverage AI now as a tool to help us create our personal brand and ultimately become a market of one. Because again, the machine will not outconnect you. So here's how this could work. Again, why I like to use this term market of one is there's so much power in specialization. So would it be okay if I give you some tactical easy wins for any business owner to use AI?

Please.

So a lot of businesses, what I found is they struggle to create a niche. They don't have a clear idea of who their target customer is. And you know what, I'll share this with you. I lived that lifestyle for a very long time when I was selling cars. So what we can do is leverage ChatGPT or Grok or Gemini or any of these tools as our thinking partner to create a target market. So look at it like this: people at the end of the day exchanged money so that they can solve problems. So what I can do is I can go on ChatGPT and I can type in, what are 5 problems that would cause somebody to consider purchasing blank? Or Hiring blank, and whatever the product is or the services that you're selling, go ahead and fill in the blank with that. So let's say that I was still selling cars. What are 5 problems that would cause somebody to consider purchasing a car? Now it gives me that, and I can build on it. And this is where things get interesting. I can say, give me an audience that is most likely to experience each of the problems that are listed above. So why is this important? Because when I try to talk to everybody at the same time, I create a message that resonates with nobody. I become the one restaurant that has 50 things on the menu and none of them are good and I'm not remembered for any of them. So how this helps with the personal branding aspect is now I can say, hey, I specialize in working with owners of older vehicles who experience the problem of high cost of home maintenance repairs. And here's what I've done is I actually put together this guide on 5 signs that it's actually more costly to keep your current car than it is replacing it. And what I've done is I've branded and positioned myself as the expert in said subject, but I've done it in a cool way without appearing salesy. And ultimately that was made possible because of AI.

All right, I got questions. Um, yeah, I don't mean to make them sound like challenges, but you know me. For instance, I've been doing this for 18 years, the career and leadership coaching, before that therapist, before that former corporate VP. How do I wanna say this? If you're really good at your work and you've been doing it a while, you know who you are serving, or you should know. Now I'm correcting myself. I hear from a lot of brand new coaches who say, "I wanna help everyone." Well, forget it. Sure. You're not gonna help anyone if you wanna help everyone. We do have to niche down. Why? You'll explain it to us. But from my perspective, For instance, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, if you're 28 and you've never been in a relationship or never been married, being a divorce coach might be really difficult because there's no frame of reference that you've lived. Now, we can coach things we don't know about, but I feel like most people want mentor coaches, coaches who lived through changing careers or whatever. But I, so I do hear people saying, I can coach anything. And I'm really not a fan of that. But if you're really good at your work, do you really need AI to tell you who your niche is?

Well, you don't. So here's what's interesting about that. It can help you with specific situations.

Okay.

So if you oversimplify it like this, and you just absolutely proved my point about the mentor coaches, because people want somebody who gets it. Mm-hmm. So how do you show that you get it is we create content that addresses a specific situation. So look at it like this. We already went over the problem in the audience, but problems cause situations, and the situations are what actually create opportunities for us to sell. Everybody's got problems. We just usually ignore them until they turn into a situation.

Interesting.

So let's say— and I'll give you a great example. Hopefully this hasn't happened to you or anybody who's watching this, but let's say that you took your car in for service and the mechanic said, you know what, your battery may need to be replaced down the road, and you say, you know what, I don't have time for it right now, I'll get to it. Let's say that there was a meeting that you had on the calendar that you worked weeks or months to get, super important opportunity, and you woke up that morning and all of a sudden your car doesn't start. That problem has now just turned into a situation.

Interesting.

And the situation is where things get real because we make buying decisions based off of emotion first and then we justify it with logic. So let's say that you allowed yourself just enough time to get out of the house, you got ready, you got all your stuff, and you wake up and your car doesn't start and you didn't have jumper cables. You got an important meeting that you have to get to. What does that do? That created an opportunity for Uber to sell you their rideshare service because that solves the problem that created that situation. So when we start creating content that addresses a specific situation, what happens is, is that audience could see it and they can say, whoa, this applies to me. And if you articulate somebody's pain point better than they can, what they do is they position you as the solution to that problem because they're looking for a mentor coach.

I have questions.

Yeah, fire away.

And I'm always, when I'm listening to my guests, I'm thinking, am I doing what they're advising? And if not, get to it. I love this idea of problems versus situations. So can you dig into that a little bit more? How would a— how would— let's say it's a coach or an, um, a lawyer or, you know, a finance— financial consultant. How would they be doing it wrong by marketing, talking about a problem versus a situation? How would— how would when you're reading copy or you're reading marketing, you're thinking they're missing it. They're, they're not, they're not sharing the situation. What's the nuance between those two? Am I making sense?

You absolutely are. And I wouldn't say they're missing it, they just need to go a layer deeper because problems are abstract situations.

Can you give us an example? Like a coach talking about, um, okay, for instance, you hate your job, so that's a problem that a lot of people have. I hate it. I don't know what to do. What would the situation driving it deeper be?

Yeah. So, so here I'll actually freestyle on this. So let's say that you hate your job and this is also coming from personal experience for a little bit because this is why I made the transition to go full self-employed. Let's say that you are somebody who is in a production-based role and you are unhappy showing up to work every day. Sales is really an— it's an energy transfer at the end of the day. So if you are demoralized and you are unhappy because you are in the wrong environment, now as a result of that problem, it has created a situation where you are making less revenue because you are unhappy to be there. Because you are making less revenue, what happens? Now all of a sudden, you could be in the situation where you made less money this month than what you've spent, which then creates another situation. When that repeats itself, what ends up happening is if you consistently make less money each month than you spend, you rack up debt, which creates a situation of serious pressure, which then could create an opportunity for a coach to say, hey, I, I specialize in helping blank audience with blank situation get out of it so that they can increase revenue. That same situation could also create an opportunity for a loan officer to say, hey, as opposed to you paying 29.999% interest every single month on your credit card debt, why don't we talk about a cash-out refi so you can make this go away? And now all of a sudden that solved the problem that that situation got you in.

I see.

Wow.

So your advice here is— let's go back to the original premise. Have AI support you in, in going deeper in terms of what problem you're solving and what situations might be emerging in your potential audience that you can address. Is that it?

Yep. So on the receiving end, when the end consumer, and this could come from an advertisement that you paid to get in front of XYZ audience or organic content, when you have a massive audience like what you do, on the receiving end, when we see this, we say, wow, this applies to me. So not only is this going to help me, but it positions you as the mentor coach that you had just mentioned. But birds of a feather, as we all know, flock together. So the likelihood of somebody sharing that with somebody who also may be a good prospect for you raises just by strategically using AI as our market research firm. Like back in the day. Oh yeah. Have you ever attended a focus group? Like you get paid to give your opinion?

I used to run focus groups in, in, uh, when I did market research in Macmillan book clubs. Yeah.

Small world. So I actually used to work for a market research company in high school. What a great experience that was.

Like, what a job.

I, I enjoyed that so much. Now looking back, I'm like, how crazy expensive these surveys used to be to put on. And if you can oversimplify it, As a business owner, you conduct a market research study or you hire one so that you can get information to help you grow your business, right?

Right.

That's basically it. But look at your expense list. You have to rent a facility, you have to hire staff, you have to donate your product, and you have to compensate the attendees just to get information that you can now get for free on ChatGPT. Are you kidding me? Like, what a great time to be alive.

So tell us, if you had a product, tell us You know, it's crazy. I never even made that connection. I forgot about my wonderful time focus grouping. But how would you use, like in my world, we had book club products, you know, teacher products, for instance. We would recruit very carefully. They had to be, you know, that was part of my, why I was successful. Each person in the room was the right person, but reflected different viewpoints. They were different demographics. But then you would show them that and you would get all of their different feedback. How can AI do that for us?

You know what? Why don't we just do an example on the fly? Give me any industry that you can think of and I will tell you exactly what to do on ChatGPT to do this and create content that actually resonates. And the best part is I'll do it in under 3 minutes.

Well, let's do it.

Just fire any industry out that you can think of.

Okay, let's think about who comes to me and they have issues. How about, well, how about a small marketing agency?

Okay. And then about you, what is the one service? Again, let's, let's start with the end in mind. What is the one service or product that we would want to sell?

So how about social media support, Instagram content support?

Okay. And this would be on the agency side. It's just so I understand the business. Okay.

Yeah. Let's say it's you pitching. Yeah, I can help you with your Instagram following and I can make you, you know, much bigger.

Bingo.

Does that work?

Yep. I would go on ChatGPT and type this in. What are 5 problems that would cause somebody to consider hiring a social media agency that specializes in blank? However you want it in the sentence, it'll give me the pain points that make the phone ring. Then I build on it.

Can I, can I give some examples just so we dimensionalize? Um, I need a bigger reach. What I've got going on isn't working, or Facebook isn't working for me anymore. Number 2, I need to expand the number of people I'm reaching and referrals. Number 3, I need to build a stronger reputation because there's a lot of competition. And what would number 4 be? I need to make more money now.

Let's just, let's just go with one of them, and that's the biggest reach because that's the easiest win. Okay, what are 5 problems that would cause somebody to consider hiring a social media marketing agency that specializes in improving clients' reach. So now it gives me the pain points that make the phone ring. Okay, then I follow that up and I say, give me an audience most likely to experience each of the problems that are listed above. So now I have a problem and I have an audience, but what do they share?

What does it—

they—

what does it share? Oh, they're going to be age 25 to 40, they're going to be in the— what, what would ChatGPT share?

Not yet, it wouldn't do that. It would give the abstract examples first So the abstract examples of the problems, then the abstract examples of the audience, then what we would do is we would pick one. So pick one out of each of those 5 audiences and problems that I gave you. Here's where things get good. This is where you get the situations. You say, "Give me one specific example of blank audience that experiences blank problem." And that's the situation right over there.

Can you give us an example, Alan, of that?

So in, in this case, we can say the specific audience could be a speaker who has a great message to share but has been capped in 1,000 to 3,000 people total social media audience for about 5 years. Okay, specific, specific problem, specific audience. Now what we do is we ask for these specific examples or situations that specific audience may be in. Now we have the real stuff, we have the day in the life of stuff that actually makes people respond. Now here's where things get really interesting on the tactical side, because what's interesting is this gives us a great opportunity as business owners to stop manually executing everything and leverage technology to do it. So what I mean by that is, opposed to you manually writing the framework for everything emails, blogs, video scripts, all of that, we can also leverage ChatGPT or other AIs to do most of the heavy lifting for us by using something called the APE format. APE format stands for audience, problem, explanation. So in this case, let's say that I wanted to take that framework and turn it into an article or an email series. What I can do is I can ask AI, to create an article to an audience of amateur speaker with a great message who experienced the problem of being stuck in 1,000 to 3,000 followers on, let's just say, Facebook, explaining why it is in their best interest to hire an agency to help them solve that problem. And now because of audience, problem, explanation, I can have content that actually converts. Wow.

You know what I'm sitting here thinking is I do a lot of them. It's always about me on this podcast. I do a lot of this, but some of it other people wouldn't have access to. In other words, when you have a big following on LinkedIn, you're hearing from a lot of people. And for instance, you and I even talked about polls that I do on LinkedIn. And what I love about that is that's number one, gonna be my, pretty much my audience or my follower audience. Number two, it also, I love polls because it's pretty quickly instantaneous. You know, you can get 10,000 views or 1,000 responses, but it's also engaging the very market that you're trying to serve. But it's doing very much of what you're saying AI can do for you when you don't have a big following on LinkedIn, when you don't have ready access to a way to reach a lot of people.

It's—

wow, it's a fantastic—

let me give you a super easy one. And I love the fact that you did— this is recent too, you just did this poll.

Just did it.

So can you, can you, could you give me— again, this is just for fictitious purposes, but can you give me one audience that you as a coach find that you commonly serve? Somebody who works in what field or what industry?

Yeah, I can— this is my avatar. Mid— they're mid to senior level professional women, typically 40 to 55. They've had at least 10 years of— they've had success and they've had traction, but they wake up and this is too vague, but it works. They want more, different, and better, and they typically don't know how to get it or even what that is.

Love it. So check this out. And this is again, just getting the data and feeding it back to the machine. This is all we're doing. If you really oversimplify it, we're getting information from the machine and we're feeding it back to it. That's it. And then we're making it our own because we don't want to just copy and paste. But if we were to go and use that APE format, write an article to an audience of mid-career female professionals who experience the problem of not enjoying where they work, explaining why it is a good idea to invest in Kathy Caprino's Most Powerful You course. Now all of a sudden you've taken that and you've used the machine to turn that into a sales letter. It's insane. And I look at this and I'm genuinely depressed for the people who are not using this because again, it's free and all you really need is a, an account on any one of these programs and an internet connection. And now you can overlap the sales department, the marketing department, and the graphic design department all by leveraging a little bit of tech.

That's just incredible. You know, I use it 10 times a day and it's, I use it not only, I usually draft my content first so the voice is mine, although it knows me by now, but I want it to be a framework that is mine. But then it edits, it shapes it, it, and it's my thought partner. It's my, you know, negotiation, you know, sparring buddy. Oh my gosh. But this is really fantastic, Alan. Fantastic. Now, is there anything else you talked about? We're talking about personal branding, market research, execution. Is there anything else that people who, you know, small businesses need to be doing that they're not on, you know, leveraging AI?

Well, yeah, to oversimplify the 3-step process here, number 1, we gotta define the audience. Otherwise, we don't know who we're talking to. And there's a chance, you know, for lack of better words, we could be attempting to sell a steak to a vegan, which is just not a good matchup. It's not saying that they won't buy it, but if I am in charge of advertising dollars as a business and that's the matchup that we're doing, it's not going to convert. So step 1, we identify the audience based off of a problem in the market, then we brand and position ourselves and our business and our messaging solely around solving that problem. Then after that, we just offer a clear next step, and that clear next step to solve said problem could be a course, it could be hiring you for one-on-one coaching or consulting. If somebody wants to take baby steps, it could be a lead magnet, it could be a guide on 5 signs that it's time for you to solve blank problem. Why is that important? Because before somebody will actually pay you with their money, they will pay you with their time. They pay you with their time by consuming your content on social media or your video series or your podcasts like this or some sort of thing before they make that financial investment. So look at it like that from those 3 standpoints. Identify the audience, position yourself as somebody who specializes and solving that problem and then just offering a clear next step. That's all that we really have to do. As humans, unfortunately, we overcomplicate things.

Okay, Alan, so let me challenge you. Don't mind that. Let me understand something. I'm really interested in your thinking about this. So I've had a lot of freebies, a lot of freebies, a lot of guides. Surefire Guide to Figure Out What You Want, Dominant Action Style quizzes. And I'm proud of it because it comes out of 18 years of doing this work, plus 18 in corporate life, plus being a former therapist. It is not— and I know because I developed my own clone, Kathy Caprino AI. You'll check it out, people.

Sure.

Um, my own clone, definitely. I've trained it. It's on delphi.ai, but, um, I've trained it so that it certainly taps into the greater content that's available in the world, you know, the Chats of the world. But it is my frame of reference. It's my lens about what careers are. It's not everybody else's. And that's the only way I could live with it, you know, that I do have a different lens from all this experience. So what saddens me, and you're going to correct me, you're going to slap me across the face, If a person who's just starting out as a new coach, 3 months in, says, I would look, I see a big problem. People come to me, they don't know what they want next, and they ask ChatGPT to write it. It's gonna be fine, but it's not gonna be great.

Sure.

Because it doesn't have a lens.

Right.

Now I know garbage in, garbage out. The more I have, and you talk about this, the prompts have to be great. The less vague they are, the more specific, the better it is. But pretty much a brand new coach is gonna ask, you know, come up with a 4-page PDF that walks people through a new framework for figuring out what they want. My gut feeling is if I read what that result was, I would say this is so damn generic. It doesn't have a lens, it doesn't speak powerfully. What would you say to that challenge? What would you say?

I agree with everything you just said. Again, walking back a little bit to a comment that you made, people ultimately want a mentor, a coach. That's why they're hiring you to borrow your brain, for lack of a better word, to say, hey, what would you do in this situation? ChatGPT in this case is just giving them more information and what they really want is somebody who gets it. So all that is going to do is make your lived expertise in mentorship that much more valuable. I mean, so—

I mean, I'm sorry. So help me understand. And it's really true. I can't tell you how many people have said, I'm coming to you because you were a therapist and you understand deep. Or I've read that you don't stay up at the top. You help me really excavate what's going on. Or you had a corporate career and you got out of it, or any of that, or you're a writer. So how, how can we make ChatGPT, based on what we just said, look, write me an e-guide for this audience who has this problem in this situation. Isn't it going to be overly generic? How do we help people make it less generic?

I don't think we need to. I think we just leave it as where it's at. Because again, let me, let me walk this back. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not saying use chat for everything and copy and paste. What I'm saying is use it for the framework, use that APE format, and then put your spin on it. Because what ends up happening, especially if you're just getting started out— this is a great example to use, by the way— so if you're just getting started out, and let's say that you have maybe a little bit less buttoned up of a presence on social media, let's say that, you know, you use a little bit of slang, you're slap happy, like it's just the coaching thing is, is new and you come out with an article or a blog post and it looks like a Harvard professor wrote it. There's a huge contrast. They're going to immediately know that was not written by your voice. In that case, I think that article might actually work backwards. So I'm a big believer in just use this as your guide, use it for the framework, and then put your spin on it. Because here's the thing, these are cool tools, but they're not always right. And if you stamp your branding on something and it's wrong, you're going to lose all credibility. So I think the best thing to do really is use it for ideas and then make it your own.

I love that you're saying that, and I want to tell you, it's wrong a lot. And one thing that really annoys me, I'll say, actually, this is not right, and it'll go, my bad, good catch. I'm like, I don't want me to catch you, right? That, that Annoys me.

Oh, totally. Oh, sure, people.

If you get one thing from this, certainly use it, use it, use it, but don't believe that it's always right. Don't believe it's always reflecting you at your best. Sometimes if I'm asking it, be my negotiation partner, I'm about to do this, it'll say something that is never going to come out of my mouth. And I'll say, you're saying that's my voice, but I would never say that. What do you think? And it'll say, you're right. That's too pushy. I'm like, why am I having to tell you that you're not doing your job? So please don't take this as Alan and I are saying, this is not to be deeply vetted. This is not to be, this is not to replace your brilliance, your special lens. It won't be helpful if really it's gonna be that generic and that anybody could get the same output that you did and you're gonna use that. Would you agree with that, Alan?

100%. Here's a couple of other just giveaways that something was written by AI. Number 1, make sure that you remove these em dashes or these em pauses. And if you don't know what that is, it's the big hyphen. For starters, I don't even know what key to press on the keyboard to do one of those things. I have no idea. And it was never really a thing until AI became mainstream.

Interesting.

So always double check that. Second off, If your headline starts for your email with, I hope this email finds you well, it's an indicator that it was written by ChatGPT. Excessive use of emojis, that's another one. If your email or your blog post starts off with, in a world where blank, indicator like garbage in, garbage out is one thing, but just make sure, make sure that you at least know what is in it and it doesn't start off the exact same every single time. As far as the formatting, AI, a lot of times if you write a blog post, it's going to be in a similar format. That's fine, there's nothing wrong with it, but just make sure that you make it your own because there's nothing more embarrassing than you stamping your branding on something and it being wrong. And on the other hand, let's say that everything's right but you haven't even read it, but your audience did, and they come up to you and they say, oh my goodness, that article that you wrote last week, I love what you said in the third paragraph, bullet point number 2, and you have no idea what's in it, you're going to look like a knucklehead. So make sure that you check your work and you put your own spin on it.

Now I have to give you two funny, funny scenarios about that. The em dash. So I've been writing on Forbes, on the Forbes platform, I don't know, since 20— I think 2011. They automatically make dashes, em dashes. Oh, that's what the— and I love it. I love the look of it. So I will do that sometimes, so it's not chat doing it. Secondly, it might be because I'm older, Alan, but when I write to people— not, not in my newsletters, but if I write to you, I— and I haven't written to you in a few months— I'll say, 'I hope this finds you well.' So that's how I talk.

But it's interesting. I mean, look, hey, I'm not, I'm not attacking you. I'm just letting you know.

How funny is that?

Just watch. Take a look at the patterns. Of emails that hit your inbox and take a look if you use— again, call me out on this if I'm wrong, I will happily admit if I'm wrong. However, if you ask it to write you an email, it's usually going to start off with something like that. In a world where it, it excessively uses the words unlock, elevate, foster, you know, a lot of these things, you'll notice patterns when something was written by AI.

Oh my gosh.

You know, it's funny because I do these workshops and I do these seminars And I see people, even though I've blatantly said do not copy and paste, I'll see them start up their LinkedIn newsletters. I'll see them do these social media posts, and I just observe the patterns. So at the local level, that's what I'm finding. However, if your lived experience reflects differently and I'm wrong, I will happily admit if I'm wrong.

And, uh, you make one fantastic point. I would suggest you start with a draft that you wrote and let it know what your voice is. And let it correct it, let it reshape it. But because what I wouldn't want for you people is not to start developing your own voice. But, you know, ChatGPT is a great editor. Like, I don't send much out without running it by, and it condenses. I tend to be very verbose, and it will condense a long paragraph that needed condensing. It's my editor. But I do think if you can start developing your own voice, that's what I'm afraid of as writers. We're afraid that, you know, in fact, one organization, I can't give the name, but there's a huge litigation that has been won and they took, I think it's 30,000 books and used it to train their AI tool without permission. So we're all getting a payment. So, you know, writers like I am have a little bit of problem with ChatGPT. For some reasons, but use it correctly. Develop your own voice, develop your own lens, develop your how you are different. In fact, can I leave folks with this? You tell me what you think. When people come to me and they're just starting a coaching practice or starting this or starting that, one step I give them is I want you to understand the competition very clearly. What are they do? You know, find the top 50 people, new coaches, who, you know, help people start their own business. Read all— read what the websites are saying, read what they're writing, and understand how you're different from that competition. And one way to do it is read what they're saying. Would you say— would you— do you love it all, or do you go, God, I wouldn't talk about it like that? No, I don't see it like that. Well, that's your point of differentiation. Have you found that CHAK can help people understand their point of differentiation?

Absolutely. Especially if you look for an unmet need in the marketplace. There's opportunity in every single market, regardless how commoditized you may feel that you are. And I'm happy to actually share how— what I lived in the car business and how I corrected it. But there's truly every single market has an opportunity. We just have to look for an unmet need.

Okay, there we go. Any last words, Alan? Where can— I kept you long. Where can people soak up all your wonderful training, your free guides? Where can they find you? Tell us. Tell us the best thing.

Yeah. So I'd love if you really enjoyed this, I would absolutely love to give you my ebook, no strings attached. If you just go to getalansbook.com, spelled exactly how it's spelled. Well, actually, let me clarify. A-L-A-N is how you spell my name. There's like 5 different ways to spell my name.

And we'll put that all in the show notes so you don't have to remember that.

Other than that, just remember, before people buy from a brand, they make the decision to buy from a person who represents a brand. And it's ever been easier for you to get a competitive edge on your competition just by leveraging a few things that most people don't know about using AI. And when in doubt, if you're like, what do I ask this? You can ask ChatGPT what you should ask it.

Good grief.

For any sort, for any sort of guidance. So, um, play around with it, but always remember, use it as your thinking partner and make it your own.

I love it, I love it. And I would simply add, make it clear what your goal is. You know, I am intending to expand my blah blah blah. Give it as much as you can, you know. And then, what should I ask you that will help me with that goal? Would you agree with that, Alan?

Absolutely.

Thank you for joining. Such a font of information, and you've been so helpful to me so far, and we're going to have fun in the future too. People, I hope this excites you. I hope, I hope you're seeing not only the power of AI, but also the power of you. The Most Powerful You, my book. You are powerful. You already have a lens. You already know what you want to do, but let's use tools that are available that are only gonna get better and more refined as time goes on. Let's, let's help have you get the help you need so that you can come out in a bigger way and be greater help in the directions you want to. I hope you find it helpful. If you have a question, post it wherever you see this. It'll be on LinkedIn and Instagram and YouTube. Please, please. I know Alan's crashingly busy, but he'll try to answer, as will I. We'd love to hear from you what you got out of it. All right everyone, thank you. Thanks again, Alan. Talk to you shortly. And wishing you a wonderful, wonderful 2026. I know we're already in it, but Have a wonderful two Finding Brave weeks and we will see you next time. Bye everybody. Thanks so much for joining us today. And please don't forget to check out findingbrave.org for more programs, resources, and tips. And tune in next time for your weekly dose of Finding Brave.