151. Using AI Without Losing Trust, Voice, or Connection

Welcome. I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Lueck. And this is the Doing Business Like a Woman podcast, where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money is made to help you create greater impact and financial freedom one business at a time. Hello. Hello. Good morning. How are you? I'm really excited to get to talk to you today about AI and how to use AI in your marketing in a way that makes marketing easier for you but doesn't replace you in your messaging, in your marketing. As I was putting this together, I'm thinking I really want to expand this and make a workshop out of it. But today you're going to get the mini masterclass version and we'll have more to come on that. But if we don't know each other. My name's Melissa Kellogg Luick. I'm a marketing coach for women entrepreneurs. And I absolutely love helping women entrepreneurs to really embody their value, their business value, and communicate it out to the world in a way that connects and connects them to their future clients. That's what we're all about around here. I wanted to talk today about AI because it's such a hot topic and particularly around marketing. And so I want to share with you how I've been thinking about it. And so, so if we just go back to my perspective, we're going to talk about it with marketing. And so my perspective is as a coach, a marketing and business coach, my perspective as an entrepreneur and as a female business leader that values connection and service in my business over quantity and attention, I guess could be the right word. And so that's the foundation, the perspective that I come from. I'm not a technologist. I'm not, I'm a tech geek in some respects, but I'm not a technologist. And so that's the lens through which I am thinking and looking at AI and using AI in my business. And we're going to talk more about my strategy or my, my philosophy around using AI in our business. So that's basically my perspective. So it is very tempting. I have been playing with AI for a long time and I love playing with it and I think we all should experiment with it and play with it. And my, my kids roll their eyes when I talk about all the silly stuff that I create on AI and it's just a fun, there's that fun aspect and not that I'm going to use that. I'll create these silly videos and I don't know, I just like experimenting with it. And so there's that aspect of it. But there is a temptation. You could use AI as a massive content engine, right? And so my in thinking about that and yes, I could do that and I have thought about doing that. But then what I realize is that really what that is, that's 2x thinking. So 2x, if you ever read the book that 10x is easier than 2x by, by, let's see, Dan Sullivan and Dr. Ben Hardy, the whole premise behind that book is that it's actually easier to go 10x rather than doubling everything, right? Doubling your effort, doubling your time, doubling your business. And so when you think about going 10x, it creates a whole different level of thinking, of quality of thought, leadership, of depth. It's a lot. It's. It's about going deeper and going bigger with our thinking, not necessarily bigger with the quality of the work that we do and the quality of the results that we offer our clients. And so that's really that 10x thinking, right? And 2x thinking is I'm just going to do twice of everything, double everything and that will make double the money. And yes you can, but it's it you ceiling out, right? You get to that two. There's only so much of you, there's only so many hours in the day. So you have to think about, if I'm going to 10x my business, I have to think in a completely different way. And that's really the way I like to think, the way I like to run my business, the way I like to think about scaling and the temptation of using AI as a massive content engine, right? And just like massively increasing the quantity of content that you're shooting out into the world is actually 2x thinking. And so 10x for me, when I think about AI and using AI in my marketing, 10x thinking is about quality, is about 10xing your thinking and your thoughtful solutions. 10x thinking is in service to your future clients. And in this regard, I think of it like creating one piece of core content that is so valuable and so thoughtful and creates such great results that it strikes your audience to their core, right? And then you just repurpose it in 10 different ways. That's the 10x thinking versus the 2x thinking when it comes to AI. And 10x thinking in regards to AI in your marketing is using AI to increase your reach and the number of people that you can serve, right? It's not about doubling the attention that you're getting or making it real self focused. But 10x thinking is all around how can I serve more people right and help them get better, faster results, right? So that's the lens at which I'm always wanting to think about AI when I implement it and use it in my marketing. So it's really interesting. I have a story for you. I had a really interesting conversation yesterday. Last night actually it's so funny that this was my mini marketing class, mini master class topic today because I had a really interesting conversation at the dinner table with my kids who are teenagers and they were talking, they know I use AI and for those of you that know me, I'm an early adopter type. Like I, I'm an early adopter with technology. I like experimenting with things and, and they know that about me and they are, have always been, they've always picked on me and been bothered by how much I use AI and so they'll make fun of me if I tell them the recipe I use. The recipe I use to make dinner was created on AI, created by AI. They'll rip me about it and pick on me. But so we have this ongoing joke back and forth about how much I use AI. So we had this discussion that really turned into an interesting discussion last night at dinner about AI and how much they're bothered by not knowing what's real and by the effect that AI is having on replacing specifically artists and creatives because they are both artists and musicians and they feel, and my daughter is a junior in high school, she's going to be graduating, thinking about her future. And so there is a lot of that uncertainty. If I go and pursue this career, is there even going to be work for me? Because is AI going to replace me? And so I can imagine how that could feel very offer a lot of uncertainty. So we talked a lot about that. But they really value knowing what is real. As they were talking, it really helped me. I think they're like a microcosm of the larger buying community, right? People that could potentially be my clients or your clients. And that people really value what is real, what is authentic. And so I think we really have to go out of our way as entrepreneurs, as those in service based businesses, trust driven businesses, we have to go out of our way to be real with people and show up with our face to the camera like I am now, because that helps them to know that we are real. So they were telling me how much they really value knowing what is real. They value things that are real and they think less of companies and brands and even politicians and leaders and teachers that are obviously using AI. And that really bothers them because in their minds it's if you don't have time, we're talking about teachers and teachers using AI to create lesson plans. And really what that makes them feel like is that you're my teacher and this is your profession. If you don't even have time to create a lesson plan and create a worksheet or something that will help me learn this, then what good are you? And I can relate to that. I can see that because I myself, I know that when I see marketing campaigns, email campaigns that come across and you can tell very obviously that they're created by AI, I think less of that entrepreneur. I relate to that. And because I think if you don't even have the time to write me an email, then why should I give you my time and money? And so I can relate to that. It's partly that. And then it's also partly, partly that idea of we want to know what's real. And so for those of us that are service businesses and trust driven industries, we have to go out of our way to build trust. And I've heard this said that we are in a trust recession. And I think that there's a lot of truth to that, right? That there is a lack of trust. And if that is true, then we as entrepreneurs just need to be able to adjust to that and, and to speak to our people, our audience, our potential clients, in whatever way, however many ways that it makes them feel safe to trust us. The other thing that I think was really interesting, and I've been thinking a lot about, is that my children were telling me they really value using their brains and strengthening their brains rather than strengthening AI and making AI more valuable. I think that the way that they were portraying this to me can really be like a microcosm of the marketplace in general, which I often forget about because like I said, I'm an early adopter. Like, I love technology, I love all this innovation, I'm comfortable with it, I don't feel threatened by it, but that doesn't mean other people don't. And so when it was really interesting to hear them portray to me and really get through to me and how threatening it does feel for young people and for our next generation. So it's very interesting. And my question when I'm thinking about AI and using AI is always, how can it help me amplify my voice and my message and my energy and not replace it? Like, I don't want to be replaced. And my brain, my experiences, the wisdom that I have gained over my 54 years of life and my 20 years, over 20 years of entrepreneurship that can't be replaced by technology. I have a lot of wisdom to offer and I want to keep growing my wisdom and mining my wisdom and offering my wisdom to my clients. I am not going to allow AI to replace that in my business. And so that's with the lens, my decision making framework that I'm always thinking about how can I use AI to amplify my voice and my ideas and allow me to spend more time serving my clients and my future clients but not replace my intellect. So I like to think of AI as an assistant. Just if you had an assistant working for you, an executive assistant or marketing assistant, copywriting assistant, whatever, I like to think of it as that person. And so as a CEO, I'm not going to abdicate my messaging and my thinking to an assistant. Right. I as the leader am responsible for that role. And even I have a small team and there's still some things that I don't think are a good use of their time and capabilities and their expertise because they're highly skilled. And I would much rather have AI do some of those lower level administrator. So that's how I use it in my business. So that's how my decision making goes. I always want to be thinking, I want to make sure I'm growing my thought leadership and my value and the capabilities and the expertise of the people on my team, the humans on my team. And then we delegate to AI some of the more time consuming administrative and that's where I think it can be really helpful for businesses like ours. Now I specifically speaking around marketing and around a service based, trust driven business. Right. So there's a lot of other ways, a lot of other industries, but we're just talking about this specific area. So what I wanted to do today that I thought would be really interesting is to walk you through how I use AI in my marketing. And obviously we, I'm not going to share my screen and do that, those sorts of things because of the power outage and so forth. And so I will be doing more workshopping on this over the course of this coming year and teaching some more detail on this. But I wanted to share with you a high level overview of how I'm currently using AI which could always be changing. Right. Okay. So I create one core anchor piece of content each week and currently it's this live broadcast. So you are live experiencing my core piece of content. And so this is the way as a CEO I can do it because then it just makes it simple. And if you know me, I love simplicity in our marketing. So I create one core anchor piece of content. So this live broadcast, I spend time preparing for it, outlining it, thinking about it, creating frameworks for it. And this coming year, I'm going to be creating materials that you'll be able to download to help support these episodes. And then my team will send out an invitation on email to my audience notifying everybody that I'm going to be live today. So then I go live and I share my content and these are all thoughts and ideas frameworks that I have created, right? And obviously my ideas have come from 100 different sources, right? My mentors, books I've read, experiences I've had over the last 20 years of entrepreneurship. Like my ideas come from everywhere. I also can sometimes I will ask AI to research some things for me or find quotes for me, but these are my ideas, my thought leadership. So I share my content and my ideas and then once I'm done here, what happens is my team will take this live, they will download it in, and then we repurpose it in a lot of different ways. And so the way I'm currently using, I'm going live right now on streamyard. And streamyard allows me to broadcast to multiple different social media channels. So right now we are live on my Facebook page, the Avanti Business Academy for Women Facebook page. We're live on my LinkedIn personal Melissa Kellogg Luick. And then we're live on the Avanti Business Academy for Women YouTub channel. So that is technology that allows me to go live on multiple channels. And once I'm done here, my team will download this video and audio and we will download it into a tool called descript D E S C R I P T. One of my favorite AI tools. It's a video and audio editor. It's amazing. And so descript and its AI tools help us edit this video into a podcast episode. And so we will use it as a podcast. We also use AI, the descript AI tool to create multiple clips. And so we create a week's worth of short form videos from this one video. Because you all, and I too like to see content in different ways, right? Like I'm not going to think that everyone likes to watch a live video because not everyone does. Not everyone has time, right? So we take this content and we use it a whole bunch of different ways to reach different people in different ways that they like receiving content so I can help them no matter how they like to. If they like to read or watch or listen, we got you covered. So that's how I like to think about it. So we create a week's worth of short form videos for Facebook and Instagram. Descript also transcribes this video and that transcript is cleaned up and put into the along with the podcast episode for SEO purposes. And then the transcript that copy can also be used for as inspiration for creating the emails that the one email that goes out to announce our podcast is published. And then let's see, what else do we. And then I also will take that transcript and I'm going to begin building this into a workshop, a more built out workshop or masterclass that I'll offer to you later. So then this content can be used for that. So that's how I do it. So I create that one anchor piece of content and then I repurpose it in many different ways. We also use AI to help us edit and edit email and bring. So I personally use AI a lot for help editing content and bringing my ideas to life, to send out or to distribute. So I have a lot of ideas flowing through me a lot, all of the time. And how I capture those is I will either speak into the notes on my phone or write notes in my phone, or type notes and I have tons and tons of notes. And I use Evernote, I keep a lot in Evernote because it's all searchable and or the notes feature on my phone. And so I will grab those ideas and I take those ideas and those thoughts that have come out of my head. And you know how when you have things, thoughts come out of your head, they're jumbled or maybe not really clear. They're just free flow of ideas. Brainstorm, right? And I take all of that and then I will copy it and paste it into AI and help and ask it to edit that into whatever I'm creating, whether it's an email or an outline for a talk like this, or a presentation, whatever, however I want to use it. And so it really helps me bring those ideas to life faster and make sense of them, make them clear. I also use AI to help me plan out launches. So say for example, we currently are in a launch. So for example, for this 90 day marketing accelerator launch, I know exactly what I want to do. I want to use email marketing, I want to use social media and I want to do some live casting on social media. And so I'll tell AI I want to do 12 emails, I want to repurpose those into Social media posts and live broadcasts. And so can you create? And I have this window from December, December 16th to January 4th, I have those 19 days. And these are all the activities I do. Help me. And so help me create a plan around that. And then I just follow the plan because that's really where my strength is, in the thought leadership and the connection, serving my audience and not in creating plants. And now for someone like my project manager, creating plans is something she's really great at. This is something very simplistic that I can do using AI. So what I'm always thinking about when I'm thinking about AI is that you have to know where your speed bumps are, like what is holding you back. So specifically as an example, this launch, like I could deliberate for a long time about how, how should I time this, when should I send this out, when should I send that out? But if I just say, okay, I know I want to do these three things to promote this, this launch and this is the time frame I have now AI, you create the schedule for me, then I don't have to do any of that deliberation. Then I can spend that cognitive energy and that time actually writing emails, writing social posts, going live, thinking about how I can get my message across and what do my best fit clients need and want to, to gain from this program. And like I can be using my mind in much better ways. And so that's what I'm always thinking about. How can I use AI to take care of the more menial tasks and thought and thinking things through so I can continually be increasing my thought leadership, my value, my higher level thinking. That's what I wanted to share with you today. I hope that's helpful. I think this really is the next technological revolution in our world, in our culture, in the business world, and all the ideas that I talked to you about today and how I'm running things today might completely change by this time next year, who knows? But I'm in for it, I'm here for it and I, but really at the end of the day, my values of connection and service and being connected to my people are never going to change. That's something that I hold dear and I know that it is something that's very important and it's one of our basic human needs, is for connection, right? And I really always want to be using technology that supports that and helps me amplify my connection with you. And so that's really the lens that I'm always thinking about. So I hope this was helpful. I would love to hear your feedback, questions, thoughts. Let's continue. Keep the discussion going. I'll talk to you soon. Bye. 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