I replaced my team with AI to survive 🛠️ Anjeanette Carter

It's so easy to stay stuck and to not change. And it's so easy to think, well, if I just don't change, maybe everything else around me will change and, and it'll change for the better. I just need to hold on a little longer. And my advice is to any entrepreneur is pivot now. Pivot, pivot early, pivot now, pivot before it's too late. Don't hold onto hope. Hope is a 4-letter word. Pivot.

This week's Millennial Master is Anjanette Carter, who's built and lost more than one career. She now runs a copywriting and LinkedIn personal branding business for founders and CEOs. But that's not what this episode is really about. It's about what she did when the old model broke. She replaced her team with AI and kept the business alive and now thriving. In this episode, we cover how AI turns one operator into a full team, why personal branding protects you from market shifts, and how sales skills outlast any tool or platform. And Jeanette, welcome to Millennial Masters. Where are you joining us from today?

I am in sunny Los Angeles.

Well, it's definitely more amazing than in the UK right now. But I know you've lived a few careers before you landed on your current one. Current business. You were an actor, a YouTuber, a copywriter, and now a founder. So which version of these you felt was the most unstable, like you couldn't hold— it couldn't hold a future?

All of them. Is that a bad answer? All of them.

There's no right or wrong answer. There's no right.

Acting. For sure. And because, and, and this is also, I think, very hard as an entrepreneur, you have to wait for someone to give you an opportunity. And I was doing this pre kind of social media. So there was no like, oh, let me take matters into my own hands and create something. And that, that was a much harder path. So that was definitely fought the inter-entrepreneur in me.

So was it at one point, say in your acting career that made you cringe when you think about it, or—

I think all of it makes me cringe. I think when we look back at like everything we've done in our lives, it's kind of like, ooh, that was a little cringey. At every stage in my life, I made the commitment to kind of put myself out there in whatever I thought was the right space to be doing so. And so I can't regret that. Just, but yeah, when I look back on it, I definitely would love to have a nicer highlight reel in the rearview.

I know what you mean, but it's all part of the journey. When I look at the first few episodes of Millennial Masters, I also have this slight cringe feeling. However, with everything you do, you improve, you develop, you grow, and it leads to where you are now. But before we get into copywriting and what you do right now, you said you had your faceless YouTube channel, and from my research, your income vanished overnight. So what was the first irrational thought you had and the rational move that you made once that stopped? Because I'm guessing that forced you into a whole new field, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had a very successful YouTube channel. Uh, again, I was not in it, so don't go searching. You're not going to find me. And myself, along with 40,000 children's channels were demonetized overnight. This was many, many years ago. They just, you know, it's Google. This is the thing. When you play in other people's sandboxes, they hold the rules. They have all the cards and it doesn't matter what you do. They even owed me money that they're like, yeah, we're not even, not even gonna give you the money we owed you. We're just, we're just, you're just done. And it, it was a really horrendous wake-up call to have to be making like half a million dollars and then all of a sudden it's gone. I mean, it's like, it's like a death. It's like you don't even know who you are. It's like, wait a second, everything I do when I wake up in the morning, when I mean, it was terrible. And it's like everything that I've done in my life leading up to this point and still at this point, I always think, well, it's not like, oh, and I'm an attorney, but I have my own practice and it went bad. So let me just go get a job as an attorney. Like everything I've done, I can't just go get a job if it doesn't work out, if I don't make it work out. So it's not like, oh, well, this didn't work out, so let me just go back to getting a corporate job doing XYZ. Like, I've never had a corporate job. Like, what? You know, I, everything I've done, I've always been like a self-starter. I've always worked for myself. I had like one, I've only had a couple jobs where I was an employee and they sucked. So my resume is horri— like, I knew I have to start anew. And it's something that has always been kind of in my journey is that I'm a storyteller at heart. A storyteller and I've always been a writer, acting, all of that. I parlayed that obviously first into acting and writing for television and such. And then into, I took my storytelling skills into YouTube, blew that up, then it blew up in my face. And then I was like, well, what the heck else am I gonna do? So I, I, uh, parlayed that into more writing. I was like, well, how can I make a living writing? But I, I didn't wanna work in show business anymore. I wanted to be my own boss. Mm-hmm. Like, how can I do that? I didn't even know really that that existed. Had I known that existed, I probably would've started earlier, even though I made a lot of money on YouTube. The whole rise and fall is just, it just wipes out years of your life, right? So, uh, had I, I would've probably chose a steadier path of writing and having a writing agency first, had I, had I known better. But hindsight's 20/20.

So you were in a way forced to make your copywriting skills and turn them into a proper company.

Basically. Yeah, absolutely. And it wasn't even copywriting. Like, my background was really in creative writing and storytelling. However, when I was 19 years old and I, you know, I made a living doing like commercials and stuff, but you know, you have to fill in those gaps when you're an actor. So I got a, I was like, okay, my parents were like, you need a job. I was like, a real job. And I was 19. I was like, fine. And then I went away. I looked online, I grabbed something and it said, ooh, make lots of money part-time with like big dollar signs. I was like, oh, this sounds totally legit. Let me call them. So I did. And they said, you're hired. And I went back to my parents. I'm like, I just got a job in like 5 minutes. This whole getting a job thing is really easy and it's part-time, so I'll still be able to do commercials and stuff. So anyway, I get there and it turned out I got the job, because it was a commission-only position in a boiler room. But I was so young and naive that I was like, oh, this must just be what work is. I don't get paid unless I produce results. Sure. So basically I ended up becoming one of the top salespeople in this company until the FBI came in because it turned out the whole thing was a mail fraud situation. It was crazy. I had no idea. I was young. I thought we were selling like legitimate things. It was like medical billing. I thought it was normal, but apparently it wasn't. Mm-hmm. However, I learned the best skills ever. So I, I'm really a natural salesperson plus storytelling, and that is really the marriage of copywriting. So when it came time to really dive into that space, even though my background was in creative writing, I had so much sales experience that copywriting came very naturally.

And also that's one of the parts that founders find is a lot of them are great with the product or with the idea or with the execution, but Sales is not, doesn't come naturally to a lot of people. So that sounds like it was one of your advantages. And with that in mind, what part of running a business like a copywriting agency hit you the hardest?

Honestly, the overwhelm. I had so much demand, gratefully, but I had so much demand. I was growing faster than I could fulfill. So I truly was building the plane as I was flying it. And I started hiring a bunch of people, you know, anything I do, like I felt like I was constantly just trying to keep my head above water. And eventually I kind of hit a rhythm and then AI came knocking.

Yeah, because from what I read, you had a longtime client who said, we'll use ChatGPT now. Mm-hmm. What did that actually trigger in you? Because I'm assuming you used ChatGPT as well when it came out to test what it could do.

Sure. Okay. So when ChatGPT really came on the scene, it was December. Was it 2022?

Right in, right, right before November, December. Yeah. Something like that.

Yeah. It was 22. I'm trying to remember the year. It was 2022. Instant, instant panic. So to my clients and my, and the people working for me, I, I, my, I put on a face of I'm human only. This is a human-centered agency. We don't deal with that garbage. It's terrible anyway. It's not a good writer.

It was terrible in the beginning anyway.

That's true. It was, but it was definitely, it was, it was definitely not bad, but it was, but it was—

you could see where it was going.

I could see where it was going. So on the, on the, my, my instant positioning was we're human-centered. We don't do it. You want real, you come to me. That was my positioning for the first like 3 months. Inside, from minute one that ChatGPT came on the scene, I knew in my gut and in just everything in my research, this was a huge, huge disruptor, not only for my business, but for the world. Never, I never for one second thought, this'll blow over. This won't be as big as everyone says it's gonna be. I knew from the second it start, it landed, like if I do not find a way to adapt like that phrase, like adapt or die. I knew if I didn't adapt, it was gonna be over. But of course, it's not like I had a 6-month lead time before OpenAI told me they were launching this. It all just hit like a hurricane and I had to figure out on the fly. I lost clients at first. And so that led me to, you know, like—

How big was your business at that point? Like, kind of like just to frame it where, where you were back in, you know, late 2022, early 2023 when this disruptive tool came out?

I had, I mean, I was doing very well. I had already made over 7 figures at that point and I was, I had 7 writers on staff plus an administrative assistant. So I was rolling. I had a real agency rolling, making good money, happy. I was still kind of drowning-ish. I'd constantly be going back and forth. I still always had that feeling like I had to catch my breath, but it was definitely more organized chaos, but still, still chaos, I would say. And I knew things are going to change rapidly and I have to change rapidly with it.

And at what point then was your longtime client who said they're going to use ChatGPT now? Was it straight away or?

Instantly. Instantly. Within a— and, and keep in mind, it wasn't just one client that said this. It was like a handful of clients. At this time, and this is also, I think, important, an important AI note overall to any other founders listening. I, at this point in my, in my business, uh, I was a volume person. I, I dealt more in volume. And so my prices were really low because I was like, I, like, I would joke, I'd be like, I'm not the Rolls-Royce. I'm like the Prius. I'm not gonna charge you a ton of money. I'm gonna get it done fast and we'll keep going. So I, so the, the people that had the, the smallest budgets, were the people that pivoted to AI first. So I didn't even have the luxury of, oh, we have such deep pockets and we trust you, so let's just see how this AI thing works. It was, oh, there's a cheaper option. Adios, Anjanette, we're going to that cheaper option immediately because my client base already were on the lower budget tier.

And that forced you to make some significant changes in the business.

Yes.

How soon did you make them? How many clients did you have to lose to ChatGPT before you pivoted?

Well, I was always getting, so at that point in time, I also was always getting a huge influx of clients. So it wasn't just the clients that I lost that I, that I had a relationship with. It was also the lack of new clients coming in. So I was getting hit both ways. I was getting hit in lead gen and I was getting hits in other ways at this time in my business, I also relied a lot on marketplaces. I've earned over $1 million on Fiverr. I've earned over 6 figures on Upwork. So I—

for the same type of services?

Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah. Same, same, all copywriting. And people that usually go to those services are the lower budget tiers. So anyway, so I was losing on both ends, long-term clients and on new clients. And while I knew intellectually I have to pivot ASAP or change, you know, things have to change drastically. It's not like you just wake up the next day and have all all the answers. I was trying to figure it out, playing with ChatGPT a little, you know, not, probably not experimenting as deeply as I should have because I was so stressed out about the client acquisition side that I wasn't paying as much attention to the creative, like, work side of it. And after it took a few months for me, just kind of treading water, business was dipping, but not business had dipped, but not like to a crazy level. It was just dipped. Dipped more than I wanted it to dip, where I was pissed, but still making a living. Then I realized, okay, what's a good AI pivot for me with my copywriting if everyone's like, no copywriting, da da da da da. And again, this is still in its infancy. So I'm still thinking, are there gonna be zero copywriters a year for, you know, in 2020, by the end of 2023? Well, there'll be no copywriters. You know, everyone I talked to would be like, oh, your industry's dead. You know, it was really scary. And so I was like, what am— what can I do that's not just— but that's writing, but not just writing. So then that's when I pivoted heavy to LinkedIn ghostwriting because I started working specifically with founders and CEOs who wanted to grow their personal brands on LinkedIn to grow their businesses. And I kind of fell into that via my copywriting, but then I was like, okay, wait, this has some legs because one, the founders don't care if I use AI because they just don't have time to do it. It's a time issue. It's not a money issue. And number two, I could offer services outside of writing that they couldn't do, like commenting and engagement and connections and actually growing their profile, which was a service outside of writing that was not an AI service. So that really started the pivot, I'll say.

And I'm trying not to give away the pivot, but we're gonna have to, we are gonna have to give it away, Anjanette, so, because you laid off 7 writers from your team. And it's not an easy thing to do for any founder or business owner. So what's, what's the truth about that decision that most people wouldn't admit?

I'll tell you. So, so initially I dropped a couple people right off the gate, just truly because I—

Was that the junior roles that you started with?

Yeah, you know, I didn't really have junior or senior roles. I just, it was just, if you're a writer, you were a writer that worked for me. There were no tiers. It was just everyone had kind of different areas of expertise and different kind of strengths. So I'd give them projects based on their strengths. There was no one was like more superior than another. So immediately I had to let a couple people go just because of lack of— so that those were true layoffs, I would say. And then as time was going on, you would think, especially as a hired writer at they would be very grateful to have the job working with me while other people were getting replaced by AI.

Mm-hmm.

Instead of leveling up, leveraging AI, but doing better, I would say like, I don't care if you use AI, just like, it's gotta be good. Like, I don't care what you do, just gimme what I need by the deadline and we're good to go. I don't care how you get there. I read something that someone had written at the time. It said, said something like, AI is ruining copywriters. And it was so true. Everything from that moment on that I was giving my writers would be returned to me pure, just AI slop. Like their quality of work, like instantly tanked. It was like all of a sudden everyone on my team just started phoning it in all the time, just phoning it in. And remember at first, because we didn't all know the AI telltale writing signs at first, we had to learn them, what they were. And I'm looking, I'm like—

when you see it on a daily basis, you will, you tell, you can tell the tells way before anybody. Same here.

Anybody. So I was like ground zero for what is telltale AI writing, cuz I'm getting it submitted to me on a daily basis. So I started seeing all these clients and everything looking, and then they weren't following the briefs or they do this. It was becoming, I was getting terrible work. That's, that was number one. So, so for the clients I had left, I was delivering them shitty work. I didn't intervene because I was too goddamn busy trying to solve my client acquisition problem. So my current deliverables are tanking. So I'm pissing off the remaining clients I have. Then on top of it, even pre-AI, the model was I would converse with the clients, I would deal with the briefs, I'd outsource the work, it would come back to me. If there were edits, I'd speak with the client, I'd pass on the edits, but there was a lot of middling. And so, but then when I'm getting AI slop in return, the middling 10x'd, like it was all of a sudden a client that previously would've had maybe, let's say a project that would've had like 1 or 2 revisions suddenly had 5 revisions. And all of that just eats into my time. And I'm going, what, what the hell's going on? And I even, I even said to, to a handful of writers, like, you need to step it up. I don't care if you use AI. Here's an AI detector. It better pass this AI detector because by this point, again, it was so new, people thought that they could use AI to write. So they said, oh, if you're gonna give me AI, I'm gonna run this through a detector, so there better be no AI. So I'm getting the pressure to deliver non-AI work while I'm receiving only AI work. And at this point, people still hadn't learned, myself included, how to really use ChatGPT as a, as a tool. Versus like a takeover. Finally, I got to a point, I had a slower week, I had a client, and I was like, what, let me, let me just try to do it. And I, and I, and I took the Delora. I was like, you know, I haven't, it's been a couple months since I've used, I've been still in the background trying to learn these tools, but I hadn't really put them to work. I, I open up Claude, that's my preferred AI tool. I open up Claude. I was like, you know what? Let me see if I can do this. So I did, I got the project, I did it with my own prompting, with my own copywriting expertise. I took the time to really try to prompt it well, and I got a result. I basically was able to do a deliverable for a client in 20 minutes that was $600 project.

Mm-hmm.

And I went, wait, maybe I'm onto something. Then I delivered it to the, to the client and the client's like, oh my God, this is so fantastic. Can't believe how good this is. Thank you. Thank you. No edits. I went, no edits? So not only do I not suddenly have no edits that I have to go back and forth and back and forth and also, and also be like, I don't know what you're talking about on the inside. Cause I ha— I wasn't the one to write it. So I couldn't even, when they'd refer to some note, I don't even know what they're talking about. I went, there are no edits. Like there, and I, and I looked at the copy, I was like, this is really strong. You know what? This is actually better than even I write. And at this point I had really regarded myself as like a master copywriter and I still do. Mm-hmm. And basically at that moment it was like a light bulb moment and I really leaned in over a couple weeks to learn how to really be a really seasoned expert prompt engineer in copywriting. And I did, and the set, once I did that, work started coming in. I started farming out less and then I just went, I don't need anybody. I'm now, now a superhero. Like I'm now literally, I'm not just one copywriter. I am an army of copywriters. The AI instantly turned me into like a superhero. So I made the very, very tough decision. I was no longer going to work with any writers. With any other writers. So, uh, and, and trust me, it weighed on me. It weighed on me very heavily because I knew that the income I provided was crucial to a lot of people. But I had to circle back to, you know, and I even spoke to my father who's a long-time like serial entrepreneur. And he said to me, he's like, you're not their mommy. He's like, it's not your job to support them for the rest of their lives. You have a job. If it disappears, it disappears. And ultimately, ultimately the reason I got into business in the first place, every time I've ever gotten into business, honestly, it was for me to make a living. I didn't get into business to have other people make a living. That was often a nice byproduct of it. And I was always happy to be able to pay people for quality work. But at the end of the day, I had to make the decision. I'm in this business. I created this business for me. And so I need to have it work as best as possible for me as it can. So suddenly deliverables. Shot through the roof. My clients were happier than ever. I started attracting premium clients. I was working less. I spent less time doing creative project deliverables than I did managing, farming out, and quality controlling the work that was coming in. So yeah, so I, I, it instantly transformed my business overnight.

Before we get to that, because I'm, it's obviously a very important point. I was curious, how did you break the news to your former staff about you experimenting with AI, obtaining better results than they got with AI, even though they had the freedom to augment their work? With it, but they haven't mastered it to your level and that the business's survival was relying on that.

And to be honest, what's so crazy, and to this day, truly, if all of my writers had just put in the extra sweat equity to learn how to, how to do what I did, I would have been none the wiser and I would have been like, I must have these writers. I can't, I can't rely on AI for this. Like if they had just given that effort, they would still be working for me today, possibly because it would've never pushed me to do it myself if I wasn't getting such bad work in return. Yeah. So that's the ironic thing. It's like they could've made themselves indispensable and I wouldn't have known it, but because of, I'll just be honest, the laziness of it, it became their own Achilles heel. So on one hand, I didn't feel bad cuz it's like I'm paying you to phone in work that I know is taking you 10 minutes that you're spending purely even spell checking, you know? But no, I did have a hard time. There were a few people that it was on the easier side to let go. They hadn't been with me as long. I didn't have this personal relationship. I didn't have a company work culture at all. It was me as a solopreneur, and then everyone was contracted. So no one knew each other. Everyone was on an individual basis. So I couldn't just send a company-wide email being like, sorry guys, turn in your emails, you're done. I had to individually, one by one, have the discussion. And some were easier than others, but yeah, I mean, one of them was extremely, extremely difficult and I, and I really weighed on me and I felt very guilty about it, even though I shouldn't have, maybe, I don't know. I don't know what the right emotion is, but I did feel bad about it. But again, no, my dad used to always say like something like, there's nothing more ruthless than like a banker's heart. And I had to remember, I have to put on my business hat on. I'm not somebody's mommy. If I truly want to be a successful business person, I have to put the business first. So that's what I did.

And there wouldn't have been any business if you continued down that route anyway.

So true. I was in a survi— I had, I had a moment and I thought I was in a survival moment, which I was. And, but what I, I didn't expect to truly, honestly, I thought this was just going to be another thing that was going to crash and burn. I was going to have to reinvent myself all over again, yet again. I didn't expect that I would be able to leverage AI in such a way that it broke through. Not only did I not have the drama, the personal drama, and that was another thing. It's like I spent my time dealing with personal drama. Oh, I can't do this because I have this, or I have this person, I have to watch my kids, or I have a thing at a tent. And look, I'm a mom, I get it, but I just, I don't wanna deal with it. It's like my clients don't care that your babysitter, your nanny didn't come in. I, I don't care that you have to pick up your kids early. Get your own business then. That's what I did. It's, it's tough. You have to be tough to be a founder, 100%. And I had to lean into my toughness.

And once you freed yourself from those constraints and those operational and management issues that your business was dealing with, how did you manage to get back onto it? Gain more clients and also basically do most of the work yourself with your trusted AI assistant or staffer?

Great, great, great question.

So, and how long did it take?

Okay. So I, I, the last, I let the last person go. I remember within less than a month I was making more money. Less than a month I was into, well, one, I had eliminated like a 6-figure payroll, so that helps. Mm-hmm. So that, that, that obviously is like an instant cash injection. But on top of that, here's what it gave me. So here's all the answers. So before this little shakeup, I was just starting to grow my personal brand on LinkedIn, but just starting. I was still, I, I, I didn't really have the time to devote to it cuz I'm managing.

So how were you doing the lead sales, uh, and, uh, lead generation and sales before kind of like interlinking?

I've done everything. I've done everything from marketplaces to cold email, you know, to cold outreach, lead gen agencies. I've tried everything. So I always, I always believe in a multi-pronged approach to, to gain clients. So I've always kind of had a bunch of different things running. So when it came time, when I finally got, got rid of everyone, I was, I was starting to retain more clients because remember, I not only got rid of everyone, I was also starting to shift my business model slightly. I still, to this day, take on copywriting clients. I had one this week on her new website, but I was starting to lean in more to the LinkedIn management side because that also provided recurring revenue. So I didn't have to get 20 new clients every month. I could get 3 new clients a month. So number one, I didn't have to pursue lead gen as aggressively right out the gate. Number 2, oh, instant relief. I was like, oh my God, I don't have to email anyone. I don't have to check in with anybody. I can just do me. I could be in my pajamas all day and do me. So I started doing that. I, so I spent my time on the work and then I found the work was moving so quickly with my own expertise married with AI. I had extra time and I was like, well, I'm gonna build my brand on LinkedIn. I'm gonna build my personal brand. So maybe, you know, I can get more inbound lead generation. That's the best kind, right? The best kind of lead gen is when people just come to you. So I finally had the time to build my personal brand on LinkedIn with all this newfound time I had. Mm-hmm. Because I, I was spending so little. I would say I'm spending big energy on the deliverables, but not big time. There's a difference. I'm giving my, when someone hires me, they get my all. They get my best, my best brain plus AI. I'm just able to do it in, in at super speed, so to speak. So I had super speed work, did, uh, started launching my LinkedIn, my, uh, personal brand. And that's when I, I created a LinkedIn outreach system plus, so I was doing outreach and inbound and things really just snowballed from there.

And what sort of approach did you take to growing your LinkedIn personal brand? Because that's something that's crucial to many founders, entrepreneurs, and business owners, not only for growing the business, but for talent acquisition. Others have said that their personal branding helped them get investment, secure funding, and so forth.

And that's why people come to me. It's because I do all of that for them. So as a done-for-you service. So that's why entrepreneurs and founders come to me. And so I said, I gotta make this work for myself. As well. Yeah.

You, I gotta show them how it's done first.

Right. Yeah, exactly. And so now I have about like 22,000 followers on LinkedIn and I, it started just by posting daily content. So posting really, I, I, I had time to really learn LinkedIn, how it worked, what made it tick. I joined some masterminds, I hired some coaches, you know, I always believe in hiring coaches and, uh, you know, I'm always trying to learn in anything that I'm doing. I always make sure at any point in my business, I always am in some kind of mastermind or something. So I'm always growing. So that was a growing phase that I had, a learning phase that I went through. And I just, I showed up, I learned the game basically just the way I did on YouTube and just the way I had done on Twitter before. I was a long time ago named by Time magazine as one of the best top 140 Twitter feeds. I was right between Seth Meyers and Steve Martin. So I know how to hack social platforms. So I was like, I'm gonna hack LinkedIn. And I did.

And you said that clients don't really hire you now to write, but to think how they grow. Is there any kind of like recent example that comes to mind where your thinking saved a project?

Well, I say it's more that writing at this point is the details. Whereas before it used to be a, the, the main dish, right? Where people are like, I can't write, write for me. Now with the help of AI, even poor writers can kind of write, but it's not about that. I always say me doing your LinkedIn ghostwriting or website writing or anything using AI is not the same as you going on ChatGPT and trying to doing it.

You can try to do it yourself with telling it, give me a post about this.

It's, yeah, right. It's so much deeper than, you know, like for example, coders, a lot of coders are going under right now, but I guarantee me, I can use ChatGPT to code. I guarantee a seasoned coder with 10 years of experience is kind of gonna do a better job using AI to code a website than I am. It's not even a contest. And that's the thing with AI. AI is an amazing tool, but it's only an amazing tool if you can marry your expertise with it. If you don't have expertise in a specific area, AI isn't gonna make it better. It's only going to amplify— to use an AI word— it's only going to amplify what you give it, which is your limited knowledge and expertise. So can it get you a little further? Sure. But it's not gonna get you to probably the level of excellence and conversions that you're gonna want to get for yourself. So for me, it's when, when I work with a client, it's less about, oh, you can't write a LinkedIn post yourself, I bet. It's more, I know what's trending. I know what goes viral. Almost all my clients have viral moments. That's what I'm being paid for. I mean, paid for growing their accounts and knowing how to do that through writing and other tactics as well, as opposed to I'm just using AI to write and so can you. It's like, we're not even playing the same sport.

And Anjanette, is there a part of creativity that you think AI will never touch?

I've been so blown away by the growth. Just in the last couple years that we've had. I would be hesitant to say that it can't do anything because I feel like at some day it'll do it all. For humanity, I fear for AI. Right now I'm rocking and rolling and thriving and can help a lot of people. Will I be doing this 5 years from now? Probably not. I'll probably have evolved into something else because the only thing I'm sure of, I know as an entrepreneur, is I will continue to evolve with the markets and trends. And my, you know, skillset. So is there anything it can't touch? Probably not. I think the biggest thing right now is judgment. You know, even like I was recently working with Claude on my own personal sales page for a LinkedIn workshop that I have, and I was working with it and I'm reading it and it's helping me and it's, we're doing, we're doing great work together. And then I go, wait, that doesn't make sense. I'm looking and going, you know what I know with my expertise for conversions, for certain things, I was like, you know what, this is not in the right spot, da da da da da, something like that. So AI is not quite there yet. You can't, it's not, it still needs that human expertise. Will it get to a level where it doesn't? In my lifetime, I'm sure it will, but I don't have to worry.

Yeah, because some people, some people call it Alzheimer's, some people call it many other words, but sometimes whether it's ChatGPT or Claude, you can repeat the same instructions and it just won't get it and it just won't do it.

True.

And you still have to apply your judgment and make sure that— I know from my experience, say, there's certain rules if I want to draft an email, whether it's proposal, project, or whatever it would be, or following up. And rule number 1 is not start with just following up. And then when I ask 1 in 5 times for a follow-up, that's how it starts. And I'm like, didn't we say that's not the rule? And then they were like, oh, sorry, it's not. So then it throws something else in with like an em dash or any other thing that you told it not to do.

That's—

still, I still find it needs a tiny bit of human touch, but it takes so much less time to fix something than to do it all from scratch.

And I mean, sadly, I mean, again, We're, we're all a room of founders here, right? I mean, it's a lot easier to correct an em dash or tell AI to speed something up than it is to correct a, a human and deal with their emotions and baggage and everything that comes with it. And I don't mean that in a harsh way. I feel like if anyone watches this who is not an entrepreneur, and you know, there's definitely a, a different lens you can watch, see the things coming outta my mouth, but I'm a business person and that's the lens with which I see things.

So is there something that AI, any AI feature that you recently spotted or started using that like genuinely impressed you, whether it's like the newfangled AI agents or automations that you can do in a business?

Yeah, I'm very, I love the potential of AI agents. I started using them God, I want to say 6 months ago for some outreach and then I stopped for— that's like a whole other story. But I did start using it and I was impressed. Definitely. I definitely see a big future with that. I don't think it's there yet, or at least it wasn't 6 months ago.

In my experience, not yet either. No, but it's, it's looking promising.

It's looking promising. Yes. I'm excited about that. Also, Claude recently rolled out a new feature where it remembers previous conversations because a lot of times, you know, I exceed the limits even though I'm on the Max plan. I exceed the limits. So that has been tremendously helpful because then when I have to jump into a new chat, it's like, here's everything you already are supposed to know. That's only been in the last few weeks. So that's been a great update, I feel, as well.

And are these automations or agents? Where do you envision them fitting into your business? Would it be more like a personal assistant in terms of your schedule or more for outreach or researching potential clients? Where do you see these fitting in in the future? Because now you're dabbling with it, you can prepare your business for the, not necessarily the arrival because they're here, but them working properly, the AI agents.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, I feel like the best use of AI agents for someone with a business like mine is outreach, lead gen. I mean, fortunately, and something, because I've built my personal brand on LinkedIn, cuz we were talking about time and how I manage my time in this business, I don't even spend that much time on lead gen anymore because it all comes to me through, I've built my LinkedIn to a place where most of my leads are inbound.

Mm-hmm.

But again, I still, I didn't, I didn't get there overnight. I built my personal brand while I was doing my outreach system. And again, that's why I teach my outreach system and also how to build your personal brand at the same time. So. So that is still, I think, the best way to go if you're looking to build your business on LinkedIn. You start with outreach while you're building your personal brand, and then eventually it turns inbound.

What's a tip that— or top 3 tips that you would have to share for anybody who is looking at growing their outreach and personal brand on LinkedIn?

Yes. Number 1, if you are trying to attract clients on LinkedIn, and land more business, you need to do an audit of your own personal profile. So many people, founders included, their profile is all about them. I do this, my experience is this, or this, or my— they don't even talk about themselves. It'll be, my company does blankety blank blank blank, and we serve blankety blank. It's like, people don't wanna do business with a company. They wanna do business with people they like. So step one, you gotta be likable, right? Otherwise no one's gonna wanna do business with you. But step two, you need to do a full audit and making your LinkedIn profile a client-attracting lead magnet. And I have a— and I can help you do it in 10 minutes for free. So I do have a free PDF when you sign up.

So that's your lead magnet.

That's my lead magnet.

My lead magnet is helping you update your LinkedIn profile in only 10 minutes, hitting everything you need to have your profile acting as its only And I've heard this from other entrepreneurs who were in the information and education space who said that giving away their knowledge for free to start with is a great way to attract people to work with you. Like you said, not because they can't do it themselves, but because they don't have the time.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Let's tackle then some mistakes then that people do in personal branding and LinkedIn. What's a lie people tell themselves about LinkedIn that keeps them invisible?

The algorithm hates me.

Everyone. It's easy to blame a faceless algorithm, isn't it?

So, so what's so funny is LinkedIn actually recently did a major, major, major update and their algorithm's so major that they announced it. And so I had to pivot my own personal strategy. My clients were humming right along and, you know, are still thriving, but I had to make a pivot in my own personal account. And I actually just put out a newsletter., a couple weeks ago that said, when the algorithm actually hates you. So, but what's so funny is, and it's one of my most popular posts ever because it's so many people can relate to that feeling of like, I'm invisible. They, they, you know, it hates me. But in reality, the truth is you just aren't posting enough. It's really easy to stop posting after a few weeks when you feel like you're just shouting into a void and no one's there. But it's the people with every social media platform I've found consistency. Is always the winner.

So there's a lot of lurkers on LinkedIn compared to other platforms. There's a lot of people who just watch. They don't necessarily like or share as they used to do on other platforms, but they will reach out privately, I'm assuming through DMs or using any of the links, comments, etc., to get in touch. Is that a correct assessment?

20%. Every time I get a booking on my calendar and I look, I go, who's this person? Never heard of them.

I never seen their name commenting or liking.

Never. I say lurkers are buyers. And, um, when I start to work with founders, when we, when we usually start working together on their LinkedIn profile, they'll say, I'm only really getting comments from like other people in my other, like say people like selling what they're selling, kind of people that are, I'll say, not the decision makers in their industry. They'll be like, I'm getting a lot of comments from those people. I'm like, Yeah, cuz they're trying to all grow their profiles too. I said lurkers are—

by commenting under yours and the audience stealing, uh, technique from whatever, right?

Pretty much, pretty much. But we every, we all, I do it too. We all benefit from that. Mm-hmm. It's like, that's the dance. Yes. So the people, everyone who comments on my LinkedIn posts, I don't think any of them have ever bought from me other than on my coaching side, which is like a, like how to grow on LinkedIn in my workshops, my newsletter. Other than that. There, I've never gotten a client that was like always commenting on my post. No, they're lurkers. They're watching, they're seeing what you're doing. And when the time is right, boom, all of a sudden you have a booking on your calendar. And I go, I have to, I always have to look them up and I go, oh, this person follows me. Oh, they watch. And then I get on the phone and they go, I love your content. I'm always, yeah, I always look forward to your updates. And I'm always like in my head, I'm like, really?

Cause I never said anything. I've never seen an interaction.

Exactly. But so I always say, yeah, it's, you may feel sometimes like you're speaking into a void or that it's not working. But rest assured, it compounds. It absolutely compounds and works over time.

So then what's you would say a real driver behind these LinkedIn posts that convert or go viral?

Well, well, those are two different questions. So viral content is great because it just gets a lot of eyeballs. It's great for reach. It grows your account. It grows your following. It's, it's great for vanity metrics. And how they all say vanity metrics don't pay the bills. True, but they do add a bit of legitimacy. You're gonna trust a founder that has 10,000 followers over one that has 500. Oh, this person probably knows what they're talking about. So viral posts play, uh, you know, definitely play a role in the strategy. In terms of what kind of posts actually convert to more business, which is obviously ultimately the goal, you know, it's, I, I like to do a mix. Mix of kind of more general posts that kind of reach the masses and hit pain points of the masses, and then sprinkle in the, you know, for me it would be LinkedIn content. Here's the hooks that work, here's what doesn't work, you know, this is why, this is what's going on, you know, and was sprinkled in with my own personal expertise.

So people, so she's still sharing free information and tips about your work, which then attracts people to come work with you because you demonstrate knowledge and legitimacy in the field.

Absolutely. You have to show you're an expert for people to think you're an expert, right? You have to prove it to them.

Let's talk a bit then, Anjanette, about your founder mindset and your business psychology, because you said your dad was a serial entrepreneur, so now we know where this is coming from.

Yes.

You kind of like gave it away. You didn't lead with it. It kind of like didn't show up in my research either, but you definitely shared it. And a lot of people have had inspiration from their family when they started their entrepreneurial journey. And it sounds like your dad was also a bit of a mentor throughout your journey.

100%. I mean, my dad is like I wanna say as black and white, cutthroat, cutthroat business person as, as it gets in terms of, for him, it's always like, if it doesn't make me more money, I'm not doing it. Or every business decision is, well, does it increase our bottom line? What is, how does it affect the bottom line?

It's also protecting his time at the same time.

True, true, true. Um, and you know, he is much older, you know, he's retired now, but he, you know, he sold his businesses and he's He's, you know, living, living that traveling life. He was just in London not too long ago on a holiday. Yeah. I mean, he always kind of taught me, you know, nothing matters except what's going in your bank account basically. And everything else is just a problem to be worked out to get it to, to get more money in that bank account. And if, and that's kind of where you start and everything else you troubleshoot.

So is there an insecurity then that still drives your best work, ambition, and decisions in business?

Yes. The insecurity is I have a lot of money noise. I'll be honest, I have a lot of money noise in that it doesn't matter how much money I make. I, uh, you know, that's saying a great thing about capitalism. You always want more. There can always be more. You can, you can always spend more in this global economy, especially in America, you can piss away money like no other. And I don't, that's not how I am, but you know, I'm very frugal. I always kind of sadly operate from the fear of, you know, what if I never make another dollar? And while that may sound irrational to some, to me, it's a real driving fear. So that's what keeps me going all the time is just, you know, I always feel like I gotta be one step ahead.

So is there a belief about success that you had, say, 5 or 10 years ago that feels ridiculous now?

Yeah. I mean, I always say like, if I make X amount of money, then I'll be set, then I'll be good. I just need to make X amount. And then I make that amount and then I go, yay. Okay. What's the next goal? Like literally this, the, the, the, the moment of celebration is less than like 0.1 seconds. And it's so sad. And I feel like a lot of people can relate to that in anything, whether it's money or just anything. It's like, you, you have a goal, you want to get to the goal, you smash the goal, you feel amazing, and literally mere seconds later, it's what's next? What's the next thing? What's my next goal? The goalpost gets moved every time. And at this point, I've just kind of come to accept that I will never be satisfied, you know, that I will never probably reach the finish line, so to speak, and that I will continue to move the goalposts until I do.

But while you move these goalposts and you evolve, learn, and grow, have you learned to enjoy the journey as well, rather than aiming for the next big thing? Because I know from my experience and what others have told me, those, those early days when you just look ahead and go for hitting those goals can also be the best days in hindsight.

Interesting. You know, one of my biggest, I'd say, obstacles is enjoying the journey. I'd say it's a real— I am a very ambitious Capricorn by heart. So getting to slow down and enjoy the journey versus like, okay, well, where am I gonna get there? When am I gonna get there? Is, uh, is tough, but it is something I will say that I'm actively working on and that I have been actively working on getting better at it. But, you know, I don't know that I'll ever be cured. You know, I meditate a lot. I do hot yoga like 4 or 5 times a week. You know, I really try to center myself and try to stay present. But one of my biggest issues, we could say, is being very future-focused most of the time.

So you said you do hot yoga and meditation. Are there any other routines that you have that keep you grounded and productive, especially as you turned the business around to be centered around yourself and your work and attention and time overall, augmented and powered by AI?

Yes. One of the things I do, so to center myself, I make sure I'm always working out and like meditating. Like even every night I try to go to bed to like a sound bath on YouTube. I try to hear that, you know, I really try to center myself. Because I find every time I meditate, the more I meditate, the easier life gets. So that's number one. But, and number two, just in terms of workflow, my secret weapon with AI, without AI, is timers. Because I find, you know, there's that Parkinson's law where whatever we decide, whatever we choose, time expands to fill whatever we say it's gonna fill. So if I say, oh, it's gonna take me 30 minutes to, to do a task, and that's what I used to do. I used to be like, okay, this will take 25 minutes. I used to do the Pomodoro method. And I'd put that timer. And then I learned about Parkinson's Law and I was like, maybe I should— maybe I can do this in 15 minutes, not 25. And then I found, oh my God, I can without sacrificing quality. As long as you're able to do this without sacrificing quality. I just found, oh no, I'm just like refreshing LinkedIn 100 times, you know, in between. And that's why it's taking longer.

So it's so easy to get distracted by all the notifications, especially when you live on LinkedIn for a living, so to speak.

Oh my God. Yes. Yes. So timers, using timers to complete tasks is a big one that makes it. And now I only have something I, I think important to share. I only have, and what this is something I was not able to achieve pre-AI and even doing all the work deliverables myself. I finally now over the last few months can say I have truly achieved the 4-day work week. I do not work Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays. I only work Monday through Thursday as well.

This is ideal and especially for solopreneurs, so to call them. How do you manage client relationships and communications, for example, on Fridays?

I don't schedule any meetings for Fridays. So unless it's like an absolute emergency, I will not meet with you on Friday. I won't even do a podcast on Friday or any, you know, I won't, I won't meet, no meetings on Fridays. Okay. Obviously when I wake up on Friday morning, I do handle some emails for about 5 or 10 minutes that I will do. But other than that, I don't, I just make sure I just, it's called timing, you know, it's like I'm just organized. Yeah. And so I make sure I get all my work done by those 4 days. And if a client writes me, of course I'm gonna write them back on a Friday, but usually writing someone back in an email is not more than like a 5-minute thing. So I don't really count that as working.

And you don't have to be at your desk. Desk or, you know, office.

Exactly. I don't even have to be at my desk. Yeah. So Fridays are for, I say Fridays are for me. That's, that's how I do it. So I just organize myself. It's not, it's not hard.

That's a great tip. I want us to move quickly into some crystal ball gazing based on your experience with AI. And I'm wondering, Anjanette, what type of businesses and founders AI will wipe out completely now that you've survived it and thriving yourself?

I have a controversial opinion about this, Daniel.

We love a controversy.

I said this a year ago. I, I believe a, an early casualty of AI will be SEO. I'll say this much. I believe in that so much that part of my business, when AI came on the scene, I had maybe a third of my business was in blogging and blogging particularly for SEO. I immediately got rid of that revenue stream. Because I immediately phased it out because I just felt one, blogging is one of the things AI really can write without true expertise. It's not like copywriting is different because that's sales. It takes so much different acumen, but just straight blogging for SEO, that I think is something that can be easily taken over by AI now and has been. A lot of people argue with me about this, but I think, I think if, if SEO is your business and then people say, oh, but there's AI SEO. I mean, I don't buy it. That's just me. That's just me. But so if I were in the SEO business, I would be looking to pivot.

And there will be just a handful possibly of bigger players that remain in the industry who are doing that. I did speak with a founder a couple of months ago from there, and possibly similarly to what you said, the showing up in search results from AI agents Still takes a bit of work, but I think like you said, the future is still to be written there. It's not very clear. Now also keeping with this theme, for any other founder terrified that AI will make them irrelevant, what's one move they should make today to give them the momentum again?

I have been there, so I hear you and I still fear it. Like I still fear it. It's not like, oh, I conquered AI. Everybody, it's constantly evolving. Like I said, if we reunite in 5 years, Daniel Ionescu, 100% chance I will be singing a different tune and I will be promoting something different and we will be talking about something different because I, only thing I know for sure is I'll still be an entrepreneur, but I will, we're gonna evolve. So anyone who is like, oh my God, I see the writing on the wall with my business, go to what is the next adjacent thing that is not a threat yet. And, and I would go there.

It's, yeah.

So I, I think the biggest thing honestly is it's so easy to stay stuck and to not change. And, and it's so easy to think, well, if I just don't change, maybe everything else around me will change and, and it'll change for the better. I just need to hold on a little longer. And my advice is to any entrepreneur is pivot now. Pivot, pivot early, pivot now, pivot before it's too late. Don't hold onto hope. Hope is a 4-letter word. Pivot.

And if that's the advice for other founders, my final question for you today, then it would be, if you could whisper one sentence to your past self in that late 2022, early 2023 AI panic, what would it be?

Two things. Well, the first truly, I would say, It's all gonna be okay, Anjanette. It's all gonna be okay. God, if I had just, if someone could have just given me a hug and told me it's gonna be okay, that's all I needed. But, uh, in terms of actual advice, this is advice that I'd give myself during that AI moment. And honestly, I would've given myself this advice 5 years ago. The real thing that I regret that I wish I had done sooner was build my personal brand.

Mm-hmm.

That's, I'd say start yesterday on building your personal brand, cuz that is also in the age of AI, that is your business insurance. Is let's say you are that founder where you see your business is dying, but you start building your personal brand. As you pivot to that new thing, your reputation experience will carry you through. And now you're not starting from scratch. You have that personal brand. So that is the number one thing is build your personal brand starting yesterday. And if you need help, I'm here.

Great stuff. You heard that everybody. If you haven't started on your personal brand, then your LinkedIn is is still looking like a CV and a list of achievements, it's time to go to the links on Anjanette's website in the show notes and start doing your audit and working it out from there. Thank you so much for sharing your inspirational story and your ideas, Anjanette, and I'm looking forward to seeing where you're going to take things next.

Me too. Thank you so much. It's so great.

Well, we're connected on LinkedIn, so I'll certainly keep an eye out.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Daniel Ionescu.

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