Ep 262 — Everyone’s Using AI... But Are Coaches Doing It Wrong?

Using ChatGPT or other AI tools to create your coaching content? Be careful. If it doesn’t sound like you, it’s costing you clients. In this honest conversation, we explore how to use AI as a tool—not a crutch—in your business.

In this episode, business coaches Debbie Shadid and guest expert Marci Rossi discuss the hidden pitfalls of using AI tools like ChatGPT in your coaching business. From over-relying on AI-generated content to losing your unique voice in your branding, they break down what’s working, what’s not, and how to use AI strategically without sounding like a robot. You’ll hear actionable tips on how to train AI to write like you, what tools actually help, and why authentic human connection is still your biggest advantage. If you’re a coach using AI (or thinking about it), this episode will help you stay ahead without losing yourself in the process.

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Transcript

If you are a coach who's using AI, you're gonna love this week's episode. We are talking all about AI, myself and fellow coach Marci Rossi. We are covering what mistakes coaches are making, what tools they should be using, how to best use those, and the dead giveaways that you might be using AI more than you should.

We share the things that we have both learned about AI. How to maximize AI as really the best partner for our business. We have learned so much that we can't wait to share with you. Marci is a business strategist who helps new coaches remove the chaos from their business by helping them set up the tech with the tools, everything they need to have a business that is free of chaos.

So if you guys are ready, join us in this episode. Send me a DM and let me know what your key takeaway is, and please share a tip about how you're utilizing ChatGPT, or Claude, or whatever tool you use for AI. Tell us what it is. I can't wait to hear from you.

If you are a coach, who is you? If you're a coach who's, if you are a coach who is using ai, I think you're gonna wanna listen up to learn what you should use AI for, how to more effectively use ai, what mistakes coaches are making when you should use it. And what tools we recommend. Now I'm talking about this incredible conversation that I had with Marcy Rossi.

She too is a strategist for business. She helps coaches and she's a behind the scenes wizard. I.

All right, so excited to sit down with you and talk AI. So tell me, Debbie, how do you see AI showing up in your business? Well, I'll tell you, it does seem to be something that, I don't know, maybe 50% of our clients are using AI and they're using it like for everything. We should talk about that. Yes, they're using it for everything and the other half are maybe haven't even logged into it yet.

So there's not very many people that are sort of just in between. They're either all in or they're not in at all. What is your experience? I think that's the same, but more leading to that all in, I think especially as time goes on and other people around them are using it and it's really easy to get all in when you start because you're like, oh my gosh, I can also do this, I can also do this, I can also do this.

And then I think we start to see some over-reliance on it, which I think is kind of what you're getting at there, where it is everything you're doing, all of your content, everything is really coming from that ChatGPT or Claude voice or whatever. So, um, when people are using it for everything, what's the problem with that?

Well, I have to tell you number one, you and I are speaking at a summit coming up called AI Unlocked and one of the things that I say in the summit, one line that I say is AI is great at producing content, not clients. And I think that it really is true. AI can produce just loads of content so quickly, and it is so fun and you can say give me 90 days of social media and so many things, but it's not necessarily quality content or it's not necessarily accurate content. And also interesting, you can say, would you check for plagiarism? And I am blown away that sometimes it comes back and tells you it actually did plagiarize something. And I'm like, oh geez. I think that a lot of people feel like AI is like a magic pill.

Mm-hmm. And you and I both know that you still have to be building a business. AI is like a tool that you can use to assist you. What's coming up for you? Yeah, same. I mean, there's a quality versus quantity type of thing in there, right? So yes, you can have a whole bunch of content, but if you can create a 90 day social media plan in five minutes, so can your competitor and so can someone else next to you, right? So what makes you special?  Right? Why is what's coming out of you any different than what they're seeing from everybody else out there? So that's the thing I've really been encouraging my clients to push the boundaries on, especially when we're talking about things that can be easily created with AI. Lead magnets, right? Checklists, PDFs, guides, eBooks, these sorts of things. If you can make it in five minutes, so can the person right next to you. So where's your special sauce in there? Where's your voice? Where's your youness in that content?  Yeah, so one of the things that I talk about and teach with our clients is authentic branding.

And I know you and I are so close to the same two business coaches coaching women on growing their coaching businesses. We have many of the same ideas as we've talked, but I think that what will separate everybody from generic AI is becoming more authentic and that's knowing yourself, it's knowing your niche.

It's really taking your combined knowledge and life experience and thinking about how you want to communicate that so you can help AI communicate it correctly.  I mean, is that kind of what's happening for you? Yeah, and I think actually it's interesting, as you were saying that I'm realizing that AI has helped me know myself better because sometimes it gives me these phrases and I'm like, I would never say that.

I don't say with no fluff. And without the overwhelm and these very generic terms, that those don't come out of my mouth ever. And it's not until I see it that I'm like, no, no, that's going on my no-no list. My writing style list where it's like, do not use phrases like this. So I think it can be quite helpful to say I actually don't speak like this and here's why, or here are the other things that I would say or do in this context. It's that kind of clarity that unless it's in front of you, it's sometimes hard to recognize in yourself. Okay. That is super interesting. I never thought about that, but I am going to think about that because you're correct.

It does say things that you would not say. So one of the things that I do that I keep telling our clients to do, and I would suggest this to anyone that is listening, is when AI gives you something, we have a tendency to like copy it and start on it somewhere else. You can copy it and start on it somewhere else, but every correction you make, I believe should be made in AI.

Whatever tool I primarily use ChatGPT, but the paid version, but whatever tool you're using, put the corrections in there. Truthfully, sometimes I think like I did something this last week and I was like, my goodness, it is taking me more time to keep continue to correct ChatGPT, because you correct one line, and I don't know if you noticed this, but you say just that one line and it comes back with a new version of the whole thing. And then ask if you want more. And now do you wanna continue onto this? I'm like, no, no, we're still broken. We're fixing part one here. No, go back to the original thing. So, sometimes it feels like it's a lot of work.

Right now for myself, I'm committed to really micromanaging ChatGPT for hopefully the benefit of my long-term content production because I'm trying, I keep thinking I've done, you know, months and months and months I've been using this. Still, it's not quite getting me. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's very important to make note of the corrections.

I will stay in that conversation until we get it right, until I'm happy with it, unless there's small changes that I need to make outside of that, and then I keep track of any content that I'm doing. This is something I wish I had started doing from the beginning. It's a mistake that I've made that I hope I can save people from, but I was creating all my content in the platform, right?

So yeah, I use MailerLite. All my emails were written in MailerLite, and my blog posts, all of them are written directly in Wix, and it's then when I want to consolidate them all and upload those as examples to ChatGPT, I can't. It's not simple. So I've started moving those over into documents and saving those, and that way I can kind of retrain ChatGPT over and over again.

I also use ChatGPT to say, okay, these are the last 10 emails I sent. Now help me write another one based on X, Y, and Z story, or X, Y, and Z topic.  Oh my gosh, hundred percent accurate. We have podcast episodes that we're getting the transcripts for now and trying to put 'em all in threads and yeah, I wish I would've done that.

So y'all that are listening, if you are starting to produce content as new coaches, it is true. Put it outside of ChatGPT or whatever tool you're using. The other thing that's happened to me recently, ChatGPT is not flawless. It makes mistakes. One day I was doing the voice messaging and I was walking around my backyard on my phone doing the voice messaging, and I wrote like 10 emails.

Well, the unfortunate part was either I put too much in or something happened and it lost all the emails that I had written. Ugh. I was like, oh my goodness, I know better. It should be written outside of ChatGPT. Yeah, it should be on a Google document that you know you have somewhere, and then copy and paste that into ChatGPT. So. Yeah, for sure. Because I mean even ChatGPT doesn't have a flawless memory, right? Like if you have a really long conversation, you can actually test this and say, Hey, ChatGPT, what was the first thing I asked you? And it will most likely be wrong because it has that kind of token limit, whatever.

It gets technical. But the point is, eventually ChatGPT has a limited memory and it's gonna start forgetting and your Google doc doesn't. So if you can save all of that and search and searching in chat. GBT can be really difficult if I'm trying to find particular conversations. So if I can pull these out and organize them, that's where I've been using Notebook LM a lot.

That's a free tool offroad from Google and you can store all kinds of things in there. You can store your Google Docs and it'll sync. So that's the thing with ChatGPT, if you wanna update file, you have to re-upload it. If you're just editing a file on Notebook LM it has the freshest version all the time and it can help consolidate all of that content 'cause ChatGPT is giving us so much content, but then it's like, okay, what do we do with this now? That's just a lot of things and there's a lot of ways we can use it, but are we making the best use of everything that we're getting? Explain that to me again. So, are you creating content in Notebook LM or is that a tool where you put your content into and then it organizes it.

You put content into it, it can be your content, it can be other people's content. You could say, you know, maybe there's a bunch of YouTube videos you wanna watch. You can give them all the links and say, summarize these YouTube videos. Actually just did that the other day. 'cause I was not gonna spend 25 minutes watching someone's video.

You can put all of your content in there. So all of your blog posts, all of your emails, you're writing these all on Google Docs now, right? Yeah. So now you have 'em in a Google Doc. You put it in Notebook LM and say, what are some common trends I'm talking about here? Or what are some things I'm not talking about that you're, and maybe in my blogs, that I could put in my emails or that are related that I haven't even touched on that might be relevant to my audience.

So it's helping you. It's like kinda like a second brain. It's helping you store and curate all of the stuff that we're, you know, really having to create in this creator economy that we're in. Oh my goodness. Isn't that true? That is another reason why not AI related, but I like people doing video because I feel like, you can go to AI and you can say, give me a prompt. Give me some talking points so that you're not scripted. You can also get a straight up script from it, but I think that that's gonna be really, the thing that will make you more attractive is if you're willing to just get on camera and talk.

I think, that's gonna trump AI every time and all of the social media posts and the content that people are creating that are just copy and paste. You can't be copied and pasted, so thank God. Not yet. At least. Well, I mean, sort of, but a hundred percent that, right? Like, that was something I was just, I actually just came from a luncheon where we're talking about trends in the industry and obviously AI came up and yes, okay.

There are some tools out there that can create videos and these deep fakes and it, you know, it makes it look like you are saying the thing, but it's still not as prevalent as copy and pasting ChatGPT content, right? So that is that part of that authenticity thing. And I think that's really where I see this direction going is the more that people are using, and I'm gonna keep saying ChatGPT, but whatever Yeah.

AI tool you're using, the more people are relying on that, the more the rest of us are gonna say, where's the human? Where's that authentic connection? Where's the person behind this? I'm losing that personality when I'm talking about the rejuvenating awakening of the spring or whatever it is that ChatGPT is coming up with.

I wanna hear you. I wanna hear your stories. I wanna hear from a person.  And while some videos could be faked, it's still could be way more authentic than just a copy paste conversation that you're having online. I had a conversation, actually a consultation, one of my clients brought somebody, a friend with them, and, what she was talking about was so lots of coach words and lots of, it was like emotional intelligence kind of thing. And as I got done with the conversation and I took tons of notes, during our conversation, I thought to myself, we need to put this into ChatGPT and asked it to simplify what this woman just said.

Mm-hmm. Because I think as creators, a lot of times we are so far evolved beyond the situation that most people are coaching somebody on, like their starting point we're so far evolved that we just use words sometimes and talk in a way that is beyond. I always say it's not that StoryBrand talks about having like caveman language.

It's far beyond that. Yeah. And you could probably use ChatGPT to simplify. I know i've used it to shorten things. Yeah. Write at a fifth grade level or Yes. Talk to me in layman's terms. Absolutely, because that's how most of us talk and write anyway. How we might, or we'll say, let's say talk when we write it may be a little bit more professional and elegant, but a lot of times our conversations are just a little more at casual conversational and bringing that language level down so that it's just a little more relatable. Again, it's connecting, it's building that authenticity. Most of us talk at a more relatable level. Well, I mean, we're talking about tools. Is there anything besides ChatGPT and that AI world that you really like using?

It's interesting. I was thinking about that and AI is on so many things now. If we think about like Google and Gemini it comes up on your docs. I use Google Docs and all the Google tools so it comes up on there and it's wanting to correct or in your Google email, you all know it comes up, or maybe you don't know.

It comes up and it says, would you like me to, I forget what the word is, perfect or polish. It says Polish. And, you can put a command in there and then it will rewrite your email for you. Descript is another one. I know a lot of our clients wanna use the Canva ones, but I thought, you know, most of the Canva tools, let's say for example, are far beyond what your clients or my clients would even be using.

Yeah, for sure. They're not the normal kind of things that a coach would use to create marketing materials in their business and Descript is phenomenal. I don't know if you use Descript, it's similar to CapCut, but that is incredible because you can literally, every time I say so or write, which those are my words, I can go through there and cut those words out.

On the other hand, you know, if you use any of the other tools like Get my Eyes in the center of the video, it looks terrible. Yeah, right. Or try to add in a word. It looks terrible. So I think they all are phenomenal, but they do have limitations. For sure, and I think recognizing that is probably one of the mistakes that people make when they're newer to this.

You know, you were talking about the, do you want me to polish this? And it made me think of this commercial and it may be Google or Apple, but it's this guy at a desk and he's texting, he's like. Sup, bro. Do you wanna go do this? Cool, whatever. And then he hits the button and it comes out this polish.

Like, I'm going to be away next weekend for, for chance, whatever. And it's, but the guy is still that guy at the end, that email that he's getting is not the same person that, that we're actually hiring or we're working with or we're, talking to or whatever. So there's that big disconnect that can be really upsetting when you actually find who that real person is so overlying on this polish, like people don't want polish, they want you, they want a real person. I think that's a big mistake I see.  Again, overlying on ChatGPT I think it can be exciting to use a lot, but until we've trained it really on our voice so that it sounds like an actual person and not just pretty, not just professional, not just polished, but human and authentic, I think that can be a limiting factor as well.

In terms of tools, I'm really into a fan these days of Fathom, um, fathom AI. It's like Otter, but, I like fathom a little bit better, but it's just been so freeing to me when my clients consent to have video recordings, to not have to worry about taking notes and remembering every little thing.

And it can give you action points afterwards. So, oh yeah, I said I was gonna send her X, Y and Z. So that has been phenomenal to kind of really do what we do as coaches, which is to listen, right? It's that act of listening, which is hard to do when you're thinking about, let me jot this thing down before I forget.

So that's another big tool that I'm obsessed with that is such a good point about coaches who do want to be present? What a great thing to think about that. I was thinking about Loom and I believe that you use Loom as well as I do. Yeah. And that's another tool that does have some AI with it.

It'll come up with a title for your video and it will create a summary, and sometimes when you go to send the Loom video to somebody, which I use Loom, I mean, it's really my primary mode of communication with people. If I can do a loom over an email, I do every time, but it will also summarize things potentially in a way that you didn't actually say it.

I haven't seen the summaries, but I do use Loom, but I download the videos and sign it to my clients so that they have it forever. But what I noticed is they always put an emoji at the end of the title. There is always an emoji in the title, and that's something I've seen with ChatGPT.

That's a key when someone is overlying on it. 'cause ChatGPT these days loves emojis. It uses emojis for bullet points and like, I don't know a lot of people that do that, but ChatGPT does all the time and then we copy and paste it and use it. So that to me is like a signal right there that you're kind of overlying on it.

But it's just funny how the emojis sneak in. Like, I don't need a little tool sign emoji that I'm showing someone how to do something. But yeah, I know I can't quite figure that out either. I've told our clients, and I'm sure you have told yours too, like, do not copy and paste something with all those emojis in there.

Yeah. You can tell ChatGPT. By the way, what I do is I say, only use black emojis. So if it's gonna use a check mark, it's using a plain black check mark. Yeah. Or if it's using a bullet point, it's just a bullet point. It's not like a red dot or something. Yeah. So yeah, it goes crazy.

One thing I'll say is that if you do like YouTube or a podcast or like what we're doing here, it is interesting to take that and almost use AI or ChatGPT as an assistant to help you come up with keywords or maybe a title out of it. Yes, something like that. Again, with your information first in there. Absolutely. It's that training piece of it, right?

So if you get really fancy and technical, you can start building custom GPTs, which I have. So I have a podcast assistant. I give it the transcript. It gives me a title, show notes, all based on sign of some best practices. But at a very bare minimum, I think what we can all do is create that best practices list or that writing style.

Like you said, you don't have to every time tell GPT only use black or basic emojis. That's just one of your rules. Marcy does not say no fluff, like that just goes on there.  Yeah. These are the things, so it starts to learn, okay, this is a voice. So that's a simple way of these are the things that I always want to make sure are appearing in my language and uploading that to ChatGPT and saying, okay, based on this, now can you help me create X, Y, and Z?

Yeah. So one of the other things that I think ChatGPT is amazing for is research. Yes. It trumps Google. I mean, just, it's so good. Hands down. It is so, so good. You can ask it for a stat on literally anything. Yeah. And I've gone and looked to see like, are the things that they're giving me, or I'll say, you have to give me a resource for the stat.

Yeah. Yeah. That blows my mind. The kind of research it can do for you, which is particularly helpful for coaches that are creating marketing materials that, for example, if they wanted to say a pain point. Mm-hmm. And they wanted to be able to identify that pain point. What percentage of people in the United States, over 40 experiences, I'm not kidding.

It goes down that far and it'll give you a number. Yeah. And you can do like really deep research type things where it's going in, it's gonna take 15 to 20 minutes. I played around with this. I did hit a limitation in there, but I was asking it for podcasts. I wanted the host name, I wanted the kind of a description of their show.

I wanted it to research topics to say, I like to talk about X, Y, and z. You know, I wanna find episodes or I wanna find podcasts where it hasn't actually been covered, or it hasn't been covered in my angle. And it did take about 20 minutes and it gave me, I ended up getting a list of, I asked for a hundred, I think it topped out at 70, but it was a really good list.

And I've tried this in other tools. Sometimes ChatGPT or these other tools make things up. Like when I tried this in Claude, it just made up email addresses and website surfing. It's like, here's your list. And it's like, okay, well that was a waste of time. This isn't even real. So recognizing that not everything that's in there is necessarily accurate, but that's why going for the source, gimme that source so I can go into that website versus trying to Google it and hoping the page you're looking for is gonna show up on page one, otherwise you're probably not gonna see it. So plagiarism is something else that I'm looking for.

And in Google Docs and also in ChatGPT, you can say, is there anything that you just created that has been plagiarized? And both Google Docs and ChatGPT have come back and told me yes. Now it's interesting because like, let's say I wrote a piece of content in my Google document and then, and it was all in my language.

I had check for plagiarism. I was just curious and it came back and had, I don't know, they had found something that sounded similar. Sure. It was nobody I knew, or, and it wasn't even in a related business as mine. But it had found something that was similar to mine of a podcast episode of, it was from like 10 years ago.

I was so surprised that it could locate just even like the pattern of the words that I was saying. I think that's such a key point because I think a lot of us use ChatGPT or a lot of people, lemme say, I don't know about yeah, us, but as a brainstorming partner and you're like, I'm thinking about doing this.

Or a naming partner, right? We have this new program I have, this is how it's gonna be and help me come up with a name and if you're plagiarizing an idea, it's not great if I take everything that you say and pass it off as my own, right? That's not an ethical thing to do. But if you actually have a trademark on something.

And then I am now passing that off as my own. That's a really serious problem. So I know there are tools out there that can help you check like does this sound like it's written by ChatGPT or what percent of this is ChatGPT? But far more important than not sounding like a robot is not trading on someone else's trademarks.

Right. So really doing some of the research. I hadn't thought about that until you're saying this, but how many of us use ChatGPT for naming conventions? When really we need to make sure that we're not treading on someone 'cause this is not legal advice. I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. But, you know, not knowing something is not an excuse.  Right?

Like if you're going across someone's trademark and you're taking something as your own, the fact that you didn't know that that existed is not really an excuse in the eyes of the law. So just being aware that if it's out there, it's probably because someone else has already talked about it, written about it, something that's where ChatGPT is getting its ideas, right?

It's looking at the existing body of content.  So being aware that not necessarily everything it comes up with is gonna be a hundred percent original, even if you ask it to be. Well, I have never asked a question that it couldn't answer. So I mean, that just says to me, yeah, it'll make it up if it doesn't know.

And you're like, where did you get that? And it's like, oh, you're right. I actually didn't know that thing. But it'll try to come up with an answer somewhere and it could be because someone else has already said that exact thing. Yeah. A best practice that I recommend, and I'm sure you do the same with anybody that you work with, is that you wanna make corrections inside of ChatGPT as you're going so if it comes up and it says something that is like, not the phrasing that you would say it, like, you have your no words list, I have a certain, I call 'em talking points, phrases that I say. If it would say something that's not aligned with me, I go back into ChatGPT, and I literally will say, I'll copy the sentence that it wrote.

I'll put it back in, I'll rewrite it and I'll say, please update this in the actual document. And remember, this is actually how I talk. Not that way, and sometimes it feels like it takes so much time. I don't know if you're doing that too. It depends on how much needs to be changed. So I don't leave a conversation until I'm at least 80% happy with the result.

Let's say I'm writing an email until I'm about 80% happy with it, and then I'll fix it. What I will then do is I will make sure that that email gets onto my Google Doc and saved, and that way when I give ChatGPT examples later, that's the actual email. Or if I needed, like let's say I'm writing an email and now I want to turn it into a blog post or a podcast episode, what I would say is, here's the final version I came up with copy and paste in the final version.

Now let's turn that into an Instagram caption or whatever else so it knows I didn't just blatantly like if I end the conversation with something that I was only 80% happy with, it may think, okay, this is the answer she was looking for, but it wasn't. I changed some things.

So I think you're right. It's very key to go in and say, okay, this was the final version that I went with just so we're training it and it's like you said, remembering, okay, this is the type of thing that we're looking for. Something else that I did not do in the beginning is I did not create project folders.

I'm sure we were all guilty of that because we just started typing. Yeah. And you know, it feels like a lifetime of information in there now. Yep. And I really didn't start using project folders until this year. Then I made the second mistake that I made so many project folders that really I was gonna have just as many practically project folders as I was.

I've been trying to now consolidate project folders so that I have like a short list mm-hmm of the core, like, say marketing, the core things that podcast, YouTube, so they're all kind of in the same place. Organization to it is key. Organization is very key. I will say I still don't use project folders, but the thing that I started doing was at least deleting conversations that maybe I just asked it one simple question of like, I'm trying to say this, how's a different way I can say this, and then I can delete that if it's not something that I need long term.

If it's something I need long term, my new goal, something that took me far longer than I'd care to admit is to get it out of ChatGPT. Like, having this content is great, but then what do we do with it, right? So saving it somewhere or using it.

I mean, I love AI, but I really love automation, so I love to figure out ways that we can take things and do things automatically. But at a bare minimum, it's making sure that we have some way to reference back. 'cause if you're just relying on that chat history or anything like me, I mean, you're just scrolling forever and there's not a great search function in there.

So having some kind of system, whatever it's that works for you, is gonna be really key If you need to revisit any of that information.  Okay. I love, and I'm gonna take this tip from you, what you said about as soon as you write something and is like taking that copy right there and putting into the Google document, because what I find is I try to make a correction and then it basically rewrites what was already there and I'm like, no, that sounded so good. Yes. And I didn't have the original and I'm like, go back to the original of what you just said and sometimes I can't get back there. Yeah. It has a finite memory. So that's where making sure that we're keeping track of things can be really beneficial.

Debbie, tell me what, are you really excited? I mean obviously we're very excited about the AI and Lock Summit coming up. We're clearly very obsessed with AI, but what's really exciting you these days? Well, like I said, I think research is so much fun. And another thing I've been doing is, I don't wanna say reading books, but I have been putting in there a book that I'm interested in, or let's say an old book.

Mm-hmm. And I ask it to give me a summary of the book and the key points because then it helps me decide do I want to read that book? And a lot of those good summaries, either you have to pay for it through something else, or maybe there just isn't a good summary. And so I've gotten literally chapter by chapter, I'm reading a book called "The Having" and chapter by chapter of what is in that book blew me away.

So I've read the book and I've listened to the audio, but then I thought, well, I'll ask ChatGPT to give me a summary of it, even chapter by chapter. That's amazing. I haven't thought to do that, but especially, I mean, I love to read and you forget things, right? Yeah. You've read this book and if I haven't enacted it in that moment, it's like, okay, wait a minute.

I know I loved this book. I don't have the time to reread it. Gimme the action points from this, like what were the step-by-step? Especially if we're talking about any kind of like business books, self-help. It's like, now what do I go do? Gimme the summary points, the high talking points there, I hadn't thought to use it that, that way.

I have used an AI tool to do my meal planning. That's something I absolutely hate doing. So on a personal note, you can tell it I hate mushrooms. I am allergic to gluten, like all these things and it'll come up with meal plans. I think that's a lot of fun.

I will say I am a person that gets very excited about new tools, but I think it can be easily overwhelming. So it's tempting to try out all the things. It's tempting to have FOMO really about, okay, how is someone else using it? What are we doing? What are all these things? I think if instead, which is often, something we do, we're getting a business.

If we can pull back and get really good at one thing. You don't need to be a master of all of these things. You don't need to promote 400 offers. Right. When you're building your business, you need to kind of focus, at least that's my philosophy, kind of on one thing from the beginning and and the same thing with this.

 So if all you take away from this is I'm gonna start having conversations with ChatGPT, and I'm gonna save the important things, I think that's a great place to be. I don't think you're necessarily behind because you're not playing with every new tool that's coming to market because dozens, hundreds, thousands are hitting every day.

Mm-hmm. They're shiny, but they're shiny and they may not last. So just get really good at finding a way to sound like you and save yourself time in the process.  Yeah. What would you say are the hard, don't do this. Like if you could come up with three or four things that you wanna say to coaches that are listening, don't do this or use it for this, or let this be the outcome of something.

And we may have already touched on it, but what would that be for you? Number one is don't accept the first draft there. Even if you have a custom GPT trained on everything you've ever written in your entire life, don't accept the first draft.  It's going to be lazy. Make ChatGPT work. I think that is really important, to make sure that it actually is gonna sound like you at the end of the day. I can spot from a mile away something that has completely been copy and pasted. And that's because I've used it a lot. So if you're newer, it may just sound really good, but the more you use it, the more you're gonna start recognizing phrases.

And if you recognize it, that means other people are gonna recognize it too. So don't accept the first draft. That's a big one. I also can tell ChatGPT things because they, it just loves emojis, right? The bullet points always with emojis, the green check marks, the little bullet arrow. Bullseye, whatever it is. 

Like it does this all the time. And that to me is an immediate signal that you're using it. And I think probably if I had to come up with a third, it's to challenge you to still touch, tap into that creativity that you have, right? If we are entrepreneurs of any kind, it's because there is something in us that wants to create something out of nothing.

That's what an entrepreneur does.  And if all you're doing is just asking ChatGPT to come up with everything, you're losing your voice, you're losing your specialness, you're losing what it is that makes you you. So I would definitely say if all you're doing is just asking ChatGPT for all of its ideas, like I wanna hear more of you.

I don't really need what's rinsed and repeat. So that'd probably be the third. What about you? Well, what came up as we were talking, I'm thinking of all kinds of things. This conversation is so awesome is do not create a micro course or a course with ChatGPT. Yes. Coaches who have no clients, who are building their businesses.

I love you guys so much, but coaches love to like get ready. Mm-hmm. Which is meaning kind of like I'm hiding behind the easy stuff.  Yep. Get ready and then ChatGPT makes a course for 'em because it's so easy and so simple. But courses don't sell without doing marketing and without you talking about your business.

 So I think we forget that. A new coach could easily get lost in creation mode. I call that buffering , so they can easily get lost in what feels like such productive work that's not getting their business anywhere. Well, and there's no value in that either, right? If you can create a course in 10 minutes with an AI tool, so can someone else, and then the person buying it also could have just asked ChatGPT.

Give me 10 things for X, Y, and Z. So there's no real value. So we're now selling something that someone could have just Googled or asked AI, and to me that feels a little bit squishy. It's not really serving if I'm in the business to serve people, to help people regurgitating information from AI or Google.

It's just not really, it's not really my business. I think definitely it keeps circling back around to you being you. Yes. And you showing up as you, and I think that we're gonna see, if I could had a crystal ball and could tell the future here, I think what we're gonna see is that there's gonna be, in the next few years, this hard shift to a lot of that content and a lot of AI, everything.

'Cause like you said, if you start looking, there's literally new AI tools being promoted every single day that none of us really need. Nope. Nor do we need to invest in time or money. And I think then there's going to be for the coaches who are willing to put in the time. I think we're gonna rise to the top because there is this humanness that is gonna be so missing from all of that.

That's what I kind of touched on earlier, is we're gonna get burned out on all of this tech and bots, and we're gonna want that person. So I would challenge you right now if you're considering something, how can I insert some human into it? When I go back to the lead magnet, instead of just creating a PDF checklist, how can I put some you, you know? Maybe your lead magnet is a loom video.

We're talking about looms, like maybe it's something quick and personal and human. It's gonna be so key coming forward. We're gonna see AI tools rise. We're gonna see some fall off. But you're still you at the end of the day, and especially if you are your brand, that's what people are buying.

 So making sure that, that, like we've said is what's showing up over and over and over again. Yeah. And as coaches, look, that's us, you guys. Everybody is buying us unless we're part of a big company, they're buying us. So that definitely can't be ChatGPT. And one last thing I'll say is I don't want coaches to be scared about, maybe scared's not the right word, but feel intimidated or feel defeated before they get their business started because they're seeing on like social media, like, AI is my life coach. No, it's not. Yeah, it cannot be. It is amazing because you can ask it to ask you some questions, like if you were journaling or something. Mm-hmm. You could say, ask me a few questions about whatever, to deepen my own understanding of what I'm going through, but

it is never gonna replace, in my opinion, coaching. So I think we should fully step into our power, and part of our marketing should be, "i'm not AI. I'm a person that's listening to you. I hear you. I see you. I feel I can sense your emotions."  It's all kinds of things that AI cannot do. Yeah, yeah. I'm not trying to calculate what the next best answer is gonna be, and, even for those AI tools, if I'm asking for, I've used AI as a business coach to test strategy.

Here's what I've been doing. Here's my marketing and my launch results. What am I missing? Gimme some key points, like that sort of thing. But I've never been a hundred percent satisfied with something that's coming out. There's always gonna be something missing. I have my own business coach, even though I'm paying for Pro ChatGPT, because it, there's just not something there.

And that's something is the uniqueness of being with a human where they're not just trying to guess at what the next correct complication of words are, but to listen, to hear what that other person is actually talking about.  So I a hundred percent agree that that human element is going to be just absolutely mission critical, and that is your true value in when you're a coach.

Yeah. Well, so much fun. I am so glad that we got together and talked about this particularly before this AI Unlocked Summit. going to be, I understand 50 speakers. Two really good ones. Two really, really. But the rest are also, I'm sure, just fantastic. Two really good ones. You and me. That's right.

Two, two of the best. I think I love AI unlocked. I'm so excited that we're gonna be speaking there. I can't wait to see your session. I think there's got a lot of true value, but it could be overwhelming, right? You don't have to be everywhere doing all the things. Pick one thing, make sure it's working from you, and then you can get fancier as you go on.

I don't want it to be overwhelming. It can be easily overwhelming with all the stuff that's going on there, but let's just focus on making sure that it's working the best way for you right now and get fancy later. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you and I, the bottom line is maybe I'll speak for myself and you can agree or not agree, but we don't need all the tools.

No, we don't. That just complicates a business and at the level that you're at, and even the level that I'm at, and I don't mean you, I mean the listener, the level that the listener is at. You don't need all this stuff. It really just slows down your business. It creates, for most of the people I know, it creates overwhelm.

It feels intimidating. You start thinking, I'm not that good because I can't figure out how to use this stuff, but for goodness sakes, I can't figure out how to use half the stuff either. Yeah. 'cause it's all new and it's not really necessary. So keep it simple. You guys keep it simple. This goes back to your point actually of buffering, right?

Sometimes we're playing with that tool because we don't wanna put ourselves out there because we don't wanna get visible, sell the thing, do the thing, right? So it's easy to get distracted, but we gotta get ourselves out there. Let's not, not time to buffer. So, yeah, I have had so much fun with this conversation.

Any last parting thoughts before we wrap this up? I think we've touched on all the points. Be authentic. That's it. I honestly, if we summed it up, I think those are the two words. So I hope you take away that. Debbie, thank you so much for joining me.

This has been an absolute pleasure. And you too, this is gonna be super fun. I'll see you at the summit and I know our pass will cross again. So I hope you guys enjoyed hearing the inside chat of us over AI and all that we're using it for too. So thanks a bunch. Thanks. Bye-Bye.