David:

So when I first heard about artificial intelligence and its ability to learn, I was kind of a skeptic. And people were saying, oh, this is the greatest thing. And so I actually tried ChatGTP, and I was not impressed. I was actually also given a business plan using that AI thing produced, and I wasn't impressed with that either. But yet as I've talked to other people and how they use AI, I'm becoming more interested in what it can do. I guess I liken it to a computer with a typewriter. If you ever remember going back to typing a paper in a typewriter, you have to continue typing that same page over if you mess it up too much. Where on a computer, you just, you don't. You just make your corrections the way you go. And so I think AI is going to be a similar thing where you have to get used to using it and then it can be very useful. And so I brought on Jennifer Leah today to help unravel some of the misconceptions around AI and to also tell us about some hidden dangers that go along with it. And it helped us to choose what to use. So, Jennifer, welcome. Thank you. And to start off, this is a Christian podcast, and I'm just saying, what is one way that you have found to honor God in our business that other people may not think about?

Jennifer:

[1:26] I personally feel that we all have a special mission in our life. And some of those missions seem really big, like Mother Teresa, and some of them we never really hear about, but they completely change the world and impact people. And for me, my mission is to help other people fulfill their mission. I really believe that business is where God calls most of us because it's where we find our freedom. It's where we can support communities and families the best. And there are too many businesses that don't get the support that they need. And so they end up closing. And so those people don't get to fulfill that mission. And so in my business, I feel that I serve God by serving other businesses and making sure that they can fulfill their business, their mission in the world.

David:

[2:15] Very good. That's neat. Thank you. And so take us, take a few minutes and share us about your journey and how you got to start, how you started working with AI and what you do with it now.

Jennifer:

[2:27] Yes. So I started my business career as a copywriter. And so really using AI was the furthest thing from my mind. At that point, it was still science fiction. You know, we're talking 15, 16 years ago.

Jennifer:

[2:43] And so when it came out a couple of years ago, first of all, everyone in the writing community lost their mind because they thought none of us are ever going to get to work again. Um but also there was the other side where people felt that oh we'll never have to do work again because we have ai and i took the middle of the road i thought that there are tools and some of them are good and some of them are bad and but most of them have a purpose and you need to at least evaluate them to see how they work and like you i tried chat gpt in the beginning and i thought I don't understand. I don't understand how this is so amazing because I didn't know how to use it. And so I left her by the side for a while. But then I was working with a client and that was one of her main offers was teaching people how to use AI. I believe it was something along the lines like how to use AI and make it sound like you. And so I worked her with events and webinars And I learned a lot from her and realized that everybody was touting it as, oh, this is your, your writer that can do everything for you and create everything when really it's, it's not.

Jennifer:

[3:57] A person that you have it's a tool it's like a calculator you need to put information in to get information out so if you've ever used a graphing calculator you may know how to use a regular calculator like adding or such but if you don't know how to put in the correct information you're not going to get those lines graphed or you're not going to get the answer to the problem And that's really what the AI is at at this point.

Jennifer:

[4:25] It is a collection of information either that you've put into it and trained it or that it's been trained on and is sweeping across the internet to pull together and give you a view of what's going on. So instead of you going to Google and reading every single blog and hoping that you find the right keywords, it's synthesizing all of that in one place. And so I started experimenting with it and seeing how it could work and saw how it had a place in business that wasn't replacing everybody, but was serving in a better way and giving people more information so that they

Jennifer:

[5:06] could serve their audience in a better way. Um and do tasks that we're doing anyway but really refine them um in a faster fashion um so that's where i am right now that when i use it with my clients a lot of it is for research for market research for messaging research um but also taking what they've done and turning it into something else so that they're not constantly spinning their wheels creating content yeah i I did a talk just yesterday about escaping the content mill of modern business because we all feel like we need to create so much content and really you don't need to.

David:

[5:48] That's an interesting comparison with a graphic calculator and just that it's a tool. Because like so many things, tools are meant to be used and sometimes that hammer doesn't work as a screwdriver. The wrench doesn't work really good as a hammer. It's good for the right tool for the right purpose. Research sounds like a great way of using that to scan a bunch of articles that you don't have to read. It can maybe look through them to find out what you need. So research is one way. What's a couple other good ways we can use AI appropriately?

Jennifer:

[6:26] I think that one of the most valuable ways to use it, and there are a few others I'll go over, but one of the most valuable ways is as a social listening tool. Because since it has access to the entire internet and is synthesizing everything that's going on, your ideal client is on the internet looking for things. They're searching for recipes. They're searching for clothes. But they're also searching for answers to the questions for the problems that you solve. However, they're not usually posting that on Facebook. Sometimes they are. But most of those we're afraid to ask because then we think, oh, what will people think if I don't know the answer to this question?

David:

[7:06] If I'm asking this question, what are they going to think about me? Yeah. Yes.

Jennifer:

[7:10] But in the middle of the night, it's in their head and they're searching on Google or wherever. And so getting into...

Jennifer:

[7:19] The mind of your ideal client not in like a matrix type of way but capturing the information that they're putting out there but not sharing with you and probably wouldn't even share with you on a sales call or on any kind of communication between you because it is guarded and we don't want to even though they say there's no such thing as a dumb question with still especially as adults and professionals, we want to come off as we know what we're doing, right? And so there are things that we're afraid to ask. And so when you go in there and ask, this is my client, you know, this is my ideal client. This is what I want to offer them. This is the transformation I provide. Can you tell me more about them as far as what are their hidden fears?

Jennifer:

[8:07] Sometimes we're afraid of things, but we don't have words to put to it. So even when you're having a conversation with someone, they're not going to say oh you know what I'm really afraid that if I start email marketing then I'm going to run out of ideas and people are going to get bored reading my email. They're going to say well email marketing seems overwhelming and I don't think I'm very good at it but really the fear is that they're going to get to a point and they're not going to be able to keep it going. Those are things though that are being put out on the internet and so like it or not all of that is tracked when you're on the internet, you know, there are bots tracking it. And that's why AI really isn't as new of a thing as we think. Spellcheck and all of that are still AI.

Jennifer:

[8:53] But one of the most powerful things is, you know, the questions they're afraid to ask. But also I look at what webinars, this is one of the questions that I ask sometimes, what are six webinar titles that my ideal client would really like to go to? And so they're weighing like, what are popular webinar titles in this niche? And it isn't even necessarily that I'm going to use that exact title and create a webinar. But what I know is that if I'm talking about this aspect of that topic, my people want to listen to it. And so I can talk about that topic more.

Jennifer:

[9:29] So little details like that truly change how you're interacting with people. Because many times when we are speaking to our audience, we are sharing things that are valuable. And we want to be there to serve them. And they say, you know, provide value and give information. But we're talking up here. Or we're talking very broad. whereas our audience needs to hear just this one small piece to get hooked and say oh that was what i needed to hear because i always say when people are too stuck and in a hole they can't make decisions right they're too overwhelmed they can't see where they're going if you can empower them with just a little step up that now they can see out of the hole now they can make decisions because the person in the hole is never going to buy from you they're just stuck um so sometimes narrowing that down to what are those hidden fears what are those topics that they you know when you think of like health or building wealth or building a business there's so much you could talk about but really there's these

Jennifer:

[10:33] little things that people want to hear most and it isn't so much that.

David:

[10:38] You can you can put that into a chat not chat gtp but you could put that into ai and say hey go search for this type of client and they might be asked for this or that and they would come back with those things?

Jennifer:

[10:49] Well, it isn't so it, It's a process. And so when I do this, it does happen faster than me doing it and having focus groups. And I can tell you from clients, we've done focus groups and then we've done this. You get so much more information because people don't want to share as much openly. But I start by describing, you know, I would describe myself like I my name is Jennifer. This is the business that I have. This is how I serve people. These are the tools that I use. This is a typical transformation. A couple of paragraphs just describing my process. and what I'm doing, and who I want to connect with. And then I say, this is the client that I've worked the best with, and I want to connect with them better. Could we go through some questions? And this isn't an exact problem, but you get the idea. Could we go through some questions to help me identify with my ideal client more and get to know them better? And so then I go through a series of questions. So the first one usually is, what is it that they want most out of, you know, because I work with business owners, what is it that they work most out of their business or their marketing? And it gives me that. And then I build from there because now that we have worked out a framework, sometimes it comes up with stuff and I'm like, no, that's wrong. We're going to refine this more. And through giving information, asking information, I can get a full picture that then I can create into an ideal client, um.

Jennifer:

[12:16] Analysis I guess you could say that we can use with my client in building let's say a webinar campaign or doing a launch or forming a new product so one example is I've done this with a client I've been working with for a while and she's an amazingly talented health coach.

Jennifer:

[12:36] But she just wasn't she was talking about it and she knows so much but there was like this disconnect and so we kept refining things and finally I said to her well what is you know we need to really get down to what is that one little aspect of health that is going to get them talking because everybody knows that you're you know she has a big following people really like what she has to say but it wasn't taking them to the next step it's like what's going to take them to that next step and so we went through a process of doing this through AI and they said pain sleep And I forget what the other one was. There were three or four top points that push people topics that push people to say, yes, I need some help with my health. And so she focused in on pain. And in the matter of a couple of weeks of shifting that, her business is completely transformed because now everybody's it's not I need to redo my whole health. It's like, oh, my back is really hurting and I'm tired of it. And so that little nugget that may have taken years of because she did survey, she did focus group, she talked to people and nobody could actually tell her that's what it was. But we're up at night searching for it. So now we know.

David:

[13:52] Yeah. And how did you find that they're interested in pain by just asking the AI, what are they interested in?

Jennifer:

[14:01] What are the, I can't remember the exact question, but it was something along the lines of what are the greatest pain points that push someone to make a choice to change their health journey? Because it is a big transformation. So what pushes you to make that much of a change in your life? Um, and there was a few and she's like, Oh pain. I know I've done so many classes on pain. Let's start there. Um, but when that was, when pain was just in the general context of things, it wasn't hitting people as hard as let's do an assessment. Cause then she created an assessment from that of like, what question should I ask people to make them realize how pain is affecting their life. And so he turned that into a survey that people do on her website. And now they can go through and realize, wow, pain really is affecting my life.

Jennifer:

[14:59] It's not just talking about this is how I can help you solve your pain, or this is what causes pain. It's giving people that realization that they are in so much pain that's holding them back from what they want to do in their life, with their family, at church, in their business.

Jennifer:

[15:14] And so that all came from, This is a couple of weeks of research. However, as I said, it would take finding probably 200 people that we're willing to talk to and actually getting them to be honest and synthesizing information. We're talking about five years of research as opposed to a couple of weeks.

David:

[15:33] Now, I think you're referring to this, but you're not quite exactly saying it.

Jennifer:

[15:37] Okay.

David:

[15:38] You're talking about, and other people said, training the AI, that you have to teach it and train it to how to think, what to think. Yes. So that's that's a part of it. And that's why just putting something in, you're not going to get good results, but you have to train it and all that. Correct? Yeah.

Jennifer:

[15:56] So there's two different levels of training. Any kind of AI tool has been trained in some way. This way it understands language. It can take language and replicate language. Just the way when computers first came out, my brother had a Commodore 64. He was really into computers, even though they were.

Jennifer:

[16:18] And my mom would sit there and read him all of the coding, basically, and he would type it in and they'd spend hours and all of a sudden they would just do like one little streak across the screen. But it was exciting, right?

Jennifer:

[16:31] So just like that, the AI needs to be trained. It's just a blank slate and you need to it needs to understand how things work. Just like you programmed it into a graphing calculator. Now it knows when I put in these things, I create a graph. So there's that, that there's a training on it to create an AI model that then we could buy into ChatGPT, Magi, Claude, whatever one we're using. But then there's also, once you have this tool, it's very generic, right? Um if you just put what it it spits out out there it would be like when people used to you know sell term papers when we were in school that's like the whole day you know some but not that i ever bought it or sold it but i'm just saying like people there would be someone that would make these term papers and make lots of copies and sell um and it was very generic because you didn't write it you just put your name at the top of it you don't even know what it says and you're just handing it in.

Jennifer:

[17:27] It's kind of along those lines that you're just taking whatever is in there and you're trying to say, oh, this is content that will serve my audience. Where really what you need to do is get it to know who you are. Get it to know your style of doing things. So I have a document that has writing samples in it that are things that I wrote that have concepts that I share a lot. They show my style of writing and how I phrase things, key phrases that I use a lot. And so I upload that a lot when I'm using AI. If I don't, now I have one where I have a trained workspace. But before when I didn't have that and I was just using the public version, I would upload that because this is how I talk. I don't want to be writing and all of a sudden send things out. We were like, this doesn't sound anything like her.

David:

[18:19] Yeah. Yes. Go ahead. Yeah. So how do you get, all right.

David:

[18:26] Two questions, but you talked about open and closed systems. I want you to talk about that, what the difference is. And then how do you get, you just mentioned something about, you had a system that you could, that was generic and then a system that you basically own and you're training and it comes back to you. You're the same person on that. Can you touch on both to those real quick yes

Jennifer:

[18:45] So those are somewhat related there is open ai which chat gpt and the like which is open software you can start an account you don't even need well you do need an account but it's free you can use it you're allowed to use it to a certain extent um and it's just like a gmail account or whatever anybody can use it then there's closed where you buy into an account and you own the content that's in there. So... The difference is we might think it's just free versus paid. However, there's some paid ones that are still more on the open end. And what that means is that whatever you put into it or create from it, it goes back into the model. And other people can use that basically. So coming back to the term paper idea, it's the difference between you writing your term paper at your desk and handing it in. And then you getting that back versus if the teacher kept all those term papers and then said to other students, oh, you can use these to inspire you to write more term papers. A closed system, it will reuse what you put in there for you to create content, but it will not take your content. And like if I put stuff in, you wouldn't be able to search and then, you know, basically plagiarize what I have on there.

Jennifer:

[20:10] And legally they can do that. So you have to realize when you're using something that is open, when you put stuff in, it is using that to train the entire model, not just train the model on your way of doing it. So just be cognizant of that. Yeah.

David:

[20:30] So if I was going to be a content creator, a podcaster, and I want to, or write blogs off my podcast, I'll pretty much want a closed system that just say, here's how I write so that later on it can start copying how I write and write things for me based upon the video or audio.

Jennifer:

[20:50] Yes, that's something that's important when you're choosing a tool, and there are more and more tools coming out, is knowing that whatever you put in is not going to suddenly be passed to somebody else. Now, if you're putting stuff out on the internet, there is, I mean, tangentially, it is being passed but it's not going to be passed verbatim it's not where it's training that model of this is how you talk to people about this and someone asks a similar question it's like oh this is exactly what you do um that's where a lot of the controversy with ai as far as creatives writers, artists podcasters has come in because some of the models have used copyrighted information to train the model um and so realize that whatever you create is in some way copyrighted because you have intellectual property rights to it but if you're putting into open system then you lose those

Jennifer:

[21:42] rights um sure over it so okay yeah this.

David:

[21:47] May be hard to gauge but what is the time return on investment with ai like if i started brand new today when am i and started investing an hour to a week how when am i going to get that time back or when is that break even time

Jennifer:

[22:03] Um, I would say that a lot of the ROI comes in understanding how to use the tool more than getting to the point where the tool does something for you. Um, it's a matter of knowing how to phrase it. And I know that there's a lot of people selling prompts. And so you can start there with generic prompts. But again, you use generic prompts and you get generic answers.

David:

[22:26] Generic answers. Yeah.

Jennifer:

[22:27] But it's a good place to start if you've never done it before, because then you start to understand how you build prompts and how much information you have to put in there. And so sometimes, you know, I am a writer and I create videos and I'd like to maximize my time. So I'll take a video and turn it into something. I'll take a writing assignment and break it into things. But I've worked on my prompts that I use now for so long that now I know what I need to tell it to get out what I want it's not going to take something and so I would say it's it's a learning curve the biggest learning curve though is understanding what are the limitations of AI what does it need to know to get what I need and a lot of that just comes from playing with it just like most things on the internet you learn it best by experimenting and failing yes seeing how it works. But the AI models have come very far. And I feel like within a couple weeks to a month, depending on how tech savvy you are or how much exposure you've had to it, you can get up and running. And then once you understand the process, now you can replicate the process. It's not about continually coming up with new prompts. It's about finding the prompt that will help you simplify what you're doing and then using that over and over again and possibly refining it.

Jennifer:

[23:45] But when you have a new problem, you could come up with a new prompt. But it's not that you need to continually coming up with new ones. It's really about learning how to use it to get what you want out of it.

David:

[23:57] Okay. So if I had a closed system, I owned, I had a paid version and I spent a couple hours putting in 30 or 40 questions into it. Like when I come back to it next week, are those questions still part of the model that's helping me?

Jennifer:

[24:14] It depends on which system you use. So chat GPT, they do have, and I don't remember which level it is and it keeps changing, but there is a model of it that is a closed model that it isn't cherry okay so you go in there and you train a specific chat and then you can keep asking it to do other things and it's trained on everything you've done before because for instance if you wanted to train it to create 15 tweets for x based on your style then you could each week go in and say this is what i'm talking about this week and it will just do it the exact same way and it keeps generating it basically from a template um there are closed.

David:

[24:58] Systems then yeah you're talking so if it's a closed system you can do that versus

Jennifer:

[25:03] Like claude is a closed system and you can keep having like extending your chat but it doesn't train in the same way as chat gpt so that's why you need to um i use magi right now because it lets me create a workspace, that I can train on my voice and I can train on my business so that then no matter what I do, that is in there and I don't have to start from scratch every time. With Claude, what I did was I created documents. So I had an ideal client document. I had a writing sample document. I had a standard procedures document. And then when I started a new discussion, I uploaded those because then that gave it all the background information. And now I can ask it questions based based on that and let it do research, but it already knows everything about it. I'm not starting from scratch from there.

David:

[25:54] Okay. So you mentioned Magi. Yes. And you mentioned Claude. Is there any others that you might recommend that would be good for like a closed system thing?

Jennifer:

[26:06] Those are the ones I have the most experience with. So I hesitate to offer too many suggestions because I feel like if I haven't tried it a lot, then I don't know enough about it. I don't want to send people there.

David:

[26:19] Yeah. No, that makes sense.

Jennifer:

[26:19] Yes, Magi is a tool that brings in all the different AI models, but it's in a closed system. And so they don't share between users and they don't share out to the open systems. I know the person who founded it and, you know, have gone through a lot of demos. And before I signed up for it. Um, so it gives me flexibility because then I can have workspaces for different clients. So when I work on things for them, I'm not starting. Oh, it's not where I'm talking about all my stuff. And then it's like, Oh, let's talk about this and have to start all over again. I can just toggle the workspaces until that helps.

David:

[26:57] I understand the workspace thing. That's good. One more question, then we'll have to wrap up. What are some common misconceptions that you have seen that people have around AI?

Jennifer:

[27:10] I think the biggest thing is that because it can generate so much so quickly, that then means it's better to share so much so quickly instead of really working on refining it and making sure that it is what you need to share. It's still better to share better content less often than to share more content that's mediocre. But the other thing is that just because it can do something, if you don't have any knowledge of that, doesn't mean that you're going to apply it the right way. So the latest update a couple weeks ago, I don't know if you saw it, is that now I believe it's ChatGPT can create these ads, right? So now everybody thinks that they're an ad creator and they can start an ad agency. Or if you look at them over and over again, they're all very much generic. They all have a very similar layout. And so now everybody's ads are going to look exactly the same. And so yes, you can know nothing about advertising and create an ad, but is it going to be effective? You should know something about advertising before you sell a service that you're going to create ads for people that are going to convert.

David:

[28:19] Yeah, that makes sense.

Jennifer:

[28:20] The biggest thing is people think you need an expert to be an expert.

David:

[28:25] Sure, sure. Yeah, we want something for nothing. I feel like that's part of the game, and they want to do it quick. They want to do it now and everything else. Yes, yes. To summarize up, if we're going to wrap all this stuff up in one thought, what is one thing that you would encourage people to do concerning AI?

Jennifer:

[28:45] I would encourage them to have an open mind about it. But at the same time, be cautious. AI can do a lot of things. And in a world where that is becoming more commonplace, it's just like the businesses that didn't want to have internet or didn't want to have cell phones or didn't want to take credit cards. You can run your business that way, but it's going to hold you back in the long run. So don't be afraid of it. You can choose not to use it, but at least understand how it's used this way you can protect yourself. At the same time, when you're using this as a tool and it can help you scale, understand that it does have limitations. And it doesn't mean you can take your hands off the wheel and just have AI run everything. You know, there's a lot of people that are selling that concept. You need to know how to do something before you can replicate it or refine it in AI. Going back to the graphing calculator, if you know nothing about geometry, a graphing calculator does you no good.

David:

[29:45] Absolutely. Very good. Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for your time and encouragement today. And as far as the audience, next steps to put this into practice, check out the show notes because we're going to have some links and sites from Jennifer that you can get ahold of her and contact her more and sign up for our newsletter because that's a great way to communicate with us and not miss out on future episodes. And if you're a perfectionist like me and I habitually get caught in the trap of indecision, I encourage you to book a call with me and we can help move you forward in your business on a biblical foundation and so friends that's all we have for now trust you have been inspired to redeem your business redeem your time and buy it back and walk worthy of God's great name thank you very much