00:00

Welcome to Make More Money Without Selling Your Soul. The podcast for bold entrepreneurs ready to simplify scale and reclaim their time. I’m Polly Lavarello, Evergreen scaling strategist and cushy business pioneer. Join me and my occasional guests as we explore the themes of wealth, selling and well-being, because building a business that works for you changes everything. Let’s dive in.

00:36

Hello and welcome to the show. Today I want to talk about AI. Now I’m not claiming to be an AI expert, but I think any of us in this online space are having to become it to a certain extent because it’s, you you can’t ignore it.  It’s everywhere. It’s in every interaction. It’s in every conversation. It’s all over social media. And if you’re not using it in your business, most likely you’re falling behind. and There’s no getting around it. But I have a very positive slant on this. so if you’re tired of the AI doom and gloom, and I’m talking about this in a very practical sense. I want to talk about how AI isn’t replacing businesses, but it is replacing average service. What you need to do to essentially for a i proof your business so that people don’t start thinking, why why should I work with her when I can work with ChatGPT?  And that’s a fear, right? I’m just allowing some space around that sentence because I think that is a fear that if a lot of us listen to it long enough or sit with it long enough, we can recognize there is probably some opportunity around how we get to do things better.

01:06

Um, so yeah, you know, like the pace of AI evolving is extraordinary. The tools are getting better almost weekly. In fact, probably daily, maybe hourly. Every month there’s another feature that makes you stop and think, wow, I didn’t know it could do that. Right. Um, and every time it writes an email or something like that for you, like, wow, that is increasingly sounding like me. It’s pretty alarming. Right. Um,  And even today, I’m recording this episode differently. For the first time ever, i haven’t used my usual podcast producers who I’ve used for, I think it was approaching three years. instead Instead, I’ve built an AI workflow.  Maybe you’ll notice no difference. Maybe it’ll be even better. Maybe I’ll regret it. I don’t know. But it made me think about something much bigger that really felt worthy of a conversation. Because if I’m changing how I buy services, your clients probably are too. um So let’s get into it. I want to talk about how AI ai has changed what clients are paying for.

02:05

This is probably the biggest point. Years ago, people paid for execution. Today, execution is becoming cheaper every month. Execution, you might be wondering, like, is this something i ever did?  ah It looks like writing emails, creating graphics, meeting summaries, marketing plans, social media posts, research proposals, project plans, brainstorming, things that whether you are doing them yourself or whether you are outsourcing them, there is less value attached to these pieces now.  That’s just how it is. That’s going to be uncomfortable for some of you to hear. For those of you who are employing people who execute on these things, it’s an opportunity to think about how have their services evolved since I initially hired them.  If you’ve been working with people for years and the majority of their tasks have become quicker and easier and more efficient due to AI, what are they doing around that? What are they doing on top of that that doesn’t make them replaceable by an AI tool?

03:02

Because look these things haven’t become worthless, but they have become expected. And that is a huge difference. It’s a bit like calculators. Nobody pays an accountant because they own a calculator. They pay them because they know which numbers matter.  Likewise, nobody’s going to hire you if if what you know is the same stuff that ChatGPT knows. They’ll hire you because you know what to do with what it produces. Okay. they’ll They hire you because you know how to use it effectively. So a conversation I’ve been having ah a lot with my clients recently, you know, that I had a client who has a tech VA and she was saying, should I send them on an AI course? And I was like, look, if your tech isn’t already on an AI course, what on earth are they doing in calling themselves a tech VA? Being a tech VA these days ultimately is probably 90% AI fueled. If they haven’t already gotten that bus, they’re not taking their title seriously. So the next thing I want to talk to you about is clients are buying judgment. This is where humans become even more valuable. Okay.

03:59

AI can tell you, here are 10 strategies. You can tell the client to ignore nine of them. That’s worth paying for. So whether you’re in the health or wellness space, whether you are a business strategist like me, whatever capacity you support people with, the challenge with ai is actually probably the antithesis of it offering 10 strategies.  The challenge with AI is it often wants to come across assertive and giving you a clear solution, but it will randomly cherry pick a strategy out thin air of something off the internet that it’s already found and tell you that’s the one for you with crazy levels of confidence. That means that I’ve even been on calls with clients who’ve really assertively said to me, no this is the strategy I’m following. I don’t trust the one that you’re saying. And I’m like, where did that strategy come from? Where’s that confidence in that strategy come from?

04:46

Claude, of course. Okay.  I mean, that hasn’t come up often, but it came up once and I was like dumbfounded by that moment because I was like, this this is the challenge. People buy assertiveness, people buy confidence. And unfortunately, AI understands that. So a lot of what it suggests to you won’t be a, this could work based on what I found, based on a a hundred different strategies on the internet. This is something that could work for you.

05:15

No, it will say, here is your nine-step plan. Here’s how to execute it over two weeks. And it will not be thinking about your past, about your future, about everything that lies ahead. No matter how much it knows about your brand already, chances are that that strategy will be totally whack, even when it knows everything about you.  So, you know, this is the challenge. So people aren’t investing in your knowledge necessarily. They’re investing in your judgment, your experience, your mistakes, your intuition, the context, the pattern recognition.

05:44

Now, the thing that helped that client trust me on that call, was I was like, okay, you can follow that strategy and it might work for you. I mean, most strategies do work if you persevere. However, if you want the strategy that’s not going to leave you time poor, falling behind, needing to hire a team of seven, then And you want the strategy that’s worked for various my seven-figure clients who’ve only got a team of two to three who are only working Tuesdays to Thursdays, then you might want to listen to this one.  And funnily enough, that got their attention, okay? So AI doesn’t possess any of those things. Experience, mistakes, intuition, context, It does have some pattern recognition, but even then, not as good as a human’s pattern recognition when it’s applied super specifically. Okay. It’s almost got too much pattern recognition and that in and as of itself can be the challenge.

06:31

So the thing that you have here is your human edge. And this is a question i want you to come back to. If ChatGPT became twice as good tomorrow, would someone still hire me?  Maybe your edge is your ability to challenge people. Maybe it’s emotional intelligence or facilitation or leadership or accountability or confidence or strategic thinking.  Or maybe it’s simply helping them make decisions and not overthink things for the gazillionth time because Lord knows AI is brilliant at helping us overthink things. Yeah. Or maybe it’s just helping people actually implement, which I guess comes back to what I just said about making decisions in its own sense.

07:13

But these things become more valuable, not less. Okay. So I really want to reassure you here, AI isn’t here to take your job as long as we understand what are human edges.  And I also want you to know that if AI is making your job faster, that doesn’t mean that what you need to charge needs to be cheaper. This is what I really want you to hear. Imagine if something took you 10 hours before and now AI helps you do in two.  Are you simply going to charge less? Or do you spend the other eight hours that you saved out of 10 thinking more deeply, improving the strategy, giving better support, creating a better client experience, spotting the opportunities the client hasn’t noticed.

07:55

I mean, ultimately it’s understanding that people aren’t paying for the time and energy it took you to do something. They’re paying for the transformation. Okay. So you don’t even necessarily need to spend those extra hours, but I would say in this transitional period, as AI is developing such a strong edge in this space, taking the time to understand your edge is a really valuable time to spend on your business for now. Once you understand it, just double down on that. Okay.  I also want you to know when it comes to AI, of course, ethics really matters. Look, I’m not a GDPR expert. I’m not going to claim to be. I highly recommend you go. I’ve got Lucy Legal in my corner. There’s loads of other brilliant ones online as well. and But, you know, as exciting as AI is, there are responsibilities that come with it.

08:38

So things like where your client transcriptions are stored, who owns that data, Are you feeding confidential information into tools? have clients been Have clients consented to this? Does your privacy policy reflect how you’re working today with AI?  Most small businesses haven’t revisited any of this or visited it in the first place, and they should. Okay, it’s really, really important because transparency builds trust. You don’t necessarily need to tell clients every AI tool you’re using. It doesn’t matter to them whether you’re using AI Canva to bosh out carousels these days, but it does matter if it contributes to the work that they that that they’re receiving, right? So, you know, things like I use AI to help summarize our sessions. I use AI to draft ideas. I never use AI to replace strategic decisions.

09:24

People don’t mind AI, but they do mind deception. Okay. So trust is becoming a competitive advantage. Make sure you are clear. So for example, I do call summaries, which are really detailed because I use AI for my clients. And it’s brilliant because we break down celebrations, actions, what the focus is for the week ahead. And it makes working with me one-to-one so much more powerful. i’m I’m really excited by this development because before I’d rely on my clients to then come up with a plan, come back to me and tell me what they’re doing. Well, nowadays I can actually send that plan. I can review that plan before our next call, see how they’re actually on track with that plan. Now I know not everyone goes to that extent, but I find for my clients and for myself, it works really brilliantly.  um But at the very beginning of each email, I always say, here’s a call summary with the help of Claude. So that I’m not pretending I took an hour to write what what would have taken an hour, a very long email, and that they understand that this is an AI summary, which also might mean that there might be nuances or elements to it that aren’t entirely complete. But, you know, for them to then use their own humanness around that and understand what they need to make it mean to them and how they’re going to apply that on the other side.

10:33

So ultimately, AI has raised the bar. AI doesn’t mean your business has become less valuable, but it does mean average has become free. The middle has disappeared. People will either choose the cheapest solution or the free solution, or the person who’s thinking is exceptional.  There’ll be room for less people who simply execute a process, and the brilliance of your expertise will shine even more brightly, okay? So I don’t want you to think that, you know, with AI, we need to be afraid of it, right?

11:03

But I do think irrelevance, I don’t think AI is the thing we should be afraid of. I do think irrelevance is. The businesses that thrive over the next five years won’t necessarily be the ones with the biggest AI stack or the fanciest automations.  And that’s really important to know, okay? But they will be the businesses that become even more human, more thoughtful, more strategic, more trustworthy, more courageous. Because look, AI can generate content, but it can’t replace conviction.

11:30

It can create a plan, but it can’t build belief. It can write words, but it can’t make someone feel seen. Or if it does, it’s kind of creepy. That’s your edge, okay? Protect it, develop it, and let AI handle everything else, okay? um I hope this is reassuring.  um Yeah, there’s there’s a lot of noise out there. i know I tend to almost ignore a lot of ai news updates because I just find them, frankly, so alarming. But they are a part of how we live now.  And ultimately, you one one thing clients have reflected me recently is that some of them felt they’d become so reliant on AI, it was actually dulling their creativity. It was dulling their critical judgment. It was too easy to just listen to a really assertive AI bot tell them, that sales page is brilliant, than to actually take a moment to put themselves into the shoes of their ideal client and take a moment to think about, would my ideal client really resonate with this?

12:29

If I were my ideal client, would I want to buy this? And moments like that really matter because just because AI is assertive does not mean it’s correct. And I think that’s psychologically a really challenging thing for for us to wrap our heads around because we have become attuned to somebody who is assertive is generally right and correct. I mean, look at Donald Trump.  How the hell do people trust him? He comes up with so much BS, but boy, does he say it assertively. So please. Don’t listen to AI and don’t listen to Trump. Become confident and assertive in your own views and don’t let AI dictate what it is that you’re doing. However, don’t entirely dismiss it either.  And do please take a moment to recognize if Claude is comparable to the work you do, how can you really emphasize the human edge to what you do and how it’s not just another meal plan that ChatGPT has created or not just another business strategy that Claude has created or not just another, i don’t know,  online therapy session with ChatGBT and why they should choose you. there’s that the I mean, the examples are endless, right? Because AI is being used in every different capacity. Find a way to understand what your human edge is and double down on that so that people understand how you deliver beyond AI.

13:51

And of course, for those who aren’t even interested in it, they’ll be jumping straight at you regardless. This is all part of developing a strong personal brand. All right. I really enjoyed recording this episode. Like I say, it’s so meta because this is the first time that I am recording this using AI. I hope it’s come down well. If you enjoyed it, please give me a review. Leave me some stars, five of them, please. And DM me to let me know. Did you enjoy this episode? Would you like to hear more like it?  

I’ll be in yours next week with a another episode.