E173. Why AI Won't Replace You (And How to Use It to Work Faster)

Hi and welcome to a brand new episode of Tech Your Business. For most of us when we talk about AI, we are familiar with using AI for things like our content, for maybe images these days and maybe blog posts, social media posts and things like that. But today's guest is talking about a different way to use AI for your business and today's guest is Natalie Dormio. Natalie is a tech expert She has over 10 years of experience and she'll be with, she'll be our guest today on Tech Your Business.

So welcome to the show, Natalie. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. So before we go deep inside, can you share a bit about your background and how you help businesses tech their businesses?

Yeah, sure. So I've been in business for 20 years with my husband. This is a family business. background is in software engineering and so i'm from france my husband is two when we studied we after our studies in france we decided to move to the us to leave the american dream and because we were software engineers you know in the silicon valley uh we quickly got a job and we stayed there for 10 years we had our three kids there and then in 2005 we decided to sell everything and move back to France and that's where the opportunity came to start a business which is something my husband has always wanted to do so we started to build software because we were software engineers but we had no knowledge of marketing or sales so we did something because we thought it was cool which is what a lot of people do with their expertise they focus on the expertise and they try to avoid the big things that are scary but are necessary when you start a business Um, and, uh, five, six years in, you know, like no money left.

Like, what do we do? Like we got a coach. We said, well, you guys are tech people. What stopped by building websites.

You know? So we did that and quickly it evolved into e-learning and that's really became, um, of focus. How can we improve e-learning? The e-learning experience.

How can we help people get better results online, but also for people that are selling programs, how can we help them create better experiences and create something that's leveraged, right? So when AI started to come in, actually, we've started to integrate AI five, six years ago into programs, back when it was not that easy, you know, not available like it is now. But that AI thing, you know, that's like just such a natural way for us to, to start to use that to improve that that experience inside program which is really at the core of interesting so you talked about going from software engineers to moving to the us and moving back to france and building as software engineers would be something um but unfortunately mine is the other way around i think i started with knowledge of marketing before i learned how to code so yeah then when i learned how to code i now forgot how to start focusing more on the code so i fully fully identify because sometimes you just get lost solving especially when you love solving problems just get lost solving solving solving and you forget maybe it's just your problem maybe nobody else is interested in that problem you're so passionate yeah absolutely yeah that's the difficulty of wearing you know multiple ads you know and at the beginning you have to do that but then it's about identifying what do you really really want to do and then you keep doing that and then you you get help for the rest i think you mentioned ai and e-learning so can you just go deeper on that you're learning how you're using ai to make that better yeah sure so so so basically you know like a lot of people know ai as chat gpt some people go as far as like custom gpt's or projects you know in gpt's right but uh the way we are uh seeing ai and using ai is as an amplifier so ai is really only as good as what you feed feed it right if you're just going to go to ai and ask you know you know create a blog post you know on this topic it's going to create something that sounds really good when you read it but it's just what everybody else is saying by definition it's taking what's out there right so we quickly realized that the value of ai is the accelerator piece is the analytics piece but it needs three things to work really well it needs knowledge and that's us so that can be your podcast episode that can be your videos in your program right it needs context so the person that asks you know the quality of the question that ai is going to ask you right so between the knowledge the context and a good prompt then you can have an amazing output and that's basically what the the logic that we are using to use ai to create tools inside program look like inside a coaching program or an online course to help people get results and basically the way we look at ai is can i use ai to solve a problem because if you start to look at every tool that comes you know that that gets out there then all you're doing is testing tools and you're like oh that sounds amazing but is it solving a problem that i have right so really the idea is to go into your program and say okay people need to achieve this in order to get results and some people get stuck can i create a tool to help them get unstuck make a decision faster get them started on something whether this is writing an email or or something like that.

But it's always, you start with knowledge, then you've got some AI, and then at the end, you also have the human coming into play as well, right? So it's always human-y. When you mentioned the AI is an amplifier, literally I had a post on LinkedIn about a week or two ago with that exact title. And it's like, what's we're learning on computer?

Oh, really? Garbage in, garbage out. So if you're putting in rubbish, going to get refined rubbish out of it. Exactly, yeah.

And the danger, I mean not the danger, I know that it is helping a lot of people post more and be more consistent because they were not before. The problem is that people get all excited because now they're consistent, but they are just probably wasting time on content that is not engaging so they feel busy they feel like they are doing more but like you ai is an again an accelerator if you don't have the stuff in the first place it is not going to get you like the great output that you're hoping right So I think that's the danger right now with AI.

We really try to stay focused on using AI to solve a problem, to help a client, not like because it looks cool. So I try to not look at these tools, right? Unless they're like, oh, that could solve a problem. So you mentioned three things that are important in making AI work for you, which is the knowledge, your knowledge, your unique knowledge, the context of the questionnaires, as well as the good prompts.

and I'm also like I always suggest to or say that who man should always be there because a lot of times you might have at every this at every point you have to make a decision decision can go in three ways and AI might want to go one way which while you want to go this way and if you leave AI to do what it's doing you end up somewhere far away from where you intend to go except maybe yeah maybe you had no plans in the beginning so you mentioned one other thing making and creating tools with AI and I think that's piqued my interest so can you go deeper into that creating tools how does this work and yeah sure so so basically the this is the concept so and and this is going to speak to people that specifically have a program so they are maybe a coaching program or they have a course and one they want their clients to have more results and faster right we know that when we have more results we have more testimonial more case study everybody happy right and so it's about looking at the program and that's something that we help people with it's looking at their program and looking at the places where people get stuck or it takes longer than it needs to right so for that you need to track a lot of people don't track what people do so if you don't track you don't know where people are stuck and a lot of people are not going to tell you but once you've identified that then it's about looking at what is the outcome what is it that like the homework or what is the thing that they are trying to do that they are stuck on and that's where we want to create a tool so um i mean it's we can take an example for example where um so we have this client and he's helping people get leads on linkedin so one of the things is you have to um look at it as a profile with you right so basically you give it you give it your profile and then so the profile is the context right this is what you have and what you want to do and then the knowledge is his framework on how you should structure your profile right and and basically what it does instead of telling people well you've got to work on your profile and these are the seven things that you need to do now it's basically giving them a tool to say give me your profile then it has the knowledge which is his framework and then it's going to come up with some suggestions as a starting point for people so people can it gives them a head start right basically so it's not about copy pasting and here is my new profile but it's to show them how to um you know what it would like what it would look like you know with this new structure and your content so it's really like structuring it in a way that fits the framework and then it's for people then it's a lot easier for people to say oh yes and i know what i can have here i can add there so that's one way another one for example is sometimes people get stuck on so one of the things that we do is memberships right and when people have an idea for a membership i tell them you have to build what we call an interest list it's a list of people that are raising their hand and saying i'm interested right you can't do that how do you expect to sell if you can't get people to raise their hand for free and but they get stuck in the email they're like i don't you know like what should i say i don't have the price yet i don't know when it's going to uh be open you know like what if they ask me what's inside so what we do is we help them we say this is what you need to do to say in your email why you're doing it why you're why okay because people love that who this is for and what problem you're trying to solve for them that's all right so they answer these questions and based on that we give and and it has their tone of voice and things like that as well right um but it gives them like a short email that really looks like almost like a conversational you know email um just to get people to raise their hand and just that they can get the email in like 15 minutes where it might take them days or they might not even ever write it because they are not sure right so it's it's also that sense of like everything is an experiment in business right so operate from what you want share your personal stuff you know like your story why you want to do it and that's what people connect with right so so those are like examples for example so now you mentioned the linkedin um getting leads on linkedin tool and the other two for emails and co so looking at tools that have been created using ai for clients what sorts of success stories have you gotten from these clients the difference these tools have made in their businesses in their lives Yeah.

So actually this specific business, he turned, so he has a whole training right on LinkedIn. The profile is just the first, the starting point. Right. And basically what he said, two things happened.

One, he was able to make his training videos a lot shorter. They're like 15 minutes, but they each have a tool. So now it becomes you learn and you do. It's learning, doing, learning, doing.

And he's tried to apply and create those tools for every single step. So what this made is that it made his program much more interactive where people are doing and not just consuming videos. He said that the overall thing, which used to take four months, can now be done in four days. Like if you're doing the work.

Why? Because there used to be videos and then people were left to thinking how to do it. Right now, if you follow the thing and you make it as like, it's good enough. Let me go to the next step.

It goes really, really fast. So that's the big difference. It's something we would have like to drag people through the program and just, you know, struggling to keep them engaged and motivated you know like when it takes so long to get results to having these mini wins and and and moving them you know forward in the program and and get to to a result you know i think um i think that's that's actually one um way something i can actually testify to because i also say without um ai i don't think this podcast would have lasted this long because a lot of the research a lot of the things you have to think through just um give that to ai then at least you make the final decisions yourself and the time saved is just phenomenal so now one um talking to a lot of business owners one thing especially in the last few months maybe a year or two that i hear from a lot of them is they feel ai is being overhyped so they feel um most people pushing AI give ascribed powers to AI that it doesn't really have.

So from your experience, what are your thoughts on this? What can AI do? What can't AI do? What should AI do?

And what shouldn't AI do? Yeah. I mean, I agree 100%. I think that people, especially really, really good marketers, are surfing that wave of download my 1200 prompts.

You know, like who needs 1200 prompts? You know, I have one problem. I don't need 1200. So it's like that magic bullet, right?

And the problem with AI is because people can go to chat GPT. they can go to plot, they can go to complexity, and they ask a question, and the way they get an answer so quickly that's so well written, people see it as the holy grail. Oh, now I can write great content, that sounds good, but it's far from enough. So you have all these people that are building business on AI, and some are very legitimate, but some are just surfing on a, you know, like, um, sending people the dream of creating a course, you know, for yourself, you know, it's, it's going to create it for you.

You don't have just push a button and then make money. It doesn't work. Okay. It's like, you're wasting your money.

If you're going with that again, AI as an accelerator, like you said, garbage in garbage, garbage out AI is going to be as good as what you feed it and as a developer i don't know if you're using ai for development but you know we still do like some back-end development with ai you know you know how it hallucinates and then it's going to come up with a great idea and the the next thing you look like well but wait a minute that whole piece that was there it's gone why did you take it out And he puts it back So it requires you to still have knowledge and know and being able to have a good judgment right so when people say ai is going to replace developers i'm sorry but no because even if it's not there are people behind it okay so i think the the what is happening though is that i think i mean ai has been here for a long time but the way it is widely popular now people expect it in programs they expect to have assistance uh you know ai assistant that can help them that can point them to the video the resource inside program it is expected right and at any any role in a business if you can find a tool that can help you do your job better faster then you're golden like i don't i don't think there are any job that is is going to be hurt by ai if they embrace it and like how can i make it better because people are going to look for that next what are the people that are really good at what they do like a great writer that can embrace ai oh my gosh like it puts your writing on steroids if you do it right right so that's my thing that's when you talked about yeah for development because i actually tried i've tried out a couple of those um ai tools for development and they actually decent especially when you want to do maybe simple things just uh maybe do this or do this or think through a problem but one thing i've noticed is when you want to go a bit complex it builds something really fast for you and then there's either a security problem or a logical problem or something in it and then it builds it in like maybe two minutes three minutes and then you spend four hours trying to fix the problem you created because a lot of times for something that could with that you could um solve the problem with a very simple line of code it now wants to create an object and create so many complex things to solve a really small problem so it just creates a lot of these things for you and it lacks also you you know like when when you are you know when when you're developer when you're writing code you're also right for reusability right so it has if you don't tell them it has no range of where where what you're when you're getting at so it's not It does have some good ideas, you know, oh, you know, so we save time on some of these things, but just for the idea, not for writing the code, because it's like you'd have to verify everything to make sure that you didn't take anything out.

Like this whole piece, like, why is it gone? And why did you rewrite that? Like, it's like trying to improve things that don't need to be improved. So again, it's about being really good at asking what you want and being like super specific.

So that, but you have to be able to analyze it and then plug it into your own stuff. So I think that's what people are finding out. And I think that what you just mentioned is the key. being good at knowing what to ask and being specific and there's no way you would know what to ask or be specific about if you're not already an expert so at least have a lot of knowledge in that field and apart from development in all in all fields that's the thing with air you should know what you're doing because even with um with content with everything else there's a lot of times you tell you to write things for you and it just straight out lies and if you don't know what you're talking about you just publish that lie and yeah exactly exactly so and you know like because people now are starting to see you know ai is not personal you know it's too impersonal people want connections and um and i think there is a way for really to get that connection going and with people and using ai and actually one one thing that we we have this new tool it's called podcast lead flow and our challenge what we wanted to do is we wanted people to start a conversation uh with someone so like say you have a podcast episode on your site this person is interested and but then there is a disconnect right like they have no way to take action to reach out to you like quite easily right so we were like how can we use ai that's a problem that that that we found and we solved how can we use ai to start a real email conversation with a listener that's in stress that is interested to learn more and the way this works is you know remember i was talking about knowledge context the knowledge is the content of the podcast episode so for example it could be that content what we're talking about right now the context could be that we ask them a couple of questions like how do you want you know how do you want to use ai uh what worries do you have about ai things like that and then based on the context and the questions that they answer it is going to send them an email that is unique with one piece of advice right so basically you start the conversation by it's like an opt-in if you will but instead of getting a freebie like everybody gets the same pdf you get a unique piece of coaching or advice on how to apply what you learned in the podcast episode.

That is using AI to accelerate building relationship and have real conversations with people. Because now they are you're in their inbox, you're cc'd on the email and you can actually email each other, right? So that's how we see. So how does this work?

Because you know, most podcasts get published on multiple platforms, YouTube, Spotify, Apple, and all that. So let's say the podcast is published, the listener wants to interact with lead flow? How does it, how does the process work? Yeah.

So, I mean, you have to have your podcasts on as many platforms as possible, right? So you still stay on Spotify, Apple, all of that stuff. But the goal is that you also want to have your episode on the page where you have control of what happens. Because Apple, Spotify, they want you to stay on their platform.

They want their listeners to stay on the platform to continue reaching content, right? So you use that, but you also have your episode, you're repurposing it basically on your own website where you have the episode and below there is this form that could say something, hey, do you want to find out how to apply what you just learned on the episode? answer these two questions and i'll send you what to do next by email and then what they get is they get a unique email a unique piece of advice like if they were sitting next to you so it really sits on your website you can also mention it on your show notes and if you are able to have links you you can have a link on that, right?

But the goal is to get, it's also like an email, a lead qualifier, if you will. Like we have a client who's a coach and basically the people that are going to fill out the form are the people that are ready to book a call with her. So she's going to get better quality call, right? So it's like, how do I get these people that are ready for the next step how do i work with you or how do i make that work for myself we make it easy for them to do that and start the conversation always the power of air i think and i think that's one thing so yeah it's not just what can i think about too because um you know you have episodes everywhere and you're wondering okay what if someone sees the episodes i know people have um really short attention spans these days so maybe they might see they find no way to reach out and they just forget about it and that is just one we said um exactly it's it's it's the the curse of the podcast is that you don't know your listeners right and and and the not the worst part but like the frustrating part like uh for my friend alicia was like my clients tell me they listen to my podcast so i like there is a disconnect there There are people listening that could want to work with me And then I have clients and there is a gap How do I feel that that gap Right?

So because then you can also know what episode they come from. So then you can be strategic. You could say, Ooh, when I speak about that, I actually get the right people to book a call with me to work with me. Right?

So now you can talk about metrics for your podcast because downloads, they mean nothing. if you don't know who's downloading and who does what, right? But you can talk about people putting calls or people replying to the email saying, tell me more, right? Or something like that.

And now people are going to be more likely to spend money on podcasts if they know what it does to their business, right? Because right now, most podcasters treat their podcast as a hobby, right? They spend money and time and then they have a business that runs but they have no idea how much effect the podcast has on the business right so now for a business owner listening to today's episode and um maybe they're inspired and they want to start using air to accelerate their business to do more what would you recommend the first step they should seek should be so they don't end up using air like everybody else is doing.

Yeah. So again, it's going back to solving a problem. Why do you want to use AI? Is there a problem that you're trying to solve?

Either saving time, is it being more consistent? So I would look at it this way. Because otherwise you're going to get drawn into and you start asking people, ask people what's their favorite AI tool and you're going to have 50 names and then you do what do you do with it, right? So start with like why and it doesn't it should not be because that sounds cool of I have the fear of missing out right, it should be what problem do I do want to use AI, okay, these the problem the things that you want to start doing or you want to do better and then start you know to look for a tool to make that happen.

So now for for as somebody in the field in the development, software development field at least you understand AI beyond just the chat interface from the basic levels so where do you see AI for small businesses heading in the near future? I know I can't really go far because it's changing so fast but listen the short same medium same where do you see ai for small businesses hurting well i think that ai is going to be well it is already available you know to people that don't have like a big budget which is you know really the key and the the way i see it is we're going to have more, not necessarily like people joining tons of tools, but we're going to have people actually hiring people that know how to use the AI tools.

You know what I mean? So the business owner still needs to focus on the business and not learn all the AI tools. So it's about surrounding, you know, having a team of people that uses the right tool to automate what needs to be automated and also focus on consistency. You know, consistency automation is really what I think is going to help people grow while you're using also AI, you know, as an accelerator of results, you know, for your clients.

So I think that those are really the three ways. But it's going to be about like, I don't believe like in the schools that do everything, you know, like you pay like a monthly fee and it does everything because it does everything average and not everybody needs all of that. That's my take. But you see what I'm talking about.

And so, but it's about using the great tool that does what you want. And sometimes it takes time to find it. Right. But I think this is going to allow more small businesses to win if they put the structure in place.

Because so many small business die within the first one or two, three years, right? And that's because they're overwhelmed and there's just too much to do, right? So I think that for the people that know how to use AI in the right way, you know like as a helper again as an accelerator and not has like the holy grail that that's gonna for you then you're gonna see more um successful people people will be successful faster yes um i think we've talked for about 30 minutes or thereabouts and i know this topic is large there's a lot we haven't talked about that i know would be helpful but for anyone who is listening concerning everything we've talked about and co.

Is there anything, any final piece of advice you would like to leave that maybe I haven't covered or you feel would be beneficial to the audience? Yeah, so I guess it would be around how to approach AI and just being really strategic and not get drawn into the, oh, you should try that tool. It does everything and things like that, right? Staying focused on, for business owners, right?

Staying focused on what you're trying to achieve and try to keep that focus and really only use AI if it can help you get there faster and just let the other people play with all the tools and send all the images and stuff like that. because that's not how we grow a business. So it's that focus is going to require people to have the discipline to say, AI only if it helps me get AI. And I think that focus is one of the hardest things for entrepreneurs because most entrepreneurs find it very hard to focus.

Like I think I tend to have good ideas twice a week. And of recent I've just learned to just keep them far away and focus on one thing else. just be starting new things every week so that's really very important thing yeah exactly yeah my husband is like that so i totally yeah so so for our listeners who um have learned a lot from this um episode i've learned a lot too and they would like to continue this conversation they would like to talk more with you they would like to learn more with you they are curious about how your product lead flow works and maybe they want to try it out what's the best way they can reach you sure so for the podcast actually there is a um a free license where you can actually try it without credit card so you can do that it's called podcastleadflow.

com so you can just go there and get your license um and then for anything membership online program integration of AI, you can go to themembersiplab.com. So those are the two places where you can book a call with me. I love to chat with people and learn what they are doing.

You know, I learn so much from chatting with people. So I love to do that. So those are the two places where you can find me and I'm also on LinkedIn, my name, if you can spell it. All right, so that's perfect.

So podcastleadflow.com, the membership lab.com and also on linkedin if they want to connect with you so those will be in the show notes and at the bottom of the screen for those watching on video so thank you so much natalie for coming on take your business today thank you so much for having me peter i hope you learned a lot about using ai in not like everyone else in your business air to actually get results not just generate Ghibli images and things like that. If you know someone, this episode is going to benefit.

Share this episode with them. And if you want to learn more about taking your business, we have over 150 episodes talking about exactly that topic. So till next week, don't forget to keep taking your business and bye for now.