Like many small enterprise homeowners, I spent quite a lot of time in 2023 contemplating how I needed to combine synthetic intelligence into my content material company, iHartContent.
At first, my intuition was to affix “Workforce No AI” and to disregard it altogether. As a author, the worry of instruments like ChatGPT is fully comprehensible. In spite of everything, it may spit out a whole weblog publish in mere moments. It’s pure to fret about being changed.
However as I watched this rising know-how proceed to evolve—and commenced to see the various methods founders in different industries had been starting to make use of it—I made a decision to as a substitute take a “maintain your folks shut and your enemies nearer” method. I needed to be taught all the pieces I may about AI to assist me perceive if it was actually going to trigger the existential disaster I imagined.
Over time, I spotted that the reply isn’t any: AI isn’t a menace to me. Not less than not anytime quickly. For one, the standard of content material creation simply isn’t there but. These instruments require human enter and finesse to get helpful outcomes. Something that individuals are doing with AI isn’t a lot AI-created as it’s AI-assisted.
That’s after I began to totally grasp the chance in AI: Studying to work properly with these instruments could possibly be a boon to my enterprise, and I may even use them to serve my shoppers in a manner that allowed me to be a extra priceless accomplice (as a substitute of changing me).
This method to integrating AI helped my company obtain our first multi-six-figure milestone in 2023. It’s grow to be so priceless that I’ve launched a brand new line of enterprise to assist others discover ways to work alongside AI. And none of this is able to have occurred if I had continued to shun it.
For different enterprise homeowners who’re feeling hesitant about integrating AI, listed here are 3 ways I’ve used it this 12 months to develop my enterprise, and the way I plan to proceed evolving these approaches into 2024.
I’m utilizing AI to open up time to work on my enterprise as a substitute of in my enterprise
My company, like so many companies, has all the time confronted the “cobbler’s youngsters don’t have any footwear” downside: Whereas we’re on high of our shoppers’ advertising and marketing, content material, and social media wants, our channels used to get virtually no consideration.
As soon as we began utilizing AI to clear operational bottlenecks and streamline the content material creation course of, I used to be capable of ship the identical excessive stage of service for our shoppers whereas additionally having time to spend by myself enterprise improvement.
For instance, we began utilizing ChatGPT to batch matter brainstorming, help us in outlining, and do preliminary rounds of content material edits for our shoppers. It’s vital to notice that we all the time cleared the usage of AI instruments with our shoppers forward of time and didn’t use them for any shoppers who had been towards it. Nonetheless, most individuals had been comfy with our considerate use of this know-how, and these new processes had been quickly saving me about eight hours per week, minimal.
That’s a whole workday freed up for duties like constructing out our personal on-line presence, shopper acquisition, and discovering new methods to develop my enterprise as a substitute of solely serving our current shoppers.
In 2024, we’re going to search for extra methods to streamline processes and to coach our prospects on do a few of this themselves. That may really feel like precisely what I used to be afraid of—educating my shoppers to make use of AI so that they don’t want me—however I see it as a strategy to construct extra worth. For example, if our shoppers can simply write on-brand communications that’s not included of their package deal with us, it makes all of their content material look extra unified and, subsequently, extra profitable.
Educating them additionally reveals the work that we put into utilizing AI, so that they don’t really feel like they need to be capable of pay us much less simply because we’re integrating these instruments. It’s nonetheless a really human course of that requires particular experience, and we needs to be paid properly for bringing that to the desk.
On high of opening up time to work on my enterprise, AI has helped me execute enterprise improvement duties.
Early on, we used it in apparent methods, prefer to help our model copywriting or utilizing it to assist us map out three to 6 month content material calendars for ourselves and our shoppers.
Because the 12 months went on, nevertheless, we began utilizing it extra for higher-level duties, from monetary planning and projections to technique improvement to diving deep into our personal branding and messaging. I believe that is the true superpower of chat-based AI brokers: Utilizing them as thought companions for enterprise technique.
For example, after we had been struggling to fulfill our monetary aim for 1 / 4, I outlined what we had been aiming for and all the pieces we had been doing to attain it in ChatGPT, and requested what extra approaches we may take into account.
Over the course of a protracted brainstorming chat, we got here up with some ways that finally helped us not solely hit our aim, however exceed it. Among the ways included figuring out methods to higher leverage the distinctive strengths and expertise of my current group, methods for altering the pricing construction of our service choices, extra “low-hanging fruit” alternatives for top worth add-on companies, and even concepts for chopping bills.
There’s limitless potentialities for tactics you should use AI to strategize round your small business, and since you should use pure language with it, you possibly can simply have a dialog such as you may with a group member. It’s gotten to the purpose the place anytime I encounter a problem I don’t know method, my first response is to go to ChatGPT to assist information my pondering.
I’m utilizing AI to educate me by way of setting our firm imaginative and prescient
A number of months in the past, I used to be feeling actually caught with the enterprise: Not motivated or fulfilled with the work we had been doing. However I couldn’t actually put a finger on why that was or exactly how I needed to pivot or enhance.
One evening, in desperation, I turned to ChatGPT and gave it the function of a enterprise coach, explaining my scenario and asking it to offer me thought-provoking inquiries to unravel my rut. By the course of an hours-long dialog, we obtained to the purpose the place I recognized that I felt the work we had been doing was not contributing to the world in a optimistic manner.
We weren’t inflicting hurt—we had been already very selective about our shoppers—however needed to lift the voices of people that had been actively making the world a greater place.
With this aim in thoughts, ChatGPT then helped me define a plan for gently offboarding some shoppers who weren’t as aligned and shifting our messaging to draw this new viewers. Due to this work, we’ve taken on 4 new shoppers within the final month alone who our group is so excited to work with and who’ve a message that the world desperately wants to listen to.
Certain, I may have carried out this work with out ChatGPT. However the course of was so fast in comparison with if I’d been muddling by way of it by myself. AI can by no means absolutely change the deeply human perception you may achieve from working with a model coach or enterprise coach, however it may assist get you unstuck. Within the span of just some months, I’ve gone from feeling out of alignment to extraordinarily enthusiastic about the way forward for the corporate. In 2024, I need to proceed searching for alternatives to place AI in that teaching function and let it ask me the deep questions that can make my work extra significant.
Right here’s what I now imagine about AI: It’s not going to interchange you, however the companies which can be utilizing it will change you as a result of they’re going to be transferring a lot sooner. I’m not saying this to create worry however to encourage different enterprise homeowners that now could be the time to step into this house. You don’t need to grow to be an knowledgeable, however you need to take a detailed have a look at how it may be leveraged in your small business. I believe you’ll be amazed on the methods it may transfer you ahead.