AI Productivity, Business Growth, Service-based Businesses

Stop Playing With AI: Start Producing With It in Your Coaching or Consulting Business

You don’t need another “fun” AI toy. You need a serious, outcome-driven AI engine that powers real client results, real revenue, and real time freedom in your service-based business.

The Harsh Truth: “Playing” With AI Won’t Grow Your Business

Let’s be blunt: most coaches and consultants are treating AI like a novelty. You dabble with prompts, generate a few social posts, maybe outline a webinar, then go right back to the same overloaded calendar and inconsistent revenue. That’s not AI Productivity. That’s digital procrastination dressed up as innovation.

If AI isn’t tied directly to Business Growth—more qualified leads, higher conversion, better client delivery, and stronger retention—you’re wasting its potential. The gap between playing with AI and producing with it is simple: producers design systems; dabblers chase shiny objects.

What Effective AI Use Actually Looks Like

Effective AI Use in a coaching or consulting practice is not about getting “better answers” from a chatbot. It’s about building a repeatable, reliable engine that supports your core value chain:

• Turning one strong idea into a full content ecosystem—emails, posts, lead magnets, and sales pages—without diluting your voice.

• Standardizing your frameworks, exercises, and methodologies so AI can help you deliver consistent, premium client experiences every single time.

• Automating the “back office grind”—research, draft creation, formatting, follow-up emails—so you can stay in your zone of genius: coaching and consulting.

This is Outcome-driven AI: every prompt, workflow, and tool exists to move a metric that matters—revenue, profit, client results, or your usable hours per week. Anything else is noise.

Why Service-based Businesses Can’t Afford to Stay in “Experiment Mode”

As a coach or consultant, your product is your brain, your time, and your ability to create transformation. That means the stakes are higher for Service-based Businesses than for almost anyone else. If you’re not using AI to multiply your capacity, you are choosing to cap your income and impact—period.

While you’re “testing” AI with random content prompts, competitors are quietly building AI-powered onboarding, diagnostic tools, curriculum libraries, and follow-up systems. They’re cutting delivery time in half and doubling perceived value. That’s not a small edge. That’s a market-shifting advantage.

Simple AI Implementation Strategies That Actually Move the Needle

You don’t need a massive tech stack. You need a ruthless focus on leverage. Here are three bold AI Implementation Strategies to stop playing and start producing:

1. Build an AI-powered Signature Framework Hub. Feed your core frameworks, client stories, objections, and offers into a structured knowledge base. Use AI to generate tailored exercises, examples, and explanations on demand, so every client gets a “custom” experience built on your proven IP.

2. Turn one client win into a full marketing campaign. Start with a real case study, then use AI to spin it into posts, emails, webinar scripts, and landing page copy that all point to one clear offer. This is AI Productivity tied directly to Business Growth, not random content for content’s sake.

3. Automate pre-work and follow-up. Use AI to generate intake questions, pre-session worksheets, and post-session recaps that are specific to each client’s goals. You instantly upgrade your perceived professionalism without adding more manual hours.

💡 Pro Tip: If an AI workflow doesn’t clearly save you time, increase revenue, or improve client outcomes, kill it. Your AI should earn its place in your business just like a team member.

Design Your AI Around Outcomes, Not Tools

The platforms will keep changing. Today it’s one chatbot, tomorrow it’s another. Chasing tools is a losing game. Designing Outcome-driven AI is not. Start every AI decision with one ruthless question: “What measurable result will this support?”

• Want more leads? Use AI to create consistent, high-value content that drives to a single lead magnet or application.

• Want higher prices? Use AI to package your methodology into assets—playbooks, templates, and tools—that justify premium positioning.

• Want more time? Use AI to slash the hours you spend drafting, editing, and preparing, so you can focus on high-impact work.

The Line in the Sand: Dabbler or Producer?

AI will not magically fix a fuzzy offer, a weak message, or a broken sales process. But if your foundations are solid, AI can pour fuel on the fire. The question is whether you’re willing to stop tinkering and start building.

As a coach or consultant, you owe your clients clarity, not chaos. Treat AI the same way you treat your own programs: with intention, structure, and a relentless focus on outcomes. Stop asking, “What can this tool do?” and start demanding, “How will this accelerate my clients’ wins and my business growth?”

The gap between playing with AI and producing with it is a decision. Decide that every AI workflow must drive AI Productivity, fuel Business Growth, and serve your clients better. Make that shift, and AI stops being a toy—and becomes one of the most powerful assets in your service-based business.

The Secrets to Using AI for Business Growth (Without the Slop)

Most business owners have opened an AI app, typed a few prompts, watched it spit out something impressive, and then wondered why nothing in the business actually changed. The tool is remarkable. The results, for a lot of people, are strangely flat.

In this episode of The Amanda Kaufman Show, guest host Rebecca Kaufman sits down with Amanda Kaufman, an engineer-turned-entrepreneur who is genuinely in love with AI and uses it across her business every day. Amanda breaks down the gap between playing with AI and producing with it: why more technology does not automatically mean more productivity, and the specific habits that turn a fun toy into a growth engine.

More Technology Does Not Equal More Productivity

Back in the 1980s, an economist pointed out that as a society gains more technology, it does not necessarily gain more productivity. Amanda sees the same pattern all over the AI world today.

How It Matters:There is more potential than ever, and potential is not the same as output that reaches the marketplace. Doing a thing faster is not the same as being productive. Productivity means effort is actually producing an outcome, and a lot of AI time produces motion without any.

How to Do It:Separate speed from productivity in your own head. Before opening the app, decide what outcome you are actually trying to create. Amanda used AI to help a client overhaul nearly a hundred pages of their website with a full brand refresh, work that would have been a ten-thousand-dollar redesign, at a fraction of the cost, because she aimed it at a concrete result.

Common Mistake:Mistaking activity for progress. Cycling through endless conversations feels productive and generates nothing shippable, because the effort was never pointed at a defined outcome.

Know the Outcome Before You Open the App

AI is designed to continue the conversation. It asks questions, checks your preferences, and keeps going, which feels wonderful because people love being asked their opinion.

How It Matters:That same design keeps a conversation alive long after the objective has been accomplished. The dopamine of being consulted quietly replaces the discipline of finishing. Hours disappear into a chat that never needed to continue.

How to Do It:Get clear on the good outcome first, then use AI to get there and stop. Amanda used it to narrow down, to eliminate the things she would not work on, to do research, and to weigh real choices. The thought partnership is a genuine revelation, especially in a lonely world, and it is a starting point, not the finish line.

Common Mistake:Treating the conversation as the deliverable. When there is no defined objective, AI happily iterates closer and closer to your preferences forever, and you walk away with a nice chat and nothing built.

Treat AI Like a Different Kind of Brain

Human brains are loaded with psychological biases. AI, for all its quirks, thinks differently, which makes it a useful counterweight.

How It Matters:Confirmation bias is how an owner ends up selling something nobody wants, hunting for the one person who validates a belief while ignoring the many who do not. Left unchecked, it can hide the real reason customers buy for literally a decade.

How to Do It:Point AI at real data instead of your assumptions. Amanda fed it transcripts of actual sales conversations and had it count how often certain phrases and ideas came up. That analysis revealed that people hire her privately not because of her engineering background or the latest tech, but because they are at the end of their time and energy and want help honing in on what to do. That one insight rewrote how she talks about her work.

Common Mistake:Running the business on anecdote and feeling. A single conversation leaves a very different impression than a hundred of them analyzed together, and without the data most owners never see the pattern that was there the whole time.

Be a Dreamer With a Spreadsheet

Amanda’s favorite discipline is to be a dreamer with a spreadsheet. AI makes that easier than it has ever been.

How It Matters:Emotion sweeps owners up in the excitement of a possibility. Without a way to check the dream against reality, a result that lands below expectations becomes confusing, and the usual response is to abandon the strategy for a shiny new one before it ever had a chance.

How to Do It:Have AI help you lay out the inputs, the expected outputs, and the assumptions, then summarize it as a memo or spreadsheet. Execute the steps, then measure the real-world outcome against what you predicted. Amanda captures metrics by screenshotting her dashboards, dropping them in a folder, and having AI update the spreadsheet, which lets her stick with a strategy far longer and make more money by staying the course.

Common Mistake:Never asking AI for an actual output. If the whole exercise stays a conversation, there is nothing to bang up against reality, so there is no way to tell a working strategy from a failing one.

Direct the Over-Eager Intern

Amanda describes AI as an over-eager intern. It is fast, willing, and in constant need of an editor, a producer, and a director.

How It Matters:AI is always running math and probabilities, tuned to keep you happy. Happy is not the same as effective in the real world. When everyone gives AI minimal pushback, it learns that average is good, and owners who filter everything through it regress toward a generic sameness with no differentiation at all.

How to Do It:Provide the direction and the standard. On that big website project, Amanda built the design book and the rules first, then produced against the plan and went back to AI whenever she hit a roadblock: here is the goal, here is the input, give me a new output. Be specific in feedback, because “that looks bad” is not actionable, and have the courage to say no. When she needed a better ad script, asking it to respond as a world-class media copywriter changed everything.

Common Mistake:Disengaging your own thinking and discernment. Outsourcing judgment along with the typing is the real risk, and it produces work most people would not be proud of if they had made it by hand.

Conclusion

AI is not a solution you switch on. It is a partner you direct. The owners who grow with it know their outcome before they open the app, use it to escape their own biases, keep a dreamer’s spreadsheet to test ideas against reality, and direct it like a talented intern who still needs an editor. Know your goal, protect your discernment, and let the tool amplify the work you actually do. Go make something only you would make. You will be glad you did.

To hear the full conversation with Amanda Kaufman, listen to Episode 345 of The Amanda Kaufman Show on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does AI feel impressive but rarely move my business forward?

Because doing something faster is not the same as being productive. AI is built to continue a conversation, which feels great and often produces nothing shippable. Growth comes from deciding on a concrete outcome first, then using AI to reach it and stopping when the objective is met.

How can AI help me make better decisions instead of just faster ones?

Use it as a different kind of brain to counter your own biases. Feeding it real data, like transcripts of sales calls, can surface patterns you would never notice by feel. It can also help you lay out inputs, outputs, and assumptions so you can measure results against a prediction rather than a mood.

Is it safe to use AI for copywriting and content?

Yes, as long as you stay the editor. AI is a strong starting point for drafts and ideas, but it optimizes to keep you happy, which can drift toward generic, average output. Direct it with specific feedback, have the courage to say no, and keep your own thinking engaged so your voice stays distinct.

What is the single most important thing for using AI well?

Know your goal. Not AI’s goal, not what sounds good to your coach, but what you actually want to create. Once the outcome is clear, treat AI as a partner that helps you get there and even spots your blind spots, rather than as a solution that decides for you.

Where can I learn more from Amanda Kaufman?

Amanda is running a free training called How I Finally Got AI to Help Me Make Money, a comedy, where she shares the mistakes and the fixes in a lighthearted way. Register atclairvenu.com/training. You can also subscribe to her newsletter, The Quiet Part, athttps://clairvenu.com/the-quiet-part, and if you would make a great guest for business owners building something real, apply for the show at https://clairvenu.com/the-podcast.

Transcript

Rebecca Kaufman (00:00)

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Amanda Kaufman Show. This is Rebecca here because it's a double Kaufman episode. Hello, hello. do let us know how you've been liking these episodes down below. We are still experimenting, so if you have any feedback, let us know. Amanda, today I wanted to pick your brain about something. You ready?

Amanda Kaufman (00:18)

Let's go. Let's do it.

Rebecca Kaufman (00:20)

All right. So you use AI in your business all the time. I feel like I would say business personal life all the above.

Amanda Kaufman (00:27)

I'm in love with AI.

Rebecca Kaufman (00:28)

Okay. And you were telling me that you did something pretty cool with it. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Amanda Kaufman (00:35)

Yeah, so in addition to launching this business, Claire Veneu, that sponsors the show, I have been able to help my clients to build stronger brands using AI. so I think there's a lot of AI slop out there and kind of like hilarious usage of AI, which is great. I mean, like that's what the early frontier days of anything are like. We just experiment and try a bunch of things. But what I'm so

excited about is and maybe a little bit of a reveal into what gets me going but something that I'm really excited about is actually the articulation of the brand that my client actually has. So

Actually, even in my inner circle, I recently got a a post by one of our members, which was really, really a treat. She was using my prompts to build a website, and she was so surprised that the first part of it, she didn't really build a website, but she got all this clarity about exactly who she was speaking to. So that when she did design the website, it was speaking exactly to that person. And I feel like in our

Well, I know in our industry of entrepreneurship in our world.

Customers really like when things feel really tailored and are very specific to them. There's like this pride of ownership that we have when we buy something that is exactly reflective of our preferences and who we are. And AI is making it possible for small businesses like my client in the inner circle. I have another client. We did like a full, like bottom-up, nearly hundred-page overhaul of her website. And

Yeah, like previously I would have had to outsource that for sure. It would have been for sure a ten thousand dollar redesign and rebuild. And we were able to do that at any absolute fraction of the cost. And it did take time and energy and attention. But what was so exciting is this through line that's now happening in my clients' businesses and hopefully in mine too, where we're speaking to the same person consistently. whereas

Rebecca Kaufman (02:19)

And

Amanda Kaufman (02:46)

In the past, it would be like, okay, well, I'm gonna implement this new technology, and so then you're kind of working on that for a really long time, and then you pick up like another piece of building your business, and it just feels like this Franken business where everything's just cobbled together and and and held together with this duct tape. Whereas with AI, we can actually produce things like a design system, which is basically

all the rules for the the when do we use this particular kind of font when do we use this particular kind of statement things that historically large businesses have these things like I remember when I was working for a really big consulting firm we had very very specific brand standards that we had to adhere to and those brand standards were being produced by you know full-time employees at headquarters

kind of deal, and then communicated down to everybody with these brand guide books. Well, now as a small business owner, if you know that it's important to have consistency so that your customer is is having the maximal experience possible, it's this standardization that I'm really excited about. And yeah, AI can be really fun for coming up with cartoons too.

Rebecca Kaufman (04:01)

Fair enough. Fair enough. Well we'll get more into the nitty gritty with that right after this quick message.

And you know what, honestly, that feeds right back into this conversation because it sounds like what you're really accomplishing with your AI is the brass tacks of it all. Like you're actually getting things completed, you're making progress. Are you finding that people are having trouble using AI to actually move the needle forward? Or like what's the typical use of it if someone's not familiar with it?

Amanda Kaufman (05:19)

You know, there's this super interesting quote that of course I'm not remembering on on the camera, so that's great for me. I'm gonna you what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put it into a training that I'm gonna be doing pretty soon called How I Finally Got AI to Help Make Me Money, a comedy. And we're we'll we'll talk about it. But basically back in the eighties there was an economist that pointed out that as society gains more technology, it doesn't necessarily gain more productivity.

Which I thought was a really interesting idea, a really interesting concept. And when I look left and right in in the AI happy world that we find ourselves in now, I am seeing the same thing where yes, there's more potential than ever, but just because there's potential doesn't mean there's great utilization and and actual productivity that ends up making it into the marketplace. So I think like

there's a difference between doing a thing faster and being productive. So when I think about the term productive, productive to me means that I'm exerting some kind of an action, some kind of an effort, and the out and it's and it's affecting an outcome. There's an outcome to the effort.

And so what I'm seeing a lot of entrepreneurs, especially, they're they're bold enough to get started and to say, hey, I'm gonna do the crazy thing and download the app, right? And I'm gonna play with it and it's gonna be great. So, like, that's awesome. Where it falls off is the intentionality of what is a good outcome? What is it that I really want to produce here? And if you're just trying to see what it can do, that's

Great and that's fine, but if we stop there, that's where the productivity drop-off happens, is because all that time and that energy cycling through conversations, AI is designed to continue the conversation. It's designed to ask you questions and check in with your preferences as you go along, which honestly feels great. We love being asked our opinion. We love being asked like love that.

Rebecca Kaufman (07:12)

My dopamine was it.

Amanda Kaufman (07:15)

And and what it's actually doing is it's continuing a conversation that in my opinion, well, in in my practice, it doesn't actually have to continue because the objective has already been accomplished. So when I was starting the Clairvenue company, I was doing it after having the experience of of a another company and all of the lessons and all of the learnings and all of the conversations with thousands and thousands of people over the years. And so for me, I was using AI to actually

Focus down to eliminate the things that I'm not going to work on, the things I don't want to focus on, the and to help me to do research and to actually assess choices that I could make. And so having the thought partnership, I think, is already a revelation for a lot of people. We do have a loneliness epidemic. But then after that, it's like, okay, so you've got a partner that you can think.

things through with now what? Now what?

Rebecca Kaufman (08:13)

Okay. Well now what? So what are some really practical applications that someone can be using AI for right now in their business that they maybe and might not have thought of or aren't using to the fullest extent?

Amanda Kaufman (08:25)

my gosh, so many things. number one, don't be afraid to use it for copywriting. Now, a lot of people crap on it because if you just say to AI, write me an email, write me a social post, do do these things. AI have has these really like mathematical tells of the pattern of language that it's basically calculating what is it you probably mean.

And what is going to probably make you happy? So it's all probabilities. And so I kind of think of it like AI is another team member. And so if you've ever worked on a large team, you've probably experienced the benefit of having a slightly different brain than somebody else on the team. And maybe that other person on the team sees things in a different way and in a different light. And then when you're able to like work together.

Rebecca Kaufman (09:06)

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Kaufman (09:12)

It you end up with the synergy of the thing that would happen that could never have happened if it was just each of you in isolation. So AI can be the same. So I would say for sure the utility of you know writing down ideas or suggesting things to start with or to get like to to to actually activate your productivity by getting you some quick wins. Totally. Like I think AI is a great tool for that. I think another thing.

That getting back to that idea of it's a different kind of brain, it's a different way of thinking. Our brains are full just addled with these psychological biases. And so a couple of my favorites are things like confirmation bias. So confirmation bias shows up for a business owner when they have a belief about how the world works and what people actually want, and they take that belief and they look for evidence that supports that belief.

So that's how you end up selling something that nobody wants because you believe that people do want it. And so even if you've got a thousand people who are saying, nah, that's not all that interesting, the one person who stopped by to be like, okay, I think that is interesting. You're like, Yes, confirmation, right? So so that confirmation bias can be really alleviated by using AI. And I'll tell you how exactly I did it. is I use it to analyze the transcripts of

Rebecca Kaufman (10:03)

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Kaufman (10:31)

real conversations that I was having. Of course I tell people when I'm recording all the time. but I I used it to mathematically count out how often were certain phrases being used or how often were certain ideas coming across and certain words coming across. And that's how I discovered that when people hire me privately, they're not hiring me because they're so you know, wowed by my engineering background or razzle dazzled by the latest technology thingy that I'm showing them. It like

Seriously, 95% of the time is because this person is intelligent. They've already done the homework they have, they know what to do. It's that they are at the end of their capacity for their time and their energy, and they're looking for someone to help them to hone in on what it is that they want to do. And so with that clarity, I was like, I need to talk a whole lot more about running out of time.

I need to talk a whole lot more about not being able to afford a higher level of team. Like I need to talk about capacity. And without that information, without that data, I didn't see it literally for a decade.

Rebecca Kaufman (11:34)

Well, and if you hadn't taken the time to input all of those transcripts, like it's another example of like going off of data versus going off of feelings. Like anecdotally, you're gonna have an entirely different impression of the conversation that you're in at any given moment than somebody else. Let alone, you know, the hundreds of sales conversations you're gonna have over the lifetime of your business. So some an application like that is crazy useful. And it's not

theoretical anymore. You're using concrete data. That's awesome.

Amanda Kaufman (12:03)

Yeah, it is really it is really awesome. Thanks for saying that. I I I love using AI because it is easier than it has ever been to for example, like I always say be a dreamer with a spreadsheet. The reason I say that is because to your point with our emotions, like we get so swept up. We're so excited about this possibility. And to be able to just do like real quick.

Rebecca Kaufman (12:06)

Ha ha ha.

Amanda Kaufman (12:27)

Like the spreadsheet of what are the inputs, what are my expected outputs for doing this task? What are the assumptions that I'm making? And to talk all that through and then have it summarized in like a memo, basically, or in a in a spreadsheet that you can go, okay, at this time stamp, this particular time, this is my expectation of what's gonna happen if I do these act if if if I execute these steps, right? Then, and this is very important.

Executing the steps and then measuring right and then measuring what was the real world outcome and even like what were the the middle step outcomes to that to that activity. And this is where I fell apart like all the time pre-AI is I would get a result that was less than what I wanted, or it was less impressive than I wanted it to be, because it was very important that I'd be very impressive. and then I would just be confused.

Rebecca Kaufman (12:59)

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Kaufman (13:22)

About what caused that and would I ever be able to figure it out? And then what I would do is I would abandon the strategy for a brand new, fresh strategy in the hope of getting that big outsized outcome. Now, because it's so much easier to analyze the the outcome of the result, I can stick with a strategy a whole lot longer. Now, here's the really big thing is that I've got, I have to have the discipline to ask.

AI to create an output, right? Because if you if you just have like the longest conversation that's ever been had inside of AI, what ends up happening is that over time it's just iterating closer and closer to your preferences. But if you have an output like a spreadsheet that says, okay, I anticipate I'm gonna put in this and I'm gonna get out that, and then you can bang it up against reality. And again, using AI, like let's not make this way harder than it has to be.

I literally, for capturing metrics, I take screenshots of the various screens of things that I'm looking at, dump it in a folder, tell Claude co work to to update the spreadsheet, and there it is. Like I I have all my data laid out in a way that I can actually react to, and it's causing me to stick with things for a lot longer and have better insights that allow me to grow. And like, yeah.

Rebecca Kaufman (14:35)

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Kaufman (14:40)

That's how I ended up making a whole heck of a lot more money. It was basically by sticking with a thing, sticking with an idea longer.

Rebecca Kaufman (14:48)

Yeah. Yeah. Cause again, and I think this is a reoccurring theme for us is is that like silver bullet feeling. You're like, well, this strategy, this marketing effort, this conversion event that I'm trying to do, like whatever the case may be, it didn't work. Doesn't work for my business, doesn't work for me. Next. When in reality, if you were able to actually see the data lined up, you might see where the domino started to not connect as well. You know what I mean?

Amanda Kaufman (15:13)

I exactly know what you mean. And like this very show, just to get a little meta here, the reason the reason I'm doing this show is because I have a lot of data over the years that shows that when I have a core piece of content, I am more effective at pushing more content out off of the core. And I was struggling with

Rebecca Kaufman (15:19)

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Kaufman (15:35)

the psychology, the mindset of finishing core content. And that was the reason that I invited you to interview because I knew that having conversation, you know, would increase my accountability to showing up. I actually think it's more entertaining to the listener. Let me know in the show in the comments. But you know, I I do think it's actually a more engaging format, which is wonderful. but more to the point.

Rebecca Kaufman (15:52)

Yeah.

Amanda Kaufman (16:00)

I'm showing up to doing the thing that I have plenty of data that shows that doing this thing over a long haul and with consistency makes a huge difference to downstream outcomes.

Rebecca Kaufman (16:11)

Amazing. Okay.

Amanda Kaufman (16:13)

Yeah, downstream

outcomes, by the way, being like in the conversations that I have with potential clients, they so often will reference something they saw.

Rebecca Kaufman (16:21)

Speaking of which, we are gonna come right back to this conversation after this quick message.

Ha ha

that one will never stop cracking me up. My goodness gracious. Okay. So we were in the middle of having a conversation about AI. You have some crazy applications for how you're using it. And just to someone who knows you personally, I know that it doesn't stop it. Just, you know, your business. Just gonna put it out there. She has a spreadsheet for Christmas, guys. And she did that before AI even really was a thing. So but I guess my question would be.

be is like, where do you even come up with this stuff? Cause as someone who isn't as data minded personally, I wouldn't even think to put people's converse like my sales conversations into ChatGBT or Claude or whatever AI you're using. I wouldn't even think to try that. So where are you even coming up with these like different applications?

Amanda Kaufman (17:27)

Such a great question. So I think the first thing is when I was aware of the idea and the concept of AI for a long time before OpenAI opened their doors and released ChatGPT to the general public. So I I already had this idea that, there's a there's a different level of computing than simply running the program, right? Like there's self-programming programs. And I was like,

Okay. So I kind of get that, right? so so I think I I was already pretty primed for the idea. And then when it became open to the general public, I just like real quietly was I downloaded that real soon. Like I did not I think it came out and I was on it within a week. And yeah, like it was it was a really quick, quiet adoption on my side.

Rebecca Kaufman (18:09)

wow.

Amanda Kaufman (18:13)

but the reason that I was so excited about the possibility of it is one of the most expensive things in my business is actually messaging. and you know, people don't people don't realize that is that, you know

All businesses, they have visibility, they have conversion, they have delivery, and they also have overhead. so for me, the visibility was the thing that I found myself spending the most money on coaching, the most money on copywriters, the most money on, and like if I if I refused to spend that money, it was the thing that I spent the most time on: handwriting all of the emails, writing all of the social posts, all the original content. and there is actually a little counterpoint.

Rebecca Kaufman (18:47)

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Kaufman (18:53)

here too, which is you know when when I first started using it for copywriting, for example, the output was not good. Like it was it was more

It was more the fascination of I could. And I think that to to your point, like how do I know to use this stuff? A big part of it is I got rewards really early on from using it. And so then I started to condition myself that hey, maybe I'll be able to do something else and something else and something else and something else. So I think there's a little bit of a dopamine loop attached to that. but you know, even early days, I would force the AI to do something better.

And the way I forced it to do something better is I rejected what it said and I said, make this better. And I was specific about how. And so, you know, I was just talking about a big project I undertook for a client updating nearly a hundred pages on their website with a full brand refresh. Well, before I ever touched a single page.

Rebecca Kaufman (19:41)

Mm.

Amanda Kaufman (19:55)

I worked with AI to build their design book, their structure, the rules that we were gonna follow from henceforth. And so I think like to be super effective with AI, fundamentally you've moving out of this really reactive place that most of us are experiencing the world these days, where we're spending hours a day in a scroll reacting to everybody else's content.

I think like the proactivity of saying, like, hey, I could have a huge advantage if I planned ahead that I want to do a thing and just starting to change how we do it. So as I was describing this big project to my husband, I was like, it didn't feel like building a website has in the past, where it was very tedious, a lot of, you know, handling individual elements and

Rebecca Kaufman (20:42)

Mm.

Amanda Kaufman (20:46)

really slow and really severely constrained by my own design abilities. this time it felt like a production. It was like I was this producer and I was saying, hey guys, like this is the goal, guys being AIs. this is the goal, this is the thing. And then I would work through the deployment of the plan that we worked through together. And then when I hit and encountered a roadblock, an obstacle to being able to finish

and right back to AI. And I said, here's the outcome. This is what we're wanting to do. This is what I have as an input going into this. Give me a new output. And then it would give me the new output. And then I would mobilize that. So yeah, it wasn't a fully autonomous, you know, hey computer, make this website not suck. Right. It wasn't that. but it it it definitely was more directive and less requiring of me.

To know all of the ins and outs of how to make the result happen. I I was most responsible for saying, yes, that looks good, or yes, that's achieving the goal at the standard that I want, and being courageous to say no. And and I think that a lot of the AI content that I see, there's not enough no happening.

Rebecca Kaufman (21:38)

I don't know.

Amanda Kaufman (21:58)

Right. There's just there's so much fascination with it. People are are producing things that like they honestly probably wouldn't be proud of proud of if they did it by hand. but I also think that the reason that they produce it is because they've never been told what actually does work better. And so the speed is the speed is winning over quality for sure right now.

Rebecca Kaufman (22:14)

Mm.

Well, and you've described AI to me as kind of like an over eager intern at times. So this idea that that over eager intern does in fact need an editor, does in fact need a producer, needs a director, you know, that makes a lot of sense. And having the just the awareness that you can just be like, no, that's not very good. Like let's let's fix this. This is sloppy for XYZ reason, and just having the awareness that that's an option, massive.

Amanda Kaufman (22:24)

Yeah. Yeah.

That's that's massive. I think in my own communication style, it's really improved my specificity when I'm giving feedback even to humans. ⁓ because I've I've realized like I can just say that looks bad. And that's a level of feedback, but it's not terribly actionable. And so if I leave AI to guess at what part I thought was bad or what part would need to improve.

Rebecca Kaufman (22:55)

a hundred percent.

Amanda Kaufman (23:11)

then it always requires more iteration and it can end up being extremely frustrating. And it really does remind me of learning delegation skills. It's like if you, if you s if you communicate an emotion that's not usually actionable, right? So learning how to do that, I think, is is super key. The other counterpoint to all this, that I just to close that loop earlier, is writing. So

On one hand, it's faster than ever. On one hand, I can say, like, hey, write me an email to so and so, or I could I even have automated agents that will draft my responses to emails before I sit down and reply, which is fantastic. It saves me so much time. and if you disengage your skill of thinking and discernment, I think that's a very real risk that a lot of entrepreneurs are

Going to be reckoning with pretty, pretty soon if they're not already seeing it. If you don't have the thing about AI is it's always math, right? It's always math and probabilities. So if if our collective as society is just basically having minimal reaction to the content that is being put out, then AI goes, okay, this is what's good.

Rebecca Kaufman (24:10)

Yeah, uh-huh.

Amanda Kaufman (24:23)

And so it's not just doing that with you in your account, it's doing that across the millions and millions and millions of users that are using it for hours and hours a day. And so I think like the real risk as an entrepreneur is that there are biases in the in the AI that are designed to keep you happy. But that's not the same thing as producing something that's gonna work in the real world.

And so I would say like it's a great place to farm, you know, to to get prompts. It's a great place to do research, to find evidence for things. it's a great place to organize ideas. Like for me, I tend to have like a boatload of idea. Like these ads that I've released into the show recently. I first sat down with AI to do it. And honestly, the first rounds were terrible.

And they and they weren't just terrible, in my opinion, like they actually sounded really not like anything I would say. Now, when I ended up producing the actual ads, it did help that I went through a whole thought session and had had drafted scripts with AI for sure. but I think what ultimately is gonna work is gonna be the thing that you actually do. So I think that there's a tendency to AI filter everything right now.

in an effort to be perfect and then that perfection is actually regressing you to this super average performance that gives you no differentiation at all.

Rebecca Kaufman (25:48)

Hmm. Well, I have one more question about that after this quick message.

All right. So it sounds like this AI application inside of your business really is something that's a huge tool for you for saving time, getting things out there. But it also sounds like it's a big exercise for your like personal discipline, your leadership, your communication. If you had to give someone one piece of advice to make AI work inside of their business and actually produce things and like move the needle for them, what would the biggest piece of advice you'd want to give them?

Amanda Kaufman (26:57)

Know your goal. You have to know your goal. Not AI's goal, not what sounds good to your coach, not not what you think your family members are gonna approve of, but like what is it that you want to create? And then look at AI not as the solution, but rather as a partner in making it happen. And I think like

You've got to know your goal. You you you need to understand what good is according to you. Then you can ask AI for its assistance and help. And you can you can even use AI to help you identify blind spots and and areas where you could improve. So, like getting back to the ad example when I was working on the script for it, I it was just sounding awful. And and so I said, I was like, hey, imagine you were a world-class copywriter for media ads.

How would you change this? And all of a sudden it had all of these really great suggestions that changed everything dramatically. And so I would say, like, use it as a thought partner, use it as a way to like distill down to the essence of what is really important for you at this time. and just don't get complacent, don't treat it like social media.

Rebecca Kaufman (28:08)

Fair enough. Well, and to close out the show, tell us a little bit about this class you have coming up. How can people get into it? How do you find out more information about it? Tell give us all the tea.

Amanda Kaufman (28:19)

Cool. So I love doing this show and I think it can be really helpful to have something a little more structured. So if decided to put on a training, it's completely free. You can sign up at clairvenue.com slash training. And it is called How I Finally Got AI to Help Me Make Money, a comedy. And so it's a comedy because I'm gonna be sharing with you a lot of the mistakes and the issues and the and the problems, and we're gonna do it in a lighthearted kind of a way. but at the end of the day, it's

gonna really show you how you can use the tool for better business.

Rebecca Kaufman (28:52)

Amazing. Well, with that, we're gonna wrap up this episode. But if you have any questions about AI, any cool applications that you're using in your business that everyone else needs to know about, please let us know in the comments. We'd love to hear about it. Like if you're not using AI in your business yet, this is your prompt to start playing, get started, get that goal, and we will see you guys next time.