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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 hitch “Crew No AI” and to disregard it altogether. As a author, the worry of instruments like ChatGPT is completely comprehensible. In any case, it might probably spit out a complete weblog submit in mere moments. It’s pure to fret about being changed.
However as I watched this rising expertise 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 an alternative take a “hold 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. At the least 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 may very well be a boon to my enterprise, and I may even use them to serve my purchasers in a approach that allowed me to be a extra precious companion (as an alternative of changing me).
This method to integrating AI helped my company obtain our first multi-six-figure milestone in 2023. It’s change into so precious 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 an alternative of in my enterprise
My company, like so many companies, has all the time confronted the “cobbler’s kids haven’t any sneakers” downside: Whereas we’re on high of our purchasers’ advertising and marketing, content material, and social media wants, our channels used to get nearly 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 purchasers whereas additionally having time to spend alone enterprise growth.
For instance, we began utilizing ChatGPT to batch matter brainstorming, help us in outlining, and do preliminary rounds of content material edits for our purchasers. It’s essential to notice that we all the time cleared using AI instruments with our purchasers forward of time and didn’t use them for any purchasers who had been towards it. Nonetheless, most individuals had been snug with our considerate use of this expertise, and these new processes had been quickly saving me about eight hours every week, minimal.
That’s a complete workday freed up for duties like constructing out our personal on-line presence, shopper acquisition, and discovering new methods to develop my enterprise as an alternative of solely serving our current purchasers.
In 2024, we’re going to search for extra methods to streamline processes and to teach our prospects on do a few of this themselves. That may really feel like precisely what I used to be afraid of—educating my purchasers to make use of AI so that they don’t want me—however I see it as a solution to construct extra worth. As an illustration, if our purchasers can simply write on-brand communications that’s not included of their bundle with us, it makes all of their content material look extra unified and, due to this fact, extra profitable.
Educating them additionally exhibits the work that we put into utilizing AI, so that they don’t really feel like they need to be capable to 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 ought 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 growth duties.
Early on, we used it in apparent methods, prefer to assist our model copywriting or utilizing it to assist us map out three to 6 month content material calendars for ourselves and our purchasers.
Because the 12 months went on, nonetheless, we began utilizing it extra for higher-level duties, from monetary planning and projections to technique growth to diving deep into our personal branding and messaging. I feel that is the true superpower of chat-based AI brokers: Utilizing them as thought companions for enterprise technique.
As an illustration, after we had been struggling to satisfy our monetary purpose 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 further approaches we may take into account.
Over the course of an extended brainstorming chat, we got here up with some techniques that in the end helped us not solely hit our purpose, however exceed it. A few of the techniques included figuring out methods to higher leverage the distinctive strengths and expertise of my current workforce, methods for altering the pricing construction of our service choices, further “low-hanging fruit” alternatives for prime worth add-on providers, and even concepts for slicing bills.
There’s limitless potentialities for methods you should use AI to strategize round your corporation, and since you should use pure language with it, you’ll be able to simply have a dialog such as you may with a workforce 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 considering.
I’m utilizing AI to teach me by 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 state of affairs and asking it to present me thought-provoking inquiries to resolve my rut. By means of the course of an hours-long dialog, we acquired 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 approach.
We weren’t inflicting hurt—we had been already very selective about our purchasers—however needed to lift the voices of people that had been actively making the world a greater place.
With this purpose in thoughts, ChatGPT then helped me define a plan for gently offboarding some purchasers who weren’t as aligned and shifting our messaging to draw this new viewers. Because of this work, we’ve taken on 4 new purchasers within the final month alone who our workforce is so excited to work with and who’ve a message that the world desperately wants to listen to.
Positive, 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 it alone. AI can by no means totally substitute the deeply human perception you may achieve from working with a model coach or enterprise coach, however it might probably assist get you unstuck. Within the span of only a few 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 may make my work extra significant.
Right here’s what I now consider about AI: It’s not going to exchange you, however the companies which are utilizing it will substitute you as a result of they’re going to be transferring a lot quicker. I’m not saying this to create worry however to encourage different enterprise homeowners that now’s the time to step into this area. You don’t should change into an skilled, however you need to take a detailed take a look at how it may be leveraged in your corporation. I feel you’ll be amazed on the methods it might probably transfer you ahead.
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