Latest / Smart Business Growth with Nicky Miklós / Discover How to Preserve Humanity in the Age of AI with Leanne Shelton

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Discover How to Preserve Humanity in the Age of AI with Leanne Shelton · Smart Business Growth with Nicky Miklós

• 0:04
  Nicky: Welcome to the Smart Business Growth Podcast with Nicky and Ness.
• 0:11
  Ness: We would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of country, the Turrbal and Bunurong people of Brisbane and Melbourne respectively, where Nicky and I both work and live.
• 0:21
  Ness: Today's guest is Leanne Shelton.
• 0:32
  Ness: Back in 2023, with her nine-year-old SEO copywriting agency struggling to convert in a tough economic climate, leanne made the ultimate business pivot.
• 0:39
  Ness: She decided to embrace, not escape, her shiny new and free competitor, chatgpt, by educating herself on the topic.
• 0:48
  Ness: With decades of writing, marketing and training skills in her back pocket, leanne started to teach non-techie business leaders about AI, prompt engineering with a human touch.
• 0:59
  Ness: Leanne quickly became a sought-after keynote speaker for summits and conferences, with multiple requests to run webinars, workshops, one-on-one sessions and in-house organisational training.
• 1:12
  Ness: These days, her core focus is on team and one-on-one training sessions for marketing purposes.
• 1:20
  Ness: Based entrepreneur is a newly converted, running enthusiast lover of dance, daily meditator, occasional yogi, engrossed reader and audible consumer of business books and psychological thrillers, a dedicated wife and frazzled mum of two daughters.
• 1:36
  Ness: In our conversation today, leanne helped break down this topic of chat GPT how it can really help us as leaders in business, and also answers the question what won't ChatGPT replace?
• 1:49
  Ness: I trust that if you're a leader or a business owner, this conversation on ChatGPT is going to be really helpful for you to get your head around how this product can really help your business and have some ways around how it might be hindering your business.
• 2:06
  Ness: Anyway, let's jump straight in and enjoy.
• 2:09
  Ness: Hello.
• 2:10
  Nicky: Leanne, we're so excited to pick your brain about all things, not just AI, but how we can keep the humanness right in AI, how it can help our businesses, but also getting really clear on how it won't help or what it won't replace.
• 2:24
  Nicky: So, if I can just kick off with a question around, what's your best thoughts and advice around?
• 2:31
  Nicky: How do we push through because you talk about pushing through this AI overwhelm while still maintaining humanity.
• 2:38
  Nicky: How do we do that?
• 2:39
  Nicky: What's your best tips and advice as a starting point on how we do?
• 2:43
  Leanne Shelton: that, yeah, great, great starting question.
• 2:44
  Leanne Shelton: So, yeah, the thing is is that there's just so much hype around AI and all this pressure to experiment with all these tools or find the best tools to suit your purposes, and so this is what contributes to overwhelm.
• 2:58
  Leanne Shelton: We've already got enough on our plates, let alone I've got to try and brace this thing, which, for a lot of people who aren't technical, it's just completely left field, right.
• 3:06
  Leanne Shelton: So I just say, to start it slow, just start with opening up your Copilot, chatgpt, whatever just a standard thing is, which you don't bit of a trusted source, microsoft Copilot or OpenAI, which has become well-known.
• 3:20
  Leanne Shelton: Just start small, so don't go big.
• 3:24
  Leanne Shelton: Just think okay, I want just help with fixing up this email.
• 3:27
  Leanne Shelton: I've thrown off this email.
• 3:28
  Leanne Shelton: How can you just improve it?
• 3:29
  Leanne Shelton: How can you just like, just start with small little tasks like that, just to get comfortable with it and realize it's not so scary.
• 3:36
  Leanne Shelton: So that is really what you have to do, but just don't get sucked into.
• 3:40
  Leanne Shelton: Oh my gosh, I'm overwhelmed.
• 3:49
  Leanne Shelton: I'm overwhelmed.
• 3:49
  Leanne Shelton: I'm overwhelmed.
• 3:50
  Leanne Shelton: I have to get no, no, no.
• 3:50
  Leanne Shelton: Just pull it right back and don't think about creating all these new projects now that you have this capacity with AI.
• 3:53
  Leanne Shelton: People keep saying no, start small.
• 3:53
  Leanne Shelton: Just do work on a task that you need help with.
• 3:55
  Leanne Shelton: Or you're procrastinating on getting that article started, or you need to put a marketing plan and you haven't quite got there yet.
• 4:02
  Leanne Shelton: Just use it as a starting point and then just go with it from there.
• 4:05
  Nicky: I'm really curious also to understand what are the different ways that we can use this AI to keep the hustle healthy.
• 4:12
  Nicky: You know that's kind of.
• 4:13
  Nicky: We've talked about the fact that there can be some really good benefits in terms of time.
• 4:18
  Nicky: So to move through the overwhelm, you just start taking some steps.
• 4:21
  Nicky: What are some bigger ways that you see that we can actually use AI to keep the hustle healthy?
• 4:26
  Leanne Shelton: Yeah.
• 4:26
  Leanne Shelton: So, coming back to what you said about humanity, I don't want people to be using AI to replace them.
• 4:31
  Leanne Shelton: My little catchphrase is we want AI to enhance us, not replace us.
• 4:35
  Leanne Shelton: So there's too many people who are just overwhelmed, exhausted, burnt out, and so they just go.
• 4:41
  Leanne Shelton: All right, I'm just going to use AI tools to just replace my thinking or just hand it over.
• 4:45
  Leanne Shelton: I need to write this email, this article.
• 4:47
  Leanne Shelton: I'll just get AI to do it.
• 4:48
  Leanne Shelton: That is not the right way, because the quality is just going to be lacking.
• 4:52
  Leanne Shelton: It's going to come out generic, robotic, lifeless.
• 4:55
  Leanne Shelton: You'll sound like everyone else and you want to ensure that it remains unique to you, so you want it to be like basically pulling out your expertise and experience and using like amplifying that with the tool.
• 5:05
  Leanne Shelton: So what I recommend is to work with it by training it up, which a lot of people don't realize you can do.
• 5:11
  Leanne Shelton: Train up these tools, so the large language models like Copilot and ChatGPT and Gemini.
• 5:16
  Leanne Shelton: So start with training up on your business.
• 5:18
  Leanne Shelton: This is what we're about.
• 5:19
  Leanne Shelton: This is our products, our services, our mission, vision, mission vision, values, all that kind of stuff, our story, and then go great.
• 5:27
  Leanne Shelton: Remember that like, upload your style guides, whatever you've got.
• 5:30
  Leanne Shelton: And then the next step is then teaching your brand voice.
• 5:33
  Leanne Shelton: And look, I come from a copywriting marketing background.
• 5:36
  Leanne Shelton: Right, and brand voice was so important for content marketing, for copywriting, but it's just been lost with AI.
• 5:42
  Leanne Shelton: People forget that that was the driving force of getting a copywriter most of the time to get it to sound good and sound like them.
• 5:48
  Leanne Shelton: So you want it to also sound like you and not like everyone else.
• 5:51
  Leanne Shelton: So that is the next thing you have to train up on.
• 5:53
  Leanne Shelton: And then you want it to ensure that it knows who your audience is, who your customers are, your current or potential customers.
• 6:00
  Leanne Shelton: So if it doesn't know that, once again the output is just going to miss the mark.
• 6:04
  Leanne Shelton: So you need to train up to understand those three core things, to ensure quality and that actually complements what you're all about and not replacing you, and then you can then take over and challenge the output it gives you.
• 6:17
  Leanne Shelton: Like you can test those things.
• 6:18
  Leanne Shelton: Yes, I agree what it's giving me, no, and as you go through time of using it, you're training it up.
• 6:23
  Leanne Shelton: So mine, after like two years of consecutive usage of Chatsbury Tea, it can nail my brand voice and I can write an article in an hour that I feel comfortable putting out to the world because it sounds like me, but I've had enough input in it that it's still me.
• 6:37
  Ness: That's so important, isn't it?
• 6:39
  Ness: That we don't lose that, and I think that's a key if you are putting out content into the world, and I know that there are clients that use AI to help them with proposals and to help them with, you know, reports or whatever it is back to their clients or seeking work, but we can't lose us within that.
• 6:58
  Ness: And I think what you said is really important there around training it up to understand who you are, because that is what I didn't like about chat GPT when it first came in it was.
• 7:10
  Ness: It just sounded awful and it was like but I would never say things like that, and so I felt like at the beginning I would spend just as much time rewriting something as what it, you know like, said there was in my head.
• 7:23
  Ness: There were no time efficiencies whatsoever, and I think my lesson in that was I didn't actually like I was just doing it intuitively instead of perhaps going and finding out, well, how do I make it work best for me and what's everything you've just said?
• 7:38
  Ness: You know I didn't.
• 7:39
  Ness: I didn't have that in my knowledge bank when I first opened it up, so but I see our clients, you know, using it.
• 7:45
  Ness: Particularly helpful around getting started with training, with job descriptions, with ads for, you know, positions available.
• 7:54
  Ness: There's so many different ways that I can see business owners and leaders can really be using this to start to help them, and I so relate to the procrastination or overthinking thing that if I had that when I started my first business, it would be, you know, like just give me something, because staring at a blank page is really hard to get started working with.
• 8:15
  Ness: I'm really curious.
• 8:16
  Ness: So if that is freeing us up time and we're able to find ways for AI to work for us, what is it that you think AI is not going to replace?
• 8:27
  Ness: Because a lot of people are quite fearful that AI is going to take over the world and nobody will have a job.
• 8:33
  Ness: And you know all these things, given your expertise, you know and you can see where the future is going with this.
• 8:40
  Ness: What's it not going to replace for us?
• 8:42
  Leanne Shelton: Oh, 100%.
• 8:43
  Leanne Shelton: It is not going to replace the human connection, and I'm currently writing a book about this called the AI Human Fusion, and, yeah, you guys are going to be featured In that book.
• 8:53
  Leanne Shelton: I'm really saying that human connection is going to be so vital, even more so with AI, because when things like deep fakes come out and people can easily replicate your voice on the phone, whole no like trust factor, like ensuring trust before you make a transaction, is just going to be harder and harder.
• 9:12
  Leanne Shelton: So we're going to actually have to go old school, traditional meeting up with people face to face more often, I think for networking, for, like you know, some Asian cultures they only do sales transactions in person.
• 9:24
  Leanne Shelton: I actually think it's going to happen, rather than hiding more behind the screens, from a cybersecurity point of view as well, as we just want to have that human interaction, and I actually mentioned the book.
• 9:35
  Leanne Shelton: It's so ironic with during COVID times, even the most introverted person still wanted to talk to people, to humans, at one point.
• 9:42
  Leanne Shelton: Some people are using AI to just write and comment on LinkedIn, for example, and I'm like we don't want bots talking to bots, like how does that serve us as people and you know just what you're saying as well about.
• 9:55
  Leanne Shelton: You know, things like job descriptions, or even I've heard, with award writing and stuff, award applications, that people just use AI and hand it all over.
• 10:02
  Leanne Shelton: No, we need to see the human come through that.
• 10:05
  Leanne Shelton: We need to make sure your expertise, your experience, is coming through those things.
• 10:08
  Leanne Shelton: So what's going to be really important is having humans managing the tools, not just letting the tools run rampant.
• 10:15
  Leanne Shelton: I'm seeing that especially for like marketing.
• 10:18
  Leanne Shelton: I, as a copywriter who's been in this space for a couple of years, I can easily see if something's AI generated and more and more people are also developing the sixth sense.
• 10:27
  Leanne Shelton: And so you want to be aware of falling into that trap of thinking oh, I'm being so productive and thinking about them, how the tool's helping them, and not think about how it's being received.
• 10:38
  Leanne Shelton: And that is the problem.
• 10:40
  Leanne Shelton: They're not thinking about how it's going to come across.
• 10:42
  Leanne Shelton: They're thinking I just smashed out that in five minutes.
• 10:44
  Leanne Shelton: How good am I?
• 10:45
  Leanne Shelton: It's going to affect your brand potentially.
• 10:48
  Leanne Shelton: Or people won't go for that job because it sounds generic and they don't think a human really cares enough.
• 10:54
  Leanne Shelton: Maybe it reflects the culture, I don't know.
• 10:56
  Leanne Shelton: This is kind of the vibes you just might put across.
• 10:59
  Leanne Shelton: Or I know of awards submissions I've heard from judges totally just ignore all the submissions that obviously are generated because there was not enough human.
• 11:07
  Leanne Shelton: So the humanity, ironically, is going to be even more important.
• 11:11
  Nicky: We've had clients who have been recruiting and they received cover letters that were pretty much identical, so it was obvious that it was using.
• 11:19
  Nicky: Ai and immediately.
• 11:20
  Nicky: They don't kind of get along.
• 11:21
  Leanne Shelton: Yeah, they'll get along too 100%.
• 11:23
  Leanne Shelton: So don't think, oh great, I can apply for this job and not no.
• 11:27
  Leanne Shelton: I mean, look, you can use AI to potentially help you that way, but you need to put a lot of work into it and make sure it is you and it's not just you saying, hey, see, what they've asked for here.
• 11:38
  Leanne Shelton: Can you just answer this and make me sound good Like?
• 11:42
  Leanne Shelton: Authenticity is just so important and that's just something that it's been overlooked with the whole hype around AI, which really frustrates me.
• 11:49
  Nicky: So we have to think about what are we inputting, what's the brief?
• 11:52
  Nicky: And then what are we?
• 11:52
  Nicky: How are we working with the output of that as well?
• 11:56
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• 11:56
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• 12:03
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• 12:17
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• 12:23
  Nicky: I'm really curious about what are the trends you're going to see, or what are the trends you're seeing that we're all going to see, because even that shift to more face-to-face I mean that sort of makes sense, even coffee chats, but there is that convenience of Zoom, google Hangouts, you know, whatever it might be, but that deep fake is scary, the voices I don't even like saying hello, Nicky.
• 12:44
  Nicky: Well, I don't even say hello Nicky speaking when I, if you call me, if anybody rings me, I'm sorry, but it's going to be really different answering of the phone to what it would have been like three years ago, where it's like hi, Nicky speaking, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, cause I'm like I don't know are they recording me?
• 12:57
  Nicky: So I'm going to start a trend now.
• 12:59
  Nicky: So what else do you think are some of the key trends that you're projecting for the future?
• 13:03
  Nicky: What's going to shift in the world of business?
• 13:05
  Leanne Shelton: when it comes to AI, yeah, so there's a lot of talk around agentic AI, so like agents, so AI agents basically doing all back-end stuff.
• 13:14
  Leanne Shelton: So say, one bot does the research and the other bot writes the article, another bot puts in the SEO, another bot repurpose it in the social, and that's just like a marketing point of view.
• 13:25
  Leanne Shelton: Or there could be other steps as well.
• 13:26
  Leanne Shelton: If it is recruitment purposes, it could be this bot reviews all the resumes and then this bot then picks out the best ones based on the criteria and this bot then sends out Zoom links to the lineup meetings or whatever.
• 13:39
  Leanne Shelton: So this kind of stuff will need a lot of human input, though, to make sure that they're doing the right things and, once again, the person on the other side is getting the best experience.
• 13:49
  Leanne Shelton: But that kind of stuff is going to come out more and more and at the moment, like, I haven't played around with it because it seems very fiddly and techie.
• 13:56
  Leanne Shelton: So you know, I'm assuming it'll evolve and become a lot more accessible and easy for the everyday person to set up these things.
• 14:03
  Leanne Shelton: Same with yeah, like I know someone who's got a phone agent.
• 14:07
  Leanne Shelton: She's already had a virtual phone agency for years and now introducing AI ones.
• 14:12
  Leanne Shelton: I'm not a fan of getting an AI voice of me pretending to be me on phone calls or anything.
• 14:18
  Leanne Shelton: I do not believe in that.
• 14:19
  Leanne Shelton: I don't believe in digital avatars pretending to be me.
• 14:22
  Leanne Shelton: I prefer to have one that I've made up that calls itself my assistant, rather than a replica of me.
• 14:27
  Leanne Shelton: Wow, but that can be done.
• 14:29
  Leanne Shelton: It can be done.
• 14:31
  Leanne Shelton: This is the thing it can be done.
• 14:34
  Leanne Shelton: And I see some of the other AI experts going oh how cool is this?
• 14:38
  Leanne Shelton: This is the digital avatar of me and it sounds like me and I'm like why are you making this a thing?
• 14:43
  Leanne Shelton: I do not agree with it.
• 14:44
  Leanne Shelton: Like I said, I'm about authenticity and I don't because then people start to question is it even Leanne running that webinar, or is it a replica of her?
• 14:53
  Leanne Shelton: And is it actually what, leanne?
• 14:55
  Leanne Shelton: Is it Leanne's script, or did someone else randomly put that script and just slap my name on it and say I did it?
• 15:00
  Nicky: also, how much easier is it then for someone else to take your avatar that's it like did you were you even involved in creating the avatar.
• 15:08
  Nicky: Okay, this is freaking me out now.
• 15:09
  Leanne Shelton: Yeah, so this is where I say don't fall down that rabbit hole going shiny objects so cool, just be, look, I've I've had, you know, there's 150 episodes of my own podcast plus probably another 50 podcasts I've been a guest on.
• 15:23
  Leanne Shelton: People can easily take my voice and do it if they wanted to.
• 15:25
  Leanne Shelton: I'm not going to make anything easier, but look, just don't get caught up in the fear factor.
• 15:31
  Leanne Shelton: We just got to trust that enough government regulations start coming in and these people will be heavily penalized if that starts to happen.
• 15:37
  Leanne Shelton: But yeah, agentic AI is going to be a trend.
• 15:38
  Leanne Shelton: There's definitely going to be a lot of focus around responsible and ethical usage.
• 15:47
  Leanne Shelton: So I'm going to put emphasis onto AI policy.
• 15:48
  Leanne Shelton: This year.
• 15:48
  Leanne Shelton: I'm going to start working with an IP lawyer, so she'll be part of my team.
• 15:50
  Leanne Shelton: If anyone wants to have an AI policy to really explain full transparency at your company, at your business, where you use AI, where you don't use AI, how you protect your client's data.
• 16:00
  Leanne Shelton: That's going to become a real core thing this year.
• 16:02
  Leanne Shelton: And also about the whole security of data.
• 16:05
  Leanne Shelton: That is a big thing.
• 16:06
  Leanne Shelton: It's also become focus as we speak.
• 16:08
  Leanne Shelton: Deepseek just came out, china's equivalent of ChatsBT, which apparently can be taken offline, which is meant to be more secure because all the data you insert stays on your own computer.
• 16:20
  Leanne Shelton: But that brings up questions itself about how powerful is your computer?
• 16:27
  Leanne Shelton: Can it handle it?
• 16:27
  Leanne Shelton: Do we need to then start to buy other computers that adjust for AI usage?
• 16:29
  Leanne Shelton: Do we have to turn off the internet every time we want to use AI and is that going to work?
• 16:33
  Leanne Shelton: All these kinds of questions, and there's like sustainability questions as well, like environmentally, like there's a lot of.
• 16:41
  Leanne Shelton: I won't go into it, but like the data, the power, it needs to be powered somehow and that's also a cause of concern.
• 16:48
  Leanne Shelton: So, now that I think people are starting to getting over the you know, the initial excitement, now reality is starting to hit in.
• 16:54
  Leanne Shelton: How's this going to look long-term and people putting in proper practices and just being aware of how this is going to work in the long-term?
• 17:04
  Nicky: It's interesting.
• 17:05
  Nicky: You bring up environment because I wanted to ask you about that, because I heard something about the environmental impact.
• 17:07
  Nicky: And then now I feel guilty every time I put a something into Chatty Cathy, which is our nickname for ChatGPT.
• 17:12
  Nicky: Like, is it that bad for the environment?
• 17:16
  Nicky: Like, even just every little time I use it because I don't know what to do with that information.
• 17:21
  Leanne Shelton: I know I haven't looked into it like much yet.
• 17:24
  Leanne Shelton: I probably will need to put that into my book somewhere but I have been hearing all sorts of things about how this needs to be developed and this needs to be developed and every search you do create is this much power and as more and more people use this stuff, we need to look at this.
• 17:38
  Leanne Shelton: So really curious to see where it goes.
• 17:40
  Leanne Shelton: And, yeah, like we've destroyed the world enough as it is.
• 17:44
  Leanne Shelton: Hopefully AI doesn't do it more.
• 17:46
  Leanne Shelton: But there's a couple of questions that I want people to just pause and think about.
• 17:49
  Leanne Shelton: Like I did put a post on LinkedIn about let's just pause for a second, like deep seek, everyone's like, oh, it's so easy to just get caught up in this whirlwind of AI the coolness factor and I say, look, just like I said, to start small, just start dabbling with it.
• 18:06
  Leanne Shelton: Don't freak out too much.
• 18:07
  Leanne Shelton: Just don't over-invest in big projects and don't over-invest in all the new tools or whatever and I mean it goes against productivity if you're just constantly playing with tools anyway, but we just need to keep our human brain active and thinking about it, not just get caught up in it, and I think that's something that active and thinking about it, not just get caught up in it.
• 18:21
  Leanne Shelton: And I think that's something that, yeah, it's very easy to do, especially if you think it's exciting and new.
• 18:25
  Leanne Shelton: But all right, there are implications of this.
• 18:32
  Leanne Shelton: And especially if you do have a team, you want to make sure everyone's on the same page with it.
• 18:34
  Leanne Shelton: And, yeah, don't kind of just go crazy with it before.
• 18:36
  Leanne Shelton: Like I'm saying with DeepSeek it's just been released, let's just work out the bugs before everyone dives onto it.
• 18:42
  Leanne Shelton: But yeah, I'll just get excited.
• 18:46
  Ness: Well, it's interesting because I wonder, when you look at the sort of the business landscape, do you think that there's a big uptake in business around AI?
• 18:54
  Ness: Do you think some of the bigger corporates and you know some of the communities out there of small to medium businesses Do you have any sort of stats on how much of a take up that is, how many percentage of people are actually utilizing that in business?
• 19:09
  Leanne Shelton: nowadays it's probably lower than you think.
• 19:11
  Leanne Shelton: I did see some stats recently about Australia and New Zealand and we're way down the bottom in terms of implementation, I think because we're very wary about it all.
• 19:19
  Leanne Shelton: I can't remember what the stats were, but definitely the big organizations.
• 19:23
  Leanne Shelton: Just so much wariness around the security and so, like I know, my sister-in-law works at a large accounting firm and they're only just maybe starting to implement AI but being very cautious with it.
• 19:34
  Leanne Shelton: So that's once we kind of get over the security thing.
• 19:37
  Leanne Shelton: Like I'm trying to do it for my own clients, even smaller clients, like there's a legal client, no-transcript how good would that be.
• 20:02
  Leanne Shelton: But I don't want to use touch potato to help them with their training for their workshop.
• 20:06
  Leanne Shelton: I want to find a good, secure platform.
• 20:08
  Leanne Shelton: So I feel comfortable, you know, saying it's okay for you to use this because then it comes back onto me too.
• 20:14
  Leanne Shelton: So there's a lot of tiptoeing still overseas.
• 20:18
  Leanne Shelton: Like there's an equivalent of me, Heather Murray, who's a UK copywriter turned non-techie AI trainer very similar and she seems to be like going everywhere with these big clients all over there because everyone seems a lot more on board than here.
• 20:30
  Leanne Shelton: It's very much like.
• 20:32
  Leanne Shelton: I had a conversation with Ticketmaster the other day and about doing a talk for them and the next month and they're like all the senior leaders are still like completely brand new, have no idea.
• 20:41
  Leanne Shelton: And I'm like okay, so that's an example of one of the companies here barely using it still two years or so after Chachapik was released.
• 20:50
  Ness: Yeah, yeah, because I would imagine you know you've got your first fast followers and you and I think of that bell curve always about there's always going to be the laggers and the you know the majority of people who join at the same time.
• 21:03
  Ness: What piece of advice would you give somebody who is listening to this conversation, runs their own business or is a leader in business and is kind of like on the fence going oh, I just do, I invest time and effort and energy, like for what purpose?
• 21:20
  Ness: Because it's moving so quickly that if I invest in getting my whole team trained in something, is that something that's only going to be relevant for the next three months and therefore it's just like why am I going down this path?
• 21:32
  Ness: So I'm just curious if you could talk to that for our people who are sitting on the fence a little bit around AI.
• 21:38
  Leanne Shelton: That question actually is exactly what my publisher said I have to talk about in my first chapter.
• 21:42
  Ness: So I'm going to go into that.
• 21:44
  Leanne Shelton: Yeah, I think you need to.
• 21:46
  Leanne Shelton: It's not going to go away.
• 21:47
  Leanne Shelton: But you can also dig your head in the sand.
• 21:49
  Leanne Shelton: It is going to keep changing.
• 21:51
  Leanne Shelton: But if it's just like social media, the internet, even like electricity when that came out there's only so long you can just avoid it and then you have to kind of come on board and just kind of get your head around it.
• 22:07
  Leanne Shelton: So what I teach in my training it's quite often just the basics in terms of the mindset around it.
• 22:09
  Leanne Shelton: So like the ethics, responsible usage, because also we're writing my book and I make sure it's still relevant after it goes to print, right?
• 22:13
  Leanne Shelton: So I'm talking more big picture which isn't going to change.
• 22:17
  Leanne Shelton: So just how you approach it, keeping it human, knowing when you use it as a tool to support you.
• 22:23
  Leanne Shelton: When does the human just take over, when are you falling into bad habits?
• 22:27
  Leanne Shelton: And knowing like to recognize that's happening.
• 22:29
  Leanne Shelton: But getting a training with your team, it's not a waste of time because what I teach is very basic.
• 22:33
  Leanne Shelton: It's like training up to understand your business.
• 22:35
  Leanne Shelton: It's honestly, it's just getting their hands dirty and seeing what's possible and what's and where the limitations are.
• 22:41
  Leanne Shelton: Because, look, they're going to be doing it anyway, whether you know it or not.
• 22:50
  Leanne Shelton: Maybe they're completely denying that you're using AI, but they're using it or they're completely freaked out by it.
• 22:52
  Leanne Shelton: So the best thing you can do as a leader is just help ease people into it.
• 22:54
  Leanne Shelton: Go, it's okay, safe space.
• 22:55
  Leanne Shelton: I know you want to use it.
• 22:56
  Leanne Shelton: I think it could be useful.
• 22:58
  Leanne Shelton: Let's do it properly.
• 22:59
  Leanne Shelton: Let's just start doing this and this.
• 23:01
  Leanne Shelton: Yeah, just don't go over investing spending tens of thousands of dollars on promises of things that aren't quite ready yet to trust, like tools that I wouldn't trust.
• 23:11
  Leanne Shelton: My business hand over.
• 23:12
  Leanne Shelton: That's what I would do.
• 23:13
  Leanne Shelton: So that's what my training is honestly, just making everyone feel going from like unprepared because AI just kind of appeared out of nowhere, to prepared and feeling going from unclear and having no idea what next steps are, what tools to use, to much more clearer.
• 23:28
  Leanne Shelton: And then going from, like you know, being unskilled to skilled and actually having the skills and the confidence to give it a go, but know when not.
• 23:38
  Leanne Shelton: Okay, it's given me that starting point.
• 23:39
  Leanne Shelton: I now know what to do to take over, to prompt it or just take it offline.
• 23:44
  Leanne Shelton: So that's so.
• 23:45
  Leanne Shelton: That's really what it is right now.
• 23:46
  Leanne Shelton: It's a mindset thing that you need to work on with your team.
• 23:48
  Leanne Shelton: So don't go into training about tools because they may be redundant, irrelevant, bought out six months, you don't know, but the concepts that is not going to go away so important.
• 24:00
  Ness: And it was interesting what you just said then around you know people are probably using it outside of work anyway.
• 24:06
  Ness: So, as a leader, we want to be on the front foot because if we bury our head in the sand and especially our younger generation, who are coming into the workforce if they're all over it and we don't have we haven't stopped to think about the repercussions or to talk about how we use AI in this business and, like you said, the policy around what is okay to use it for and what is not, then we could end up in a really sticky situation, with people who know how to do it going ahead and just, and then we've got those who feel intimidated by the change, who may be a bit slower to learn and adapt, and feeling that gap get bigger and bigger.
• 24:46
  Ness: So it's definitely topical and it's definitely, you know, who may be a bit slower to learn and adapt, and filling that gap get bigger and bigger.
• 24:50
  Ness: So it's definitely topical and it's definitely, you know, a key thing that's not going away.
• 24:52
  Ness: So we really need to work out how we're going to use it the best in our business.
• 25:00
  Ness: Look, this has been a fascinating conversation.
• 25:01
  Ness: I loved our last conversation we have.
• 25:02
  Ness: It is opening my eyes more and more to how we can use this in our business, and I'm curious, as we wrap up, you know, we often say at the end of our podcast, what's an actionable action that our listeners can take in the next 24 hours?
• 25:13
  Ness: And I guess I want to kind of make it a little bit more broader for, you know, depending on who's listening, perhaps make it more personal around what we can do to get more comfortable with AI.
• 25:24
  Ness: So can you think of something that we could do within 24 hours that would be helpful to just take that one step closer to understanding and using AI?
• 25:33
  Leanne Shelton: Okay, yeah, so one fun little exercise I get people to do just to see the difference with brand voice.
• 25:38
  Leanne Shelton: So I mean you want to train up and all that.
• 25:41
  Leanne Shelton: But what I recommend is just getting to say, okay, say please, I use please and thank you.
• 25:45
  Leanne Shelton: I think it's just good.
• 25:46
  Leanne Shelton: But I say, you know, say something like please write me a 500 word article on, insert a random topic relevant to industry, right, it's good to do that, see what it gives you.
• 25:55
  Leanne Shelton: Then say thank you, please rewrite in a professional and conversational tone.
• 26:01
  Leanne Shelton: Then see how it changes slightly.
• 26:03
  Leanne Shelton: The message will be there but the wording will be different.
• 26:06
  Leanne Shelton: Then say, okay, please rewrite in a professional, conversational and quirky tone, or insert some other random word, right, and see how it changes again.
• 26:15
  Leanne Shelton: And this is a really fun exercise to show you you putting your input in how it changes the output.
• 26:21
  Leanne Shelton: And it just gives you a really good example of when people just go write me this generic but as you just add this and you can only imagine, if you say, you can even add and write it for women who are 50 plus in senior leadership roles, and then see how it changes again and then you'll realize how the context of audience changes it.
• 26:40
  Leanne Shelton: So that's a little fun exercise and you just see what I mean by why you need to train it up and give directions.
• 26:46
  Ness: Yeah, I love that so much.
• 26:47
  Ness: You've just reminded me, at Christmas time we had my sister and I were responsible for the family Christmas, for all the fun activities, and we we had all the logistics and all the instructions of the things that we were doing over the Christmas Eve, christmas day.
• 27:01
  Ness: But we kind of wanted to jazz it up.
• 27:03
  Ness: So we actually put it into AI and said create an invitation for the family members and write it in the voice of the Grinch.
• 27:10
  Ness: And it was hilarious what it came back with.
• 27:12
  Ness: We loved it.
• 27:13
  Ness: We had to.
• 27:13
  Ness: You know, we had to send it off to my dad because it did say he's that old, he's probably remembers when Christmas was invented and we're like, oh ouch, are we allowed to distribute this amongst the family?
• 27:26
  Ness: So so that was a lot of fun that we had with it and as we're sitting there going well, we want this to be a bit more jazzier and a bit more fun than what we.
• 27:37
  Ness: Our brains were not in that space at all.
• 27:38
  Ness: So I can see how doing that is is really useful.
• 27:40
  Ness: And on this note I'll wrap up.
• 27:42
  Ness: But I remember somebody telling us it's like you've got to think about AI, like your hungover intern, like they're super enthusiastic and they want to help, but they're not 100% on point today.
• 27:53
  Ness: So be careful that what you ask is, you know, like it's just the quality of the question that you ask that is going to determine the quality of the answer.
• 28:01
  Leanne Shelton: Yeah, I say the assistant thing.
• 28:03
  Leanne Shelton: I haven't tried the hungover one, but yeah, I like that too.
• 28:09
  Ness: Awesome.
• 28:09
  Ness: Thank you so much for joining us.
• 28:11
  Ness: Goodbye from Nicky as well.
• 28:12
  Ness: She had to shoot off just a little bit earlier, but it's been lovely having you here and we'll be back in your listening ears again shortly.
• 28:19
  Ness: Thanks Leanne, thanks Ness.
• 28:21
  Ness: Thanks for listening to today's ep.
• 28:24
  Ness: If you loved what you heard, connect with us over on LinkedIn and let's continue the conversation over there.
• 28:29
  Ness: Did you hear?
• 28:30
  Ness: You can now buy our book Healthy Hustle the new blueprint to thrive in business and life, at healthyhustlecomau.
• 28:38
  Ness: Want us to speak to your team or run a workshop on healthy hustle in your workplace?
• 28:43
  Ness: Send us an email or go old school and give us a call to discuss.
• 28:47
  Ness: Until next time, happy listening and here's to thriving in business and life.