Latest / Wedding Pros who are ready to grow - with Becca Pountney / Why AI is killing your marketing

Transcript

Why AI is killing your marketing · Wedding Pros who are ready to grow - with Becca Pountney

• 0:41
  I want to start today's episode with something a little bit uncomfortable.
• 0:44
  I've been looking at wedding business marketing all over Instagram, all over websites, all over blogs and I've noticed something worrying.
• 0:51
  So much of it is sounding exactly the same.
• 0:53
  The same captions, the same phrases, the same slightly too perfect images.
• 0:58
  And I know why.
• 0:59
  It's AI.
• 1:01
  So today I'm asking you a big question.
• 1:03
  Is AI killing your marketing?
• 1:05
  And more importantly, what do you do about it?
• 1:08
  I'm Becca Pountney, wedding business marketing expert, strategist, speaker and author.
• 1:13
  Over the last decade, I've combined my love of marketing with my knowledge of the wedding industry to help thousands of wedding pros and venues just like you learn new skills, strategize, get re energized and grow their businesses.
• 1:25
  Because after all, that's how you stay top of your game.
• 1:28
  Whether you're brand new into this industry or been here forever, I want to help.
• 1:33
  So grab a cup of tea or a cocktail, sit back and enjoy a brand new episode of my award winning podcast, Wedding Pros who Are Ready to Grow.
• 1:40
  Let's get going with today's episode.
• 1:43
  Foreign.
• 1:47
  Today's episode.
• 1:48
  It's one that I've been itching to record because it's coming up in a lot of conversations I have with wedding business owners at the moment.
• 1:54
  And I've been speaking about it a little bit on this podcast and on other podcasts where I've been a guest and it's the topic of AI, but not whether you should use your AI or how you should use
• 2:04
  AI.
• 2:05
  It's this bigger question around is AI actually killing your marketing?
• 2:10
  Now I need to let you know that I am not anti AI.
• 2:13
  This is not an anti AI podcast at all.
• 2:16
  But what I am anti is your marketing being bad.
• 2:19
  And whether I'm speaking at events, chatting in the members lounge, or just looking at my own feed, the same worry keeps coming up and it's should I be using AI?
• 2:28
  And also am I using it wrong?
• 2:31
  Now I use AI every single day in my business.
• 2:33
  So as I said, I'm not hating on AI.
• 2:35
  And later in this episode, I'm going to show you and tell you exactly what I'm using AI for because I think it's more useful to know what I'm using it for.
• 2:44
  But the trap that I think the industry is falling in into right now is that you're using it badly and it's impacting your marketing and I want you to help spot that mistake before it starts to cost you
• 2:57
  booking.
• 2:58
  So here's the plan.
• 2:59
  Firstly, I'm going to show you the trap and I'm going to give you a few slight, uncomfortable honesty checks.
• 3:04
  And then I'm going to give you the reframe that's going to change everything.
• 3:08
  And then we're going to get really practical with a simple filter you can apply to your social media, your blog, your inquiries, and I'm going to finish by telling you exactly how AI fits into my own week so
• 3:18
  that you can steal what works.
• 3:20
  So let's start then with the trap.
• 3:22
  Where are people going wrong?
• 3:24
  Where maybe you'd be going wrong in your own business?
• 3:26
  Well, here's what I see happening.
• 3:29
  A few years back, AI was very new and people were just starting to discover it and we were getting excited about what it could do.
• 3:37
  And now more and more people have adopted AI.
• 3:40
  In fact, my mother in law very recently sent me a cartoon picture she'd made in ChatGPT.
• 3:45
  Now I remember people making cartoon pictures of themselves on ChatGPT two or three years ago and now she's just discovered it.
• 3:51
  So AI adoption is becoming more wide and more and more people are understanding the power of it.
• 3:57
  However, a lot of people are still using AI in 2026 in the same way they were using it when they first discovered it.
• 4:04
  So, for example, you may type into your AI write me an Instagram caption for a wedding venue.
• 4:09
  You copy it, you paste it, it's done.
• 4:11
  But what happens is we end up with really boring generic results because AI is just looking at everyone else's.
• 4:18
  What's a good social media caption for a venue?
• 4:20
  And everyone is starting to sou the same.
• 4:23
  So the result of that is I'm seeing generic posters.
• 4:25
  I'm sure you've seen these all over your local village, all over Facebook, everywhere.
• 4:29
  Posters which are clearly made with AI.
• 4:32
  And I don't know about you, but there's something that makes me just turn a blind eye to them.
• 4:35
  It's not that we shouldn't use AI in graphic design, but lazy graphic design.
• 4:39
  Using AI is just as poor as lazy graphic design because it's boring.
• 4:43
  Everyone's posters are starting to look the same.
• 4:45
  Nothing about it stands out and then you lose people's attention.
• 4:48
  I'm seeing really bland captions, so everyone's sounding the same.
• 4:52
  I'm seeing blog posts that have clearly just been written to tick a box.
• 4:55
  So there's no creativity, there's no different angle.
• 4:58
  It's just ask AI for a blog post so you can tick that box and say yeah, I've done a blog post this month and the really worrying one for me is replies to inquiries or pitches that come into
• 5:10
  my podcast where the emails have lost all human connection or human sound and they just sound like they've been written by ChatGPT, mainly because they probably were.
• 5:19
  And loads of clear signs of this.
• 5:21
  Sometimes I see things presented in certain fonts that just look like they've been copy and pasted or the font still looks different, all those M dashes that keep appearing and again, it just.
• 5:32
  There's nothing wrong with utilizing it.
• 5:34
  But when you are starting to sound the same as all of your competitors, that's when it becomes a problem in your business.
• 5:41
  And I want to be really clear about why I think this is happening because I don't think it's that you're being lazy and I don't think that it's because you are worrying about being poor in your marketing.
• 5:53
  I actually think that it's because you're busy.
• 5:56
  You're so busy doing weddings at the weekend, admin in the evenings, childcare marketing in the gaps.
• 6:01
  And this tool has come along ChatGPT, Claude, whichever AI large language model you're using and it promises to take a job off your plate.
• 6:10
  And of course you're going to do that, because if one job can come off your plate and it's going to save you time, you want to grab onto that because we're all time poor and so that's the temptation.
• 6:20
  But here's the bit that nobody is telling you.
• 6:22
  You these tools are actually just trained on the same Internet, okay?
• 6:27
  They don't really have a brain, they're just trained on information.
• 6:30
  Now, they're incredibly clever, but they are just trained on the same Internet and answering the same prompts for thousands of business owners at once.
• 6:38
  So when you and every other venue, photographer, florist, celebrant in your county all ask for an engaging Instagram caption about the golden hour, you're all going to get variations of the same answer and your voice is going to
• 6:50
  have disappeared from that.
• 6:51
  It's going to sound bland because you're just getting the average version of everyone's voice.
• 6:57
  And the problem with that is that when everyone looks and sounds identical and couples can't tell you apart, the only thing left for them to choose between you is price, right?
• 7:08
  And when you look the same, they are just going to go for the cheapest option, which is not what any of us want.
• 7:12
  And I've spent the last few years talking about how to be unapologetically yourself, how to have your personality in your marketing, how the only differentiating factor between what you do and what a competitor does is.
• 7:23
  Is you.
• 7:24
  But AI is starting to strip that from some of you because you're trying to save time.
• 7:30
  And when they're deciding on price, you just end up becoming a commodity.
• 7:33
  And we know that none of you want to compete on price alone.
• 7:36
  You didn't start this business to be the cheapest option.
• 7:39
  You started it to be brilliant at what you do.
• 7:41
  So here are some honesty checks, and I've actually created a worksheet that you can go through that goes alongside this if you want it.
• 7:49
  And I'll put the link in the show notes.
• 7:50
  So here are the honesty checks.
• 7:52
  I want you to think through these things and be really honest with yourself because no one else is listening.
• 7:57
  You don't need to tell me.
• 7:58
  Just answer them reflectively.
• 8:00
  So question number one.
• 8:02
  Are you currently typing generic prompts into AI and then posting whatever comes out without barely editing it?
• 8:09
  If so, that could be a problem.
• 8:11
  Okay, number two, If I took your captions and looked at them without any images, could they belong to any wedding business in the country?
• 8:19
  If I took your name off of them, or would it be really clear?
• 8:23
  Or there'd be something in it that made them sound like you and your personality.
• 8:27
  Okay, here's the test.
• 8:28
  Go read your last five captions and ask yourself, could my nearest competitor have posted this word for word, or is there something about it?
• 8:35
  Is there some storytelling?
• 8:36
  Is there some personality traits?
• 8:38
  You know, if I throw in something about the Spice Girls or about musical theater or, you know, something that sounds like me, you know, when you read something and you can hear the voice of the person saying it,
• 8:47
  then your competitor couldn't have written it.
• 8:49
  It wouldn't have worked for them.
• 8:50
  Okay, number three, are you using any AI generated images for anything?
• 8:54
  Okay, I'm really hoping that you're not, but I understand, again, the temptation, especially when you are starting out.
• 9:02
  You.
• 9:03
  You don't have the images, and you think, I can create the images, but it's kind of false.
• 9:07
  And the same where people are doing these trends where they pretend to be at celebrities weddings or pretend to be at the World cup and pretend to be a supplier.
• 9:15
  And that's a big problem because we're living in an economy, a trust economy.
• 9:19
  And if we are making images which are fake, yes, they might be a joke.
• 9:24
  But if your couples don't realize that, or people pick it up and think you're really doing those things, and then Realize you're not.
• 9:30
  You've kind of lost that trust.
• 9:32
  And so really you should be creative.
• 9:34
  You should be able to get your own images.
• 9:36
  You shouldn't need to be using AI images, especially in your marketing now, maybe as a mock up, maybe client facing once they've booked you to see how something could look, but not in your marketing.
• 9:45
  And if you do, you should be clearly labeling them so people know.
• 9:49
  And four, this is a big one and I think I'm seeing a lot of people doing that.
• 9:54
  If you're honest with yourself, do you think you've stopped trusting in your own creative instincts because it feels easier and safer to ask the robot?
• 10:04
  Have you noticed that little voice that used to say to you, oh, I've got an idea for a post has actually gone a bit quiet lately because you're thinking, I'm just going to ask my AI what I should
• 10:15
  write today and your personality and your confidence is gone.
• 10:19
  I want to just pause for a moment on this issue of confidence because this is genuinely something I'm seeing with some of you when you're using it to write your emails, using it to write your posts, using it
• 10:28
  to come up with ideas for your business because you don't feel like you're good enough to do that.
• 10:33
  And I want to tell you, you are good enough to do that.
• 10:36
  And you and your personality is what is going to sell your business.
• 10:39
  You don't need to sound professional and bland.
• 10:43
  You need to stand out and show up.
• 10:45
  We're in a marketing theme park world.
• 10:46
  If you don't stand and show up, it's really difficult.
• 10:50
  If you just look like everyone else, as I said, you're going to go back to sounding bland.
• 10:56
  You know, it's back to the day when I looked at styled shoots and every single style shoot looks the same as everyone else's.
• 11:01
  Okay.
• 11:02
  And it's really difficult for you to stand out.
• 11:04
  That's what's happening with this AI bland images.
• 11:07
  And in order for us to stop that, I need you to get your confidence back.
• 11:10
  I need you to get your creativity back.
• 11:12
  I need you to remember that people want to see imperfect humanness behind your emails.
• 11:19
  Yes.
• 11:19
  Use automatically automations to save yourself time on emails.
• 11:22
  Yes.
• 11:22
  When someone fills out a contact form on your website, I want them to get an email straight back with the next steps.
• 11:28
  But that email that you send straight back, you write it once in your own voice.
• 11:32
  You don't need to use AI for that.
• 11:34
  You don't need to use ChatGPT for that.
• 11:35
  Or Claude, you Can write that yourself, test it, send it out.
• 11:39
  If it doesn't work, tweak it, change it, be creative in it.
• 11:43
  Today's couples are going to become tech savvy and they're going to know when you're using AI in a way to save yourself time and being smart with it, or if you're just using it to cut corners and therefore
• 11:54
  you're not caring about them as much as you could do.
• 11:57
  Okay, now I know so far this has sounded a little bit doom and gloom, and it's probably sounded a bit like I'm anti AI.
• 12:03
  And as I said at the beginning, I'm absolutely not.
• 12:05
  And I want you to understand that AI is not the problem, it's how you're using it.
• 12:10
  And that's the whole message of this episode, really, in one sentence.
• 12:14
  I want you to write this on a sticky note and remind yourself that people buy from people and that has not changed.
• 12:21
  We may be in a more technological advancement, advanced world world, sorry, but people are still buying from people.
• 12:28
  And more than ever that human connection is important.
• 12:31
  So I want you to remember that phrase when you're thinking about how you use technology in your business in any way.
• 12:36
  And this phrase has been true in the wedding industry since time began and it's actually now more true than ever.
• 12:42
  It's your personality, your story, your way of seeing, seeing things, the slightly odd things you always say, the opinion that makes some people love you.
• 12:50
  That is what's going to make you win bookings.
• 12:52
  And AI can't replace it, but can strip it away from you if you start to let it write everything for you.
• 13:00
  And actually, I'd go a bit further though, because the more AI generated sameness that is flooding our industry, the more valuable you being recognizably human becomes.
• 13:10
  Five years ago, having some personality in your marketing was a nice to have, but actually now it's becoming a competitive advantage because the bar for sounding like an actual person is dropping around you.
• 13:22
  And this is actually genuinely one of the best marketing opportunities that you can have.
• 13:28
  And it's hiding inside something everyone is scared of.
• 13:32
  Okay, now if you're wondering about the jargon behind AI, I want to talk to you about the difference between generative AI and agentic AI.
• 13:43
  Now, this is going to be the only technical bit, but I want you to understand that AI isn't the problem, it's how you're using it.
• 13:48
  So here's a quick bit of jargon busting for you because I think it helps you to decide where AI should belong in your business.
• 13:54
  I'm reading a book at the moment and I will try and find the name of the book so that I can share it with you in the show Notes.
• 14:01
  But it basically talks about how AI shouldn't be replacing you as the business leader.
• 14:06
  Instead it should become your thought partner.
• 14:08
  It should be working alongside you, not instead of you.
• 14:10
  And at the moment, a lot of you are using AI to replace you.
• 14:13
  It's the AI Driven Leader by Jeff Woods.
• 14:16
  So I will make sure I post a link to that in the chat in case you in the Show Notes in case you want to watch it.
• 14:21
  But here's the difference then between generative AI and agentic AI, because they're the two main kinds of AI that as of summer 2026, you need to know about.
• 14:31
  And this is changing all the time.
• 14:32
  So if you're listening in the future, it may be out of date.
• 14:35
  So generative AI is the one that most of you know about.
• 14:38
  Okay?
• 14:38
  It's the thing that is you're going to and asking to create things.
• 14:41
  So you're going to Claude or ChatGPT or Gemini and saying, help me write a caption, help me create images, help me write blog posts, help me write email copy.
• 14:50
  And on the whole, the way you're using that is probably where you're causing this sameness problem, because everyone else is generating the same kinds of things from the same machine and you need to handle that with the most
• 15:02
  care.
• 15:02
  Now, a quick warning on this because again, increasingly in the education market, I am seeing people selling you solutions where you can buy this AI robot and it's going to help you write captions and help you write emails
• 15:16
  and help you write blog posts.
• 15:19
  I don't know because I haven't looked at these products deeply enough.
• 15:23
  But number one, you can probably do these things anyway with the AI you're already using.
• 15:26
  You probably don't need to buy one that's been packaged up.
• 15:29
  But secondly, make sure you understand because if multiple people start using the same thing, then you may end up just adding to this problem and sounding the same.
• 15:40
  So as with anything that you ever buy on the Internet, do your research, understand it properly, and again, don't lose your confidence.
• 15:46
  I'm sure you can write a great caption, I'm sure you can write a great email.
• 15:50
  You always have been able to.
• 15:52
  So let's not feel like we've got to pay for some magic answer to write it instead.
• 15:57
  So that is generative AI.
• 15:58
  It's when we're asking the the machine we're asking the AI to generate something for us.
• 16:04
  Now on the other side of the coin, there's this agentic AI and that is AI, which does something for you.
• 16:13
  So instead of you asking it to write something for you, it just gets on and does tasks.
• 16:17
  So think of agentic AI like an employee, someone coming and working in your business that you train up and do stuff for you.
• 16:23
  So for example, they could be doing some admin for you, they could be some research, they could be organizing data, summarizing data, doing tasks behind the scenes.
• 16:31
  Think of it less like a copywriter and more like a virtual assistant.
• 16:36
  And honestly, that is where we should be looking at using AI in our business as wedding professionals, because that is what's actually going to save you hours, but without you losing your per, your public voice, without you losing
• 16:48
  your good quality marketing, because it's not doing the front facing job that you should be doing as the business owner.
• 16:55
  Owner.
• 16:55
  You know, nobody's booking you based on how you tidy your spreadsheets or you know, summarize your reviews, or you know, put data in and get data out.
• 17:05
  So actually this is the area where I think there's lots of opportunity for you to be using and understanding AI rather than just replacing your current marketing efforts.
• 17:16
  So a rule of thumb for you when it comes to AI, I want you to be really careful when you use AI.
• 17:22
  That speaks for you.
• 17:23
  Now you can use AI to speak for.
• 17:25
  You can give it some really good prompts, you can give it some really good work.
• 17:28
  You're going to have to put a lot more effort in up front.
• 17:30
  You can't just go to that system and ask it to write your blog post.
• 17:33
  But be generous in thinking about using AI to save you time.
• 17:39
  So how can we be human versus just using AI?
• 17:44
  What's the use cases, Becca?
• 17:45
  How should we do it?
• 17:46
  Let's get really practical.
• 17:47
  So I want to give you a kind of simple filter that you can apply to any marketing job that's currently on your list.
• 17:53
  So you can work out which part of it needs to be human and which part of it you need to hand over to AI.
• 17:58
  So let's go through some of the big ones.
• 18:00
  So first up, social media.
• 18:02
  Love it or hate it, we know it's a big part of your wedding business.
• 18:05
  So how should we decide what should be done by AI and what should be done by us as humans?
• 18:11
  Well, first of all, I want to encourage you to be as human as possible with the actual content.
• 18:16
  Okay?
• 18:16
  That means it should be your face, your Voice your opinions, your behind the scenes moments, the wonky first attempt when you try and do something, the real things that happened at last weekend's wedding, that's the stuff that's going
• 18:27
  to stop the scroll because it's not the fake stuff.
• 18:31
  That's the stuff that is unapologetically you, that's going to sell you your personality.
• 18:35
  Remember, people buy from people.
• 18:38
  However, we can use AI for the scaffolding, the stuff that goes around that the planning of content ideas.
• 18:45
  When you're staring at a blank screen and thinking you can't think of the right way to write a hook and then you can get it to give you some ideas.
• 18:54
  Now you're not asking it to generate the ideas, you're putting some ideas in and getting it to come back with some hooks getting you to kind of think differently.
• 19:03
  And that's why, as Jeff said, it should be your partner rather than replacing you as the job.
• 19:08
  So for example, you could put one idea into it that's done really well already on your social media and ask it to try and generate five alternative ideas that you can film from that same idea.
• 19:19
  Help you create a content calendar.
• 19:21
  You could put data into it and try and get it to analyze the data for you in a lot quicker way than you could do it humanly.
• 19:28
  AI is a brilliant partner for your content, but it's not there to write your captions and do your posts for you.
• 19:36
  That's where you should be coming in.
• 19:37
  And if you are going to use it to write things for you, make sure you prompt it well and then make sure you go through and edit and put your personality back in.
• 19:45
  Remember what I said earlier, if I took five of your captions, would they look the same as everyone else's captions in your area that does what you do?
• 19:52
  Or is there something that makes sense, makes them stand out?
• 19:54
  Okay, the second area I want you to think about is blog post writing.
• 19:58
  Because I know that blog post writing is difficult.
• 20:01
  You want to see it as a checkbox exercise.
• 20:03
  But also Google are catching up with this.
• 20:05
  My lovely friend Sarah from Sarah Does SEO did a great video post about this recently.
• 20:10
  About how basically Google's just not indexing AI slop if it thinks you've just thrown together a blog post for your website using AI just to tick a box.
• 20:19
  It's just not indexing it, so it's pointless work.
• 20:21
  So instead when it comes to your blog post writing, you need to be be human.
• 20:25
  Tell stories, talk about real weddings, share your local knowledge, share your opinions, your genuine Point of view.
• 20:33
  Okay, if you're a venue, for example, the AI machine doesn't know what your garden smells like in June, or which corner of your venue catches the light of 4 o', clock, or where to put the cake, or you
• 20:44
  know, the experience that you bring to the table.
• 20:46
  AI can't tell you that that's you.
• 20:50
  However, AI can help you for outlines.
• 20:53
  It can help you with research, it can help you come up with a great SEO related related title.
• 20:57
  It can help you tidy up your draft or give you some first bullet point ideas that you can then write around.
• 21:03
  The order matters here because ideally the draft should start with you with your ideas going into it.
• 21:09
  Even if you speak into AI and say, I'm looking to write a blog post about this, this is my experience, this is why I want to write it, this is how I want it to perform in search, give
• 21:16
  it as much information as possible, see what comes back, edit it and then polish it using AI and ask AI to make it sound less like it's written by AI.
• 21:25
  Take out those M dashes, look for the format that is very AI driven and bring your personality back to it.
• 21:32
  It should be seasoned by you, not started by AI and seasoned by you.
• 21:38
  It should be full of you and then just AI to just lift it or to give you the ideas when you're feeling blank.
• 21:44
  That is going to produce two completely different blog posts.
• 21:47
  And couples can tell.
• 21:49
  They want your opinion, they want your ideas, they want your unique viewpoint, they want personality.
• 21:56
  Okay, now let's come back to those inquiry responses.
• 21:59
  Remember I said about inquiry responses.
• 22:01
  Now I did a marketing review for a venue recently and as part of that I did some competitor analysis and I, I contacted some of their competitors and the review, the responses I got, two of them were quite
• 22:12
  clearly written by AI.
• 22:14
  They didn't sound very personable, they sounded like a robot.
• 22:17
  And it just, it just wasn't particularly appealing.
• 22:21
  So instead, what should we be doing?
• 22:23
  Well, we can be human with the warmth, the tone, the, you know, all of that information.
• 22:30
  We can be personal about it.
• 22:31
  Now we may send an automated reply.
• 22:33
  It may not be personal to the point of us answering a question, but it also doesn't need to be sounding like it's written by a robot.
• 22:40
  And then if you do send that automated reply and you have time, follow up with a personal response as well, which does note what they've said in their email and does talk to them as well.
• 22:50
  You can use AI to give you ideas, check your tone.
• 22:53
  If you're replying to A late night email at 10 o', clock, or you think it sounds too angry.
• 22:57
  Or maybe you could use it to draft boring logistical bits, directions, parking, timings.
• 23:02
  But the couples are going to smell a copy and paste reply a mile off.
• 23:07
  And remember your inquiry replies the first impression you make.
• 23:11
  So yes, speed is important, but the warmth is what's going to convert.
• 23:16
  Okay, you may be thinking, great, Becca, you've told me all of the things we should and shouldn't be doing, but how are you actually using AI in your business?
• 23:24
  So.
• 23:25
  So as I said, I'm going to practice what I preach.
• 23:27
  I'm going to pull back the curtain a little bit because hopefully hearing some real examples will make this land.
• 23:32
  And this is where AI genuinely earns its keep in my week.
• 23:36
  So as I said, just like Jeff said in his book, I try and use it as a thinking partner.
• 23:41
  So when I'm planning an idea or I want to work through a problem, I will open up Claude and I will talk it out with AI the same way I would if I had someone working with me in
• 23:51
  the business.
• 23:52
  I don't say, can you write this for me?
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  But I will say, here's what I'm thinking.
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  What does this sound like?
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  What have I missed?
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  What opinions should I add?
• 23:59
  A testimonial in here and it's starting to sharpen my thinking and sharpen my outlook.
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  And I do speak to it.
• 24:05
  I find it a lot easier to speak into my microphone to AI and it type back rather than me trying to type everything else.
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  And it helps me share my ideas.
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  Sometimes a big jumble mess of ideas.
• 24:15
  I put it in and it gives me ideas out.
• 24:18
  Sometimes I use it for admin and organization.
• 24:21
  I might use it to summarize a long document or put my day together.
• 24:25
  I might use it to tidy up processes or workflows.
• 24:29
  I might even use it to get help and support.
• 24:32
  I love to put a screenshot into AI if there's a technical problem and ask it to solve it.
• 24:37
  Sometimes I might use it for repurposing so we could use it in we use AI in the podcast episode to create the transcript of the episode so that you can read it.
• 24:46
  Sometimes we might use it to get ideas for the show notes or to to remind us what links we're supposed to put in the episode.
• 24:53
  And we could use it for social media prompts as well.
• 24:56
  I know Simona uses it sometimes.
• 24:58
  So we put the video footage of the podcast an AI tool which then finds the best bits of the podcast and chops them up, but she then has to humanly review that and edit it down to make it
• 25:07
  right.
• 25:07
  It doesn't always get it right.
• 25:09
  And the other thing that I do now with AI is I use it to organize my day.
• 25:15
  So I have a bit of a chaotic life.
• 25:17
  Sometimes I have meetings all over the place, emails to dos.
• 25:20
  And so I created a little agent inside of my CLAUDE which basically does what's called a daily briefing.
• 25:27
  And so I've given it context, I've told it all about my business, I've given it my goals for the year year, I've given it my to do list.
• 25:33
  All of that sits inside Notion, which is another piece of software that speaks within claude and then it has access to my calendar and my emails.
• 25:42
  Now, I understand not everyone wants to give it that kind of access, but I'm all up for trying these things.
• 25:46
  So I gave it access to all of those things and I taught it to basically be my personal assistant.
• 25:51
  And so every day I can go into CLAUDE and say just the words daily briefing.
• 25:55
  And while I'm in the shower or having my breakfast, it works a couple of minutes behind the scenes and it will come back and it will organize my day for me.
• 26:02
  It will say, you've got this call in the diary at this time, this call in the diary at this time, in the gaps in between, here's what you should be prioritizing.
• 26:09
  This is what you need to get done.
• 26:10
  This is the big strategic project you need to be working on.
• 26:13
  Here's some emails to reply to.
• 26:14
  Do you want help writing the replies?
• 26:16
  I always say no because I don't want to lose my personality and it kind of pulls everything together and gives me some structure.
• 26:23
  It also summarizes a lot of my emails so I don't even have to go in and read full length emails.
• 26:27
  It tells me what emails to go and look at first.
• 26:29
  It tells me which ones I could ignore, tells me which ones are just spam and it's really, really clever.
• 26:35
  So AI is doing a lot of heavy lifting, but it always has my personality and my stamp all over it.
• 26:43
  I don't let AI publish my voice unedited because it will just sound like everyone else.
• 26:47
  You know, nothing is going out with my name on it that I haven't at least got my personality stamp or my team stamp on it.
• 26:55
  You know, if a client reads it, I want them to know that they can hear my voice saying it.
• 27:00
  And I don't want them to think it's just some bland, boring catch.
• 27:04
  So notice the pattern in how I'm using AI in my business.
• 27:08
  You know, the pattern is that AI is doing the background work, is doing the thinking.
• 27:13
  It's being a thought partner.
• 27:15
  I'm not getting stuff out of it.
• 27:17
  I might be putting stuff into it and asking it to refine it.
• 27:20
  I might be asking it to look at data and crunch numbers, but I'm not letting it take away my creativity.
• 27:26
  And when I use it to save time in other areas, it allows me more time and energy to be creative.
• 27:33
  Which brings me to the final takeaway of this episode.
• 27:37
  This is what I want you to leave this episode with.
• 27:40
  I don't want you to leave feeling guilty about how you've used AI because it's new technology, it is changing all of the time.
• 27:46
  And anyone who tells you they're an AI expert, unless they're very high up in a technology company probably has only just scratched the surface because this stuff is changing quicker than anything else.
• 27:55
  They're comparing it to like the launch of the Internet and how that shifted the world.
• 27:59
  Okay?
• 27:59
  It is a huge change and it is changing all the time.
• 28:02
  So if you don't understand it yet, don't beat yourself up about it.
• 28:05
  But what I don't want you to do is use it poorly to cut corners and lose your marketing tone of voice and potentially lose customers.
• 28:12
  So I want you to think about how you use AI.
• 28:15
  Use it, yes, to save time, but use it to save time so you can be creative.
• 28:20
  That's the rule.
• 28:22
  Give the robot your admin, your research, maybe your first drafts, the behind the scenes jobs, but use that time you've saved doing things that only you can do do.
• 28:31
  Being unmistakably, recognizably you turning up on camera as you writing captions as you, sending emails as you going to wedding fairs, as you going to networking events as you and being in real life.
• 28:43
  People want 3D humans.
• 28:45
  People want human connection.
• 28:46
  They don't want to just talk to a robot.
• 28:48
  Because in the sea of same, the wedding businesses that are going to stand out are the ones that sound like you, that sound like a real person.
• 28:55
  And that is a massive opportunity right now because of the fact there is so much AI blast blandness out there.
• 29:01
  So while your competitors might be posting more often but sounding average, you can be the voice in the feed that actually sounds alive and sounds human and is telling stories and bringing that to the forefront.
• 29:13
  So this week, here's your homework.
• 29:15
  I want you to pick one thing.
• 29:16
  Maybe you've been asking AI to create for you and take it back and maybe pick one thing you've been doing manually, some admin jobs you dread and give it back to AI.
• 29:24
  Think of it as your partner, not as your replacement.
• 29:28
  Think of it as your strategic behind the scenes partner rather than the person at front of your business.
• 29:33
  Because that is how you're going to start using AI.
• 29:36
  Well now if you listen to those honesty check questions earlier and thought, oh no, that's me.
• 29:41
  Well I have made you a worksheet.
• 29:43
  As I mentioned earlier, it's a free worksheet called Is AI killing your marketing?
• 29:47
  And it basically includes a two minute self audit where you can score yourself honestly and then it gives you the full be human vs use AI check sheet covering everything we've talked about in today's episode and also an
• 29:59
  action plan to write down your swaps and you'll be able to grab it at the link that I'll put in the show show notes as well.
• 30:06
  I really hope that's helped you think about AI differently because I don't want AI to be killing your marketing.
• 30:10
  I don't want you to sound like everyone else, but I also don't want you to hate AI either.
• 30:15
  It is coming, it's here to stay.
• 30:16
  It is incredibly powerful and there's a lot of cool stuff you can do with it and you can start to dig in and learn.
• 30:22
  But what I don't want it to do is replace you and your creativity in the wrong areas.
• 30:27
  And that's the warning and the warning signs are there.
• 30:29
  I'm starting to see it from some people out there and I don't want you to be warning one of them.
• 30:34
  As always, if this episode's helped you today, please share it with a Wedding Pro friend who needs to hear it, especially if you've noticed their captions sounding a little bit robotic lately.
• 30:43
  And if you've got a moment, I would love you to leave a review on the podcast.
• 30:47
  I haven't asked for reviews on the podcast for a long, long time and therefore I haven't had a review on the podcast for a long, long time.
• 30:52
  As you know, in your own wedding businesses, reviews mean everything.
• 30:56
  They're so helpful.
• 30:57
  They help more people find the show, but they also just help me remember why I'm doing it, why I put this out every single week.
• 31:03
  So if you've listened to this show for a while, enjoyed the show, if you've learned something from the show, I would implore you just take five minutes out of your day and leave me a podcast review.
• 31:12
  It would mean everything to me.
• 31:14
  Thank you so much for listening.
• 31:16
  Let me know how you're using AI in your business.
• 31:18
  If there's any interesting use cases, I would love to know it.
• 31:21
  So go out there, try it, grab that worksheet, and I'll see you all next time.