EP 04: The Role of AI In Business Operations - Part 2

With AI changing everything, many women are asking the same question: Am I replaceable?

In this episode, we sit down with Jen Gaudet to talk about how women can navigate rapid technological change with confidence and turn uncertainty into opportunity.

We explore how adaptability, emotional intelligence, and self-awareness are becoming more valuable than ever, and why AI isn’t here to replace you, but to amplify you.

In this episode:
• How to stay relevant in the age of AI
• Why women’s soft skills are a competitive advantage
• Overcoming the fear of being “replaceable”
• Reframing change as an opportunity for growth
• How to build clarity around your identity and value

Plus, we talk about an upcoming summit designed to help women leverage AI in their careers and creative lives.

If you’re feeling uncertain about the future, this conversation will help you feel grounded, empowered, and ready for what’s next.

Follow us on Instagram: @wtf_womentalkfinance | Spotify, YouTube & Apple Podcasts: WTF! Women Talk Finance | The Founders Office: foundersoffice.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

I'm Jackie. I'm Candace. And this is WTF.

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Grab your coffee, wine, water bottle, emotional support snack, no judgment, and let's get into it. Okay, you guys. Today we have one of our favorite kinds of episodes because we have someone who we really love in real life. And um we are so just aligned with our thinking, with our guests today. It's uh Jen Godet. So we're so excited to have her here. She's amazing, she's smart, but what she really is is she is a ride or die. She's your fiercest advocate. She's the person that you trust with major decisions that you're balancing or big business choices that you've got to make. And she's someone who's going to talk you through the chaos and really get you into a place of decision making and taking action. She is full of love and she does not mince words. She will tell you exactly what you need to hear in that moment. And I love it so much. She's a coach, an operator, author, and just an amazing person. So we're super excited to have Jen here. Hey. Hi, Jen. Hi, ladies. Thank you. Um, so we've talked a bit about our show, and we've been on your show. Um, things that we bond over is our love of female support, supporting our other women, women supporting women. Um, and so a lot of our listenership is women. And you are this powerhouse coach. And you've you've given me the tough love, and I am so here for it. Um, and so I want to go into kind of like Gen Go day coaching hat today, if we could. I saw an article, and and we're I don't want to take this too far down the AI rabbit hole, but I'm wondering how many other women are sitting here reading these articles about AI's taking primarily female-dominated jobs and women feeling maybe a little, oh gosh, threatened in this in this space. Coach Jen, what is your like, what how do you handle those types of kind of big scary moments in time and help help specifically your female clients and just women in general, maybe come over those humps um in their career?

SPEAKER_02 2:52

This isn't the first time this has happened, by the way. It happened in the internet, it had it's happened periodically over time. Um, so you know, this is uh it's scary, but it doesn't have to be. So the first thing I want to say to everybody who's out there, if you're feeling like that, you're not stuck because you're weak. You're stuck because literally the ground is moving underneath you. Um, and it is it is a fact. Women are more exposed than men to disruption from AI because female dominated um occupations tend to be more task-oriented. So the rules have changed, and all you need is a new playbook. Um, so first things first, I know I've been ahead on AI because I've been talking about AI on the air for five years. I've been coaching on it. Um, so I'm in that world. But the reality is we're kind of at that 50% adoption rate. So you are not behind. You're actually right on time because this is the moment where reinvention matters. Um, and so when we're in fear and we're feeling stuck, it's because we feel like what made what our value was was in the tasks that we did. But really, what makes us powerful as females, especially, is we have a really great ability to adapt. We're the ones running the household and raising the kids and doing all these things. There's a reason that women have the children. So we're adaptable and your ability to adapt, to like package how we think and our empathy and how we lead, those are our superpowers. And so this is not about, this is not about, I don't have the skill sets, I'm stuck, I can't move forward. This is about, okay, the career path you took or was or was told was safe. It's being rewritten right now. And now it's your choice to decide how am I going to take those soft skills and the skills that I have and figure out whether I want to pivot. Do I want to build? Do I want to learn AI? I strongly suggest you learn AI because that is the future. And start or do I want to start something new? And and the first step is to stop pretending that the way it was before, you know, 2023. It's not coming back, folks. It's not. That cat's out of the bag. Okay. But being stuck, that's not who you are. It's not your identity. It's just a point in the old map where we're trying, like we're we as human beings don't like change. And so all this change is happening. It's not our fault, but we're we have to decide. This is the moment where we decide who I want to be moving forward. Um, and so I'm gonna just give you a couple of quick things that you can do if you're watching. Number one, you don't need more inspiration, you don't need gurus, you don't need all of that. What you need is clarity. So we're gonna reframe it. It's not the end of the world, it's not the end of your value. This is the end of being paid for the tasks you've been doing if you're in those fields. And this might be businesses like photography, uh, videography, marketing, like these, like there's companies going under left and right because they're not adapting and leveraging the tools. But it's it's not the value of the people that's gone down. It's that they've chosen not to elevate and automate the tasks so that they can do more. So the new path might look like for you. The women who win, they're not doing the work, you're redirecting the work. AI, you you become a more managerial position. You are managing AI with your lived experience, your decision-making skills, your ability to build communities and build relationships because that's a superpower for women. And now what it's unlocking, if you can imagine, the ability to solve bigger problems because you're not stuck in the test day to day. So your first move is to pick a lane. Are you gonna upskill? Are you gonna learn a tool that will re are you gonna reposition yourself? Are you gonna build something entirely new? So that's the first move. What is it that I want to do? What am I willing to do? And how am I gonna get started? And the way that we think about that is we audit what we do now. What's everything that is a superpower that you have? Your skill, not just your skill sets and the tasks you do, but like, do you think, do you think faster? What is your judgment? Do people come to you because they trust you? Like, do you have an exceptional leadership style? Have you proven time and time again that you can attract the top talent? Like, what are the nuances that are your superpowers? And what do you still do that requires those superpowers? Like that's that's your audit because AI can't replace those things.

SPEAKER_03 7:32

We've had this conversation before with with Candace. Uh, Candace and I have, and I think we've probably had this conversation with you. Um, a lot of us are feeling this exact same way, and there's so much narrative out there and so much rhetoric, and you know, social medias and the different messages we're being fed can be really um dampening. Like they can dampen the spirit, right? And like you said, you don't need more info. We're all here together. Um even if it feels really isolating, you really are not alone. Um, and that said a lot of this advice is specific to AI and business, but it feels really broadly applicable in life, right? And that to my point, Candace, about us having this conversation. Our last podcast was about like the how a lot of women carry a lot of emotional work. We we do a lot of unpaid mental work, right? So this advice that Jen is giving is really applicable to life. There's a lot of overwhelm because of AI right now, and then there's a lot of overwhelm just because like women by nature are like overperformers.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Well, and I think for me, there was like there was some when I saw that article and when I see some of these pieces come around. I don't know how my fellow Woo girls feel about this, but like almost past life trauma popped up of like replaceable. Like it almost it it that was felt like this under the current message to me. You're not safe, yes, like you're never you made it this far, and now you're we've made sure. And so I was like, nope, nope, we're not gonna take that one. Like that was old, probably not even my wounds come creeping in. And so there's so much like entanglement too from that messaging that I think is not only something I'm carrying, but other women carry. And when we continue to receive that message, we need to like unpack that work, right? Like, so Jen, like everything you said, I was like, Yep, this is the good stuff. Let me buckle in, let me buckle up, Jen's.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

Well, you know, like what you're talking about. You're talking about like trauma and old wounds and things, but it also like we're a lot of times we as women have done what men have done because we've been forced to act as men in the workplace. Like and so what we have done, which didn't used to happen, but what we have assumed by being a man in the workplace, because we have to fit into that and like everything that that entails, it means that we now wrap our identity and our worth, which should never happen, by the way, to our production and our job. Ladies, you're not failing. Your job description is changing, your job description has failed. It's not you, it has nothing to do with us, it's not, and so that in the coaching, it's about really, and and we see this with people who want to exit a business, um, or people who want to exit a role in a business as well, right? We've wound up our identity and our purpose and our productivity into something that's now changing. And we have to really get back to who are we? Who are we being? This is not what I'm doing. Our identity is wrapped up in what I'm doing, and that's why we feel so threatened. It's our identity is actually who we are being. And I have a great exercise. I've actually run this exercise more than I ever did in like the 10 years I've had my company in the past year and a half, because I'm seeing it so much as you say, like jobs, tasks are going away. So people are like, Well, what's my worth now? What am I bringing to the table? I feel like I'm not adding value to my job anymore, even if they still have a job, right? Um, and so um I'm gonna just tell you the exercise because why not? And if you like, I'll tell you it's easier if you have somebody to bring you through it, but take 10 clear pieces of paper, like 10 pieces of computer paper, not lines, and just write I am on top of each of them. And then I want you to fill in each of those with somebody who you are, and it can't have anything to do with your job, the tasks that you do. You can't write, I'm a mother, for example. You can write I love creating, or I am a creator, I am a, you know, like whatever that is. I am artistic, I am athletic, whatever you want to do, but it can't be associated with other human beings or tasks that you do. It is one of the hardest exercises you will ever get. You're gonna get five or six of them like this. Those last four are gonna be a real challenge because it's gonna be roles that you play. This is not about roles that you play, it's who you are at the crux of your being. Like, and I'll tell you, I'm a fierce advocate. I am I am a fierce advocate. That is who I am at the core of my being. That's my number one.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

Yeah, really, you are.

SPEAKER_03 12:31

I want you in my cloud. How do you go ahead, Candace? No, go ahead. I was gonna ask, like, how do you come across this work? How do you choose to do this work so that you're in a place where you can show up with such a strength for others? Because uh, unless this is just like downloads from the ether is right into you and it's part of your being, I would suspect there's some element of work here. And it's it's really fascinating because it has to occur to you first that you want to do the work, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:05

I've done my own self-development work. I've been in I'm a self-development junkie since 1995. I believe in I believe in that you create your reality, I believe like all the woo stuff. Like I have literally got 30 plus years of documented experience to that in what we how how we are being who we are being doesn't matter all the goals we set. If who we are being is not in alignment with the goals that we set, we're not gonna reach our goals. Period. End of story. And you see that in business. Oh, I want to make another $10 million this year, but I'm stuck making a hundred thousand. Why? Because I don't believe in myself that I am worthy of this or that I'm adding that value. I don't believe that I'm bringing that worth forward, right? It has to start with it. And so I am a product of the work and the exercises, it's a call, it came to me, it came to me in a retreat I was doing. It was actually a it was a yoga retreat. It was 12 ladies, and we were, I had set exercises that I normally do. Some of them are like NDP, some of them are from psychology and all of the background that I have. But I realized that in that moment in time, and this was by the way, one of the first times the first one that I hosted post uh pandemic lockdown. So it was one of the first times that we were actually gathering together and doing things. And I'm like, I need to throw out the old exercises because the pandemic was like that, right? For a lot of these old women, they had brick and mortar, they really struggled, they were super successful, now they're trying to keep it going. And I said, Stop, you're not failing. Everything that has happened has been outside of our control. If you own a business in pandemic and alcohol sales was the bulk of your sales, and you were closed to this, like, and you had to go to delivery service, you couldn't deliver alcohol in a lot of uh uh markets, like you were struggling to survive. And and what happened is when we came out of that, we were still in that struggle to survive mindset. So I threw it out, and this just it just was like we have to re-identify who we are. And so we went through, I went through this exercise with that, but personally, we all did this together. I'm like, listen, guys, like this is what I feel like we need to do because I feel like I think we need a reset. And we talked about an anchor on the other show, like removing that anchor and self-development and that baseline. And I'm like, what happened in pandemics it like took our anchor that was a weird backed us up a little bit. So now what we need to do is we need to identify who am I, who do I want to be, who am I becoming, and what does that mean? And so you document that, which is really hard. But then what we did is we put it in a like semicircle in front, and like, of course we did it safely, and I was behind them, so they didn't fall because I'm a PTFR and I can't help it. Um and I said, close your eyes. We did a couple of rounding breaths in front of all of their IM statements. And I said, What you're gonna do, you're gonna scan from your what you're when you open your eyes, you're just gonna scan right to left, left to right, close your eyes, and you're gonna tell me the three things you remember from the IM. And so I picked them up in order, and then we did the scan again and picked it up. So we had an order one to ten. And it was really fascinating because 100% of us did not pick the first three or four things that popped into our minds when we scanned. So it it basically grounded us in and subconsciously things poked up. And then the exercise after the retreat was every day for 10 days. I want you to document like a journal on each of these pages about what this means to you, what does it look like, what is embodying this look like? And by the end, every single one of them had made draws, I had major odds. So, like um, you asked the question, how did like where is it was a combination of things? It was a culmination of all the work I had done, the experiences that I had, and then it was an experiment and it worked, and so that's kind of where that came from. But it's really powerful because women, as women, we are very intuitive, even if we have turned that off and not listened for a while, it's still in there. So if we did, and by the way, we did like a rest a restorative yoga, so we were all well rested and really like in a good space um when we did this exercise. So I think removing yourself from the day-to-day, I don't care if it's going into nature and having a hike or something, like get out of the the freak out mode, do whatever you need to do to downregulate your nervous system, and then try this exercise because it'll help you to understand who you are as a human, who you are in your in your power. Um and I know that sounds so cliche, but when you grasp onto that and your identity becomes that, then the skill sets and the jobs and the career and we have so much going on. We're at war. I don't I don't think we're technically at war, but we're for all tents and purposes at war. Like there's so much going on. We're moms, we're worried about our kids. But when we take all of that away and identify with who we are at the parts of our being, if there's not another human being on earth, we're able to really solidify and anchor into our identity, and then it allows us to do the audit on what are my superpowers and what do I bring and how do I want to show up in the future? Because the reality is that I think the estimate is 90% of jobs are gonna have to upscale rescale anyway. It's not just picking on us as women, but for us as women, we need to stop waiting for permission to take our our power back and to and and to really open our options and build the leverage that we have.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

You can have a board, investors, advisors, and still have nobody you can actually talk to about what is really going on. That is not unusual, that is the founder reality, and we step in right there. I'm Tom Powell, and at the founder's office, we're proud to sponsor Women Talk Finance.

SPEAKER_03 18:55

I love this. This is I could just listen to this. This is so important. It's such an important reminder. It's a great conversation. To our listeners, please pin this. There's gonna be a moment where you need to hear this again, and maybe again. Um, Candace, you're gonna get flooded. I'm doing this exercise. I'll send it to you too, if you don't mind, Jen. I'm gonna do my 10 IM statements and I'm gonna have like I'm using you guys as unsolicited accountability partners. I love this so much.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

Bear with me. Like my number one after all the journaling, and and then you you pretty much do the exercise again where you scan after you've journaled it out. Mine is fierce advocate. Like that's number one at the very top of who I am. And you know, it's really interesting because I didn't associate that at all. That was like nine or ten that I came up with when I was picking my items. Um, so I'm curious what comes up for you.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

I'm thinking too, this is one of those exercises that's like you have to do it for yourself, and doing it for yourself is so much harder than doing it for somebody else because I feel like I could spit out 10 beautiful things I value in both of you in like a hot second, and I would I'd have more oozing out of me, just like, oh, you know, so but doing it for yourself, giving yourself the permission almost to do that is like the first phase of that exercise, even it really is, and and honestly, it's an exercise in self-love.

SPEAKER_02 20:29

Yeah, and self-trust, and self-trust, yeah. And so, like it really is about diving in, and a lot of us have gotten analytical and we're in our heads too much, and we're really our superpowers not there, our superpowers in our intuition, our superpowers in our hearts.

SPEAKER_03 20:45

Um a lot of us are living through our nervous systems right now, and our nervous systems are shot. That's right. So we are living through this entity that's just constantly raped.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

So women have had it harder. I'm not saying comparing trauma, but statistically, women have had a very hard time the last six years. COVID hit female jobs harder than men. Uh women were the ones taking the back seat, whether it was because their jobs were downsized or because they had to stay home to for child care or family care. Um, those jobs didn't all recover. Now we're seeing shifts in the work, major shifts in the workplace. The other thing is, we've, you know, many times on the pod, we've talked about the mental load of the household. Well, who's carrying the mental load of the added expenses that are happening right now? We're all experiencing how expensive and crazy things have gotten. And so it feels like we've kind of all been in this pressure cooker for the last handful of years.

SPEAKER_02 21:51

And it I I would add to that, it hit us harder on a social and and uh hard like uh uh our basic needs because women are more. Community-centered. Men are less community-centered than women. It's whether it's, you know, evolution, whether it's just behavior and societally trained in us. And so when we locked down and we didn't have that human-to-human interaction, it was devastating. And not only to us, but to the children. And who was left with bringing the children up and helping them through those challenges? Mostly the mothers in the in this scenario.

SPEAKER_03 22:24

So a lot of moms become became teachers overnight.

SPEAKER_02 22:29

And that wasn't a core skill set. And so that damaged confidence because now you're like, well, I'm doing something. I'm not comfortable doing it. I'm in a role I should never have been in for my children. Um, but you know, I think I think when you think about nervous system, if you're watching this, you're like, that was too woo for me. I have an easy action. When you feel stuck, if you feel stuck, don't ask what job is safe. Don't ask what job is safe. Ask what value do I have that can be scaled, taught, licensed, led, or sold in a different way. Because, you know, we started this conversation on career and we went, we did go woo, and not everybody is into the woo, but um, the reality is the world is changing and we're operating in a space. If you are asking what job is going to be safe, you're already losing the game. You're just keeping yourself in that like trauma, like stressed area. Um, and so instead of thinking that, ask what value do I have that can be transferred in a different way.

SPEAKER_03 23:29

And know that you do hard things, all of us. We do hard things, women especially. We do hard things.

SPEAKER_02 23:36

That's one of my affirmations. You can do hard things.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

I do hard things. I do hard things. I say it on my myself every day. Jen, I who stumps from this conversation. You know, I'm in with the room. I know. I want to have both of you.

SPEAKER_02 23:49

Group hug. I've got it for you. I'm I'm virtually hugging both of you.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Hey, I feel like Jen, you have something coming up in June, and I wanna take a minute on that because that I think a lot of this conversation feeds into kind of some of the programming you're putting together. And so, do you want to take a minute to talk about that?

SPEAKER_02 24:09

Yeah, absolutely. So I've come together and I'm partnered with a couple of people who have done great work within companies, um, and we've reformatted to design labs and design summits. So, what does this mean? Like, we have partnered with women who AI and um and a couple other female organizations to curate what does it mean to be a woman in an AI age? How do I leverage the technology in my career, in my family? What does it mean for my kids? How is education gonna change? How does this change the financial picture? What does this look like in my business? And how can I do this so that I can optimize and maximize my human talent? Like the ethical considerations, we're gonna literally dive in. And the summit is different because this isn't a seminar where people are talking. It is literally a creativity incubator. Um, so I don't know if you remember centers in in kindergarten. Um, that's kind of what this is like. We break into little groups, we each solve a different problem, we come back together and then we share. Um, and it's designed to unlock your inner creativity because it was trained out of us. So all the thoughts we come into the um summit with or the design lab with, we're gonna throw those out the window because that's the faulty old way of thinking. And we're gonna co-create the future where we are creating the business we want, the career we want, being the parent we want, and leveraging um the technology in the way that we want. So we are actually creating the future that we want to live in and that we want our children and our grandchildren to live in. So um I think it's a really fascinating look. It's it's got the tactical components, but it also has the, you know, the real human components. And and one of the core questions that brought these into being is what does it mean to be human in an AIH? Because I think that core identity question is being asked. Nobody's thought about it necessarily and asking it in that way, but it comes down to what does it mean to be human in an age where we've got robotics and computers and all of these other things doing the tasks for us. So um if you're interested and you want to be in a room of females who are really thinking about this, and we've got novices who have no experience through people like me who have been living and breathing this for years. Um, but it is is truly a co-creation event so that we can creatively problem solve together. And um, I'm hoping that we reimagine the world that we're gonna have in the next couple of years together.

SPEAKER_03 26:40

Where can people find details? Is there a website?

SPEAKER_02 26:44

Um, there is a website. I will share that with you because it's like in the show notes.

SPEAKER_03 26:48

Perfect.

SPEAKER_02 26:49

Yeah, I'll I'll share that website with you. And um, you know, otherwise just reach out to me. Like I'm on LinkedIn, I'm very active on LinkedIn. Um, and I I respond to people. Um, and if they know you and they want introductions to me, I'm happy to talk to anybody because the reality is, is we are women, we're gonna be the ones who drive the success or lack of of humanity if we wanna if we want to take it there in the in the next couple of years.

SPEAKER_03 27:16

I hope you love on yourself the same way that you clearly love on others, and even me and Candace, and we're newer friends, like we haven't known you that long. Seriously, if I wreck my car, like I might make a call to you. Like you're just you are so you are truly the fiercest advocate. Like you live and breathe that, and you can just feel it talking with you. You are such an exceptional human. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 27:38

Thank you. I'm big on self-care and self-love. Don't worry.

SPEAKER_01 27:42

Yeah, we love you. And please check out Power CEOs, it's amazing. Um we just we love we love having you here. This will be one of many because we just we love having Jen here. And please, please share with us your 10. We would love to see um, we'd love to see what what everybody comes up with. So thank you, Jen. We love you. Thank you. Love it. Thanks everybody for listening.

SPEAKER_03 28:11

Thank you. Okay, that was today's episode of WTF.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

If you laughed, learned something, or felt a little less alone, make sure you hit follow.

SPEAKER_03 28:22

And send this episode to a friend who might need it. Women don't gatekeep, especially not the good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 28:27

We'll be back next week with more real talk, more stories, and probably more over sharing.

SPEAKER_03 28:32

See you next time on WTF.