Are you ready to break free from the 9 to 5 grind and turn your expertise into a thriving coaching business? Well, in this episode of Using AI at work, we sit down with Ryan Musk. A former Google executive who took the leap into entrepreneurship and never looked back. Ryan shares his journey of leveraging AI and no code tools to build a $50,000 a month coaching business, all while helping other coaches monetize their knowledge and create the lifestyle they desire. Get ready to be inspired and discover the steps you can take to fire yourself from your own business or role using AI. Let's get started. Welcome to Using AI at Work. I'm your host, Chris Daigle. Each week we'll be learning how today's business owners, entrepreneurs, and ambitious professionals are getting more done with smart use of tomorrow's tech. Let's get started. Hi, in today's guest, we've got Ryan Musselman, and I want to share with everybody this is what happens when you when you reach out to individuals who are doing cool stuff. You reach out to them cold, not to sell them anything, but just to say, hey, I'm real interested in what you're doing. Uh, I'd love to talk more. That's how Ryan and I got connected on LinkedIn and what ultimately led us to uh this podcast interview today. So, Ryan, welcome and why don't you tell everybody a little bit about what you've got going on in Dallas?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm glad you reach out, man. It's
gonna be a good conversation. Thank you. So I've really leaned into the coaching solopreneur vibe that seems to be taking over the corporate world. And for those who don't know what I'm talking about, effectively, you've got really good executives who have got amazing track records. Maybe they've sold companies, maybe they've moved into just different organizations, managed large teams. But many of them are choosing not to step higher into the career ladder. They're choosing to go into their own business and not just to build or raise capital or scale some monstrous machine, but really to have a lifestyle business that controls their time and allows them to do the work that they love. So I stepped into that route after a successful career working at Google, building content engines, content programs, content networks, selling content partnerships, kind of catch my drift here. I leaned into the content angle. Now I help coaches really get their coaching program off the ground to their first 15K a month, or if they're already making money, add an additional 15K plus per month. So I've stepped into that online entrepreneur world and have been enjoying it ever since.
SPEAKER_02You know, I think that uh some portion, if not a big portion, of this audience fits into exactly that individual that you're talking about that has some skills, but they don't understand that there's like they wouldn't even know where to start to get the freedom that comes with coaching or entrepreneurship and that sort of thing. So I think I'd like to actually start there for those people who are listening. If, if I mean they're listening to this to learn these skills and they have domain expertise from their industry, that sounds like a good match for you know going out on your own. What would you advise to somebody who is in that position and maybe thinking about that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, really simple. What's one thing you can teach to one person in one hour? And if you can answer that question, you can develop a multi-six-figure business from that seed of an idea. And the answer is usually going to be relevant to well, what have I been doing my entire career? Whether you're newer in your career or you're more advanced in your career. And that's what I really like about coaching is that everyone's going to pay for knowledge. Even with the rise of AI, you're what are you using AI for, right? To get something done faster, to acquire knowledge quicker. There's many different use cases. Coaching will always be an important long-term use case for individuals who need some form of advancement in any area or any niche. And so again, the one hour test is usually the first place we start because it leads to the easiest answer. It's an easy question. It's a very tangible question, I understand, right? If you and I sat down over a beer and I said, Chris, teach me one thing in one hour, and you'd probably be off to the races. And before you know it, you'd be in one of the best conversations we've ever had.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's right. And I know people love talking about themselves anyway. So that always makes for a good conversation. The people that are coming to you, what's what's kind of like, where are they in their career? What's their life situation that that catalyzes them to explore wanting to be a coach on their expertise?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, in some areas, they're disenfranchised by the that traditional nine to five, even if they've had great experiences there, which is similar to me. So I didn't have a bad nine to five. I was never looking to escape, except for when I first got out of college and stepped into my first four-year kind of professional role post-degree. And that's usually because you don't start off after college doing what it is that you love. You're in, well, yeah, in my generation would call that kind of paying your dues of sorts. But that's the that's the mode I was in. And as I progressed further and got down the digital content route and started to jump and step into roles that I loved, for me, I had a great nine to five career. So others are either in love with it or not in love with it. It doesn't necessarily matter. They care more about building and leaning into something that they can own for themselves, that lifestyle business that does allow them to have more time doing what they want to do, working from home. And I know that's like pretty much what many people can say are the lures of that. But those who are stepping into this just are sick of listening to the echo chamber advice. You hear many different things out there, right? Like it's it's a long game, it's you know, you got to put in the work, you gotta post every day on social media. That's just generalized encouragement. It's not a roadmap. And so the people who are coming to me have no roadmap. And I like to roadmap them with a 90-day plan that has tangible checkpoints. You know, the more you can feel it and touch it, taste it, see it, smell it, the more you know you're on the right track. It should feel like progress. So those are the individuals I dominantly work with.
SPEAKER_0290 days is a fast transition.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it is. It is. And I didn't know when I first started, I didn't know what the first day looked like.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01And that was in 2022. I was just posting on LinkedIn to deeply connect
with my audience. I wasn't even trying to have an offer. I wasn't looking to leave. And then all the LinkedIn hype six months later, I said, okay, let me just try this and see what this is. So my friend had this ghostwriting offer. I can write content, I like to write. So my friend was ghostwriting. And if no one's ever heard of ghostwriting in the audience, it's basically you just writing content for someone else, but they're posting it on their account. So it looks like they wrote it, but really someone else wrote it for them. It's for busy executives who usually don't have the time on their own hands to build their own personal brand. So I was doing that for other coaches, career coaches dominantly. And then I started to close more deals as I just put the offer out there, floating it out there. No silver tongue sales tactics or any type of big plan. I just serviced it out there. And that really got me addicted to say, okay, let me just keep going down this rabbit hole, optimize this offer, see where I want to go. Now I don't ghost anymore. I'm just teaching people how to build their online specific coaching business. And I only work with coaches in that regard because I really believe in monetizing your knowledge. And I believe it's important to if you can do that, man, lean into that and run with it. Because it's so gratifying to build and see your knowledge make other people grow and advance.
SPEAKER_02I've had that happen. I think accidentally over the course of my career, I've advised a few thousand entrepreneurs. And it's always fantastic when you're at like an industry event and somebody says, Hey, and you're kind of like, Oh, yeah, I remember you, but you don't. And they're like, that one thing that you told me when we were on the phone, that made me go from here to here. I took this direction, and now like I've blown up. Things are great. And it's I can tell you, man, the the reward that comes from that side of coaching is uh certainly the money's fantastic, but but the money alone wouldn't be as fulfilling as have knowing that you're you're you're making money by impacting other people and letting them because they're gonna pay it forward and they're gonna end up transforming as a coach other people's lives, other people's careers. So I think it's fantastic. Um obviously for for you, content creation was kind of you say you like writing, it got you out there, it got you on the it got you noticed in the the social platforms. Is that a recommended path for somebody that is interested in taking that leap?
SPEAKER_01Definitely. It's a component you can't ignore. And that's part of the reason why I went down the AI route a little bit with it, although it wasn't my first choice because Chat GPT wasn't didn't have its moment like it's having now. But you're gonna need to be able to promote who you are, who you help, how you help them, and you having that voice online is important. It doesn't mean it's the only thing you do, and it also doesn't mean you become a content creator who runs a business. You become a business owner who creates content. That's an important distinction. Yeah. And if you if you don't understand that distinction when you start off, you'll get attracted and lured into the hype of starting something new like content creation on a platform like LinkedIn, which is right now the easiest platform to really grow an audience. But then you'll be optimizing for the algorithm and engagement and not optimizing with your offer leading the way. And so people often will get caught up in how many new followers can I get or how much post reach can I get instead of how many offers can I make in a day. That's an important distinction worth unpacking too.
SPEAKER_02So and I don't know if this is a universal uh experience for uh people like me who would be a great candidate for the coaching, uh having a coaching business, which I've had in the past, but for me, content creation it seemed like a lot of work. It didn't come naturally or easily to me, and it seemed like it was a long play.
SPEAKER_01Am I right or am I wrong? Oh, I think you're spot on. I think most people's experiences, I don't know how to write, and they're used to high school and college when you're writing an MLA style format, right? We're taught to write in a very functional scholarly type level. When on social media, that's just not how it works. You you actually go through this period of unlearning how to write in school. Interesting, and a period of learning how to write on social media and for an audience, and they're so different. So different. It's almost like the less formal you get, the more effective you are. And in school, if we would have learned buyer psychology, why people buy, what makes someone move from point A to point B, that would have been far more valuable than us spending time learning MLA style and formatting and citing sources. And I'm not saying that to discredit teachers or that scholarly academic process, but that is not why I'm able to sell. When I don't do that, I can sell. And I think it's the same for all of those who are building that online business. It's just a different skill set.
SPEAKER_02That's a great tip for anybody who's making an attempt at being a content creator. Yeah. But don't go scholarly with it. People won't read it. Um so obviously there's this challenge that I have with writing. So AI has certainly been an effective tool to allow me to increase my output with a lot less effort. Right. Um, however, uh synthetic output, synthetic content isn't my intention. My intention is to still leverage the tools, but introduce authenticity or my personality or style. And it's not an easy thing to do with uh Chat GPT or Claude or anything like that. You you gotta there's a process there. What would you advise if somebody did want to use AI to support that, to make it less daunting for them? Are there any tips or tricks to make sure that that content isn't just some GPT BS?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, boy, it's such a nuanced question because there's so much that someone must understand before they can even start on doing that. So I'll give you the oversimplified answer. One, if you're using chat GPT, we'll focus there since that's really in the spotlight these days. I first recommend, and I don't have an affiliate with them, get off of GPT 3.5 and just pay for that $20, $20 a month prescription of GPT. Agreed. There's a couple of reasons why. Number one, it's just dramatically different in terms of getting an answer. If you try to get GPT 3.5 to write something for you, it's pretty much gonna have emojis. It's gonna say stuff like skyrocketing and unlocking and leveling up and discovering and all the fancy, semancy marketing lingo that surprisingly is still very commonly used in the corporate world by people who are not using AI and unfortunately by marketing professionals too. So get GPT 4.0 and and then when you're creating content, one of the things that I found most helpful, again, this is an oversimplification, is if I want Chat GPT to write something that sounds like me, sentence structure, words, tone, and so on, I have to feed it examples of where I've made content first and then ask it to produce that content for me. And so it's the power in the prompting. And that's going to determine the efficacy of the output you get from chat. The more it's trained, I mean, GPT stands for generative, pre-trained transformer. Said in layman's terms, train it better, get better results. So the more you train it to write like you, the better it will.
SPEAKER_02So um, I know that before we got on this, you had uh you were pretty proud about the the way that you were leveraging generative AI technology in your content production cycle and distribution cycle. Uh I think it would be helpful for individuals who, because if I was listening to this and I didn't know much about AI, but I I was intrigued by the idea of
monetizing, you know, my career, what I've been doing, but doing it for myself as an advisor or a coach or a domain expert, I'd be really interested in like how how can I get there faster, right? Obviously, AI can support that. Um, do you mind kind of walking us through how you're leveraging some of the tools to help you with uh content creation and distribution?
SPEAKER_01Sure. My favorite is on GPT 4 again, GPTs. Now, for most of your audience, I'm sure they're well versed in this, but in case there's anyone new, maybe not, the the GPT is really just think of like a little mini app on the platform. You know, so Apple, you have iTunes and you have the Apple kind of app directory, and you're downloading different apps. Well, think of GPTs as you creating little mini content creation apps within Chat GPT. For example, I have a GPT that writes all of my sales content for me. I have another GPT that rewrites popular social media posts for me. I've got another GPT that can take any post on the internet and turn it into a content template, meaning something that I can get from that output and fill in the blank for a piece of content down the road, could be an email or social media post. So each of these little GPTs, these little apps, serve a different purpose with different instructions, all custom tailored to how I write and the audience I serve. And I love that because now it makes prompting a bit old school in a sense. I made this joke earlier this year. He said, oh, prompting chat GPT is so 2023. And now 2024 has come along and the GPT store is open. And you can make these GPTs and add all the prompting on the back end, then get really savvy with those little conversation starters, those kind of four blocks you can put up in GPT and get it to do stuff faster. And now I've got it to a point where my process for creating content is I'm just gonna click a button and I'm gonna get the output that I want from the attachments on the back end and the prompts that sync with them and the templates that are there. And then I'll go through and I'll edit and make sure it sounds like me and fix anything I didn't like and then ship it. So I know that was a very cool bit of a big one there, but we can unpack that however you'd like.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I actually would. So for those who haven't aren't, let's say they're gonna go on to Chat GPT today and they're gonna look for the GPT store and they're gonna say, hey, I'm gonna try what Ryan was suggesting. Um what was the learning curve for you in creating GPTs that you can get this kind of output from?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm gonna back into that with just a quick story. I told you that I was ghostwriting at the beginning of the call and I didn't like it very much. I like creating my own content. I don't like to create it for others because the brain switch that you have to do is so big. And so I said to myself, okay, I've just left my job and stepped into my own business, and I don't even like the business that I'm building. I should have just stayed at my other job and stayed in the nine to five. So I said, all right, how can I fire myself from my own business using AI? And it set me on this journey for about a year of learning how to prompt and how to write content, mainly instructions into Chat GPT to give me what I needed. And so that that route is really where I started taking a bunch of AI classes and other courses to really learn okay, what is it that I need to do in order to give Chat GPT instructions that give me the exact output that I need. But I had to learn how to prompt properly. And so here's a few tips for those of you who are out there doing that. Show ChatGPT what looks really good and show chat GPT what looks really bad. So I have this hook generator that writes the first line of your social media post. Nice. And I show chat, hey, this is a bad hook, and I give it five examples. This is a bad hook, and it's a one example. This is a bad hook, number two, this is a second example. And I do that all the way to five. And then I show chat this is a good hook and a good example, and a good hook and a good example. Now give me 10 of these. But I'm just clicking a button because of the pre-written instructions on the back end. So the learning curve there for you is start with contrast. Show the bad, show the good, ask for the good. And then you can give other examples along the way, and that'll help you craft a better GPT or at the very least, a better prompt so you can get the type of content you need.
SPEAKER_02So I think that that was um very insightful for those listening. The learning curve is what it is, but once the learning curve has been um completed, the iteration ability with these GPTs is you can do one over lunch that you can end up using for the rest of your, you know, the life of your business. It's pretty incredible stuff. So I'm glad that you shared that. Now, uh one of the things that um people that aren't using it, they might think, oh, I can get this GPT and then I can press a button, then I can copy and paste. But it sounds like what you're doing is you're still human in the loop. It's giving you it's getting you 95% there, but there's still some Ryan getting in there, and actually I do it this way and I do it that way. So you're able to leverage the tools to get the heavy lifting of the content, but there's still the authenticity because you're you're not just copying and pasting, you're still giving it that that muscleman touch.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's a great thing, and I want to, I really want to clarify this for a second. The way the GPTs are written, I actually could just copy and paste because it's AI learning how to write like Ryan
and therefore giving me an output that sounds like Ryan. So I technically could copy and paste that, but the whether for good or bad, perfectionist side of me and the and the content side will make me want to reword certain things. And so I think it's important to do that because you may get an output that you just don't like. AI has reached a certain point where it can get a lot of the job done. I still don't think it can get all of the job done. And there will be a future where it does get all of the job done, I think, especially in content marketing. But it's still nice to go through and enjoy that creative process. Now, most of my time is. Not writing from a blank page. It's writing from a prepped piece of content. This means I can get out of the minutiae and more into that strategic zone. And I can zoom out a little bit. I can fly above what's happening, the chessboard, and move things around in different ways and therefore make more progress in the advancement of my business. And that's what I really like about it.
SPEAKER_02You know, I think that that was probably one of the reasons that it was hard, quote unquote, for me to create content was the blank sheet of paper.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02What do I say? Where do I start? I mean, I think I got stuff people would be interested in, but how do I put it into words? And having that somebody that can say, here, work with this, right? GPT can say, here, take this and go make it better. So much easier. So let's talk about what that looks like for somebody who is like, I'd still rather do it the old way. I'd still rather beat up the keyboard a little bit. What's the what's the the time allocation for old way versus new way for you at least? What was that? What did that look like?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I went from a blank page and spending a lot of time creating content every week to really using the engine to prep the ideas for me. Now, I still write most of my content versus use AI because the program that I built is for the person that doesn't like to write and doesn't want to be creative in that particular sector of their business. They want to be creative in the sales or operations or finance side of it. So I built the engine for them need that. Um, but on my end, the the amount of time that I'm seeing it save for others, I got a career coach who just hit 20K a month. He just announced it. He's really excited about it. But he called me the day before and said, I just want to let you know you're a big part of that process. Because what he did with the engine was go from hours of writing his own content and trying to figure out, well, how am I going to persuade someone to buy to using a content engine that writes his sales content that's drawing from me but putting it in its own words. And so that helped him generate the right lead acquisition he needed to make the right offers and ultimately close the right amount of deals. So that freed up his time to really zoom out of his business, worry less about content creation and more in serving new and existing clients.
SPEAKER_02So this is cool for everybody listening. We happen to be talking about content creation, but the real win here is that by leveraging the tools for whatever it is, in this case content creation, it's now freed up time for you to do things that are more in your zone of expertise or more like higher leverage immediately for your business. But also, there were maybe you're a business person, you're like, I'd love to create content. I don't have the time to do it. Now, using tools like this, there's no excuse about time is no longer the reason that you don't do it. Right. Like it's gone from an hour of sitting or two hours of sitting working on this thing to being able to probably knock something out in 10, 15 minutes that's, hey, pretty good. It's a big win.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. You you'll see it like when the outputs are there, it's like, oh my gosh. That like you you see just the words forming on the page. I think the psychological fact of watching chat put this post out makes you think, oh man, yeah, if I could just do that better and better and better, amazing. But I do want to get it to a point. While I may not use it as heavily now, because I didn't design it for people like me, I design it for people who are not like me. But the next version of that is designing it for more creative-driven people like myself, so that I can then spend more time building this. I love sales, by the way. As a as I'm a weird person who's in this creative world and loves to write and figure out that stuff, but I really like the buyer psychology of it. And I always think to my own self, what made me buy this today if I bought into a mastermind? Let's say it's 10 grand plus. Sure. What brought me to that decision where I said this is a no-brainer and made me pull out my credit card and not only that, be excited about it. Rather than having buyers remorse, it's like I spend this 10 grand and I couldn't be more thrilled to have spent it. I'm no longer thinking about this. I'm only thinking about how do I use this program and go beyond. And so AI then can help bring that about for us because if we know we're gonna lean into a program and it's gonna require us time to apply and learn and study and be shaped. And if we have AI that can handle all this other stuff over here, well, now we can lean in with a little bit more freedom in our step to learn, apply, grow, iterate. So I think that's creating a key component for many of us in using AI.
SPEAKER_02So I want to get back to this the client that you serve, the the the coaches who um one topic for one hour. I like I like that concept a lot. So for those individuals, do you find is is there a consensus on they t coaches tend to like to create content, tend to not like create content, or is it all over the board?
SPEAKER_01It's usually over the board, but leans heavily into I don't want to spend time on content. The first career coach I ever closed, this is insightful actually, is a storyteller. But he hates writing. He wants to tell stories or said a different way, he wants to tell career, help teach career professionals, coach career professionals on how to better communicate their value heading into interviews and throughout their career. But his mechanism for teaching them that is more one-to-one or group coaching. He
does not like to write his content. And so he was running into this big problem. He's lives in Florida, likes to go fishing on Saturdays. He'd go fishing on Saturdays, but his mind would be stuck on the coming Monday. What do I post? That's where his mind always went. So when he hired me to ghostwrite for him, it was to solve that with the intention that it would also drive inbound leads. So that's that's part of where these coaches are coming from, is they may be all over the board. Some of them might like the creative process, but even if they like the creative process, they don't like the time that it takes to execute that creative process. And AI release. Makes a lot of sense.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. So for those of you who are listening, will you explain kind of what a career coach does?
SPEAKER_01Sure. A career coach is going to likely help you with a couple of areas. And its most basic form, they're gonna help you interview better. So you may be an individual who's like, ah, I feel like I'm just statically going through my day. I need a new job. I keep getting to the final round of interviews, and I get no call back. A career coach in one aspect can help you communicate your value better, just like the career coach that I mentioned. Other career coaches may focus on a specific industry. So I worked with a separate group of coaches who helped people in tech, specifically mid-level to executive level, who are saying, I want to work at a large company, Apple, Google, and so on, in a role that is meaningful to me. So they would hyperfocus on a specific industry. Other career coaches will help you with your resume, they'll help you interview better, they'll help you get career clarity, they may focus on different niches, different states of your career. So all of them are just trying to help you advance your career in one way, shape, or form. But usually the blockers there are I can't seem to find roles that I like, I can't seem to connect with other people in and around the hiring manager's decision circle, I can't seem to get past this interview, my resume sucks. So they're helping through the plethora of career challenges.
SPEAKER_02I could see the career coach uh role being aided by GPT for ideation and strategy in a big way. So very cool. So when you're talking to your clients and AI is coming up on a scale of one to ten, one being like what is AI, 10 being Sam Altman or whatever, um, where do you find that most of your prospects, where where are they falling?
SPEAKER_01Very entry-level, meaning they've dabbled, they've played, and they've included this. Just doesn't sound like me. And that all comes down to the prompting. And so when we work together, then they're getting this, it's a pretty long and complex prompt, but it's very organized for chat to follow a systematic set of instructions in order to get a specific output. And so we're just kind of enabling the plug and play nature of that, because what I didn't want to happen was okay, you're joining this program. I'm gonna teach you AI, and then you're gonna use AI. I think that's the wrong way. I wanted you to come in and you're just gonna plug it into a wall, right? And then start using the system. So very plug and play. Everything's been done for you. You just need to update a few things on the back end, namely your content and the audience you're speaking to. And that can be done in seconds rather than minutes or listening to a you know, 10-hour course.
SPEAKER_02So they're able to leverage, are they able to leverage the GPTs that you've built? They're just customized for them, or how are you, how are you walking through some geeky stuff here.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Yeah. So the geeky side of it is I built the prompts
agnostically, minus a few specific rule sets that a coach would come in and customize. And those rule sets really lean into traits of their audience, traits of their offer, and traits of the call to action to that offer. And so they're just going in and updating a few bullet points, and then it's ready to go. So you can get the system and within an hour be producing content. And that hour of you producing content really probably means all your content for the month.
SPEAKER_02Wow. That's I guess the alternative would be trying to teach somebody how to do this, which is exactly what you said the wrong way, rather than plug it into the wall, teach UAI, and then say, okay, go figure it out. Go figure out how to make this thing sound like you and you're right. That's not the way to go.
SPEAKER_01No, it's really not. And even the content, the outputs that you're getting from the GPTs is just extracting templates that I've already used to sell my business. Yes. And my service. So I'm taking those templates, plugging them into the GPT. Then the coach is coming in and updating their writing style and who they serve. That way, the output that chat gives is put into this template, yet for their audience with their offer and their writing structure. So now we've got a plug and play sandbox. It's the Legos versus what's the really advanced kind of Lego set that people play with, Lego Technics, right? Where it's like that this is the advanced Legos, and then there's the simple person Legos. And I'm a simple Lego person. So me too.
SPEAKER_02So this is this is uh um interesting because for those of you listening, it's not about, well, I'm not a coach, I'm not gonna do content. It's not about that, it's more about finding the solution. So in this case, if I was a coach or I was interested in becoming a coach and pursuing that, I would be two, I got two options, go figure it out myself, right? If I want to use the tools, or spend that same amount of time sourcing a solution that is not, that does not require me to be involved. So in this case, it's content creation tailored for the audience of a thought leader or a coach. However, whatever your career is, if you're curious, how can I use AI in my industry or my role? I I really like Ryan's advice here. And it's not go learn AI. Maybe go find out has somebody already built some tools that are AI powered that as a logistics manager, as a HR professional, that I can go ahead and plug in rather than me have to go and spend the hours and hours that Ryan's done on his you know GPT prowess, he's now able to, uh, I would be able to just go and say, oh, in an hour I can have content? That that solution, please. So I don't want everybody to think that you've got to go out and learn AI. You have to learn how to use the tools, right? How to apply the tools. And it's not even a specific tool, it's just about the application of a tool to a certain process or workflow. So as your audience matures in their usage of AI, what are your plans for continuing to be that person who leads them on that journey of AI education and literacy?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a great question. As as I really progress through this, what I found is it's not so much that people only need help with the content side of it. It's that they, if you're in a coach, need help with your entire business model. Because most of us, and this was true of me, I come from a sales background, a s more in the context of strategic partnerships, corporate partnerships, content partnerships, but it required a sales component every time, a deep sales component. And it was always easy for me to build material, pitch material, strategic content campaigns, marketing campaigns from a pre-existing framework. That company was established, it had these deliverables, these resources, and so on. But when you step out of the corporate world and create an offer with no existing framework other than the knowledge you have in your career, it's different to craft that offer. It's different to think about it in that business model. It almost feels like you're restarting from scratch. And you feel like that person you fresh out of college, wide-eyed and mystified, trying to figure out what's step one, right? Where's the water cooler or whatever you want to describe it, whatever analogy makes the most sense. And so I'm now taking the content engine and saying this isn't the whole pie, this will be one of three. And that way, when I meet with clients now, step one is let's get clear on your offer. And then let's validate that offer by getting three customers who will buy it, say that they're interested. Now you're operating from a place of clarity
and your offer is informing your content. And this makes programming GPTs different. So now the GPTs can write content because you have clarity on your offer and who you serve. And so if GPTs are part two and clarity on your offer is part one, then part three is how do you make that business long-term and sustainable? And so what we're trying to teach people to do now is hey, if we're adding an extra 15K per month through your coaching program, monetizing your knowledge, how do you do that consistently so you have line of sight to 50K per month and 100K per month and so on? And that's what we're coming, that's where it comes in building rich client experiences where it's an always-on mode, they're always learning, they're always getting value. And really, I'm teaching my clients so that they don't need me anymore, so they can effectively teach their clients so they don't need them anymore. Yes. Right. And if they do need them, then it's more for different seasons throughout their entrepreneurial journey where they're coming on in short bursts, maybe for extra guidance or extra hands and so on. And I think that's the evolving model I'm starting to see, the emerging model that is going to make a lot of sense for up-and-coming coaches to embrace.
SPEAKER_02So, and another thing I want to bring up is that even though we're talking about uh, you know, Ryan's a subject matter expert in the coaching space, if you're a solopreneur selling whatever, or an entrepreneur who's got their own business that is maybe you've got a brick and mortar or whatever, all of these same principles apply. It's the emyth revisited. It is you having to wear a lot of hats in your business. And if you try to do it without the assistance of a VA or somebody in your office or the AI models, then you're doing it the hard way because uh being an entrepreneur, especially a solopreneur, trying to do all of it is um an exciting journey. Uh, but Chat GPT or whatever your models are, or even the AI assisted tools that you might be using, or a combination, a stack of tools like what Ryan's talking about here, it please don't do it the hard way. It's like from coming from me and from Ryan both, please don't do it the hard way. Use the technology, use the uh the shortcuts, the compressed result cycle that's possible with these tools. So, Ryan, I I I think that there are people that are listening to this that maybe they've thought about it, or even if they haven't thought about uh going out on their own, right? Because they didn't know where what they could do. They didn't realize that they could monetize the skill set that they've got for a broader application in other people's businesses. Um, how how can they how can they plug into what you're doing or what you're teaching, the paradigm of that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I think really just for those who are curious and want to learn more, send me a message on LinkedIn. I can point you in the right direction. Nice. And it's really that easy. I I think the the world is too nuanced to there's so many different resources, right? Most of the ones that I trust with AI are are paid resources. So I have a there's this right with AI newsletter that I subscribe to. Um it's a paid newsletter, but the people behind it have proven to be very adept in in AI. So um just a good one. Um that's usually a great starting point.
SPEAKER_02Okay, cool. Yeah, and I can tell you that um sure we have people that say, oh, just uh DM me on whatever platform, and you will never hear from them again. I reached out to Ryan Cold. He didn't know who I was, and he got back to me. So um, and I can see from the post and the engagements that he's getting with his content that people are like there's uh there's a community being built from that content on LinkedIn, and all it takes is for you to go and start reading some of Ryan's stuff, follow it. If you want to try this out, if you want to learn more about um, you know, being your own boss, starting that coaching business, uh there's a lot of folks out there, but Ryan's path is probably a lot, there's probably a lot more similarities with the way that he arrived here than maybe some of these uh coaching guru types, right? So I would encourage you to learn it from the person who's still in the trenches, still um enthused by the effort and is applying, constantly testing and learning how can I use this tool, how can I refine this process? And it sounds like from everything that we've heard from Ryan today that that's the case. Ryan, I signed up for your newsletter today. Um, you want to send people maybe? Is that is that a good place for them to go and start to get some of your content as well?
SPEAKER_01Oh, definitely. I'm I'm sharing insights there from what I've done to build a 50k month coaching business. So I think that's a great starting point. You can always unsubscribe if I don't fit your bill, but uh that's a wonderful starting point. And I would encourage people to message me on on LinkedIn as well. That's kind of my CRM of sorts, my heads-up display there. So I'm always on there building relationships. And like you said, it it led to this here, and I'm sure we'll be in contact for many other things. And I'm sure at some point in our lives we'll be on a panel together at some industry event speaking about something and reminiscing about remember that one time we did that podcast. So it's good stuff. I reached out cold.
SPEAKER_02So a lot of lessons here for the listeners, and we'll be um adding any links that we talked about, including the link to Ryan's social profiles, um, in the show notes. But I think that that a takeaway that you should certainly ponder is you've got you possess knowledge that you take for granted. However, somebody else who was earlier in their career in the same profession or hasn't had as many reps as you've had at this, those individuals value the information that you're taking for granted. And there is an opportunity for you to uh especially leverage, look, I would never uh I would cautiously advise somebody to go out on their own as an entrepreneur if they've never done it before, because there is uh the school of hard knocks exists in entrepreneur land. However, using technology the way that Ryan has talked about will certainly soften the transition of you going from uh the nine to five corporate or or manager or whatever
into the place where there are no rules except the rules that you set, AI can certainly allow you to uh get farther faster. So with that, Ryan, thank you so much again, man. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. I know that uh there's a lot of demand for your time. You've got a huge audience. Um, and for you to come and share uh with us on the Using AI at work podcast was fantastic. Any comments in closing?
SPEAKER_01I just want to really double down on what you said. You really can monetize the knowledge in your head. And I'm gonna give a bit of an anecdote, but it's a real example. There's an individual who's a friend of mine, she she just got her master's degree, but she's still in her 20s, just had a 100k launch. She did it all off the power of building a personal brand and leaning into being a cohort driver herself, teaching people online business tactics. And she knows what she's talking about. She's powerful, she's strong at that, full of knowledge, and it's because she just applied the time. So imagine you then, if you're mid-30s or even your 40s, I'm 40, and it's been almost a year since I made the jump out of corporate world, and I'm thriving and doing well. And you can do the same thing. You just need to learn how to do it. That's it. Yep. And the more you start taking action, the more that ambiguity starts to fall off your back, like the way raindrops fall off duck feathers, just really fast. So get to it and you'll see.
SPEAKER_02I love it. I love that perspective. Thank you so much, everybody. We'll see you on the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to using AI at work. Don't forget to subscribe for more conversations about how to use AI at work. And a special thank you to our sponsor, Chief AI Officer, for empowering businesses with AI education and training. Visit their website for free AI readiness assessment and AI strategy guide to help you get started using AI at work. That's www.chiefaiofficer.com. Well, thanks to our producer, Evan Despolnier, for making this episode possible. Follow us on Twitter at the handle UsingAI at Work and visit www.usingai at work.com for free resources to help you harness AI in your role.