12. AI Doesn't Think For You. It Thinks With You. How Small Businesses Should Actually Use AI | Artificial Intelligence

Most business owners are either ignoring AI completely or using it in ways that do not actually help their business.

In this episode, Ginny Seeley shares a practical look at how AI is really being used across the businesses she owns with her husband and why the key mindset shift is this: AI does not think for you. It thinks with you.

The conversation begins with a real story from Cavalry Appliance Service, where Joe used ChatGPT to solve a barcode implementation problem that the manufacturer's own documentation could not fully explain. By combining his real world experience with AI as a thinking partner, he arrived at a better solution than the one originally suggested.

From there, Ginny walks through the three most powerful ways small business owners can use AI right now: as a problem solving partner, a task multiplier, and a polishing partner for communication and content.

She also shares an important lesson she learned the hard way about building your AI workflow around a single tool and why every business owner should build redundancy into their AI toolbox.

If you have ever wondered how AI actually fits into a real business without replacing your expertise, this episode will give you a clear place to start.

In this episode you will learn:

• The mindset shift that changes how AI works for your business
 • How Joe used ChatGPT to solve a real operational problem
 • The three most practical ways to use AI in a small business
 • Why writing first and letting AI polish second improves communication
 • How to build a resilient AI toolbox so one outage never stops your workflow

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Transcript

Just the other week, Joe hit a wall. He was trying to implement a new barcode system for the parts management at our appliance business. He had the manual, he had the hardware, and he had every intention of making it work, but the instructions just were not getting him where he needed to go. He was going around in circles for hours, trying to make the system behave the way he needed it to behave inside our workflow. And then he did something that completely changed the outcome.

Welcome to the Outcome Academy Podcast. I am Ginny Seeley. I'm a business strategist and longtime process improvement expert, and I also co-own an appliance service business and a coworking space with my husband, Joe. So I understand what it looks like to juggle growth, leadership, family, and big dreams all at once.

If you're a service-based entrepreneur or executive who wants to stop putting out fires and work on your business and build momentum with systems, smart marketing, and practical tech, you are in exactly the right place.

He took the user manual and uploaded it directly into ChatGPT, and then he started a conversation back and forth—trying things, testing ideas, asking it questions, adjusting what he was doing, and trying it again.

And by the end of that conversation, Joe had implemented the barcode system in a way that was actually better than what the manufacturer had in their own documentation.

Because Joe brought his knowledge of our business, our workflow, our trucks, and our technicians to that conversation. AI helped him think through that problem. And that distinction matters, because AI doesn't think for you—it thinks with you. And that is what this episode is all about.

When AI comes up in conversation with business owners, I usually hear a couple of different things.

The first one is, “I tried AI once and it didn't really sound anything like me.” Maybe you asked it to write something. Maybe the answer felt kind of generic. Maybe it just missed the nuance of what you were trying to say. So you closed the tab and you went back to doing things the way you always have.

The second thing is people feel like there are too many tools. GPT, Gemini, NotebookLM, Perplexity—literally something new launches every single week. It feels overwhelming, and I'm going to be really honest: it even feels overwhelming to me.

But the problem is people dabble a little bit and then they stop.

Also, a lot of people feel really nervous about AI overall. They think to themselves, “What if AI replaces my expertise?” Or worse, “What if the people that I serve think I'm cutting corners by using AI, and then they judge me and they walk away and they don't want to use my business anymore?”

All of these concerns are absolutely valid, and they totally make sense, because most of what you hear about AI is either super hype or super fear. Very little of it is just practical reality.

So I want to clear some things up today.

The most important sentence in this entire episode is this: AI doesn't think for you—it thinks with you.

And to be honest, if you are letting AI think for you, that's not the point. We're not trying to replace our human touch with AI. I talked about that a little bit back in Episode 6. It's really important, as we're incorporating AI into our daily tasks, that we still maintain that human touch.

The moment you start letting AI think for you, that's when you lose your humanity. And people want to work with other people.

When people use AI poorly, they kind of treat it like a vending machine. They type something vague in, and then they get something generic out. Then they either publish it, or they decide that AI isn't useful. Either one is kind of a mess.

If you publish something that isn't really what you intended and doesn't have your expertise, your stories, and your personality, people start to doubt you.

But if you also decide that AI isn't useful, and all the other businesses around you are using it and getting things done really quickly and efficiently, then you're putting yourself at a disadvantage.

But when you bring your expertise, your documents, and your real situation, everything changes.

When Joe was working on that barcode problem, he didn't just go to ChatGPT and say, “Set up a barcode system.” That wouldn't even make sense. ChatGPT wouldn't even know what the barcode system was for, what he was trying to accomplish, or anything.

He said, “Here's the manual. Here's where I'm stuck. Help me think through this.”

And that's the difference.

So I want to share a few ways that we're using AI in our businesses. This is just a big, 30,000-foot view of how we use AI. If I sat here and told you every single way that we use AI in our business, we would be here all day—and it wouldn't just be one episode.

But there are three big ways you can use AI:

First, you can use AI as a problem-solving partner.
Secondly, you can use it as a task multiplier.
And third, you can use it as a polishing partner.

Now I'm going to walk through each one of those so you can go a little deeper and understand what I mean.

The first one is AI as the problem-solving partner.

This is the Joe example that I gave you at the beginning. He didn't need to be an expert at AI, nor did he need AI to be the expert at what he was doing.

He already understood his business. He understood our trucks, our technicians, what they needed, what our parts look like, our workflow. What he needed was someone to help think through the implementation of this new barcode system with him.

AI acted like a collaborator who never got tired, never got frustrated, and could iterate with him step by step.

Another way you can use AI as a problem-solving partner is to take transcripts and upload them into AI and then ask it to analyze the transcripts.

For example, if you're recording your customer service calls, you can take the recorded call and turn that into a transcript. If you just have the voice download, there's another AI tool I'm going to toss out there real quick called Descript—D as in dog, e-script.

There you can upload a video or an audio file.

Copy and paste that entire transcript into your AI tool, and you can ask it to identify patterns. You can ask it why the customer got confused. You can ask where the communication broke down in the conversation. You can even ask it how you would improve sales or deal with that difficult customer.

This is great content for training your team, improving customer service, and all of those types of things.

I want you to think through this for a minute and think about some things in your business that you could upload into AI as a thinking partner.

That type of analysis would have required a lot of money and a lot of time to do in the past, and now we can do it in minutes.

That's not AI making judgment calls—we're the ones making the judgment calls. It's just helping us see patterns and allowing us to take those patterns and interpretations, bring them to our team, and then decide what we want to do with the information.

This is the part I love most.

Inside Outcome Academy, I teach a lot. I teach workshops, I have courses, and I have mastermind sessions. And I realized something a long time ago: just because somebody understands something that I'm teaching them does not mean they know how to implement it.

There's a huge gap sometimes between understanding something and actually implementing it every single week.

So I started building custom AI tools for my students.

What I do is teach a concept, then I give people the tool, and that tool helps them implement something.

For example, instead of just teaching someone how to write their elevator pitch, one of our modules in Brand Builder Blueprint is called Elevator Pitch Perfection.

Instead of just going through that whole thing—which I think is really important, and people should still do that—you open the GPT tool called Elevator Pitch Perfection, click the link, and then it starts asking you all the questions you need to answer to build an elevator pitch in your own voice.

So instead of just me explaining something that everyone should know how to do, I actually created a custom GPT that helps you carry out that task.

Custom GPTs are awesome for repeat tasks.

Somebody came to me and said they were having a hard time breaking down their goals from a big goal to actionable tasks. So I created a custom GPT that does exactly that. It's trained to ask the questions it needs to understand the big goal you're trying to accomplish, and then it helps you plan out the smaller steps to make that goal happen.

Another time, a client asked me for help creating a custom GPT for writing sales ads. They needed to constantly create ads for items they were selling. They wanted to put in the name of the item and an identifying industry number.

So I trained a custom GPT so that when they put that number in, it automatically queries the item, understands what it is, pulls images, and creates a really great ad to sell that item.

So for this one, think about things you repeatedly do in your business.

I have custom GPTs that help me come up with ideas for blog posts and podcast episodes. I have one that I use with my Compound Marketing Machine students called the Small Business Content Generator.

What that one does is help create a strong draft of a blog post. Then they can go back and add a personal story, review it for accuracy, add their own ideas, and upload their brand voice document that we create in Brand Builder Blueprint.

Then—voilà—they have their blog post.

It doesn't stop there. It also provides SEO information, social media posts, an email introducing the blog post, and a summary they can use when they publish it.

So this is how I want you to think about AI. I don't want you to just use it as a search engine.

Now let's talk about AI as a polishing partner.

This one is probably the most misunderstood.

I do not recommend telling AI to write something for you and then just copy and paste it. Your audience knows when something has no human behind it.

Sadly, I've even seen people copy and paste the little message at the bottom that literally says it was written by ChatGPT.

Please don't be that person.

When you stop writing your own ideas, you stop developing your ability to communicate—and communication is leadership.

So here's the approach I take.

I write first. I bring my ideas to AI, and then I ask it to help polish them—tighten a sentence, improve the flow, or rewrite a paragraph so it flows better.

Because your friend Ginny here is awesome at writing run-on sentences and not knowing where to put commas.

AI can help with that.

It's not creating the ideas. It's taking my ideas and helping them look professional so I can communicate clearly.

One thing I also love doing is using voice.

I'll activate the voice feature in an AI tool and just talk through my ideas. Then I'll ask it to organize them into paragraphs, bullet points, or a structure I can upload into NotebookLM to create slides.

The idea is yours. The expertise is yours. The voice is yours. AI just helps refine it.

Now I want to talk about something I learned the hard way.

About six months ago, I was trying to finish a task quickly and ChatGPT was down. It didn't mean everything stopped—but it slowed me down.

So I want to encourage you to build redundancy into your AI toolbox.

Don't rely on just one tool.

Pick at least two that understand your brand voice and your business—your mission, vision, values, who you serve, your pricing, and your positioning.

For me, I like using ChatGPT for thinking through problems like Joe's barcode system.

I like using Claude for polishing writing.

Some people love Gemini. I haven't gotten deep into that one yet.

But the point is this: AI has leveled the playing field.

The tools that used to require entire departments—marketing teams, training departments, analysts—are now available to small business owners for around $20 a month.

Small businesses are the backbone of our communities. We sponsor little league teams, show up at school fundraisers, and employ our neighbors.

And now the tools that used to only belong to huge corporations are available to you.

Not because AI replaces your expertise—but because it amplifies it.

So here's your homework this week:

1. Set up two AI tools—ChatGPT and Claude are a great starting point.
2. Bring a real problem to AI. Upload a manual, a document, or an email thread. Ask it to help you think through the issue.
3. Write first. Then let AI polish what you created.

Your voice stays intact, your communication improves, and your output gets better.

People keep asking how we use AI in our business. And right now you're hearing about agents, Open-something, Claude Cowork, and a lot of advanced tools.

But don't feel overwhelmed.

Start with the basics we talked about in this episode.

You can do this.

You are smarter than any AI tool you will ever use. AI may have a lot of knowledge—but it doesn't have your lived experience, your creativity, your passion, or your humanity.

So use AI to amplify your humanity.

Let it help you share your ideas with the world faster so you can spend more time doing the things that matter most—serving your customers and spending time with your family.

Thanks again for hanging out with me today. I'll see you in the next episode, and I can't wait to hear how you're using AI in your business.

As you go through this week, notice where this shows up in your own business.

If you want to go deeper into this work, including the mastermind and other ways we support service-based business owners, you can explore everything at outcomeacademy.com.

Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode.