77. Build an AI Marketing Assistant that Actually Sounds Like You | Interview with Nina Huchthausen

In Episode 77, Gerda explores one of the biggest conversations facing private practice owners right now: AI and what it means for your practice. 

With so much noise, excitement, and uncertainty around AI, it’s understandable if you’re feeling a little unsure about where to start (and let’s be honest… there’s a LOT of “AI advice” out there right now). And you’re probably thinking….Do you embrace it? Ignore it? Experiment with it? And how do you make sure you’re using it in a way that actually supports your practice?

Well…. This episode is here to help answer all those questions. 

Joining Gerda is Nina Huchthausen from Set to Growth and the AI Corner Club, who shares her insights into how practice owners can start thinking differently about AI and the role it can play in their business to create more time, capacity, and ease. 

In this episode, you will learn (among others):

• What AI actually is, what it isn’t, and why knowing the difference matters.
• Understanding the difference between building an AI Assistant VS simply asking ChatGPT random questions.
• How to use AI in your marketing, but in a manner that actually sounds like YOUR brand voice and without the usual AI tropes.
• How to embrace AI in your practice ethically, strategically, and without losing the human connection your clients value.

Who this episode is for:

✔️ Allied health practice owners who are excited about using AI to strengthen the marketing function within their business. 

✔ ️ Practice owners who want to understand how AI can improve their business efficiency without compromising their client data, brand and reputation.

✔ ️ Practice owners who keep hearing about AI, but aren’t quite sure where to start.

Tune in for a practical and thought-provoking conversation that will help you move past the hype and uncertainty around AI, and start thinking about the actual REAL possibilities it could create for your practice.

Here to help you build a practice you can’t stop smiling about 😍

Nina's Contact Details:

Nina Huchthausen | Set to Growth

E: nina.h@settogrowth.com

W: https://settogrowth.com/

Want Gerda's Help with your Business?

Gerda helps allied health group practice owners go from overwhelmed, overworked, and underpaid to fully empowered and financially thriving. If this is you, then make today the day you reach out. Complete this super short Triage Form here bit.ly/triageformpps and Gerda will personally reach out to you. 

Here to help you build a practice you can't stop smiling about :)

Connect with Private Practice Success & Gerda here:

• Would you like Gerda's help in growing your practice? Step 1 is to complete this short form HERE. Gerda will personally go through your answers and will respond asap. 
• Follow the Private Practice Success Facebook Page
• Follow Gerda on Instagram
• Connect with Gerda on LinkedIN
• Join the Private Practice Success Facebook Group - exclusive to practice owners.
• Email Gerda directly at gerdam@private-practice-success.com
• Order your hard copy of Gerda's book, The 7-Figure Practice HERE.
• Ready to work with Gerda? Send in your details HERE and she will be in touch.

Transcript

Well, hello there, amazing private practice owner. My name is Gerda Muller, and you are listening to the Private Practice Success Podcast, and this is episode number 77.

Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to Nina Huchthausen from Set to Growth and the AI Corner Club.  Welcome, Nina, it is so good to have you on the podcast today. 

Nina: Thank you so much, Gerda. I'm super, super excited to be here today. 

Gerda: Same. Before we get stuck into all the goodness that is AI, I just wanted to give everybody that's listening some context. 

Nina is one of this year's expert speakers that is going to be joining me at the upcoming Private Practice Business Intensive, which of course is happening in August 2026. Nina has agreed to run a 90-minute workshop called Bring Your Laptop, Leave with an AI Marketing Assistant. So I thought, let's get her onto the podcast and give you a bit of a sneak peek into what her presentation is going to be all about. And if you can't get to this year's event, that's super cool as well because I am very confident that after listening to this episode, you're going to still walk away with a lot of helpful insights from listening to what Nina has to share with all of us. 

So Nina, I'm going to let you kick us off, and I would love for you to start by telling us a bit more about who you are and what it is that you do. 

Nina: Awesome, thank you so much again, Gerda, for having me. My name is Nina, I'm the founder at Set to Growth. We have not always focused on AI strategy training and continued governance and support because we are all novices in this space. I would say most practitioners started in 2022, 2023, same as me, so I do not want to proclaim myself an expert in this space. But I'm an avid learner and implementer. And for me, my career started back in 2010 building processes and systems for growing businesses. 

My very first project that I kinda stumbled into after university was helping at PWC building an intranet, and helping people who had no idea, including myself, of what an intranet was on how to engage with it, build really good processes, and teach them how to fall in love with the platform. That was my brief, and I was like, "Alright, well, first of all, let me look up what an intranet is." But once I figured that out and then sat down with everyone and got self-taught about this, I really fell in love with helping people have it easier in the way that they work. Back then, that was through process design and systems design.  For me, that's always been a big passion because, and I know this is a big problem in the allied health industry as well. A lot of people across the globe suffer from working themselves into the ground, to the next holiday, recovering, and doing it all over again. 

What I learned very quickly in my career, that comes back to - when we don't know exactly what we need to do, how we need to do it, or when we need to do it. And for me, I've always seen time as the most precious resource on this planet, and I, back then, decided I would like to not see myself as someone with a job title, but someone who ultimately gives people time and capacity back. And that led me down this path at some point to really start embracing artificial intelligence, because that's what it really is. It can be, when used for good in the right way, as a way to create time and capacity for us. And that happens through teaching artificial intelligence, which operates incredibly similar to human intelligence, through teaching that it can take manual, repetitive work off our plates and do that for us. 

When I realised in 2022 that that intelligence has become so good that, when it's trained correctly, it's not just generic, but it can operate like a human, I was like, "I need to gift as many good businesses as possible this gift so that they can focus on the stuff that they really love doing, that lights them up, that creates energy, that creates drive, and ultimately creates a much better customer experience,” right? And the reason why I was so drawn to working with you, Gerda, is because I've had many health challenges in my past, and it was always someone in the allied health space. Someone with private practice experience. Someone who was genuinely interested in figuring out the root cause and not just treating the symptom. Someone who wanted to take their time, who genuinely helped me. But gifting that time to figure out the root cause comes at a cost, right? And that I think often ends up that a lot of practitioners work themselves into the ground if they're not careful, because they are interested in gifting back health, often at their own detriment. Because there's a lot to it when you run a business that a patient doesn't see. 

Gerda: Yeah, very true. There's so much that I love from what you've just shared, and I think there's a lot of alignment here because what I hear from you is that a lot of what drives what you do is to help more people. As allied health professionals, we are helpers. My tagline in my world of business back at the practice, my business called  The Psych Professionals, it is always, "We are here to help more people in better and more effective ways." And of course systems are incredibly important to help us achieve that and become more efficient. And now, of course, we have AI that is available, and when used in the right manner, that can again help with that mission of how can we help more people in better, more efficient ways, but also in a way that you've touched on that doesn't burn out the practice owner in this particular instance that we're talking about, but yes, the clinicians in general, but the owner that has so much work that they need to do. 

It's interesting to hear you talk about the intranet.  It's like, wow, you've been through that initial wave of technology evolving to that level, and now this is this new wave of the new evolution which is a big jump for a lot of us. And I know you say you're not an expert in the area. I think you're being really humble because from what I've seen, you most certainly are an expert compared to me and a lot of people out there. 

So very excited to have this conversation, and I'm thinking, a really great place to start maybe is to get some clarity as to what AI actually is, because I think there's a lot of presumption as well as assumptions around what it is and what it isn't. Can you talk us through that a bit? 

Nina: So artificial intelligence, and that's why I use that term a lot versus AI, is an intelligence. It's something that learns, understands, comprehends, and takes action on that learning. Same as a human. But with artificial intelligence you can't meet like a human. So really If we want to connect with artificial intelligence, we have to set up an account. Yeah? An account either with, you know, some of your listeners might have used ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini. And in order to create, to make that first interaction, we need to put in our name and password and create an account, and then we can start chatting to it, and that's probably what most people do with artificial intelligence.  Now imagine we did the same with a human. 

Why do we go to artificial intelligence? Because we have a question or we have a problem, we are seeking answers. We want something. So we log in and we ask it that question. So  imagine we did the same with a human, and we just walked up to a stranger on the street and said, "Hey, sorry, can you pause for a moment?" And then we just ask it a question, that human a question. That human will give us one answer.  If we stopped another person on the street will give us a different answer. And stopping somebody else will also give us a different answer, because every single human has no knowledge about us, and based on their world, that's how they answer the question. And humans have intelligence that continuously evolves, and so does artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence though, even though the better it gets we feel like it is very human-like, is a data model that has been trained by other humans, that has a lot of bias because it's been trained, but it is the same with every single human. 

Every single human walks around the planet with a lot of bias and has been trained by other humans, right? Where do we get our knowledge from? Yes, from our own experience. We, as humans, have the luxury of being actually able to walk this planet and gather our own experience, but we all have been taught by other humans as well, that's how we gather our knowledge, but then our brain develops that knowledge and creates ideas with it as well. So artificial intelligence is very similar to humans, and that's why just in this context I'd like to create that picture of intelligence that has been taught in the past to arrive at the knowledge that it has today. But it can also future cast and play with that knowledge and reassemble that knowledge. And that's why I think for a lot of people it is really exciting, but we have to understand that it is a data model at the end of the day, and if it has been taught things that are incorrect, it will not know that it's been learned, taught incorrectly. It will just say it as a truth. But it is not, and that's why I think it's so difficult to understand for a lot of people, it's not like a system or an app that you just lock into when you ask what is one plus one, and it just always tells you two. Or it's not like a CRM where you type in where you just search for a name for a client, and it just gives you that name. 

Because it's intelligence, it always thinks about, okay, cool, how else could I answer this or create something with it? So it's not always black and white. Even if you and I were to log into the same language model and ask the same question, we might get a different answer because it has been trained now for many, many years from millions and millions of people. It is out of the box when we log in for the first time. I would see it as an intern that comes straight out of university and has studied 1,001 subjects. 

Gerda: Okay, I like that. 

Nina: It is incredibly smart, right? And if you log into any language model, into any artificial intelligence model, ChatGPT or Claude, and ask it any type of question, it will probably find that answer somewhere. Any human on the street might struggle with the same question, but it doesn't experience life, and that's where its limitation is. So in my mind, it is not something that can replace a human, but because it's very smart, university smart, and it is very fast in executing university-type questions. I think it can be very powerful in harnessing its unique skills.  So for example, what I think AI is crushing it in that we cannot compete in, is… Gerda, have you written a book? I actually don't know. 

Gerda: I have, yes. 

Nina: So I'm just going to make it up - it might take me eight hours to read it. AI can probably do that in five or less minutes. Nobody can compete. And then it will remember everything that's in there, and we can ask it any question. I don't know which human can do that. We can't. So, you know, like comprehending a lot of data - perfect. A lot of general knowledge - perfect. And when we teach artificial intelligence about any given subject, it can pick it up like that.  With humans, we need time. Humans gets exhausted from a lot of information. Humans need breaks. But AI, because it doesn't walk this planet, AI can't, you know Right now we have an energy between us yeah? That's very positive. We're vibing right now. You cannot vibe with AI, because it's just giving you an answer. And as much as this tries to, it cannot give us a sense of closeness, connection, empathy, understanding. It can't dance with us. It can't make us feel seen and safe. 

Gerda: I 100% agree. Actually, a week or so ago, I was having this internal reflection on, you know, I hear a lot of people asking ChatGPT and even Claude for help with their mental health, for example. And I went, okay, well, I'm convinced that it's better to see an in-person psychologist than to go to ChatGPT when you're anxious, having a panic attack, or you're depressed, or you're dealing with a trauma.  But, you know, I'm not objective here, I'm very biased because I'm a psychologist myself. So I actually went to ChatGPT, and I asked ChatGPT to write me a blog with 10 reasons why a human psychologist is better to consult for mental health than to talk to ChatGPT. 

It was really interesting, and it brought up all the things that you've just mentioned, right? That it can't read your body language because it can't see you. It can't vibe with you. There's no connection. It can pretend to be empathic, it actually doesn't care. Whereas a human does care. It's that human connection. And I think it's important for people to therefore understand the differences, like you say, this is artificial intelligence. It's great at, you know, recalling memory retention and giving back stuff that it's learned, but there's limitations to it. 

I love your analogy of it being like an intern because as somebody that employs a lot of clinicians, we all know that, even myself when I was an intern or even a brand new graduate having done six years of study at university, I still had so much to learn. I did not know it all. And I think it's the same with AI, that it needs to continue learning, and obviously it also needs to learn more about if we want to use it in our business, our systems, our…’What makes our business unique’ for example. 

Nina: Absolutely. And that's why I think the big thing that I would like to preface is artificial intelligence is this: I strongly suggest to everyone do not see it as competition. Do not see it as something that should replace you or anyone in your practice. It should be there to support and serve you and be your assistant, because, I think that it is a very important point in time where we all need to make very smart decisions on how we're going to use it. Because we could all, as a collective, decide instead of talking to a human who - could talk back at me, who might challenge my thinking, who might play a side, or play back to me, or talk to me in a way that I don't like - I just talk to artificial intelligence because it doesn't talk back at me. It accepts me the way I am. And if I program it the right way, it just agrees with everything that I say. 

But what happens if we handed everything over to artificial intelligence -  we lose purpose. If a human loses purpose, it ends financial income. There is no such thing as a thriving practice success, because nobody can afford it right. So artificial intelligence, as much as it can be seen as a genie in a bottle that can do a million things because it is incredibly smart and we could be training it for everything, I think we have to all contain it and use it for the right things, and make sure that we work with humans for human matters, for human things, for humanness to make sure we are all wholesome, and use artificial intelligence to do the manual work, the repetitive work, the process driven stuff, the stuff that is easy to teach that we don't love doing.  But things such as reading a book and summarising it? Man, if you gave that to your staff, you know, they're like, "Oh, God," and I'm like, "I'm so stressed out. I cannot do it in a day. I have so much to do." We want to give that to artificial intelligence, you know?  So we have to be wise in what we use it for and what we don't use it for, to protect ourselves more than anything else. 

Gerda: That's correct. I love the thought of, you know, it is a resource or a tool, but you need to use it resourcefully, because you can use tools in various different ways, and it's about knowing how to use this one. And if I think about it, you know, it seems like right now AI is, like, everywhere you look. If I look at people in my own Private Practice Success community, but just the community in general, we've got people that are very excited about AI, it's the early adopters. We've got people a bit overwhelmed about it. There's some people that go, "No, I don't want anything to do with it, it's the devil." 

Why do you believe is now a good time or the right time maybe for particularly allied health practice owners to step into embracing AI within their business? 

Nina: I think a couple factors. So any work that is process driven, that you could write an SOP for and then we just follow the steps. Such as planning out your marketing, writing social content, email content, creating images, whatever it is that we have developed a process for, or it could be booking in a client into a calendar, writing a follow-up letter or be engaging them and taking them on a stronger, longer customer journey, or consolidating your invoices, anything like that. AI's become really, really good, very teachable and very reliable and very fast. And that creates a huge opportunity because everyone inside a practice, whether that is allied or not, we all only have so much time in the day. We can either choose to use that time to see patients, to spend more time with patients, to research, to understand, to really come to the bottom of a health concern, or in your case as a psychologist, to spend the extra 10 minutes. Yeah? Or having to say, "Hey, the 60 minutes are up," because you know you have 10 administrative things to do before you have to dash home and look after the kids or do your own life. That is the choice. Without artificial intelligence, we have to keep making, or we stay back and then at some point we burn out. 

Now, artificial intelligence, if we use it correctly, can take those things off our plate and create more capacity for the things that we love doing. Now it has been around for a while, and it will not go away, meaning if we decide to be like, "No, it's the devil," yeah? That might mean that other people start embracing it, and will be able to give better, more accessible, maybe even more affordable ways of servicing clients. And that might mean then at some point we might either feel like we are falling behind or we cannot catch up, because it requires a fair bit of reinventing ourselves and how we go about doing all of our work. And that personal reinvention is not done overnight yeah. It's the same as if you worked for 10 years by yourself, and all of a sudden you start hiring staff members. You have to step up into a leadership position, you have to reorganise how you work, how you plan for your staff, how you hand work over, how you give them feedback, how you support them. That is not easy right? And it is the same with artificial intelligence.

If we start embracing it now, we have now the chance to do it bit by bit, and very strategically we can identify and just start with, “Where's my biggest bottleneck in my business?” Maybe something that is deeply draining me or I avoid it. Or if I don't do it something bad could happen and then I'm stressed out to the bone. Yeah. It's just one thing if I learned how to teach AI to do it for me, what would be the possibility? And then just embrace it as a single staff member that you just onboarded, you know? 

Gerda: I love that because I think we can all agree that AI is not a fad. It is here to stay, and you mentioned falling behind and I totally agree. If we don't start to embrace it one step at a time, it will be like me pitching up to 100 meter race, and competing with Usain Bolt. It's like, there's no way I can win that race, right? And it's not always about winning, but it's like, you'll be so far behind and that can be very discouraging and that's going to lead to feelings of being a failure, of burning out, all of that type of stuff. So we really owe it to ourselves to go, "How can I do this more efficiently? How can I embrace it?" And you mentioned all the different ways we use it with systems, with your operating manual. Particularly what we are going to be talking about at the Business Intensive is how to use it in your marketing. Because I know that a lot of practice owners aren't natural marketers. Yes, there are some of those who are exceptions. They know they have to market, they do it sometimes reluctantly, not very consistently, not in a structured manner. 

But I'm also seeing if I look at the trends within the industry right now, for the first time in a very long time, people are struggling at filling their books. Which means that marketing is now even more important than it was three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten years ago. And I don't see that changing in the foreseeable future given the economic climate that we are in. So for at least the next 24 -36 months I suspect it's going to continue being difficult. And that's why I was thinking, how can we use AI to assist practice owners in getting the marketing done? And in actually being able to post consistently on social media, write consistent client newsletters. Do those things that we know that build relationships and bring in new work and help them retain clients. Then, of course, when we talk about, you know, building an AI assistant, for example with marketing, I know the first thing people go is like, "Ah, but I don't want my marketing content to sound like AI slop," right? Because I personally, I can tell you immediately when I read something on social media, I can see what is AI and what is not because of the way it talks and that type of stuff. And obviously, when you talk to us at Intensive, it's going to be about marketing - How to build a marketing assistant.  But my question to you is: 

How do we make sure that my marketing content, when I embrace and use AI resourcefully, that it doesn't sound robotic. That it actually sounds like, like I wrote it, that people can't tell that it was AI? 

Nina: The answer's actually really simple, because let's draw it back to humans. Imagine for a second you hired me to be your ghost social media writer. I'm coming in, and all you tell me is say, "Nina, just write me some social posts." That's it. 

Gerda: I've spoken to a lot of people over the years that's outsourced to agencies, and that's exactly what they did, and then they stick around with those agencies for, three, four, maximum six months and go, "Doesn't sound like my brand. That's not how we talk. It feels like it's just generic stuff that they've given me," and then they stop working with them. And I think that's the same thing that's happening with AI because they don't do what we need to do. 

Nina: Exactly, because what it is, is hiring a ghostwriter. Now, how does a ghostwriter, and, you know, politicians have really good ghostwriters, most of the time you think that's what they would say, right? Yeah. It's because a really good ghostwriter doesn't just say yes to, "Okay, you told me to write some social media. Just do it." They were like, "No, no, no." "I need to see hundreds and hundreds of pages of how you write." Yeah. "I want to understand your writing pattern. I want to understand exactly all the words that you use, that you don't use, what the combinations are." Like, how your punctuation works. Yeah? 

How you write excitedly versus sadly versus empowering versus inspiring, all of the different things. If I was to write in your voice, I need to study your voice first, and that, a lot of people miss that, because that requires slowing down. You can't just come into AI and say, "Hey, write me some social posts." I mean, you can, but then it sounds like AI.  If you hired me, it would sound like Nina - what a surprise, because I don't know how you write unless you teach me. The teaching part is actually the really, really fun part, because as I said at the start, AI's really good and really fast picking up patterns. 

So in your case, Gerda, how I would go about teaching AI to sound like or to write like you, your social media, is to study your social media. There are hundreds, probably thousands of posts out there. You've written a book, that's long form content, right? You've written all sorts, which is magical. That is the stuff that we need to give artificial intelligence access to, teach it how to study it, to understand and uncover the patterns, and then write itself an instruction manual on how to sound like Gerda. 

Step number one, that's how you would teach me. But then of course, you know, I start writing, you will notice mistakes. But the mistakes very often come because it has studied a time capsule in the past. I don't know about you, but for me, how I write today on a Friday, yeah, two days before my period might be different to like in 10 days. Yeah, we are women okay, we laugh about this. But we vibe, we have different energies at different times. Sometimes we change our tone a little bit. There's fluidity, there's creativity, things keep evolving. So it doesn't just need to be taught once, it needs to be given this feedback, and it needs to be instructed to store it in their memory, so it can pick up your nuances, your flavour, and then keep evolving with that. 

Will it at some point be 100% you? No, because we are not robots. We operate in the conscious space, in the unconscious space. We get insights. We just decide to change it up. It won't know. It's an assistant. But it is incredibly powerful to learn, to retain, and to follow our rules until we break them, then it gets confused. But if we understand that we've broken the rule because it follows and creates rules for everything - because it understands patterns, it's a data model, right - as long as we keep following the rules, it will get better and better and better. Until we break it, then we need to teach it again. But that is literally, if we compare it like that, that's how we're going  to help ourselves to have a lot of fun with our artificial intelligence. 

Gerda: Love that, and there's a lot of takeaways there in terms of it's more than just talking to ChatGPT or just putting in one or two prompts, right? It is about slowing down and teaching it, like you would onboard a new team member, for example, and giving them feedback. The great thing is that they will remember it. You don't have to give it 100 times, the same feedback over and over. You give it once, tell them to remember it, and it remembers it. 

I love the reframe of it being an assistant. It's an assistant. It's not the final product always, because we have to put our humanness through it, because I myself can relate to how my tone in my social media content is different. It's why I've always struggled to batch write social media content, because I feel like I need to be in the moment. I'm like, really upset about this thing, I want to talk about it right now, or I've spoken to somebody and it's really triggered me and I want to tell everybody about it. Or you know, something's made me happy or made me upset, I like to write when I have that emotional response behind it, because I always feel like that's the value content, and I think it's about knowing what AI can do, using it to its utmost, and then bringing the fire, the vibe, the humanness, and that connection. 

Nina: Exactly. Look, the way I use my marketing assistant, her name is Flo,  in reality is that I do not batch write. As much as everyone says get the content all done. The whole content calendar is done in one hour for the whole month. That is great, and you'll probably get good content, but there's a lot of stuff that comes in the moment. And for me, I think the biggest value with artificial intelligence is that it's so good at writing exactly how I write, and that it knows the format and the pattern of how I construct my social media posts, because we know there's always a hook. There's a way of how we write, there's a call to action, there's something in it, and there's a visual to it, and same with the newsletter, right? It's written with purpose, intention, and has a certain frame and a certain voice, and a purpose. 

If it knows that, and we allow ourselves, we wait for our own fire, right? Because then we know it resonates with me, we can send it out with resonance to meet our audience and attract it to us. Then if AI knows everything else, what, what I literally do, I have a little voice recorder, transcription recorder. Something like this.  It's just a voice recorder that I always have in my back pocket. I speak, I transcribe my fire-written story or whatever it is,  and my AI assistant is connected to my transcription. It pulls it, and then it does its magic. 

Gerda: That's cool. 

Nina: Yeah, and that in itself, if that's the only thing that people will learn on in, in August, is absolutely life-changing. Because when you are in the moment, you might be riding your horse, driving your car, cooking dinner,  we can't sit down and be like - let's write it, but we can say it. And that's where we are the leader, the master, and AI is the assistant to be like, "Say no more, Gerda. I'm going to, phew, turn it into a beautiful cake." But you have given me the magic.

Gerda:  I love it. That’s really efficient, and, and that's a good segue into if we then fast-forward to August when we have the business intensive. Let's say I'm a practice owner and I arrive at your presentation, it's more going to be a workshop rather than a presentation, because we're going to actually do stuff, and I know very little about AI, maybe I've done one or two prompts with ChatGPT or whatever, but what will I actually be able to do by the time I leave the workshop, or what would I have? 

Nina: Okay, so first thing that I will teach everyone, because it's important to understand, is just chatting with AI is not going to give you the output that I just described. We need to learn how to train it strategically. There are  six components to it that  you need to understand so that you can train it, and because ultimately we're building our own AI assistant with a brain, with skills, with understanding, with memory. You will take away that understanding of the framework on how to teach and train artificial intelligence, and move away from chatting with it, because chatting is cool, but we want to build ourselves an assistant that can take real work off our plate. So all we got to do is talk it out and go about our merry way, so that's what you're going to take away. But then we're going to put that into practice, and we will all be building your 1.0 marketing assistant that does the research and the planning for you of your content, that then turns, based on your instructions and your leadership, into social media content, so short-form content, and into email newsletter content. We're building it, we're installing it, but you're not just going to do it blindly, but you'll be empowered to understand what you do on it , what you're doing, and how you are doing it. Because that's really what takes the scariness away. 

If I didn't teach you beforehand, you'll be like, "Okay, I built this, but can I break it? What is it actually going to do?" Because I have no understanding. That would be hiring a staff member, and you have no idea what that staff member actually does. For me, I think it's very important, especially because all allied health professionals work with clients, with client sensitive data, that we fully understand what we are building, when, and how, so we can consciously say yes or no to what we're allowing it to do. 

Gerda: That's going to be so super cool. I cannot wait. So if you are coming to Nina's workshop, you have to come with a fully charged laptop. So bring your chargers with you, because we'll actually be doing stuff on the day. And once Nina's taken you through that six-part framework, you'll be able to do other assistants as well. But we're going to do a marketing one, and my brief was specifically, as I know practice owners struggle with social media content, being consistent, and then of course client newsletters, so those are the two things that you're going to know how to get your assistant to do at the end of that session. 

But you mentioned another important point in what you've just shared with us about the sensitivity of the information, right? So the audience that's listening to this podcast, and that's going to be in the room on that day, are allied health professionals like psychologists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, etc, and our industry is understandably really cautious when it comes to privacy, confidentiality, as well as data security. 

What should practice owners know about safely using AI within their business considering those concerns? And I'm not specifically talking right now about clinical note-taking, because our focus is more on the business management side of things. 

Nina: So there are two parts in this. Part number one is, client sensitive data that we acquire, accumulate when we are working with patients. Now, that data in general, whether you're coming to the workshop or not, never ever copy it into a GPT, Claude, or Gemini for analysis or doing anything, and that's also not what I want to teach you. Because that data, even if we are not allowing Claude or Gemini or whatever to be trained, moves into the US. This is a third party who owns it, so that's not what we are going to do. We'll be using Claude, but we'll be using it in the marketing space, because marketing should not really have access to Nina's personal file. That's the first stop gate where everybody who's in the room needs to promise me we're doing this for marketing, Claude is for marketing. Claude can be for sales, Claude can be for anything to help us attract clients, but not with the management of clients.  With the management of clients, there are different large language models out there that we can install in our practice on what's called on premise, not in the cloud, so the data is contained.. there's a different artificial intelligence. So we have to put a gate down there, and that's what we're going to do. That's why we need to trust everyone in the room to do that, but that's what protects the two sides. 

The other thing is, inside Claude, we can connect it to different systems. Because there's one way we can copy paste a whole lot of stuff, and I think, know a lot of people have done that, including board reports and financials, and God knows what. It's crazy town. But Claude, GPT, and all of these other language models, they make it incredibly easy to connect to a whole bunch of our systems, just pressing a few buttons. We'll also be talking about which buttons to never, ever press inside the platform to make sure that everybody is protected. So what we'll be focusing on is the attraction, and retention of clients through marketing efforts without non-client sensitive data. 

Gerda: I think that's so important because, yes, we've got those early adopters, and some people just jump in and fully embrace things like this, but given our profession and the work that we do, it's so important for us to really look at all the risks as well. Not let that stop us, but just slow down and go, okay, let's just check all the settings. What's the buttons that need to be toggled on and off to make sure that we always know that we are as compliant as we can possibly be in protecting that data security of the business, ourselves, our clients, everything really. 

Nina: Exactly. And the thing is, with artificial intelligence, you cannot call anyone. There's no police. Call the police and say, "Ah, you know, this happened with my client data." That’s on us. There's also no insurance for it. I have not seen that there's, there's, there's any insurance who says, "Okay, if you do schmoo with your data through artificial intelligence, that we cover you." So any early adopter, a lot of early adopters I think is a bit of a cowboy in the wild, wide west. So really like we wanted to use it consciously and in a smart way as an assistant that we consciously decided to hire.  The same as in any practice with human beings, we're not just deciding on a whim to just hire some random person. We sit down, we decide what we need. We want to solve a bottleneck. Based on that bottleneck, we decide on a role, then we make conscious choices. We have to be as conscious with artificial intelligence. 

And that, of course, is what we're going to be talking about more in the session in Byron Bay. I think that's how we want to treat it. We don't want to create any more worry or concerns. We want to create ease and capacity. And for that, we need to plan and make some good choices. But if we do that, then it can be absolutely magical, and I think that is the whole idea, you know? I think that's also the whole ethos of what you do, Gerda. You're not just teaching people random things. You want to make sure to make conscious choices and reach certain goals. 

Gerda: Correct. 

Nina: And artificial intelligence should be there to help reach those goals with ease, without killing the practice. 

Gerda: 100%. I was listening to that, the people being like cowboys and if you think about it,  when you act too fast, because you get eager and excited, people could be engaging in data breaches that they don't even know that's happening. We're going to stop all those gaps and make sure it's not happening. 

But if we think then in terms of the overall theme for this year's Private Practice Business Intensive is all about Future Proofing your Practice for the Future, and I'm pretty sure that a lot of practice owners might be thinking, "I'm going to be replaced by AI. People can just talk to ChatGPT or Claude, and counseling gets done," or whatever else. How do you think AI fits into this bigger picture of future-proofing allied health business, but just business in general, in order to make sure that we remain viable and sustainable as a business? 

Nina: Good question. I think it requires an effort of the whole society to make the right choices. But what I do believe is we all have a sense of longing to be connected with other humans. We all get a lot out of it speaking to another human, versus just watching TV. Some people are like, Yeah, you know, this feels safe for now. I watch TV. But that's not what makes us humans and society thrive. We thrive of being connected with other humans. And ultimately, business owners love to do business with other business owners, with humans. We love to pick up the phone. 

The reason why I've been with my dentistry for, like, 15-odd years, is because after every session, the next day they call me and ask me, "Are you okay? Is everything okay? Anything wonky? Can we help you?" After six months, I'm not just getting a text, I'm getting a call. I love that. These are two small touch points. It doesn't take much, but I feel like they actually remember me. They're not just calling a number, they are super nice. And that super nice, that kindness, that slowing down, makes me keep coming back. If AI all of a sudden called me, I would be like, "What the fuck?" I don't want to talk to AI. I don't want to pay you if you send AI to me. I want this humanness, yeah. 

Gerda: I'm with you. 

Nina: And that's what we have to keep remembering and using AI not to replace us, because who's going to make the choice of replacing versus supporting? That is us. But we all have to make those choices, and as practice owners, we can make that choice and do two things. Because if, number one, we make the choice and say, "Okay, I'm going to really figure this out and lean what I call into this yoga stretch. It's uncomfortable. It's weird. It's like I don't really want to do it, but somebody said it's good for me. Lean into it slowly and be like, "Okay, I'm going to start embracing it, and I'm going to figure this out, and I'm going to really see, Okay, where does it excel at? Where do my people and myself excel at, and what does make us thrive and make all of our customers say, 'Five stars… they keep coming back? And take the time to figure that out. Our uniqueness, right? What makes people flock to Gerda? Then decide, Okay, I'm going to double down on that. 

Instead of me spending 10 hours on that, I want 20 hours. So where do I get those other 10? I hand that shit that I don't want to do, that's going to take me back from doubling down on giving customer love, that goes to AI, because nobody cares about that anyways. But the stuff that they do care about, I'm going to double down on that. To me, that's the real opportunity of artificial intelligence. That we can double down on sending out the love and making our people to be like, "I'd be stupid to leave this chiropractor, because they protect my family, they give me health. You know, they're always there. I want them for life." 

Gerda: If you actually look at it in that way, like you've just described, like, what should the humans do, because they do that really well and people want it, and what can the AI do, and they do that really well, that's what's going to fast-track your business growth, and that's what's going to help you help more people in better and more effective ways, and I think that's what all practice owners want to achieve anyway. 

Nina: Yeah, and it fuels you, because as I think you mentioned it at, at, at the start, there are so many private practice owners that are burning out  from so much to do and pushing hard. So, if we all allow ourselves, like, to be a bit more selfish, what fills my cup, I double down on that. What fills my customer's cup, I double down on that. Everything else, like, get off my plate. 

Gerda: I love it. Permission to be selfish with what you need, what your business needs, what your customers need, and to give yourself permission to use AI to help you in achieving all of that. That's awesome. 

So, if somebody is listening to this and they're sitting on the fence and wondering whether they should come along to the Business Intensive in August, what would you say to them? 

Nina: Well, absolutely, because we are at a point in time where we have to really support our businesses and fuel it with the right ingredients. Whether all the processes and systems and the key things that you teach them, that is super important to future-proof, you want to learn now how artificial intelligence can take some of those things off your plate. It's a key resource, and it's almost free. Let's get educated and informed so you can make informed decisions, and not say blatantly no or yes to everything and then the shit hits the fan. I think this is a really awesome opportunity for everyone to be like, Right, let's get a plan together that works for me, for my practice, it's going to  be a comprehensive holistic one, and by the time you leave, you'll be like, "Okay, cool. This is my plan for FY27." 

Gerda: That's so good because if I think about it, the thoughts that I had as you were talking was I see a lot of people go down the AI rabbit hole, and it's like they get totally consumed by it, and they're still not using it in the right way. It takes over their whole world because they're going down the rabbit hole, versus people that just use it for prompts and not getting the full benefit from it, versus people that - I'm not ready yet, versus with your six phase framework. It's really about, okay, let's go down the rabbit hole, but we're going to do it in the right manner. We're not going to let it consume us, and we're going to make structured decisions, take the right steps, and make sure it works for us right from the start. And that's why you're coming in to talk to us. 

So if you could give every allied health practice owner one extra employee tomorrow, Nina, and this employee never got sick, they never forget the instructions, and they work 24/7, and they cost you, like, 30 bucks a month or something, like less than you work to get some takeaways, would you hire them? 

Nina: Yeah Absolutely.

Gerda: So would I. We would be crazy not to, right? 

Nina: Yeah, and give them the stuff that I don't want to do. 

Gerda: Exactly. And that's what an AI assistant allows you to do. So if anybody's listening to this and going, I want this. I want to learn from Nina, and I want to create my own AI marketing assistant, then this is most certainly your invitation to join Nina on the Thursday. So you're talking on Day Two, nice and early in the morning. I've specifically put it there so that there's no cobwebs and everybody's nice and fresh. You know, come and join us. Check out the show notes, and after that 90 minutes, you're going to walk away with having created an AI marketing assistant. Are we calling her Flo as well, or what are we calling this one? Can we call it anything? I don't know. 

Nina: You give it a name. You give it a name. :)

Gerda: An AI marketing assistant that's going to understand your individual practice, that's going to write in your brand voice, that's going to be AHPRA compliant, ethical, and ready to help us create social media content and newsletters in minutes, and I think that is super cool. Super cool. 

Thank you, Nina, for coming and talking to us about that today and also in August. I, for one, really look forward to what it is that we're going to do together. 

Nina: Awesome. Me too. And hey, who wouldn't want to go to Byron? 

Gerda: Exactly, right? It is so beautiful. And also, by the way, if anybody does want to reach out to Nina, I will pop a link to Nina's website, or your contact details, Nina, make sure to send that to me, I will put that in the show notes as well if they wanted to have a chat with you. 

Nina: Definitely. 

Gerda: Excellent, well, thank you so very much. Appreciate all your time. 

Nina: Thank you, Gerda. 

Gerda: Thank you so very much for tuning in, and as always, remember that I am here to help you build a practice you can't stop smiling about. :)