Can AI make you a better, more present coach?

Stop trading your soul for your schedule. As a coach, you were put on this earth to change lives through intuition and deep human connection. But between the "KPI factories" of corporate coaching and the endless grind of marketing, your magic superpower can easily get buried under admin.

Humain Coaches is where high-level coaching meets the cutting edge of technology. Hosted by Susan Caesar—ICF Director of AI and founder of humain.org—this show explores how to place yourself at the center of a "simple empire" where AI handles the noise so you can handle the transformation.

Join us as we interview industry pioneers like Jodie Cook to discuss:

• The AI Concierge: How to use technology as a "warm welcome" that qualifies prospects while you sleep.
• Trust at the Edge: Navigating the ethics of "second brains" and recorded insights without undermining your professional reputation.
• The Scaling Secret: Why the future of coaching isn't about more hours—it's about "double leveraging" yourself to reach more people than ever before.

Whether you are an ICF-accredited veteran or a rising consultant, it’s time to stop being a "mother" to your business and start being the beacon for your clients. Tune in to learn how to evolve, automate, and reclaim your time for the work that truly matters.

Key Takeaways from the Jodie Cook Episode:

• The "Not Your Mother" Approach: Using AI-drafted follow-ups to maintain professional boundaries and keep clients accountable.
• ROI of AI: Moving beyond the "valley of despair" to see real financial returns by replacing expensive agencies with smart workflows.
• The Parasocial Edge: How digital assets allow clients to "immerse" themselves in your methodology even when you aren't in the room.

About Jodie Cook 

Jodie is an entrepreneur, Forbes senior contributor, and the founder of Coachvox, where she helps coaches scale their impact to infinity by turning their expertise into AI versions of themselves. A former 7-figure founder and competitive powerlifter for Team GB, Jodie specializes in digital leverage and personal branding for the modern era. Her mission is to create a "ripple effect" of coaching, using AI-powered tools to help coaches generate leads and deliver their unique style of guidance to an unlimited audience without increasing their working hours.

https://coachvox.ai/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodie-cook/

Host: Susan Caesar

https://www.humain.org/

Transcript

Tempo: 120.0

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome. If you've been following my work at Humane, you know we spend a lot of time looking at how organizations can remain resilient and humane in this age of rapid acceleration. But there is another layer to this story, one that is quieter, more personal, and perhaps even more vital. I've come to believe that as our technology becomes faster and more automated, our humanity must become deeper. We are moving into an era where coaching isn't just a professional service, it's becoming the connective issue of our society, a human fabric that helps us navigate complexity in every domain, from our schools and hospitals to how we lead our communities and care for our planet. That is why I'm launching this separate series on Humane Coaches. While humane leadership focuses on the how of organizational resilience, humane coaches is a dedicated space for the who. It is a global inquiry into coaching wisdom, exploring what it means to be a presence bearer in a world that often feels a little tired and overwhelmed. In this show, we aren't just talking about productivity or performance metrics. We are talking about a presence of human development and transformation. We are talking about the ancient art of listening and the modern necessity of helping humanity grow wiser as we co-evolve with the systems we've built. Whether you're a professional coach, a leader holding space for others, or simply someone curious about how we stay human together, there is a place for you here. In today's conversation, we're going to be talking about coaching at the edge of trust technology and transformation. I'm Susan Caesar. I'm the ICF Director of Artificial Intelligence. I also founded a nonprofit called Humane Org, and I have two podcasts. This is one of them, Humane Coaches, and then the other one is Humane Leaders. And today I'm really delighted to welcome my friend and colleague Jodie. And I'll let Jodie introduce herself.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Hey everyone, I'm Jody Cook. I am founder of Coachbox. We make AI versions of real life coaches and consultants. I previously built and sold a social media agency. I'm also a senior contributor for Forbes, writing about AI coaching, marketing, LinkedIn, and personal branding. 22 million people have now read my articles, but I'm very, very deep in the world of AI and coaching and on a mission to teach as many people as possible how amazing their life can be once they learn the stuff and implement it.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Brilliant. Well, I guess we could start by talking through that headline. So coaching at the edge of trust technology and transformation, and I guess explore what that means for us, what that means for you. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

I mean, the coaching and trust feel like two terms that go together. Trust and AI feel like two terms that need to be understood before they go together. I don't think it's assumed. And a lot of people don't trust AI. So I feel like the question is how can coaches use it in a way that helps them out, builds their business, helps their clients get results, which ultimately is the point of all of this, without undermining their professional, like without undermining their professional reputation that they've worked so hard to build, and without doing anything that's not cool in the eyes of their clients.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Yeah, I guess uh I I like the the way that you uh partnered up, coaching and trust, and then the AI and trust and the fact that there is work that we need to do in that intersection. And I guess when I think about that headline of coaching at the edge of trust, technology and transformation, I think of it not as a disruption to the profession, but more about maturation of the profession. So I think with AI now, we have different ways of calibrating human development. And I think the opportunities are going to allow us to really mature what coaching is, what that means for the profession, how it helps our clients realize their goals more effectively and more frequently, probably. There's a phrase around coaching isn't ending, it's evolving. What emerges for you when you think about that?

SPEAKER_01 4:38

I kind of picture it as the coach at the center of their world. And then previously, in order to add more impact, serve more people, make more money, do all the stuff, they would have had to build out a coaching team. They would have effectively had to put their methods into frameworks, teach other people how to deliver their frameworks, and then build up an organization where they have people underneath them delivering. What I think is very cool about everything that a coach could do now is they could be at the center and around them could be nothing but AI and their VA. And then it means that if they make the right moves, they can make all the impact, all the money, get all the results, help their clients out infinitely without having to build out this complicated business. And especially for coaches where it's like, hang on, I don't even actually want to be like a coaching business owner. I want to be a coach. I want to sit there, I want to talk to my clients, I want to like, I want to like immerse myself full-body coaching from my like from my intuition. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna do this because this is the thing that I was put on this earth to do. I just love the idea that now this can be simple for them.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Thinking about the profession. The profession seems to be coach focused, but actually really we should be client-focused. So I guess that I would put the client at the center and the coach serving them. Whether that actually is an AI or whether it is a coach, or I think it could be both. I think they're they're different experiences and they're different places where a client could leverage AI to help them think out loud or think about their goals and then work with their coach to transform or realize those things.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Well, if you put the client at the center of all of this, then I feel like actually what part of the reason that we made Coach Box actually was because I was, it wasn't actually coaching, it was like more advising. So I'd sold my social media agency and I was advising other agency owners on how to sell their agency. So it was like I did the thing and then I was telling other people how they could do the thing. I realized after a couple of months of doing this, that I just felt like I wanted to move in with my clients. I felt like I wanted to be like immersed in their business, what they were doing, so I could help all the time, so I could keep them on track. So every time that they had a wobble or something wasn't going right or they needed to regroup and go again, I could be there being like, no, no, no, it's cool. This is our blueprint now. And I feel like lots of coaches actually feel like that because they they love their clients. They want all the amazing outcomes for their clients, but they actually can't be there all the time because they're finite, they have to sleep, they might be on different time zones, they have other clients. So then I feel like AI and coaching from the client's point of view allows them to get just more of that brain, that framework, that like way of thinking around them all the time. And that's what they want. Like, and I feel like the consistency of being able to get one coach's methodology again and again and again is such a good thing because we know that straddling strategies, going after all these different ways of operating, coaching frameworks probably actually isn't going to serve you the best as just picking one route and doubling down on it.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Thinking about AI as it's evolving now within the profession, a bit like a concierge service. It's kind of there as the entry level to the conversation with a coach or the entry level to a coaching interaction, or yes, it's something like that. Yeah. I think so.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

I like saying it like that because then it feels like it is something that serves, well, it serves the coach and the client. The other day, um, I introduced my friend and co-host. He's called Chris Doe. We I sometimes join him as a co-host on his podcast. It's called The Future. I was walking him through Claude Code and what I'd learned how to do. And I was showing him how he could create different things. And one of the examples I showed him was these like LinkedIn carousels that he could create with his brand guidelines, his assets, some prompts around turning his existing blog posts or video podcasts into carousels. I walked him through the process. It came out with these beautiful carousels. And then he's like, Yeah, but I'm a designer. This is what I love doing. I like sitting at my computer, I like designing, I like moving all the pixels. That might feel really boring to other people, but actually that's what I want to do. And then he said, So you like lifting, right? And I was like, Yeah. Imagine if I told you that you could hire a robot to go do your deadlifting for you. Like you would be like, No, I want to do that. And I feel like that's the kind of point with AI and coaching as well. It's like, let coaches coach. Let's do the marketing for them, let's do the admin for them, let's do all the boring stuff. And then it means that a coach's new life looks like coaching and chilling out and nothing else.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

Along those lines, it's about you deciding, well, what do you want to keep for yourself? And where do you get your satisfaction? Where do you believe that it's your sphere of expertise? Whatever floats your boat, it's kind of like, well, yeah, you can keep doing that. So if he wants to keep doing the design, he can, but he's got the choice. If he hasn't got time for any reason, at least now he's got an opportunity to delegate. How can you get some skill to help you, you know, when you've got more time to invest in uh deadlifting or creative pursuits, then you can.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yeah, all I want to do is do my magic superpower work and deadlift and everything else can be AI.

unknown 9:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Well, I guess you have an equ you have an equivalent of this, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah, I mean, I am a creative, so uh the areas of creative writing, filmmaking, I I like filmmaking the old way, I like photography the old way, but I still do play around with AI to see what it can do. And I I am impressed with the quality of what AI can do now. But it doesn't worry me that I'm not gonna be able to do that. You know, I still feel that there is actually somebody compared it to being an artisan. It's like you're deciding with coaching, for instance, is what is the area of coaching that you believe you're bringing to the world. So for me, it's around female leaders and it's around regenerative design, so how we affect the planet. When I'm doing coaching, I'm gonna be looking for people that want to gravitate towards that space because that's the difference I want to make in the world. So as we think about the future, I think similar to other industries, we're not really prepared for what's emerging or for what's converging, the changes that are happening. There are a couple of shifts that I want to explore with you and just see how you're witnessing them or observing them. So you mentioned at the top of the uh show, if you like, trust is no longer assumed. So I think the whole thing around trust, that assurances are becoming non-negotiable, that it's really important to know where your trusted sources are. What are you seeing or hearing from your community around that?

SPEAKER_01 11:00

I think in the coaching community, one of the main things that comes up is the trust of the coach in how and if they record calls and then what they do with that information after that. So in how we have Coach Ross Academy where we teach coaches how to do various things across their business related to AI and digital assets, social media content, automating their business, etc. And one of the things we teach is how they can build a second brain so that they can become a better coach, so they can get critiqued on their own coaching approach, but also so they can deliver like a follow-up to their clients after the session to say, hey, we talked about this, here are the follow-up things, or hey, we could dig into this next session, or here's something that the AI picked up that I didn't pick up, that kind of stuff. Explicitly, that coach has to get permission at the start of the call to record it, first of all. And then secondly, we show them how to anonymize things so that there's nothing that could, if something, you know, if there's a security breach or if something goes wrong in the future, because we don't know what's going to happen, it doesn't put that client in any compromising position. We actually teach them how to have that conversation at the start. And the idea is that it's so in the client's benefit that it makes so much sense. And yeah, but a coach has to bring it up. I feel like if it's a coach using AI, knowing what's in it for them, knowing what's in it for their client, and then being able to explain it, then it only adds to the trust, not takes it away. I think the kind of magic of it is you can set up whatever you need. And so the the coaches we work with, about a third of them are ICF accredited, but some of them are more like kind of mentors as well. So the coaching that they're doing is like, and here's the plan of action. And it's not always the, it's not always the client that's there to figure it out on their own. It sometimes is sometimes it is for the coach or the consultant, I would say. Maybe it's more relevant for consultants, but it's up to them to go and do the following up. And that's part of the contract, say. But I think the magic of it is you could create, it can be so focused on the client. It's not like a coach has to have their cookie-cutter approach. It can be what does this client need? What does that client need? Who does need a lighter touch? Who does need more accountability? Who actually can just get on with it? You can you can kind of co-create this, maybe even in a first session with a new client.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Is that differentiated propositions, if you like? Because you have backgrounds in marketing and sales and marketing, et cetera. So I think you've got the opportunity now to say, okay, if I look at my practice, where do I want to invite AI in? Where is it gonna serve my clients well and and how do I get consent for those kind of things? But then it's also thinking about as we co-create the relationship with the client, how is AI gonna help them? You know, where do they need the things that help them stay on track? And how might they, in between sessions, be leveraging AI to help with that?

SPEAKER_01 13:40

One of our coaches, one of her almost tagline slogans is I am not your mother. Yeah. And so in the follow-up email that now goes to her client after the session, gets drafted in her Gmail outbox, and it's up to her to edit it and send it. Because we never recommend that people let the AI send it. We always want them to be human checked first. After the session, the transcript is processed, anonymized, and what comes out of it is how that coach could potentially improve any things where, specifically, actually for her, any things where she's over-identified with the client. And then also it checks it against the ICF guidelines and core competencies to just kind of keep her on top of that. Then it'll send something to the client that's by way of follow-up. Then it'll do things like it'll pull out the most surprising, exciting, innovative questions that she asks. Then it'll potentially create mini kind of stories as opportunities for coaching moments that she could use in digital assets in the future. So there's all this stuff that goes on. Some of it gets delivered to her in Slack, some of it gets delivered to her, like to a kind of Word document, some of them get delivered as a draft email to her clients. And then the client gets this email. But the I am not your mother thing is very much that's the ethos of that email. It's almost like, I'm not your mother. Here's our session. And now it's up to you. See you in two weeks. And it's quite nice that even that, because she's got such a strong way of being and a strong set of phrases that are so recognizable, it's like it's it's so not generic. Whereas if you AI generate anything, it has the potential to be very generic. But hers is just like, oh, that's her.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

It is about staying authentic. However, you want to invite AI into your world, it's how do you ensure that you are the one that's in the driving seat and it's there to support and augment what you do, not replace it. We talked about this kind of concierge idea. So the the second shift that we are observing is that AI is now first becoming the first touch in most uh situations. People, even if they're not admitting it to you, they're probably checking with AI on a few things before they think about coming to the uh coaching session. People are saying that that's because it's judgment free, it's a place they can think out loud, they feel comfortable working with it to clarify their thoughts and organize their thoughts. So if AI is becoming this first conversation, how must coaches adapt? And where does the real coaching relationship begin? Big, big questions.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Oh, I have so many thoughts on this. So I feel like coaches that are experienced, accredited, knowledgeable, have been doing their stuff, know they're good. They are inherently scarce resources because there's only so much of their time. And in if you've read the book Influence by Robert Caldini, scarcity is one of his seven influence levers. The more scarce something is, the more we want it. It's just human nature. So I actually really like the idea of top coaches not being stupidly busy because they have to be on discovery calls, because they have to be like doing outreach all the time, they have to be speaking at events, doing all this stuff when actually they just want to coach the whole time. And I like the idea that with AI, they can get, they can basically get their reputation to precede them because they can create content that's really good, that's based on their methods, their strong beliefs, their principles, that then goes out on social media and represents them really well. They can create, like we we actually create the AI versions of coaches and consultants that can engage with their potential clients to kind of, it's almost like warming them up before they have that discovery call, or even some of them don't even go through a discovery call. I feel like this works for the coaches who have been spending all these years putting in the work, the ones that missed out on social stuff because they were writing their book, or the ones that said no to lots of stuff so that they could focus on their own podcast. One example, she's a therapist actually, but she's called Dr. Marion. She's a Coach Box customer, and her AI is used to qualify prospects, to introduce them to the methods of her and her practice. And so it means that when they get on discovery calls, they don't feel like sales calls. It feels like, okay, cool, when do you want to start? Because they already know what's going to happen. Like they're so they're so used to it. I don't for a second think that the AI version of someone, the AI coach version of someone is going to replace them as a coach. But I really like the idea that it can give someone a taste of their coaching. Because the alternative is someone gets on a discovery call and they're like, oh, so what do you do? And it's like, come on, this information's everywhere. It's on my website, it's in the it's in the social media, it's like everything. And now you could just talk to someone's AI, get an understanding, see if you vibe. The coach can see if that client is coachable. And then the discovery call is only for those people who are ready to go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

It's that top of the funnel. It's the welcome into the world of me, my coaching practice, the entry into this. Actually, it's about design. So, how do I design that so it feels authentic, that it is relatable to me? So when they do meet me, that everything feels coherent and consistent. That then me as a coach, I'm elevated to that higher level of working with the client on the transformation, the mastery, whatever language you want to call it. Think about how you design your practice so that AI is the warm welcome into my world.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

I love that, being a designer. And because also you, as a as a coach, you could talk to AI exactly through that lens. So Claude Code would be such an amazing place to start with this, because the command, the opening command would be, I'm a coach, I do this thing for these people. I've been doing it this long. Here, here are the content assets that I already have, like a book or podcast, everything else. And then you could say, I want to design a way that potential clients who I know I could help who fill this description who fulfill this description, could get a taster of my coaching methods so that by the time they get on a discovery call, they're ready to go. And I know that I can help them. They know that they're they're ready. And it shortens the human, well, it shortens the time frame potentially, but it it reduces the human requirement of the sales process. I feel like if you said that to Claude Code, it would say, okay, great, here's this digital asset we want you to create, here's this social media post that we want you to create, here's what the AI version of you should do. And this is this is actually what we teach at Coach Box Academy, but it's like you could get such an idea of what you could do, and then you would be designing that, and then you could almost put it in place and then sit back and watch people coming in through different places, and then you could get people delivered to you if it's as if by magic.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Absolutely. It is about you really sitting there and thinking, well, okay, I've built up a practice and it looks like this. Do I want to continue that? So do it, is that something I want to continue and scale? Or actually, yeah, is this an opportunity for me to really redefine my purpose in life and how I want to impact other people's lives, humanity generally? Do I need to pivot? Is there something more I can do now that this opportunity frees me up? You know, it liberates you to become more of that coach and have the impact that you want in the world.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

I teach coaches how to show up on LinkedIn as part of this work. And it's kind of interesting because a lot of them will still, even though they know that they're a solo coach, they want a certain number of clients, they still sometimes fixate on the number of comments or the impressions or the kind of big number. And so many of the sessions involve me saying, Let's design your dream coaching practice. How many clients do you have in that? And then you put your that number, how many do you have now? How many are left? How many clients do we want to get from LinkedIn? And the often the number that always comes out, or the average of all the sessions I've run of what all the coaches say is seven. They want to find seven. Seven new clients. And so, yeah, so they they'll say seven new clients. So easy, so easy. And it's and so then it's like, well, you don't need to look at the top line, do you? You need to make sure that you are writing stuff that speaks directly to that one person. You don't need to chase them, you don't need to like go after them. You probably don't even need to do outbound. You need to make sure that they know that you can help them. They know that you, that they are the person that you were like designed, like you were put here on earth to change their life. And then you attract them in.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

It's like a beacon, you're you're radiating so that that energy is pulling people into your, into your ecosystem, into that world. And then how do you make that? Welcome into your world consistent with the presence that you are radiating out there, the the impressions, the the beacon, however people want to look at that. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

So difficult if you don't show up online because the beacon, you might be, you might be shining your brightest light ever, but you just don't have the surface area for look that you would have if it was just shared. But then I think it can be a bit of a mental block if you think you're going to be posting stuff, sharing stuff, and it's not going to get this much engagement. So you almost have to reframe it. And sometimes if you imagine you send out a LinkedIn post, it gets five likes and you're like, oh no, that's a failure. But it's like, but if those five people were in this lift, if those five people were in this room right now, you'd show up, you'd talk to them, you'd be really, you'd be so happy. But just because it's online, we look at the numbers and we're like, oh, that's not good. No, it is. They have people, five humans have engaged with something, and they're people who could potentially be people that you could work with.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Yeah. There is an alternative. So it's like if people don't show up online, it's possible to build your coaching practice offline. But the the counter to that is that you have to be really deep in your community. You have to find your tribe, you have to find your community, and you have to be present there. It's having that same presence, but physically rather than online. If you if you really don't want to do digital, then you have to work hard at being present where your people are.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

For me, deal flow means people flow. So if you were taking the strategic approach to not be online, then the offline thing is meeting as many people as possible, building up your it's a referral network, really. Yeah. People who are just going to give you work again and again. You might only need five of those that each give you three new clients a year. Great, you've got your referral network and then everything else is optional. But I feel like the the coaches I love working with are the ones who they've got that and they want more because they know they're capable of more. And they're like, oh my God, I'm changing people's lives. I'm doing so much awesome stuff. Imagine if I could get this into the hands of more people.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

Well, and the world does need more coaches. We we need as many human coaches as we can to help humanity navigate all of this complexity. But actually, also there is a place for AI in terms of the access that it's now enabling in the areas where we wouldn't normally have the opportunity for coaching, thinking of different parts of the world that wouldn't have it, or thinking of people with different uh kind of economic dynamics may not be able to afford it. So I think there is a place for both and that we embrace that and find ways to make sure that it's ethical and responsible. But yeah, those are all exciting opportunities now. The third chip I was gonna talk about was evidence mattering. And I know that your community is kind of all over this in terms of return on investment. If you are working in large organizations, you're probably seeing more expectations around how do you evidence that the interactions you're doing with the clients are delivering value for the business. But how do we do that in a way where we are not creating coaching into being a KPI factory? And actually, for me, what I think is with AI, we've got this opportunity now to have this continuous kind of calibration of human development. If I think about a large organization, it's another set of signals about your human capital, the development of your pupil and how aligned they are to the purpose of the organization.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

I think there's two ways I'd interpret the evidence shift. And one of them is to do with how clients best work with a coach. What is the thing that gets the client going towards results and towards putting action in place? And I feel like some clients are going to really want things to be gamified. And the idea that after a coaching session, they could have a scorecard where they say, Well, how many times have you, I don't know, meditated this week? And how big, how fast and big is your business growing? And how many difficult conversations have you had? How many audacious requests have you made this week? There's all that kind of stuff there where a certain type of business leadership marketing coach, even, might want to help their clients gamify that they can now do with AI infrastructure that could whip that up in a matter of like seconds. But then because that's not gonna work for every single client, and because I agree, we don't want to necessarily turn coaching into a KPI factory, it's like how could we make it so that there's progression, it's trackable, someone's really motivated to keep on with all their progress and use AI to do it. It's almost like I feel like our limitations are only how big we can dream with this stuff.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

I agree with that, yeah. In fact, if I think about the jobs that I've had throughout my career, so it's been large organizations, global, and getting data. So the the measures that matter, the things that truly move the needle for the experience of the customers of the employees and how that affects the bottom line of the organization or the purpose of the organization, it's really difficult. But I think now with AI, there is the opportunity to start deciding what of the signals, what are the data points across your business matter, which are the true value indicators. And then how do you align that with your people? And how might you then decide, well, how do we decide? Because again, it's it's about differentiation. And people that are motivated by gamification, great, they can have that. But people that aren't, you know, choose a different set of metrics, but still focused on the outcomes, focused on the value.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

And then there's the other side, which is coaches measuring the ROI of AI in their own practice.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

Yeah, it's being very mindful about that, so that we can compare the cost of an AI to what that value is.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

And then if you s if you think of from a coaching practice perspective, if you learn how to create social media content that's really good, that you stand by, that's all stuff that you would say out loud in real life, and it's no, there's no stupid AI-generas in your stuff. It's like really great stuff that you know is going to help people. And so you can create it to such a level where you know that that would have cost you$5,000 a month and of a ghostwriter, something like that. Then it's like, okay, cool. So there's an ROI of AI. But then are those posts generating you the value that matches the effort that you're putting into creating them and then the tools that you're paying for to create them as well? So there's almost like two levels. It's like, what are you saving in agency fees or human fees? Or and then you've got the what is the outcome and the ROI of the actual tangible money in your pocket, new clients secured. Because that's nuanced as well. Because we kind of have this thing at Coach Box that we want a coaching business to be able to be the coach, their VA, and their AI. And often it's really not even worth the coach's time to learn the tools themselves. It's way better for them to equip their VA to do it for them. Because then you're like, you're like double leveraging yourself. Because I think there's such a it's it's better now, but there was a bit of a hype thing where it's like, oh, I can I can get this tool and it can do all these amazing things. Then you get that like valley of despair where you're like, oh, it's actually really bad. But you've sunk all that time into learning it in like in the process. And then now I feel like it's better because I feel like someone who tried something six months ago and thought it was bad, who tries it now and it's developed, it's probably gonna be a whole load better. But still, we can't underestimate the learning curve of each tool. We can't underestimate the kind of the tweaking that's going to be required of everything. And then you still potentially have to do like the setup as well. So, such a higher leverage of most coaches' time is to have a VA who they say, here's the stuff I want to do, here's the stuff I don't want to do, here's the stuff that you're doing now. But actually, maybe 80% of your job could be AI. Let's work on this so that you can work on higher level stuff. And then giving VA or giving your assistant the trust, the safety, and the autonomy to be able to go and build. I felt like that, I feel like that could create like a basically a coaching empire around this one coach who's the kind of the personal brand who can now reach more people with their probably the same number of people with their one-to-one, but maybe they could charge more because they could potentially be more in demand, but they can help so many more people because of how many people can consume their content.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

I think we're moving that way. You know, we've got self-driving cars and lorries, and and there are self-driving businesses. So I know that um several brands out there are creating it. So the solopreneurs can scale and compete with with larger organizations for coaching not that far away. I, you know, I think we might uh move very quickly back towards something like that. Again, I think it's differentiated. Some uh some coaches are gonna gravitate towards that and be the pioneers in that space, and others will uh choose not to do it. I've got the last um shift that we'll just explore before we close, if that's okay. So the shift of our boundaries are blurring. So this the the fact that last year Harvard Business Review talked about people using generic uh LLMs for personal coaching-like experiences and the blurring the boundaries between coaching and therapy, and the fact that that actually is, you know, that's a risk, and it's a risk that needs to be managed. So uh how are you feeling about that?

SPEAKER_01 30:47

Within our community, I would say we have distinct coaches, distinct therapists, and I don't think those two things actually get that blurred within the coaches that I work with. I think the things that do get blurred are coaching and consultancy a lot more. So um, if a coach who's working with us is ICF accredited, they know that it's not about giving people advice. It's not about providing the answers for people, it's about drawing the answers out of them, and that's cool. But then I would say the other people who would say, Yes, I'm a coach, they actually are more like consultants or advisors because they are just gonna say this is how to do it. I think where it's interesting from both sides is that that approach has to be also designed into the AI that comes out. If you are someone who you're a hundred percent a coach who does not advise, then you would want your content to match that approach. You would want the AI version of you to match that approach. You want all your digital assets to be more about helping people reflect, helping people to come to their own conclusions, which is very different from here's your three-step process to making your TikTok videos go viral. So unbelievably different. And then you've got the boundaries blurring between just the coach and their content, however, that's delivered in itself. It's almost like people end up having a parasocial relationship with the coach because they consume their content, which is fascinating, really.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

I guess it's part of that building the relationship, what people perceive you mean to them. You know, it's it's the value you represent in their life as a consequence of getting to know what you're all about, really.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

So one of our coaches, she's called Julia Char. She's a social elegance coach. She's been doing it for about six years, and she only works with corporate women who are earning over$80,000. So there's a certain number of those that she can look after at any given time in her group programs. But she has exceptional methods and she has unique terminology that's so recognizable that if someone went onto ChatGPT, it would never come up with the stuff that she said. And people want her because she's like, she's committed to social media, she's become a kind of personality on this topic. But she knows that she wants to help people over and above her time. And she also knows that if someone isn't earning that amount in their salary yet, she can't get them to join their main group program, her main group program because it they won't be at the same level as everyone else in there. But she doesn't want to start a new group, so she's like, What do I do? So she made Julia chart AI. She launched it to her audience, 500 people tested it out, then she made it$30 a month, and 40% of those converted. So they now pay$30. 200 people now pay$30 a month for access to the AI version of her. But the crazy thing that she found out was that her high-ticket clients were also buying it. So they've got her, they're in the group program, they get her one-to-one, they get her in a group, but they're still like, no, no, no, I want more. I do want to be immersed in this. So I'm also gonna buy your AI. And I feel like having your own IP is the privilege that that buys you, the idea that someone will consume and buy more from you.

SPEAKER_00 33:51

It reminds me a bit when I used to work for ASOS, where we knew that our target audience was 25-year-old females who bought dresses. So we we targeted all everything we did to that target audience, but we also attracted people that were 40, 50, 60, you know, and that whole thing just it's like a halo effect. It attracts people to you, but it's more than you had imagined it would be.

SPEAKER_01 34:13

Nice, yeah. I was when I was a 25-year-old female who bought dresses, one time there was a photo shoot happening with ASOS, and I got to model a dress for ASOS, and I was on that website, and it was the best thing ever because I loved it. Did you come into Camden? It was in the studio that I was doing an office outside of at the time, and they just happened to do a shoot, and I got to try on a dress. Cool, very good. All you need to do is center in on the woman and then they gravitate towards you because they know that you are for them.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

Jody, thank you so much for joining me in this conversation today. Uh, we've covered a lot of ground, it's been fun. So thank you once again for your time.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

Thank you so much. This is such a big topic. Always happy to talk about it with anyone who wants to go go deeper on AI coaching, everything else related to that to those two things.

SPEAKER_00 34:57

Fabulous. Have a great rest of the day.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

Bye for now. Thank you. See you later. Bye.