Influencer Entrepreneurs: Marketing Tips to Make You More Visible
Surviving in the entrepreneur world is not an easy task. Jenny teaches you how to build a stronger business with blogging and social media tips that are up to date and proven. No more trading time for money! She teaches content and email marketing strategies that helped her build her audience and sell her lifestyle blog for over six figures in 2019. As a former inner city school district teacher she understands the importance of breaking strategies into bite size pieces of information all with the master plan of giving you homework so that you can implement the strategies in your business immediately. Get ready to be able to put her strategies into practice after just one listen!
Influencer Entrepreneurs: Marketing Tips to Make You More Visible
Ai for Small Businesses with Phil Pallen
The AI revolution doesn't have to feel overwhelming for small business owners. In this enlightening conversation with branding expert Phil Palin, we explore how entrepreneurs can harness artificial intelligence as a productivity tool rather than viewing it as a threat to their business.
Phil brings a refreshing perspective as someone who wears two professional hats – running a branding agency for 14 years and working as a content creator with nearly 400 YouTube videos under his belt. His journey into content creation happened almost accidentally when a client commented on how entertaining his tutorial videos were, eventually leading to partnerships with over 100 brands, including Adobe.
The heart of our discussion centers on practical AI implementation strategies that won't leave you feeling like you're racing against time. "I get irked when people say if you don't jump on the AI bandwagon now, you're going to be too late," Phil explains. "I just don't think there is a too late." This permission to approach AI at your own pace sets the tone for a conversation focused on sustainable integration rather than panic-driven adoption.
We dive deep into Phil's actual workflow for using AI tools, revealing the critical missing step many entrepreneurs overlook – providing sufficient input before expecting quality output. Speaking from experience, Phil shares how this approach has allowed him to preserve his unique voice while doubling his hourly rate in some instances. His advice on navigating AI tools while protecting intellectual property and creating an "avoid words" list to prevent cringey AI-generated content offers immediate value you can implement today.
Perhaps most reassuringly, Phil addresses the fear of AI replacing human jobs, citing research that shows 63% of jobs are actually complemented by AI rather than threatened by it. "I'm the conductor and I still have to conduct the symphony, but I don't have to play every instrument," he explains, perfectly capturing how AI can enhance human capabilities without diminishing our essential role in business.
Ready to explore how AI can serve your business? Download Phil's guide featuring over 200 vetted AI tools for small businesses, and check out his new book "AI for Small Business" for even deeper insights into reclaiming your time while growing your business.
Read more HERE.
This is the Influencer Entrepreneur's Podcast with Jenny Melrose, where I strategize with business owners on how to grow and scale their businesses to hit their income goals. This is episode 449 of the Influencer Entrepreneurs Podcast with Jenny Melrose. What if you could automate your tasks, create content quicker and grow your business, all with AI? In today's episode, ai for small businesses with Phil Palin, we're going to be breaking all of that down. Before we jump into it, I want to make sure that if you haven't already grabbed your strategic growth plan guide, that you do so. We're going to link to that right in the show notes so you can make sure that you grab it. We're going to link to that right in the show notes so you can make sure that you grab it. It's going to really help you with your positioning and understanding the content that you can put in to your overall business. All right, let's dive in. Hi Phil, welcome to the podcast. How are you?
Speaker 2:Hi, honey, you're one of my favorite people in the entire planet and I'm just so happy that I get to sit here and stare at your beautiful face, because it's been way too long since we caught up.
Speaker 1:It has been way too long Before we actually jump into the conversation about AI and small businesses. Can you introduce yourself and your business to our listeners?
Speaker 2:Yes, so I introduce myself in this way. Typically, I have my adult job, which is I own a branding agency and have, for 14 years, helping people and companies position, build and promote their brands. Personal branding has really always been my focus, I would say, or what I've built my reputation around, but that's also attracted companies of all different sizes startups, small businesses definitely a focus of mine, but even then, you know, work with big multinational organizations on branding strategy, positioning and brand identity development, so even the visuals and social media strategy, all that kind of stuff. My fun job is that I get to work as a content creator, and that happened right around, I would say, right before the pandemic.
Speaker 2:I realized I should take my own advice. In fact, it wasn't even me that realized it, it was a client that I'd sent a tutorial to on how to update the blog on their website and they said to me Phil, this was really entertaining to watch. Have you ever considered making videos from this? I was like, oh, that's a good idea, and I just decided that videos in the way that for some people writing blogs or putting that energy into Instagram carousels or reels, for me, creating and posting YouTube videos was a great way to show my presenting and thought leadership, almost kind of like when I stand on stage, which you and I have done together Didn't know that it would attract opportunities to partner with brands in the way that it did.
Speaker 2:So I'm close to 400 YouTube videos in well more than four years, which is wild, and now every video that I publish is sponsored. And I have partnered with way more than 100 brands in the last few years, and my biggest brand partnership is with Adobe, and I'm at a point in my career where I'm very happy, very fulfilled, very challenged and just like waking up in the morning going damn. I love my job.
Speaker 1:I love that, and you were smart getting to YouTube. That's all I keep seeing to hear. It's all I've been talking about is the importance of video now, where a lot of people have this feeling like they're fighting against AI because they're not seeing it as that assistant. They're more seeing it as trying to replace them. So if that is the case, video is one of the many ways that you can stand out. It lets your voice come out. It lets your personality come out. So what I really would love to do is talk about AI, because we have had a lot of different discussions on the podcast about it, but I want to get your take for it on how small businesses can start using AI without feeling overwhelmed. Where?
Speaker 2:should we go? Yeah, I mean, it is overwhelmed. I get that, and it's actually the main reason I took on the project of writing a book, Actually connected to what you just said. I got the book deal from Adams Media, which is an imprint of Simon Schuster, the third largest publisher in the country. Guess where they found me? Jenny Melrose Found me on YouTube. They said we love how you explain this concept in simple terms for someone that's likely overwhelmed, and so I empathize with that feeling and have really kind of dedicated my personal brand now to addressing this overwhelm.
Speaker 2:Different lanes. Other people will talk about the latest chip technology and evolutions and all that geeky stuff. My lane is AI tools, and really my perspective on AI is enthusiasm for small business owners that can use it as a tool for productivity. I don't necessarily mean working longer and getting more done in the day. Sometimes productivity means getting done what you need to do faster so that you win more time back to live, to go outside for a walk, think about things instead of feeling this overwhelm. This is not something that needs to be done overnight.
Speaker 2:I get irked when people say if you don't jump on the AI bandwagon now, you're going to be too late? I just don't think there is a too late. Every single day that passes, ai tools, including tools like ChatGPT, are becoming even better at handling human and conversational commands and language. There are many tools beyond ChatGPT that, yes, some are free, some are freemium and some are premium, but in many instances, these are well worth the investment if they help you win back time or if they help you delegate to your team so that your team can focus on high impact.
Speaker 2:I would say I'm uniquely interested in how AI is not just a tool for laziness. It's a tool that actually enables us to be even better at our work, and that's something that I'm encountering day to day in my job as a brand strategist. So, to battle the overwhelm remember it doesn't need to be done overnight, it needs to be done. I would start by focusing on what are some business challenges I don't like the word problem what are some business challenges that I need to tackle and how might AI help me in that exploration? That's the starting point.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I love that, and I love that. You said that it's not a matter of you're late to the game. You're not going to be able to figure it out, and you're right. I've noticed chat GPT has improved so much, and the more information you provide it with, the better it understands you and your business and the way that you're going to prompt it. So what are some common misconceptions about AI that small businesses owners should let go of?
Speaker 2:I have a few of these. I call them like golden rules for AI. I believe that there's no right or correct way to write a prompt, so I'm not a big fan of like these kind of copy and paste prompts. I can only have a conversation in the way that I speak English. I speak English better than you speak English, so speak English in the way that I speak it. No, that's not human. I listen to what you say. Content I remember how you say it. Personality this is what I've been saying literally for years, even pre-AI. You and I go way back, you know, standing on similar or the same stages. Content is what you say. Personality is the unique way that you, and only you, deliver that information. So there's no right way to write a prompt.
Speaker 2:I recommend using a tool like TextBlaze to save your most frequently used prompts, so, instead of trying to memorize them every time you need them, have them available at near instant recall. Textblaze is a free Google Chrome plugin. You can write backslash and then a single word command and it will pre-populate that text that you've saved. And so then we're kind of like we're perfecting the prompt instead of trying to recall it. Our brain is for generating ideas, not for storing them. And so, final thought on this as we lean into the things that AI is great at, we're reminded why we still need humans and the human element in our day-to-day and again, pre-ai. I've been preaching that since day one, right? Whether it's social media or it's AI, my job has always been to identify the human and create a brand that amplifies what makes someone great and what makes someone uniquely human. I've never described myself in that way, so thank you for the question, because I just landed on something that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1:Yes, we've been talking so much about personal branding lately on the podcast because I just think that it is the way that you are going to be able to set yourself apart. It always has been. The more you get into it, the easier it becomes, the more your audience understands who you are and what you are about. So you actually just gave us a Chrome extension without even knowing I was gonna kind of go in that kind of direction about what ways AI can help small businesses save time and increase efficiency, because that's what I really feel like it has made all the difference in my business for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it can definitely increase efficiency. Can I maybe give an example workflow of how I use AI on a daily basis?
Speaker 1:I would love that.
Speaker 2:At a surface level. This has enabled me to, in some instances, double my hourly rate, because I'm doing a better job and I'm doing it quicker. But again, for me I'm really interested rap, because a lot of people haven't really mastered how to use it yet without losing their own voice, to the point where, like, my most downloaded freebie nowadays is my avoid words list, which are the words that I save as a text snippet to tell chat GPT Don't say this, don't say groundbreaking, don't say unleash, don't say groundbreaking, don't say unleash, don't say unlock, don't say treasure trove, don't say these stupid words. Or a new one for me is like contrast structure. It's not this, you know, m dash, it's this. Oh, I hate it. Or emojis it overuses emojis to the point where I almost don't use emojis in anything other than maybe once in an Instagram caption, because ChatGPT has ruined them for me. So I would say an example I use ChatGPBT to write my YouTube video scripts.
Speaker 2:By the time I go to record them using a teleprompter, I can record my videos in less than 10 minutes, typically in one take. I don't use it to be lazy, although I do get my videos created faster. I do it because it makes me better. Step one here's the brief of whatever video I'm working on, if they've provided one. Step two go to that tool or platform's website and just copy the homepage and just paste it in, and then my most used prompt don't take action, yet I'm still giving you input. I say that all the time. Step three would be. Here are two recent video scripts that will give you an idea of my formatting and my style Using these three pieces of information.
Speaker 2:Now draft a script, and that simple exercise gets my script 90%. There the output is amazing because I've taken time to give it input, much like us having a conversation, although probably not the best example of this, because I just went on for quite a while. A conversation is two ways. It's two ways, and so remember that when you're interacting with a generative AI tool, in order to get a good output, you have to take the time to give it input. It's going to try to take the shortcut right away and just start drafting things, but it's going to be crap until you give it, I would say, three or four phases of input. Just tell Chachi Petit don't take action. Yet Another good one. It's okay to disagree with me, just tell me why. So those are like two biases that I find often and that's a way to deal with them.
Speaker 1:Yes. So I love that you talked about the input phase, because I think that's the step that everyone's missing. They think they can ask it a question, they're going to take the information from it and they're done. That's it. They're not providing them. Like you said, copy the homepage of a website and putting that into it as it's giving it information, giving that, allowing that to be the input for it. I think once I actually added a PDF to it of my opt-ins so that it understood what I was about, where I was trying to go with my content. That's when the game changed. I then provided my actual PDF to my book and that even more so helped. I just think we're missing this phase of input. We're expecting to ask questions and for it just to know who we are. But if you can provide it with actual data like you said, a script that you've used in the past, copy from a website it's going to understand your voice better and be able to provide better results to you.
Speaker 1:So I love that example so good 100%.
Speaker 2:And then I would say, specifically with ChGPT, people need to be careful about the data that they're providing it. This isn't as exciting to talk about, but I, for example, can't upload my manuscript or the PDF copy of my book to ChatGPT because I don't own it. The publisher owns it. So in that instance I use a tool like Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant, which is that little rainbow button that you may have noticed in the top right corner when you open a PDF. This program does not train the model on your intellectual property chat GPT. Most cases it does.
Speaker 2:I pay for chat GPT teams, which is more expensive. It requires a two seat minimum, so I spend sixty dollars a month on that for two seed two seats. But I also deal with uh, occasionally sensitive information, confidential information, when I'm consulting, so for me I have to use that. But I also use Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant, which I can use and not worry about the information that I'm interacting with and that can fit up to, or that can handle up to 600 pages, which is really cool.
Speaker 2:So imagine opening your book and going you know, help me extract a 500 word blog post inspired by chapter two, AI and sales. I mean it can do that and then you can just iterate and land on that result. But we're entering this phase. I mentioned it because it's important for people to think about. Maybe that's another like misconception that you asked about is that every AI tool is safe. I'm not saying chat GPD isn't safe, but I am reminding you that it trains on your data. So we're kind of entering this zone of like novelty and excitement and experimentation to sustainable use of AI, and that includes privacy, security and those types of things.
Speaker 1:Yes, so good. So one last question, and then I want to talk a little bit about your freebie for sure. What's your advice for small business owners who fear AI will replace human jobs?
Speaker 2:Um, they might not like my advice on this, but it's a good reminder that we can be replaced by anything. So there's a study done by Goldman Sachs, I think two years ago, that discovered in the U S at least 63% of jobs are complimented by AI. I identify as that like, seriously, uh, AI totally compliments my work and actually enables me to do my job even better. Imagine now, Jenny, let's say you're a client I can say remember that conversation we had four months ago that I have the transcript uploaded to a projects in chat. Gpt Jenny told me this story about, you know, going to Florida with her kids and she learned this important business lesson. Like I would never remember that if I was going by memory or having to dig back through call notes et cetera. So it's an example where technology is really adjacent to what I'm doing. I'm the conductor and I still have to conduct the symphony, but I don't have to play every instrument. So 63% it's complimenting, 30% it is jobs unaffected by AI. Maybe it's the guy cutting grass outside, and then 7% will be replaced. I think that's a relatively low number. I think it's not as high as people expect it to be.
Speaker 2:However, we should all independent of AI. We should all think about how can we not be replaced by technology? It's just a good reminder. We should all think about what is it in my work that people pay for, For example? I don't think people pay me for knowledge. I think people pay access. Pay me for access. They want my opinion. They want my opinion based on the fact that I branded more than 400 people in 14 years. It's not necessarily the knowledge. You could probably recall a lot of the knowledge on ChatGPT. They want my attention. Okay, so think, in your job, what is it that makes you irreplaceable? We should all be thinking about that.
Speaker 1:Right. It's that experience, it's the stories that you have lived through, that your knowledge then impacts the people that you are helping, because it's that human element that they need. Because tell me about you've got over 200 plus vetted AI tools for small businesses in a guide. What can we expect to find on there? We're going to make sure that we've linked to it in the show notes so everyone can make sure that they go and grab that. But tell me a little bit about it.
Speaker 2:Yes, so this is on my tools page, and I've been hard at work at organizing these actually in the categories. Hopefully, by the time that this actually goes live, you'll see the updated version of it. Right now it's a little janky in the form of a PDF, but right now we're actually digitizing it in a really exciting way with filters and links and links to videos that I have done, as I mentioned, creating content for four years on YouTube. The majority of the projects I take on now are AI tools, and so I have tried and tested many of them. In fact, the majority of them that are included in the book that I wrote called AI for Small Business. So this is almost like a little sampler just to focus on the AI tools, what they are and what they do that I included in the book.
Speaker 2:Obviously, I recommend picking up the book as well. That's not free, but it's well worth it. We talk a lot about examples. Having owned a branding agency, I feel like I've worked in so many different industries. It's given me the chance to reflect and teach real and theoretical examples of how my clients are using AI or could be using AI for productivity. That's always been my focus and will continue to be. So that's that. Yes, excellent, we are going that's that.
Speaker 1:Yes, excellent, we are going to link that. We're also going to make sure that we are linking to your book, which I am super excited about. I'm so thrilled to see that it launched. I appreciate you so much, phil, for taking the time to speak with me and share your knowledge with my audience.
Speaker 2:Well, listen, all of this, you play a role in this. You were the one that told me years ago, phil, every brand you touch morning to night, that could be a brand deal. And it was that kind of lesson, that, that and I still, by the way, quote you years later. But that kind of rewiring of my mind enabled me to think in terms of a content creator, which were those were always my clients. That wasn't me. Now I make the majority of my income as a content creator, which were, those were always my clients. It wasn't me. Now I make the majority of my income as a content creator, which is just wild. So I just so appreciate you. I appreciate you.
Speaker 1:In case you couldn't tell, phil is one of my absolute favorite people that I have known probably over the past 10 years, met in person, spoke at conferences with him, and I just adore what he is doing. If you haven't already, please make sure that you go and grab his 200 plus checklist of AI tools that you could be using in your business and make sure that you check out his new book, ai for Small Businesses. It is going to help you get that extra foot up in being able to grow your business that much quicker. All right until next time. Till then,
