Demystifying AI for Entrepreneurs with Emily Baillie

TL;DR

How can I use AI in my business without losing my voice or relying on it too much?

AI works best as a support tool that enhances your thinking, speeds up execution, and helps you scale—not replace your expertise. When you train AI with your voice, strategy, and audience insights, it becomes a powerful assistant rather than a shortcut. The key is using AI intentionally to improve efficiency while keeping your brand human and authentic.

AI in Business: How to Increase Efficiency Without Losing Creativity

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming a standard tool in modern business, but many entrepreneurs are still unsure how to use it effectively. While AI promises increased productivity and faster execution, its real value lies in how it is integrated into your existing systems and decision-making processes. Simply using AI tools is not enough—understanding how to use AI in business strategically is what drives meaningful results.

When approached correctly, AI can enhance both efficiency and creativity without replacing the human element that makes your brand unique.

Moving Beyond the Hype

AI is often presented as a solution that can automate large portions of your business, but this perspective can be misleading. While automation is one benefit, the true advantage of AI lies in its ability to support and amplify your thinking. It can help you generate ideas, organize information, and execute tasks more quickly, but it still requires direction and oversight.

Relying on AI without context or strategy often leads to generic outputs that lack depth and differentiation. This is why it is important to view AI as a tool that works with you, not instead of you. Your expertise, insights, and perspective remain the foundation of your business.

Training AI to Reflect Your Brand

To use AI effectively, you need to treat it like a team member that requires onboarding. AI tools perform best when they are given clear direction, context, and examples that reflect your business. This includes information about your brand voice, target audience, offers, and overall strategy.

The more specific your input, the more useful the output becomes. Over time, as you refine how you interact with these tools, you can create more consistent and aligned results. This process transforms AI from a generic content generator into a customized assistant that supports your business goals.

Learning how to use AI in business starts with understanding that quality output depends on quality input.

Choosing the Right Tools for Your Needs

There is a wide range of AI tools available, each designed to support different aspects of business operations. Some tools focus on content creation, while others assist with design, automation, or data analysis. The key is to select tools that align with your specific needs rather than trying to use everything at once.

For example, AI-powered content tools can help streamline writing and ideation, while design platforms can simplify visual creation. Video tools can repurpose long-form content into shorter clips, increasing your reach without requiring additional effort. By identifying where you spend the most time or encounter bottlenecks, you can choose tools that provide the greatest impact.

Enhancing Creativity, Not Replacing It

One common concern about AI is that it may reduce creativity or lead to repetitive content. In reality, AI can enhance creativity when used as a starting point rather than a final product. It can generate ideas, outlines, or drafts that you then refine and personalize.

This collaborative approach allows you to produce content more efficiently while maintaining your unique voice and perspective. Instead of starting from scratch, you begin with a foundation that you can build upon, which saves time and mental energy.

When used this way, AI becomes a creative partner rather than a limitation.

Integrating AI Into Your Workflow

To fully benefit from AI, it should be integrated into your daily processes rather than used sporadically. This might include using AI to assist with content planning, drafting emails, analyzing data, or organizing information.

The goal is to create a workflow where AI supports repetitive or time-consuming tasks, allowing you to focus on higher-level strategy and decision-making. This shift not only improves efficiency but also increases your capacity to grow your business.

Consistency in how you use AI is what turns it into a reliable asset.

Balancing Efficiency with Authenticity

While AI can significantly improve efficiency, it is important to maintain the human element in your business. Your audience connects with your perspective, your experiences, and your voice—not just the information you provide.

This means reviewing and refining AI-generated content to ensure it aligns with your brand and messaging. Authenticity should always take priority over speed. When you strike the right balance, you can scale your efforts without losing the qualities that make your business unique.

Preparing for the Future of AI in Business

AI will continue to evolve, becoming more integrated into everyday business operations. As these tools advance, the ability to use them strategically will become an increasingly valuable skill. Entrepreneurs who understand how to combine AI with their expertise will be better positioned to adapt and grow.

Rather than viewing AI as a trend, it is more useful to see it as a long-term capability that can support innovation, efficiency, and scalability.

Building a Smarter, More Efficient Business

Learning how to use AI in business is not about replacing your work—it is about improving how you work. By training AI effectively, choosing the right tools, and integrating them into your processes, you create a system that supports both productivity and creativity.

When used intentionally, AI allows you to do more with less effort while maintaining the quality and authenticity that drive long-term success.

🎧 The Motivated CEO: Business Strategy for Entrepreneurs is now The Metrics Maven Podcast. Available on all streaming on all platforms. Listen to the episode here. Also streaming on YouTube.

Episode Links

💥 LEARN HOW TO USE YOUR METRICS as a custom solution to sustainable business growth inside a one-hour strategy session! No spreadsheets. No overwhelm. Just clarity. ⁠Schedule a strategy session here!⁠

📋 TIRED OF INCONSISTENT REVENUE? GET STARTED FOR FREE WITH THIS METRICS CHEAT SHEET In less than 10 minutes, you'll know exactly how many leads you need, where your sales process is leaking revenue, and what to focus on each week to reach your revenue goal.⁠ Click here to grab the worksheet!⁠

📕 GRAB A COPY OF AMY'S BESTSELLING BOOK - The CEO Method: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Success is available at all major online retailers. Click here to grab your copy!

Transcript for Episode 302. Demystifying AI for Entrepreneurs with Emily Baillie

Amy [00:00:02]:

Welcome back into the motivated CEO podcast. Today we are talking all things AI, which in today's landscape is a huge topic. I feel like people are very divided, Team AI or not. But today we're going to unpack why AI can be such a valuable tool to complement versus replacement certain tasks in your business. So I am super excited to welcome in Emily Bailey. Welcome to the podcast.

Emily Baillie [00:00:34]:

Thank you so much, Amy. Thank you for having me.

Amy [00:00:36]:

I'm so excited to talk with you today about this topic. When we met, I was like, Emily, you need to come on the podcast. We need to discuss this because AI is hot right now. But before we do that, tell us more about yourself, who you are, what you do, and who you serve.

Emily Baillie [00:00:53]:

Thank you. I am a digital marketing and artificial intelligence strategist and trainer, and I work with organizations of all different sizes, small businesses, nonprofit organizations, and larger businesses as well, to help them make better use of digital marketing tools and including artificial intelligence. So I do that through workshops. I do that through virtual training. I also teach university courses part time. And I do consulting one on one with organizations that are trying to figure out how they can take their business or their organization to the next level in a way that is efficient, cost effective, and within reach for them. So all of that consulting is sort of tailored to the individual goals and needs of the organization.

Amy [00:01:48]:

So good. Now let's jump into this topic of AI. You know, everybody, I feel like when chat GPT came out, you know, what was it, a year or two ago now? Everybody panicked because it was like, oh, my gosh, this is going to take over the world. It's going to replace all of our jobs. But the reality is there has been AI technology around for quite some time now. That's just one tool. Can you, can you speak a little bit upon that?

Emily Baillie [00:02:17]:

Absolutely. Yeah. Chad, GPT, I think, is the most downloaded app in history. It came out about one year ago, like you said, and since then, so many more AI powered tools have entered the marketplace. So I think what's happened is AI is really becoming mainstream now, whereas before it was around, like you said, for example, like Netflix uses AI in their algorithms to tell you which programs they think you might enjoy. Based on what you watched previously, Instagram uses AI powered algorithms to serve up content. To you, this is nothing particularly new, except the difference now is that these tools are entering people's workplaces. They're entering people's homes at a very, very fast pace.

Emily Baillie [00:03:07]:

And the development of more AI tools is happening so quickly. I think everyone is sort of figuring out what that means for them. Some folks are using AI quite regularly in their work. Other folks still have that fear factor. They don't know quite what to make of it. And some folks are just kind of dabbling a little bit, experimenting and starting to think, okay, how can I make tools like chat GPT or other tools work for me? And I think that's an important approach, is making the tools work for you to boost your productivity rather than, you know, being fearful of it, but also understanding that there are risks that one needs to be aware of. Yeah.

Amy [00:03:55]:

Oh, such a good explanation. And I didn't realize that, you know, it's only a year old. I feel like chat GPT has been around forever now, but knowing that it's only a year old is kind of, you know, mind boggling. But we're still learning how to leverage it appropriately and there's a right way and a wrong way to be able to use this tool to complement what we're doing in business. Let's talk a little bit about that. What are you seeing business owners doing that's not necessarily really leveraging AI systems and all these automations to their benefit? What mistakes are entrepreneurs making?

Emily [00:04:35]:

Well, I think when you first start using a tool like chat GBT, by the way, that is the most common tool that folks who are new to AI will start with. They don't understand that you have to train the AI tool, so they'll get their login, they'll start going, and they'll enter a very simple prompt like create me a create for me five social media posts for my travel business, something like that. And what they're getting in return as an output from the AI tool is not going to be very good. It's not going to be specific, it's not going to be creative, really. It's not going to be the type of high quality content that you want to put out for your business. So I think there's a learning curve there. There's some new skills required of people who are using AI, and that's part of the process. These tools are new to a lot of folks, so they need to learn how to craft prompts and train the tools in a way that's going to help them get better outputs and chat GPT certainly isn't the only tool out there.

Emily [00:05:48]:

It is very, very popular and it's fantastic. But folks should not just stick with that tool. There's other ones out there. Many of them are free, or they have a free trial that can do different things and complement chat GPT so I recommend folks do some exploration of different AI powered tools, and I'm happy to recommend some as well today.

Amy [00:06:14]:

Yeah, that's awesome. I once heard that with chat GPT, if you put garbage into it, you're going to get garbage back out of it. And it's so true that you do have to train it. What? I know it's more complex than we have time to get into today, but what is the simplest way to start training AI technology using something like chat GPT to learn your voice?

Emily [00:06:41]:

That's a great question, Amy. So first off, you want to give it resources and background information on your specific business. So you can either copy paste from documents. Maybe you have a marketing plan or a marketing strategy you can pull from. Maybe it's simply copy that's on your website. This should be your sort of unique selling point or your value proposition. And that's a really good way to let the tool know who your business serves, who it's intended for, what your products and services are, and what makes them different from the competition. That background information and context is really going to help in training the tool and getting better content for you once you start using it.

Emily [00:07:31]:

That's probably, I would say, step one, whether you're using chat GPT or you're using a tool like copy AI or something like that, giving that background information, you can also indicate to the tool what tone of voice you want it to craft content in. And this is super fun. If you're just playing around and experimenting, experimenting, which I always encourage, you can say, you know, write this in the style of Oprah Winfrey or in the style of Tony Robbins just for a laugh and just to see how it can do it. But of course, you want to find your own unique sort of style and tone. Any AI crafted content needs to be true to your voice and your personality and your brand. So that can take a bit of finessing. You can give the tool feedback and say, please rewrite with a more professional tone or a more playful tone, or use puns or alliteration in the copy. You really have to treat it like an assistant that you're going to train and give feedback to, and each interaction is going to help the tool create better content for you.

Amy [00:08:46]:

Ooh, I really like how you said train it like an assistant. Give it feedback, because what you're doing is training it, then to work in the way that sounds like you, that emulates your voice and provides you the output that you're looking for now, something that I know when I first started using chat GPT I neglected to do because I had no clue what I was doing. Playing around with it was each time I went in I would just go and I would put something in that little box in the bottom, whereas I found out later on I should be continuing that same conversation that I've trained it off of. Is that the correct thinking or is that already outdated information?

Emily [00:09:30]:

Well, chatgpt will automatically store all of the conversations that you have with the tool and you'll see on your left hand navigation menu, you can see those saved by keyword. You can go back in time and pick up where you left off, for example, or access copy that it created in the past for you. But regarding the information that you're giving the tool, it's stored in there for training purposes. So you don't need to worry about choosing a particular conversation to go off of. You can start a new one and it should still retain that level of information that you've provided it in the past.

Amy [00:10:11]:

Awesome. I mean, it's always changing. That's the thing with AI is by the time this comes out next month, I'm sure some new platform will have been created, some new update will have been created. So I would love to know right now, what are some of your favorite AI tools that you're leveraging other than chat?

Emily [00:10:29]:

GPT that's a great question. I am really loving right now a tool called Opus Clip, and if you want to link it in the show notes Opus clip, it is a video AI tool and it's free to get started, which is fantastic for small business owners or people who are new to AI and still not sure if they want to dive in. So what Opus clip does is it will take a single long video. So for example, maybe you've recorded a podcast episode and filmed it, or perhaps you gave a talk or something like that. You can take that long video, drop the link or the mp4 file into Opus clip and it's going to create for you a whole whole series of shorter social media friendly clips. And those clips are automatically going to have captions on them. They're all automatically going to be sort of designed for maximum impact on social media. They're going to be much shorter.

Emily [00:11:37]:

And that allows you to then download those clips or share them on Instagram reels or on YouTube or on TikTok or whatever your preferred platforms are. So it really takes the guesswork out of video editing. Video editing can be quite time consuming. I always say, you know, work smart, not hard. You're busy with a lot of different things if you're an entrepreneur. So this is another tool called Opus clip that can really help to fuel your marketing efforts for your business using short video.

Amy [00:12:12]:

And that's really what AI is about. It's about helping us leverage our time to work smarter, not harder. You know what I love it for is exactly what you said. We're taking content that we've already created, that long form content, and creating just another form of content, saving us literally hours. Because I'm not a video editor, so I'd much rather pop it in and have it, you know, automatically pull out these clips, send it off to my team so someone can do that for me. It literally saves so much time. And the really cool part about so many of these platforms coming out right now is most of them, like you said, are free to start with. You can try it and see if it's going to work for you.

Amy [00:13:00]:

Because at the end of the day, it's about leveraging AI as a tool versus something that, okay, we need to have our whole business run for us by AI. No, that's not at all what this is about. This is about learning how to lean into technology and embrace it. I mean, I must admit there's some AI technology out there right now that freaks me out a little bit. I haven't totally embraced it, but there's others that, you know, I'm getting curious. I'm opening myself up to the possibilities, like, okay, hey, how can I use this to help me? How can I use this to grow my business? So you talked about Opus, we talked about chat, GPT, any others that you'd recommend?

Emily [00:13:47]:

Yeah, I like the new AI powered features in canva. So Canva is a design platform for non designers like myself. Many, many business owners and entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations use canva to create their marketing. Marketing content, particularly social media, comes with pre sized templates that you customize and make your own. And there are more and more AI powered features being added to canva. So if you are a Canva Pro user, meaning you have a paid subscription, it's pretty affordable. By the way, you will have access to the full suite of Canva AI powered tools. This is called the Magic Store Studio and this is where you can create images from a text prompt.

Emily [00:14:37]:

This is where you can create short videos from a text prompt. You can resize your existing designs and instantly repurpose them for different platforms or different mediums. And you can do some pretty fantastic editing with just the click of a button. So canva has really become, I think, a go to tool for a growing number of organizations around the world. And those AI powered features are, I think, a good place to start for folks because they're already there. You can experiment, you can play around, and you can create those visual designs and those videos faster. And that's really the content that organizations are often putting out anyway. So you can use those AI features to boost your productivity using canvas Magic Studio.

Amy [00:15:36]:

It is fun to get in there and play around because some of the things AI is still evolving and some of the outputs that I've gotten, I'm like, wow, either my input was really bad or this is just that hysterical. It's really interesting to see, and I love how you said, just get in there and play with it. Get in there and see how you can make it work for you. Now, wrapping things up, I would love to know, in your opinion, what do you see as the future of AI? Is this going to be almost like the evolution of business? When the Internet came into the workspace, at first everybody was on paper, and then the Internet came out and it was like, oh my gosh, this is kind of scary. What do you mean, the Internet? But then people began to embrace it, adopt it and use it. And now look at us. You can't imagine life without the Internet. What would we do without Google? So I would love to know your perspective on is AI going to be a necessary component to running a successful business?

Emily [00:16:39]:

That's a great question, Amy, and I think that it's going to really disrupt everything no matter what sector you're in. I come from a marketing background, and certainly marketing is one of the top sectors that AI is disrupting. So unfortunately, this may mean that, you know, there may be job displacement. I try my best to avoid that. When I'm doing trainings, I want folks to work faster using AI and do their jobs better using AI. But the reality is AI is not going away anytime soon. More and more organizations are adopting artificial intelligence tools in the workplace every day, no matter what sector they are in. So certainly we will see more and more of this as time goes on.

Emily [00:17:34]:

The pace of development of the tools themselves is pretty wild. We are on the cusp of seeing our AI generated video become mainstream. So many ethical questions and potential risks with that, as you can imagine. So that has not been released yet to the public, but I think it will once those sort of ethical questions are being sort of addressed. But there's not a lot of regulation right now with any type of artificial intelligence. And bad actors can use AI as well as good people. So the policymakers, governments in all countries are grappling with this. I don't think that some of those institutions are built for speed, so unfortunately, they're not able to keep up with the pace of change.

Emily [00:18:28]:

I hope that that is something that can be remedied, but certainly some regulation is needed because these tools are just so, so powerful and can be used in so many different ways. So over the next, I would say, five years, we're going to see massive adoption of AI and a lot of impact on marketing, on the law, industry, manufacturing, healthcare. The list goes on.

Amy [00:18:53]:

Yeah, this is just the very tip of the iceberg. And I love that perspective because, yeah, there's going to be a lot of legal and ethical concerns that are raised. And I think as a business owner, it's just important to educate yourself, to educate yourself and use it as a tool. This is another tool that you can leverage in your business in order to work smarter. I loved our conversation. Emily, tell us where we can connect with you, how we can learn more about you. Learn more about the amazing things you do.

Emily [00:19:27]:

You can find me at compasscontent, Ca. I'm based in Canada. You can also find me on Instagram, Emilybailey social, and you can find me on LinkedIn if you look up Emily Bailey. I would love to connect with all of you.

Amy [00:19:42]:

Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much, Emily, for sharing this awesome perspective. I appreciate you.

Emily [00:19:47]:

Thank you so much for having me. This was great.

Amy [00:19:50]:

And until next time, cheers to making the money you want so that you can create the

impact you desire.