How to Use AI Without Losing Your Authenticity w/ Bindi Belanger
AI is revolutionizing our world, but can we use it without losing our authenticity? In this episode, Bindi and I explore the questions..Will AI make everything feel generic? How can we use it to enhance, not replace, our creativity? And what’s the best way for spiritual entrepreneurs, coaches, and teachers to leverage AI without losing their unique voice? Bindi shares strategies for using AI to support your business—so you can spend less time on the draining stuff and more time doing what you love.
Why AI isn’t the enemy of authenticity—and how we can use it to amplify, not replace, our unique voice.
The surprising way AI can spark more creativity—even for those who resist using it.
How to avoid the biggest mistake that makes AI-generated content feel generic.
The #1 way AI can free up your time so you can focus on your zone of genius.
Where AI is headed next—and how spiritual entrepreneurs can stay ahead of the curve.
Sign up for our AI workshop: AI for Purpose Driven Entrepreneurs Use code Early20 to get a $20 discount when you register by 2/18/25
GIFT FOR YOU
If you’re a meditation teacher or coach who wants to create unique meditations people listen to over and over again, enroll in my free course Meditation Script Mastery
Music Credit: Nova by River Roots - https://www.youtube.com/riverroots
Podcast Transcript
Lou: Hello, dear friends. Welcome to another episode of the Art and Business of Meditation podcast. Can't wait to share with you. Bindi Belanger, who is back on the podcast. This is her second time and her first episode is a fan favorite. And so if you haven't listened to that episode, check that out back at least over a year ago, I guess it has to be. And we are now back. Bindi, welcome back to the show. Normally I have the introduction of your bio, but I actually don't have it right now. So if you want to share a little bit to remind people what you do and who you are that maybe haven't listened to the first episode, feel free to maybe start there. But welcome.
Bindi: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I love having these conversations with you. They're always so fun. The last one was great. I listened to it again, I think a couple months ago and I was like, oh, that was, we need to do another one. And then of course you reached out. So wonderful timing as usual. My background is, long story short is, you know, I was climbing the corporate ladder for my entire career. My background is in project program and portfolio management, specifically in the big tech space. And many years ago, I think it was 2018, I wanted to go deeper on my spiritual path. I decided to do a 400 hour meditation teacher training and had an amazing experience. But at the end of it I realized I didn't want to be a meditation teacher myself, but I loved working with people in the space. Through my class I met lots of amazing women and men who were teachers, they were sound healers, they were astrologers. And I started sharing my perspectives on business and how to launch their business, grow their business, their websites, content. And I realized that's really where I had the most joy, is kind of bridging the two worlds of business and strategy and spiritual and wellness folks who are out here trying to make an impact on other people's lives. So that's what I do today outside of my day job. I love helping spiritual and wellness entrepreneurs, you know, come up with new offer ideas that are really unique to their way of showing up in the world. You know, we talk a lot about there's a really saturated market in the meditation and wellness space, but that doesn't mean more and more people shouldn't continue to, to join. Right. And to share their gifts. It's really about, you know, really sharing what makes you unique and how you connect with other people. So that's one of the things I love to do. And I host a A free community where we can get together. I offer free guidance. I love doing that. And yeah, we're going to be doing a workshop here soon. So that's how I like to, to serve.
Lou: And I love your story in the sense for everyone listening of finding your own path with this and taking the step that's calling taking the next right step, which for you was this training and realizing. Okay, well this led me to actually realizing how much I love supporting other meditation teachers. And I learned that I don't want to be a meditation teacher. So the path gets made by walking it. And you're an example of really starting to hone in on where you come alive most and how you can most serve and the topic that I know we're going to talk about today and something that you really love and care about, which and I appreciate that you do because you've been a great guide and inspiration for me to look at AI and to play with it and to let myself play with it because I think I can speak for probably some people listening here. Especially you get into the meditation and spiritual world and a big intention is to be authentic, to be our authentic selves. And when we think of artificial intelligence, there's that word. Artificial in some ways is an opposite of authentic. Is it could be feel aversive, like it can be like, no, that's not. Well, I'm not being authentic anymore. So yeah, I'm excited to explore that with you today. And maybe that's just a good place to start if, if someone's listening with that idea or that feeling around it. How do you typically invite in the concept of AI and how it could be useful and how they can authentically use it in their own way.
Bindi: Yeah, that's a great place to start. I think a lot of the fear or uncertainty around AI comes from this idea that it's designed or created to replace us. I think we've all seen movies and read some sci fi books, maybe television shows that depict these machines taking over, replacing us in the case of relationships. There's so many dystopian scenarios around AI, it can feel pretty scary and at this kind of bleeding edge of this technology that's relatively new for us and machine learning has been around for a long time. But like the way that consumers are using AI is relatively new ever since ChatGPT came out a couple years ago. And so I think we're all still feeling our way through this, through this period. But the way that I like to think about it is instead of a replacement, you can think about ways that AI could replace us in certain aspects of our lives, and maybe we want them to. I would love a machine to come and fold my laundry, because with two kids now, there's tons of laundry. I would give a lot of money to have that done. But I don't want AI to make art for me. I don't want AI to have conversations for me. I don't want AI to replace me in lots of other ways. So when we think about that, maybe it can replace the things that we don't like doing so that we can show up in the areas of our life that actually bring us a lot of joy and fulfillment. So in terms of entrepreneurship, instead of thinking of AI as I'm going to have it do all of my work for me, it's, what are the parts of your business that you don't actually enjoy doing? What components of that could you offload so that you can spend more time in your zone of genius? Right. So if you're a meditation teacher and your gift is really holding space in a room of, you know, participants facilitating the meditation and maybe the conversation afterwards, are there parts of your business, like, you know, coming up with ideas for Instagram content or giving you, like, a outline for your next email newsletter, or coming up with, if you're running paid ads like, can AI support you in some of those areas that you're like, I don't want to do them, but you feel like you maybe need to do them. Have AI take those tasks on so that you can focus on bringing your energy into that space. Right. Showing up in person or hosting, like, a zoom class or coming up with new ideas. And, you know, I use AI a lot for brainstorming ideas. And what I like that it does is it connects dots that maybe I wouldn't have thought to put together. And so, you know, in the case of, you know, lose, lose a meditation teacher who's, you know, human design is this, and maybe, Lou, you love being outdoors. It's like, have AI come up with, like, all sorts of offer ideas of, like, how you can be a meditation teacher that meets your human design. You get to be outdoors more. And, you know, maybe nine out of ten of those ideas are not that great, but maybe one of them is like, oh, I didn't think of that. Right. We can use AI in those types of ways that can spark new ideas or new ways for us to show up in our zone of genius and offload the stuff that we really don't need to spend hours on. Like, if you're spending two hours writing your email newsletter. You know, maybe you could do it in 15 minutes by giving it a bunch of notes that you want to share with your audience and then spend the other hour and a half like, you know, recording a new meditation or, I don't know, creating art or centering yourself so that when you show up to your next class, you're an even better version of yourself. You didn't just go, you know, come off of doing all this work. So that's how I like to think of AI is not as a replacement, but as an enhancer, as a, an off, like a delegate. Right. And in some cases like a thought partner. Where a lot of people in this space are solopreneurs, right? They're doing a lot of this by themselves. They don't have someone to bounce ideas off of AI, you know, chatgpt, Claude, they can serve that role as well.
Lou: I think the fear that I've had or have, and I know some other people have voiced this too, is that the genericy, like everything, like if. Everything just becoming generic. Like if everyone's using AI for their newsletters, like it's all like, there's a tone or a quality, like, will we just, are we just going to be.
Lou: I'm losing the word, but kind of in a dream of this just generic milieu that's out there because everyone just having, hey, AI, write me a newsletter about self love today. And it's like, well, that's, you know, similar. And I, and I know like the unique prompt, the promptings, where it's at, like really learning how to prompt it and give it feedback. And so I think there's like, well, you. In order to make it unique, it's like you become a good prompter rather than a good writer. And would we lose those skills? Like, I consider myself a writer and sometimes when I write something and then I will. And I've been doing this more recently a little bit because I want to test, trying to experiment and understand what do I like, what do I not like? And you know, I notice, okay, well, write, you know, put it into ChatGPT and say, how can you end this a little better for me? Or, or how can you. I can't figure out a way to end this thing. Like, what, what would you come up with? Or hey, is, what's this? Like, how would you edit this version? And it's good. Like often it's good, like it's doing it really well. But I'm, I'm like, am I supposed to be learning how to like do this and edit it. Like, is it not. Is it sounding less like my voice than it would have otherwise? So these are like the fears that I have. And then just, you know, in a, in a more meta, existential way. Like, do you think everyone's going to be not like, less good, right? Like in a very like 10, 20 years on a. Not just spiritual wellness people, but like, do you think the world is going to be not as skilled at writing or doing certain things, like outsourcing so much of things that used to take energy and processing and learning. Like where. I didn't mean to get super existential right away, but where do you think? How do you think of that? In more of a 10, 20, 30, 40 years view of it.
Bindi: Yeah. So I would first start by saying that the way we each use AI can be on a spectrum. There are those of us who really enjoy the practice of writing and we like using words as a form of art. Right. So I love reading your newsletters. Like they're. You're a great storyteller. You should continue to do that. There are other people, other meditation teachers. That's just not their jam. They don't see themselves as like writers. Maybe they're great at putting together an impromptu. Like they show up in class and they can lead a meditation and it's just flowing through them. Right. But they sit down at the keyboard to try to write something and it's just not. It's like they don't. That's not their mode of communication. Right. Typing out a newsletter. In that case, you might use AI just to make those small refinements, just like the examples that you gave. Can you replace this phrase or how could I end this better? Give me 10 subject lines. Right. For this email that I've already written all the way to. You know, I know what I kind of want to say, but I don't know how to write it in a way that like flows well. Like AI can do more of the heavy lifting for you and there's everything in between. Right. So I would think of it like it's going to be a spectrum. Everyone's going to be somewhere different on that spectrum and just find what's comfortable for you. Because just because like, there's so many amazing teachers and healers and guys that just when they try to write it down, they're just not showing up the same way. Right. It just, it doesn't convert for them. It just something is missing. So they can use AI to help with that. The Second thing I would say is that every single New York Times best selling author has an editor. Nobody is writing and publishing their first draft. These, these, you know, highly acclaimed authors, they're doing multiple revisions and they are not doing their own revisions. They have somebody else coming in, giving them feedback. But ultimately the book or the essay or the, the poems, those are in their voice. But they still have an editor helping to do that refinement. So when you think about using AI as like an editor, maybe you do the first pass of an email or an Instagram post or you know, something and you use AI as an editor and you can, you know, you can train AI on your voice. I've done that, right. I've uploaded like 20 something blog posts to Claude and I've said, you know, Claude has something where it will detect a style. So you can upload a bunch of examples of your work, it will summarize your style, and then it will try to write in a similar fashion. Is it perfect? No, but it's pretty close. And then I can make adjustments and you can give it a certain lens, right? So maybe, Lou, you're fantastic at writing newsletters and maybe you're great at writing meditation scripts, but maybe sales pages aren't your jam. Maybe that's where you could use a little bit of help. And so when you ask AI to function as an expert marketer in your voice, right, Then it can give you a first pass at a sales page for a new offer that you have that sounds very close to what you might sound like, but you wouldn't have known how to structure it in that way. Right? And so then you can go in and make refinements. It's much easier for you, you know, probably to look at something and say, oh, okay, now that I know what it's supposed to look like, I can go in and make it sound a little bit more, you know, close to what I want it to, to say. Whereas, you know, unless there's lots of meditation teachers out there who are also expert marketers, I think, like there's lots of use cases where it can be that editor for us and that, you know, refiner, if you will. And then, you know, the genericism, making sure that all this, you know, if everyone's using AI, how are we going to get our unique personalities and voices and experiences out there? Like AI is not going to replace this because it doesn't have our lived experience, right? AI doesn't have your stories, it doesn't have your evening, you know, conversation with your wife, like Stored, you are bringing that into all of your work. And so as long as you're providing that as input, whether it's a prompt or it's a sample of your work or what I've been playing around with is just doing like bullet point notes and then dropping that into AI and say, here's what I want to talk about. So like I'm able to do it more. Like, I want to talk about this. I want to mention that here's a story I want to include. Like, let's see what it does with that. You know, help me put all that together in a cohesive, you know, way that like flows. Maybe it would restructure the order. Maybe, you know, it's. And so. But it's all my input, it's my stories, it's what I want it to say. And it's behaving in ways that like, I'm telling it to behave. I think if we're all the ones providing the inputs and this could be completely naive and this is maybe based on, hey, it's February 2025, in one year, this could be totally different. But I feel like it's still us guiding the AI. And so as long as what you're putting in is true to you, is unique, it's authentic, and it's not generic stuff, then you're not going to get generic stuff out, right? It's that whole trash in, trash out. I don't know if I'm saying that's the right phrase, but like what you put into it is going to have a huge effect on what comes out. And so if you put generic prompts in there, like, write me a meditation script on self love, yeah, you're going to get something generic. But if you say, right, I want to write a meditation script on self love and I want to incorporate this thing that I recently worked through myself. And you write that story and you give it that to AI, it's going to be something like no one's ever seen before. Right? Because it's your story that you've, you've incorporated. So that's how I, how I think about it.
Lou: I think that's a good litmus test of like the energy and how you're putting into it. I think I'm noticing myself on my consumption of YouTube. If I'm listening to like music or like background music for working or whatnot, I'm super averse if the YouTube channel started in the last year or two and they use nothing but AI thumbnails, because I can and they're pumping out content because like the, again the, the like, okay, they're just pumping a machine like, you know, you can do this so much faster and you can get traction. And I'm like, no, no, I want, I don't want the AI made thing for the, for whatever reason, I don't. I know someone did seven years ago, they put probably way more heart into creating a hour long piano, you know, sequence or whatnot that this AI is doing. And so I'm just noticing just my own aversion to like, I don't want to listen to the YouTube channel. That's I could tell is just really using AI in all aspects of it. And so that might be my own thing, like, because I. Is there a quality piece to it? It's like how to sense the quality. And I think that's the, that's I guess again a fear that I have of, of how do we, how do we know if it all feels like AI is making it again? It is the, the aspect of like what we're, what we're putting in and taking the energy and care to do that in an aligned way. But there is also a lot of, I mean it also be said with, with audit with books nowadays and how much Amazon has been flooded with just AI written content to try and you know, build people's just, you know, make, make money off of, you know, Kindle books or whatever like on the back end that's, that's grown immensely and so, you know, there's more flooding with everything which sometimes makes it harder to stand out, makes it harder to find your people because people are able to output so much more content. But I think there's a way to find it for you in a way that feels aligned and authentic. I'm curious, Benny, why do you care so much about AI? Like, why is. This is definitely like a thing that you're, you're passionate about and I don't know if there's any background to it or if you're just like, wow, this is just a cool thing that's been. That you're just interested in.
Bindi: Yeah. So first of all, I'm an Aquarius, so Aquarians are known for being very into technology and kind of futuristic thinking. I did that strengths finder thing many years ago. I looked at it again last year and futuristic kind of forward thinking was on one of my strengths. So I just, I am really fascinated about where our world is going. I'm fascinated about thinking what will my son's lives be like when they get older? I mean, AI is just at the very beginning right now. Will, what will school look like for them? You know, will they have to learn things that we had to learn 20, 30 years ago, or will that be obsolete? So I'm just very fascinated by thinking ahead. And I love playing with these types of new things and just seeing. For me, it's another form of a creative outlet, seeing what I can do with AI. It feels fun to me. Again, that could be very naive. Maybe I'm feeding it information that will allow it to take over our world. I don't know. At this stage, I'm trying to stay positive about it. There's a great book called Life 3.0, and the first chapter is kind of this story of what a potential positive future with AI looks like. So if anyone is interested in seeing, because we've heard all the negative doomsday, you know, scenarios, the, the, the positive view is actually really interesting to think about. And the way that I think of. I understand your aversion to wanting to list not wanting to listen to AI produced content or read another blog post that's clearly written by AI. I think that's fair. And I think that people can, like, tell the difference. What I advise my clients to do is with that in mind, information is now a commodity. Like you creating a course is not like we're still at this stage where like people are still buying courses, but right now you can really ask ChatGPT anything and be educated on anything anytime you want without, you know, maybe you're spending 20 bucks a month for the pro version or not the pro, but the, the plus and so information, if that's no longer something we're gonna pay a lot of money for, I mean, I can get CHAT GPT to create a custom course for me, right, Based on my specific astrology or human design. Like, why do I need to go learn from Jenna Kutcher or Amy Port, like all those people, when I can get something custom designed for me? So I, I advise my clients, like those types of things, like maybe focus less on right now and focus more on the human connection and creating community. AI will never take that from us. Not that I can. I mean, I hope it never takes that from us because like, you and I having this conversation, this is real, right? It would be very obvious if it was AI replicated in this day and age. Like, maybe in the future we won't be able to tell, but like the experience that I'm having as a person. The experience you're having as a person as we're having this conversation. Like, this is special, this is unique, when we come together in community, when we share our stories. Right? So I advise meditation teachers, life coaches, healers, like, focus on bringing that human aspect to your work, bringing people together, you being, you know, holding space for other people. We will all want and crave more of that. The more of our. The rest of our lives become so automated and robotic and obviously AI driven. If you're not cultivating that in your business, I really encourage you to start thinking about what that could look like. Lou, you've got a mastermind, you teach live on inside Timer. I'm sure you've got lots of other ideas. I've got a free group that I host a monthly call with those spaces, people will start to crave more. That's what my prediction is. We're already craving it, right? We're Americans are like the loneliest they've ever been in the last many decades. We want that connection. And I think that's where the opportunity lies. I would say focus less on worrying about, you know, the content creation, course creation, things like that. And how are you. How are you bringing people together? And that, I think, is where business should focus or probably will be forced to focus because everything else will just be able to get from AI solutions.
Lou: What if I'm someone listening? That's like, averse to. I don't want to have a group. Like, I don't want to do that. Like, I want to. I want to just write. I want to just create. I want to do. I want to make passive income. Right. I want to make a course that I can sell on the back end. And I just want to create and, you know, have more time for creating new things and new products and. And new offer or new. Yeah, new things that I'm not seeing people. I'm not like, having to engage. Like, how would you. What would you say to those people?
Bindi: Well, one, I still think there's a Runway left for us to continue doing that. I'm not saying it's over already. We can still create digital products and, you know, have success with that.
Bindi: The. I would say continue to do your writing. Continue to. To create in the way that feels the most genuine and authentic to you and. But pay attention. Pay attention to what's happening in this space and just notice, like, what's happening. Because what you don't want to do is close your eyes, put your head in the sand, and just pretend like it's not happening. Then pop your head out one day and say, oh, My God, like what? No, you know, the whole world has changed and, and you haven't really thought about how you might adapt this, this kind of like rapid evolution. I don't think we've ever seen anything like this before. Even in the Industrial revolution when new factories were being built, like it wasn't at this speed, right? It, I mean this is in a year of, I don't know how long ChatGPT has been out, but like entire companies are shifting like their strategies and their workforce and you know, this adoption is happening faster than most people realize. And I mean, I don't know if you're familiar with the whole Deep SEQ thing that happened. So the idea with, with these AI models like ChatGPT and Claude is they take a long time to train or they took a long time to train and they take a lot of resources like servers, energy, power, right to, to run on a continual basis. In China, they built an AI model called Deep Seek and they were able to do it at a fraction of the cost. And so that leap scared a bunch of people. The market went down that day. Like they didn't anticipate us getting to that point so fast. And so we're going to start to, we're going to see a lot of that, right? And so we think about, you know what I'm saying today, who knows, in six months this could be like completely obsolete as a conversation. So I would say for now, go for it, keep doing what you're doing. I think the world, we will always need artists. You know, what that art looks like and how we produce art, I think could change. So I would say keep doing it, but pay attention. I don't have a better answer than that because we don't know.
Lou: It's a great answer and it is alarm. Yeah, I can't help but just be an alarm. Like where is this going to go? How fast is it going to change? And trying to stay present with it all. I do think there is something in, often we are, I mean we've had the Internet for a while, so you can always search things up. And you know, if I think I've heard this on like a Tim Ferriss podcast that if, if information was everything, everyone would have six pack abs or something like that. Meaning like yeah, you can ask questions and you can get the information, but without a structure, often it can become overwhelming. Without accountability it can become overwhelming, which is sometimes the accountability of other people. If you do have a group and when you pay for something that creates an accountability. Like if you are selling a course and you're paying a course, $500 to do a course. Your energy that you've just said, I'm going to focus on this thing rather than asking, ask Chachi Beatty, how do I do this? And there's just less, like, commitment. You can just, you know, I don't feel like doing it anymore. And there's no skin in the game for you to continue. So there is still something with selling up packaging like you're. I mean, we're all just repackaging things in some ways with our own spin. And how can we create a container that people. Okay, I'm committing to this. I'm putting this. This is talking about more the products sense and like the courses sense, where there's still, I think, something in. I'd rather pay because I know how much that's going to focus me on something rather than have all the information. It's that, that Bo Burnham song, Everything everywhere, all of the time. Like, there's just like too much, too much overload. And yeah, I think there's still room for that. And if you can mix it with a group sort of model, I think that's. That that's important too. Do you have any other thoughts, and you've mentioned ones already, of how wellness teachers and guides can use this? Whether it's blog posts, creative ideas, brainstorming. Is there any other ideas for us that we could use or maybe how also how you're using it in different ways?
Bindi: Yeah, like, I'm certainly not an expert marketer, but I. So I use AI in terms of helping me with writing website copy. I definitely use it for brainstorming a lot. Right. Because I have, I have a million and one ideas. But for really connecting what I think is valuable to what maybe my potential audience would think is valuable is really great. You know, in the, in the workshop that we're going to do, we'll talk a little bit about how to get a better understanding of our audience. You know, using AI, where it has insights and data that we just, we don't have. Right. So things like what are their. My audience's biggest pain points? What are its, you know, biggest desires? Those types of things are really helpful, I would say. There's. There's so many tools like AI for video editing, AI for sound editing. I mean, there's going to be AI for everything. So if you think about all the different components of our business, from, you know, content production to marketing to analytics. Right. Looking at your website analytics and giving you insights that you may not have come up with on your own. There's just. And what I love about AI is that if you don't know how to use AI, ask AI. And so I'll give you an example. I was trying out Claude for the first time a few weeks ago because I'd always been a ChatGPT person. Claude is another model and people have been saying it's much better for writing. So where ChatGPT is kind of a jack of all trades and it's really good in my opinion, it's strategy. When I ask it to write something for whatever reason, maybe I'm not prompting it correctly or I'm not giving it enough context, or it doesn't know the style of my voice as well. It just doesn't sound that good. It's very kind of simple. When I give it to Claude, it's much better. So Claude has something called projects and you can give a custom instructions and we'll get into more of this when we do the workshop. But what I did was like, I don't know how to write the custom instructions for this project. I'm like, Claude, can you write the custom instructions for you? And I told it what I was looking to do and it wrote this long list of custom instructions. I would not have come up with like 10% of that stuff. And I made some tweaks and I'm like, change this, add that, remove this. And then I put that into the project. And now I have it like working on certain things for me. And it's so good, it's so good. So just like anything that I'm like, I'm okay at, but you know, I'd like it to be better. I'll use AI for that. And I love teaching people how to do, to do that. So that when where I feel like I'm best is showing up one on one, showing up in groups. And so if I can use AI to create avenues for people to find me or kind of give them a glimpse of what it's like to work with me and then bring them into my world, that's powerful, right? Because then I have an opportunity to grow the group or grow my one on one work. And that I think is what all of us are ultimately doing is one, trying to get found, to make sure that we're providing offers and services that people actually want. And then three, doing it in a way that is like not draining, where we get to spend our time and energy on stuff that's fun for us and like not do the stuff, not spend as much time on the stuff that's draining for us. So that's how I, I think of it. And you know, going back to your point about, like, well, if I can go get this information somewhere, you know, maybe people won't want to pay for it or maybe they'll only pay for it. To have that sense of accountability, I would also add that, like, if, if you want to learn something, you have to know what questions to ask, right? Like, if you go and ask ChatGPT how do I get healthy? It's going to give you a very generic answer. But if you were to find a training program that, like, in my case, for, you know, moms in their 40s who, you know, eat a certain diet, and this guy has a 6, you know, point 6 module plan that like, walks me through all these steps and he has the structure figured out, I don't need to know what to ask. That is going to give it to me in a very clear structure. Worse, versus, if I had ChatGPT, I'd be like, I don't know where to begin. I don't. What I want to get healthy. Like, I don't know. You know what I mean? So I think there is still value in creating courses or offers like that or programs as long as you, you know, you're providing that kind of structure and format that people wouldn't know to go and look for. But they, when they see it, they're like, yes, that's what I need.
Lou: I know I probably sound like I'm some, like, I'm trying to play the, the devil's advocate here of like, oh, there's like the fear. And. Because, like, I, I have some of those. But also I, I have found value in it. And I have to admit that naming my mastermind, Meraki Mastermind came from trying to brainstorm with ChatGPT, because I was, Look, I've been doing a coaching training called Aletheo, which in Greek is meaning truth. And I, and I kind of liked that. I was like, I wonder, is there any Greek words, like, what are Greek words that mean, like, working with love? And like, I wrote it down and then Meraki was just like, boom. Like, this is exactly the meaning. And I would not have, I don't know if I would have found it elsewhere. So it's been the pride and joy of my last year. And yeah, it came through ChatGPT's assistance in finding that name. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's always. And that's what scares about it. It's like whenever I do use it, it's like, oh man, this is so good. Like, it's, it works so. It works so well. It. Where it's like, you know, it's like a drug in some ways. Like, oh, like, oh, you shouldn't really do it, but then you do it and it's like, oh, it's actually really good. Like, I want. Now I got more of it, you know, so it's. I don't know. That's a. That's where my mind goes.
Bindi: But one thing that I like to, you know, offer to people is when we think about companies, right? We as a solopreneur, we have a company, but if it's just us, it's just us, right? Other companies that have, like, maybe they're small, medium, large companies, they have multiple people in the company and each person has their own role and they're responsible for doing certain things. If you're a solopreneur and you're doing everything, you could think of AI as being different team members in your company, right? So with Claude projects or with custom GPTs, you can set up different roles, different assistants to help you with different things. So you might have a newsletter writing assistant, you might have an Instagram assistant, you could have a LinkedIn assistant. Each, each one of those assistants is trained specifically for their job. And then you kind of have a team of AI agents that are part of your company. And so that's another way to kind of think about it. Like all these companies who have a CEO making all this money, they're not doing all the work, right? They have hired skilled individuals to be in those roles, to serve those functions, and all those functions work together. You, as the CEO of your company, you can put, you know, AI agents in those roles, make sure the AI agents are working together to support your company's growth. So I think if you think of it like that, that also helps, like you versus, you know, the big bad corporations. Why shouldn't you have access to the same types of powerful resources that they have access to? So just want to offer that if that resonates for anyone.
Lou: As someone who started a business in virtual, with virtual assistants, I'm curious, what are your thoughts around the use of virtual assistants now with AI could replace maybe, obviously an assistant. But I'm curious how you're thinking about actual, like human virtual assistants nowadays.
Bindi: Yeah, I think there's still a good, strong market for that. And the reason is there are a lot of people that don't want to figure out AI yet. They don't want to do anything related to the technology. It's more, you know, hey, va, I need to do these things. Can you update my kajabi? Can you, you know, here's the draft of the newsletter. Can you set it up in kit or flodesk? Can you respond to my emails with, you know, as a customer service representative? A lot of that you can set AI up to do for you or will be able to in the future. But there are so many people that don't want to get into the tools and get into the software. And so having a va, you can offload that. And the VA is that we, we train and align virtual teams. They're AI savvy, so they can, they can do that on your behalf. And so for now, I think that, you know, we'll still need VAs to do a lot of, a lot of things for us, but who knows, like I said, whether that changes in a year, three, five, ten years, who knows? But for now I think it's, you know, we still need them.
Lou: You've spoken to different uses of Claude and ChatGPT and so maybe just any, any other AI tools and how you use them or how someone might like approach a Claude versus chatgpt. You mentioned it being more of like the style that they can use versus maybe brainstorming. So anything else you want to say about that and then any other tools that, that people should be thinking about, whether it's language learning models or other, other aspects?
Bindi: Yeah, I mean, ChatGPT has a number of different models you can use. Claude has different models, they're always adding new ones, testing new ones. They have different functions. So I would say think about your use cases. Try. I've done like an AB test where I'll put the same exact prompt in both and just see which one I like. If you do that, a few, you'll start to notice, oh, one is better at these types of things and the other is better at these. They're, you know, the pro. The plus versions of each of those is 20 bucks a month. So for me it's, you know, it's obviously worth it to have both powerhouses, right? One's really great at some things, the other is good at others. 40 bucks a month is a great, you know, deal for me on that. So I would say either test them out and pick one that you like more than the other or use both and just know what you use each of them for. As for other tools, descript is a great video editing tool. So like, we're recording this podcast on video, if you were to drop it into descript, it would make editing super easy because it could go and find all the blank spaces it could. It'll automatically transcribe everything so you can edit based on the transcription. There's lots of tools like that. There are AI tools for taking like a long form video like this podcast that we're doing and cutting it up into short form videos that you can turn into Instagram Reels or TikToks. There are obviously transcription services so you can upload your video and boom, you get a transcript. I love loom for that loom. If you upload a video it will, especially if you're, if you're, if you've got a larger team, if you. So I do this with Jonah our, my co founder at Align Virtual Teams. If I needed to show her how to do something, I'll record a loom and it will automatically outline all the steps that I walked her through and say what point in the video that is. So for training people, it's excellent. Other AI tools, of course there's all the image generation stuff. I haven't really gotten into that, but I know a lot of people will create images for their blog posts or for their meditation covers or things like that. And then canva is a tool I know a lot of us use for our Instagram posts and other image generation. They are introducing new AI features all the time. It's really cool what you can do. And I think we tend to think of AI as maybe just that prompt and response type software like ChatGPT or Claude. But AI is actually built into so many other pieces of software. CRMs or customer relationship management tools have AI now built into them that will analyze trends in your customer engagement. Email tools or adding AI features like it'll help edit your emails or come up with subject lines. So just start to pay attention to the software that you're already using. Are they introducing AI features and you're probably already using some of them without even realizing it.
Lou: So yeah, like Opus Pro for videos. I find whenever I put like a video and it chops up like a YouTube or a podcast. Like if we were to put this in there and it gives like a bunch of. And he like kind of rates them as far as you know, a hook or what would, what would get it. So there's, there's so much out there and yeah, learning, you know, finding your own rhythm and not feeling like you need to, to go overboard and like you like I haven't really dabbled with the images just because, I don't know, I don't use many images anywhere. And I, in my meditations, I just typically just use my face because I'm an enneagram3 and I like attention and so it makes it easy. But, yeah, curious if there. Where do you want to take this from here? If there's any thoughts around AI, whether it's maybe some practical steps for people to try out if they want to start experimenting on their own. I know we have a workshop coming up that's going to really give a lot of how tos and giving people the right prompts and how to set up. Maybe the assistance, which I'm personally so excited for. Like, yeah, but anywhere, if people want to just start experimenting, like right now, like, where would you. Where would you send them to?
Bindi: Yeah, I would suggest testing out the free versions of Chat, GPT and Claude just to start getting familiar with what it's like to, you know, be in a prompt and response mode with something like that. You might be surprised if this is your first time kind of dabbling in the field of AI. You might be surprised at how high quality some of the responses are. Or you might find that, you know, maybe it's not as impressive as you expected it would be. Another great place to start is YouTube. And just if you have. If you're curious about like, AI for video editing or AI for poetry or, you know, there's a whole. There's a. What is it? There's a software that I was playing with and I can't remember the name now, but it was AI for writers. So you can put in just an idea and it will come up with the entire plot line. It will come up with characters for you. It will. I mean, you can use different, like, you know, the hero's journey or the, you know, there's different plot structures you can use and you can write an entire book. And to me, I know you mentioned that, like all these books and on Amazon are. It's getting flooded with AI written books. You know, I. I have my opinions on that, but for me, it was just so fun. Like, I'm not gonna write a novel to publish, but, like, it was fun to play around with like, characters and, you know, plot structure. So, you know, you can take it to two different approaches. You can say, okay, I want to figure out how to use this for business. Or you can say, I don't know, what would be fun to, like, do that. I feel like I maybe wasn't as skilled in and could AI help me do something like that just to start, you know, experimenting. I think that would really fun place to. To start.
Lou: Something's connecting for me, and I don't know if it's accurate, but. Have you listened or watched or read. Read. Watched the book? Have you read the book, the E Myth revisit. You know how he talks about, like, creator or manager, entrepreneur or taskmaster, what it is? And I. It. It seems to me like people who really thrive on AI because it seems like you're managing, like, that's what you're having to do. You're kind of like, you do this. You do this. I'm gonna tell you to do this. I'm gonna. And I find I actually like managing the least. Do you. Do you feel like that's. That's accurate? Like, because it feels like there's more manager. You're more in the managerial role because you're working with, again, AI assistants and having to, like, prompt them. And I'm just curious. Obviously, the task person and the example I use in that book is like a pie maker. Obviously, you can't. You're not. You want to just be doing the pie. So that's your genius. That's your gifts. And I'm curious what the entrepreneur. What that hat would be with AI My making sense. Like, I'm just. I'm trying to make this connection where, like, I think it's more manager. And I think that's probably why I don't say I want. I take. I often just take the first answer it gives me. It's like, I don't. I don't have time to just keep going back and forth with this thing. Like, that's. It's not. It's. It's external versus inner creative. And that's where, like, I'm. I'm more liking being in the inner creative versus the external. Maybe that's a human design thing. I don't know. But that's just kind of more resident with me. So. Yeah. Just curious how you would think of if we use that analogy. Analogy for them. The book of, like, what's the entrepreneur use of it?
Bindi: I love that I totally didn't put that together. But yes, the. The creator is The. The pie baker. Right? She loves baking the pies. She's not a good manager, and she's not a good entrepreneur yet. You're right. I function really well in the manager role. And so I'm not like, I have fun creating, but that's not the thing that I'm great at. And so for me to write an email, it's like, yeah, I could, but if I dropped in a bunch of bullet points and had, you know, chatgpt write the email, it was going to be so much better. But you're going to get a sense of what I'm trying to say. So as the manager, yes. That's. That's the people who are using Claude and ChatGPT and all these other AI tools, you're probably more in that role. My husband is the same way. Like, he, you know, knows what he wants to get done, but he doesn't want to be the one to do it all. So, like, he loves using it the same way. The entrepreneur is the one who is thinking of, how can I use AI to build something entirely new or, like, to change the strategy and trajectory of my business? So the entrepreneur might be like, looking at your. I don't know, might be looking to say, how can I create software that will generate custom meditations for individuals given, you know, they. They plug in their demographics. Like, I'm a male, I'm age this. I'm struggling with stress at work, and I like, you know, visualization meditations and mindfulness meditations. And that generates like, that the entrepreneur is thinking like, one level up, right? Like, how do I turn this? Something much more scalable. And so most of the clients that I work with, they're not at the stage where they're really thinking about scaling yet. But the entrepreneurs, the people that have that kind of mindset, like, nascent in them ready to come out. Like, that's how I imagine they would be thinking about AI in their space is how do I, you know, supercharge this world with AI? And people are doing it. They're already doing it. Just not my clients. Not yet for sure.
Lou: I feel like I'm definitely more in the creator, but also like to fantasize of being in the entrepreneur or like, you know, I can. Those two polls feel more exciting and interesting to me than the middle manager. But it makes sense you as a project manager, that you would be. You would be shining in that.
Bindi: I don't do the work. I make sure everybody else does the work.
Lou: Awesome. Bindi. Well, maybe let's speak to if people are interested listening to this and are wanting to dive a little deeper and have some more practical tools. We have a workshop that is open to the public. It's gonna be on February 25th at now. I'm on. I'm on Pacific time now, so it's like I get to be early when these, like, Night things. It's amazing. So it's gonna be 4:30pm PST, 7:30 EST. Bendy, do you want to share more about what we're gonna be doing in that workshop?
Bindi: Yeah. So I really want this workshop to be very practical, very hands on. Ideally, you're coming into the workshop with some information about your business and what you're trying to do, who you're trying to serve. And together I'll show you how you can customize either ChatGPT or Claude to understand your business goals, to understand the style of your voice, to understand your ideal audience, or help you figure out who your ideal audience is if you don't quite know yet. And then we'll talk about all the different ways that you can use these tools to support your business, whether that's content creation, brainstorming new offers, refining, you know, your meditation scripts or whatever. The reason I'm excited it's a live workshop is that people can come in with like their specific questions and we can talk through that. But I'll be sharing my screen, I'll be showing you how I prompt and then we'll include a PDF that will include a bunch of prompts for all different scenarios. Some of the favorite things that I like to do is tailor my strategies, my approach, the way that I work by incorporating my human design or my astrology or my gene keys. I actually was chatting with ChatGPT yesterday and I am a manifesting generator, but some of my channels are actually projected channels or projector type energy channels. And so I was thinking about there are some areas where, like when I respond to something and I get excited, I'm just go, go, go. And there's other things, like me in leadership roles, it's best when I wait for the invitation. And so I was just having this conversation about like, okay, well how can you use ChatGPT or Claude to help you understand these aspects of your working style and then incorporate them into your business. So we'll just be talking about all these different types of things. I think this workshop is going to be great for you if you've maybe dabbled a little bit or maybe you're brand new to it and you really just want to see what it looks like when you can custom customize and tailor their responses to who you are and what your work is and just see the power of it and then come away with a bunch of prompts that you can take and start to use and hopefully help your business grow.
Lou: I'm excited for it. I'm excited to learn from it too, and to highlight you with both of our communities, obviously to be invited to it and to make it super practical, tactical. And yeah, for those that are interested, we'll have a link in the description with the information to sign up. It should probably be two weeks from when this podcast releases, so hopefully there's enough time and we'll look for hopefully see you there if you're wanting to learn a little bit more about bringing this into your work.
Bindi: Yeah, I'm excited. I think these types of workshops are so fun for me to do, especially when they're live. So come with your questions and will get a lot out of it, I think.
Lou: And if you're listening to this and you're also Bindi has been a previous guest in my Mastermind, but she'll also be coming the next day to the Mastermind, so you'll get a little kind of VIP action with Bindi the following day after the workshop. So just a little plug for those that are interested in maybe digging deeper into Mastermind at some point. But it's going to be cool to have a public workshop with Bindi and then more of an intimate experience since the next day. So for you though, I'll hopefully see you on the 25th. And yeah, bendy, this is super fun. Always a joy to treat to have these conversations with you.
Bindi: Same. Thank you so much.
Lou: All right, friends, see you soon.