← Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
The Biggest Dangers of Using AI For Your Personal Brand - 893
00:38:44
Loading summary
Transcript48 lines
- [00:00]
A
If you've ever had a post go viral and then immediately thought, wait, how am I actually going to ship all of these orders? Yeah, that's the part that almost no one talks about. When your company is growing fast, order fulfillment can make or break your success. And that's why I recommend that you use ShipStation. ShipStation's intelligence driven platform brings everything into one place. Order management, rate shopping, inventory returns, warehouse systems, and even analytics. They're saving business owners up to 15 hours a week on fulfillment. And here's what I love Instead of juggling five to seven different tools, it's just one. You can connect to over 200 sales channels and it automatically compares rates across carriers like USPS, UPS and FedEx. Plus, over a million businesses already trust and use ShipStation. And that's why I highly recommend if you have any kind of business where shipping is required, ShipStation is the tool that I would suggest. Try shipstation free for 60 days with full access to all features. No credit card needed. Go to shipstation.com and use code BYT for 60 days free. 60 days will give you plenty of time to see exactly how much time and money you're saving on every single shipment. That's S-I P S-T-A-T-I-O-N.com and use code by T shipstation.com with code BYT Today's episode is brought to you by Shopify, the number one E commerce platform in the world for building your business and selling your products. More about them later. Also later I'll tell you a little bit more about our sponsor, which has me super excited, which provides weekly, nutritious, wholesome meals that help you hit your goals in less time, energy and effort. Plus they taste great.
- [01:41]
B
Most people don't realize that the way that they're using AI is actually killing their brand.
- [01:46]
A
There's a massive difference between using AI as a tool and using AI to generate everything you create.
- [01:52]
B
SQ Magazine reported in 2026 71% of social media images were now generated by AI.
- [02:00]
A
The problem isn't AI replacing creators, it's creators voluntarily replacing themselves with AI.
- [02:07]
B
We used to teach that your niche was your advantage, but today authenticity is your advantage.
- [02:13]
A
AI can be an absolutely amazing tool. It can help you create more efficiently, generate better outputs and be more efficient in your day to day life and work. And I don't know about you, but recently my entire social media feed has been nothing but Use this AI tool. Try this AI tool. This AI tool is going to solve world hunger and save Humanity. And while I think there are a lot of great benefits to using AI, I also think there are some really dangerous traps that a lot of content creators and small business owners are falling into. And so, especially for those of you who are trying to build a personal brand or who are trying to grow a business and are trying to use your own likeness to do so, I think today's episode is going to be a real eye opener for you. On today's episode, I am bringing back the OG host of this podcast, the person who ran this podcast for like a decade by themselves before I joined the show in 2019, and who was my co host until about a year ago. Of course, the person I'm referring to is none other than Chalene Johnson, my mom. She's a world renowned expert in both marketing and fitness, and she's built a massive personal brand with over 700,000 subscribers on YouTube, over 1 million followers on Facebook, almost 1 million followers on Instagram, and hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok as well. She has built an absolutely massive personal brand for herself that includes multiple world records and a New York Times bestselling book. And she has done it over the course of my entire lifetime, almost 30 years, throughout all of the changes of the dot com bubble, the rise of social media, and, and now the acceleration of AI. And so I think my mom offers a really interesting insight into building a personal brand and how you can use AI to help accelerate your personal brand and the growth of it and also the mistakes that you need to avoid that can absolutely kill your personal brand, maybe before it even gets off the ground. And so, one last thing, before we get into the actual interview, I want to ask you to hit that subscribe button because here, every single week on the build you'd try podcast, I put out at least one one helpful video with tips, strategies and ideas to help you build your tribe online that is growing your following on Instagram, growing your business on YouTube or whatever platform you choose. So consider hitting that subscribe button. And without further ado, here's our full conversation. Hello, mom. Chalene. For the first time ever, welcome back to what was once your own podcast, build your tribe.
- [04:24]
B
That is so weird. You're right. Hey, thanks for having me back.
- [04:29]
A
Of course. You. You did about 800 episodes without me. Yeah, you did a couple hundred with me and now you're back. But today we have a super important and super relevant topic to talk about. And you know, everyone's so excited about AI and using AI to automate everything and generate everything and it's so cool and so powerful. But you have a really interesting opinion on this. And so I want to start by asking you, how is AI making creators and business owners and brands more forgettable?
- [04:56]
B
I think it's made it so easy for people to perfect and polish their content that that is no longer the differentiator like we used to be. The advantage was the knowledge that you had or how strong your hooks were, how great of a communicator you were, how excellent you were at writing. But all of that, that playing field has been leveled. And so now, like, everything looks the same. I mean, we're talking on podcasts right now. We've got these podcast mics in front of us. And, you know, there. There are just a million Instagram videos, YouTube shorts, et cetera, with just two podcasters and a mic in front of them. And it starts to feel like white noise when everyone has the same tools and everyone's creating the same content.
- [05:40]
A
Yeah. So do you think that we're heading towards, like, a trust recession or people are just not going to be genuinely, you know, believing each other anymore Online?
- [05:51]
B
This is critical for Gen Xers and older millennials because I'm sorry if you're offended. You are falling for AI you don't recognize. My generation does not easily recognize AI when they see it. Now your generation does, like, you guys pick it up in two seconds. But people in my era, we just fall for it much easier. And I think because of that, we also think like, oh, I better learn how to use this or I'm going to get left behind by the younger generations. And so we're using it because we think other people don't notice it. And when that happens, other people who do know something as AI, there's a distrust. And so every time you're going online, you're watching videos and you're thinking, okay, this is fascinating, but I don't want to get scammed. Is this AI? Should I trust this? So. So our natural distrust is already heightened, and we just feel like everyone is trying to scam us. And what has happened is we're just. We don't trust influencers, we don't trust experts, we don't trust people wearing white lab coats. We don't trust our politicians. We're just turning away from social media when it comes to getting valuable source information because so much of it out there is fake.
- [07:13]
A
Now, a minute ago, you said that information is no longer enough or, like, you know, people have said we're no longer in the information economy or Educational content is dead. So why do you feel that is?
- [07:24]
B
Well, think about it. I used to have to. I had the advantage when I had a lived experience and nobody else had or could understand. But now somebody could type in, hey, what could I learn from having done three 30 years of marketing and infomercials that could help business owners? And suddenly you have. I mean, not exactly, but you have at least enough information that you could boil down into creating an Instagram reel. So, like, information is at everybody's fingertips. The fact that I can summarize hundreds of hours worth of research by using an AI tool in a matter of minutes, that's insane. Where an expert. In the past, that was their advantage. So today, like, knowledge is no longer the thing that differentiates you from any other creator. And so the things that I think older creators. And when I say older, I mean older millennials, Gen X, and even boomers, they have to double down on their life experiences and realize that it's like, who you are is the advantage.
- [08:34]
A
Yeah, can you talk more about, like, what actually matters now? Because, like, okay, we're on the same page. You know, there's. There's AI tools that make information less of the premium. But then, like, wouldn't the premium. Wouldn't the way that I stand out be making my stuff look super, like, polished and professional? And there's all these AI tools that can help me look more polished and professional. So is that the differentiator? Is that what actually matters? Or what would you say?
- [08:57]
B
I mean, I'm sure you would agree, Brock, and I'm curious what your opinion is, but when AI tools first became popular, like, two or three years ago, it did feel like such an advantage. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm the worst proofreader in the world. I don't know how to create graphics. Holy cow. I've got all these things at my fingertips, and my team does. It made my team better. It made me better. But now everyone has those tools. And now, because we're all leery of being scammed or leery that the words that we're reading were written by a machine and not by a person, I think we're seeing because AI tools have hit mainstream. Like, my father just wrote a book using ChatGPT and created the COVID and took it to Kinko's to have it create. You know what I mean? Like, everyone is using it now, which means nothing stands out. No one stands out who's creating amazingly perfect, polished content. I think what stands out and what's going to continue to stand out is content that it's, we know it was created by the creator. Do you know what I mean? And it's subtle, it's subtle, but I think that's going to be the differentiator because we are all desperate for real. We just, we don't want things that are fake.
- [10:17]
A
Yeah, yeah, no, I think it's like basic supply, demand economics. You know, if there's suddenly a massive supply of super professional, polished, pretty looking content because AI tools make it easier than ever before before to create that kind of content, then that content is by definition less valuable, it's less premium, it's less exclusive. And to your point that you've said a few times, people are just less trusting of it. People are less likely to want to follow an AI avatar. They're less likely to really trust someone who is ultimately just a robot or using a robot to write all of their content.
- [10:52]
B
I want to share with you an example. So you know, we obviously, I have a YouTube channel, the Chalene show, and we're always trying to elevate our content. We've hired graphic artists to help us really create much better thumbnails. Right? And so, you know, that process has been happening and lately we've been noticing. I personally have been noticing. I'm like, I just don't, I don't relate to these thumbnails. Like this doesn't even look like me. And I always try to use my own impression to shape how I'm creating content. So even though that's kind of the trend right now is these AI generated thumbnails, I'm like, I don't like them. So I wonder if my audience doesn't like them too. And so we've been doing testing recently. The test that actually won the winning thumbnail was just an untouched screenshots, low resolution from the video recording that I did. And that's the one that performed best. We've also found that, you know, even though I'm using AI tools to help kind of test the waters, like, is this a good title? Is this a good hook? Is this a good script? And it'll give me scores and it'll tell me things like, okay, this is a 91 and. And then I'll say, you know, but this is what I would be searching for and it'll score it lower and. But then when I test them, my intuition is usually better than A.I. and here's why. Because the older and more experienced you are, you have an advantage. AI is just taking everything that's out There and disseminating it to like the most popular and common responses. So it's telling me the most common responses. But I'm not trying to reach someone who's looking for the most common response. I'm looking for someone who's trying to reach me. And so I think we have to really pay attention to our intuition. And sometimes AI is right, but I think more often than not, if you have a lived experience, you know what it is your audience wants, you know what annoys them, you know what they find cringe, you know what they find cheesy, you know what they find boring. So sometimes we have to ignore AI and just go with our own lived experience.
- [13:07]
A
Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. And at the same time I still think it can still be a super helpful tool. You and I are always talking about the latest ways we're using it. And so I'm curious, how are you personally using AI today and where do you see it like most effective in your day to day life and the business operations and all that?
- [13:24]
B
I would love to break that down for you and I think we should. We'll get to that because I want to share with you like the ways I do think it helps my business, how I use it and then the rules that I currently have in place for myself and my team, like these are hard and fast rules because I'm a personal brand and I think probably most people are watching you are a personal brand. And so how things go out to the world, you need to make the final call on what is okay and what isn't okay. So hopefully we can get to that. But I think the bigger thing to talk about first is kind of the trap that people don't realize that AI can be an amazing thing and we're all excited about it. But also you have to recognize that as fast as AI is changing and developing, so too are the consumers perception around AI. And it's not positive right now. I mean some of it is very positive, but a lot of it is shifting.
- [14:21]
A
Yeah, yeah. There are some, some crazy stats that I know we've looked up and found about. You know, Hootsuite study showed that 62% of consumers distrust brands that are using AI. There's an SQ magazine report from 2026, so this year that 71% of all images on social media are now generated by AI. And this is very counter to what Forbes recently reported, which is that consumers are actively growing hostile so towards AI. Not just like, oh, we don't like it or we don't want to see it, we distrust it, but, like, actively growing hostile towards it. And so I think you're absolutely right that especially in the world of personal branding, it can be a really slippery slope.
- [15:03]
B
That word hostile is important too, because that hostility is starting with the younger generation. And so creators who are my age are thinking, well, sure, Gen Z hates AI, but, you know, they've got to get with the times. But those opinions trickle up. And like you and your sister, you influence the way I see the world. And when you guys are saying, like, not everybody's happy about it because it is replacing artists, it is replacing that authentic thing that we want from other people, we've got to pay attention to that. And I think it's very easy to slip without noticing to go, oh, this is easier. Case in point, I had a friend of mine who's an entrepreneur who said, I just discovered that I can use this AI tool where it takes my face, my voice, and it takes one ad that I've recorded, and it changes it into like, 30 different variations, all using AI. And she sent me a couple of them, and I'm like, please don't use this. This will just where you ran. And she's like, but it'll save me so much time. I'm like, what might save you time is looking at ways that tools and AI tools that make you smarter or that make you more efficient, but not things that make you less trustworthy. And I think when we're creating fake images and we never said those words, we were never standing in that room. We were never, you know, AI now can be used to fake lifestyles, intelligence, your voice, your body, your hair, all of these things. Then the one thing that really helps us to differentiate is who we are, our unique personalities. Like, that is the asset that's most valuable. And we're. We're getting rid of that when we're using AI to generate images, to generate videos, to generate our own voices.
- [16:54]
A
Okay, so what's the difference between using AI to work smarter and more efficiently versus using it to replace you or just look more polished?
- [17:01]
B
Oh, by the way, before I answer that question, Brock, I want to say to anyone who's watching who might be, you know, of a certain age, do me a solid. I haven't been back on Build you'd tribe in so long. And so I really need this video to, like, pop off. So come on, do your girl a solid and make sure you hit that, like, button and subscribe. Subscribe to build your tribe so that, you know, Brock's like, mom, I can have you back again. Okay, now I'll answer your question. Well, one of the things, you know, you and I both agree is that you, sometimes you're not feeling creative or sometimes your brain just gets stuck and you. You're not good at coming up with, for example, the hook, or, you know, how to organize things. Like, so, for example, in preparation for this interview today, I've got, like, all these thoughts. And I don't want to just vomit them on you. I want them to. I want to be organized in my thoughts. And so I'll use AI, Use my own thoughts, my own opinions, put it into AI and say, help unscramble these so that I can share them in a way that makes it easier for people to digest. That's. To me, that's using AI smarter, that's helping it to be more polished. Without Chang, I haven't developed. This is my own opinion. This isn't something I ask AI to develop for me. And I think that's one example of how you can use AI to create better content, but not to create your personality, not to create a better image, not to create a different version of my lifestyle or what I look like or my features.
- [18:25]
A
Yeah, that's a great example. And speaking of examples, that's one thing that I personally like to use AI for to work smarter and more efficiently is if I need, like, a long list of examples, because people love seeing different use cases and examples for, let's say, how they could use a specific hook on one of their reels. I might come up with three or four, but then I'm like, you know, I'm struggling to come up with a couple more. I really want to come up with one for the fitness niche. And so I might give it my examples, which come from my brain and my creativity, and ask it to come up with a couple more just to help extrapolate my ideas. But I'm not having it generate the original idea itself.
- [19:03]
B
Yeah, and I don't know about you, but I can tell when I'm watching a creator, something just feels off. It doesn't necessarily have to be an AI generated video. There's something about the script, something about. There's just a vibe. There's this energy where I'm like, I just don't know that those are their words. I don't believe this. And it's not glaring. It's just this feeling. It's like, okay, I just have this certain level of distrust.
- [19:29]
A
As many of you know, when I first started this business, I was a college student, athlete, and at the time I was eating like five meals a day, over 4,000 calories. And I was eating the exact same meals every single day. Same breakfast, same lunch, same first dinner, same second dinner every single day. And it was super boring. But it was what I had to do because I just didn't have the time to make different meals, to get different ingredients, and to experiment with different recipes. But that has totally changed since I graduated college for two reasons. I1 of those reasons is my wife, Tay, and her constant encouragement for us to diversify what we're eating. And the second reason is because of HelloFresh. HelloFresh allows you to choose from over 80 global recipes every single month so you can constantly change things up and meet your protein goals and be able to make your food faster and more efficiently without having to waste time meal prepping, planning, grocery shopping and all of that. And I don't know about you, but every single time I have food delivered, I'm a little bit dissatisfied because it costs so much and it's usually not super healthy because let's be real, nothing quite hits like home cooking. That's why we use HelloFresh. And you should too. Go to hellofresh.com byt10fm to get your first 10 meals free and free breakfast for life. One per box with active subscription free meals will be applied as a discount on your first box for new subscribers only and it varies by plan. That's hellofresh.com byt10fm to get 10 free meals and free breakfast for Life. I remember when I was starting my very first online business way back when I was a freshman in college and I was very lucky to have my mom as a partner by my side. She could kind of mentor me and guide me through the initial setup process and building the business and coming up with the name and the products and what we were going to sell. And some of you may know that that was helping moms keep their kids safe on Snapchat. And I would imagine that when you are thinking about starting or in the early stages of your online business journey, you are likely faced with all of the same challenges, all of the same doubts and fears and concerns. Is my product right? Is anyone going to listen to me? How am I going to market this? How am I going to sell it? And you need a partner by your side as well. And that's where Shopify fits right in. Shopify will help you get the word out by allowing you to easily create emails and promotional posts so that you can reach your customers wherever they are. And Shopify can be your commerce expert with world class level expertise in inventory, international shipping, handling returns and warehousing and all of that. Plus if you ever get stuck, they don't just have customer service, they have world class customer service that is available 247 and that's something that even my mom couldn't provide for me. And Shopify has that iconic purple shop pay button which is used by businesses around the world and is the number one converting checkout option in the world. That means better conversions, less people abandoning their cart, and more customers for you. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify Today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com tribe. Go to S-H-O-P-I-F y.com forward slash tribe. Again, that's shopify.com forward slash tribe. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I mean to kind of zoom all the way out for a second even as we're having this conversation today, like you mentioned, you kind of brain dumped and gave all of your ideas and everything that you wanted to talk about to AI for it to come up with kind of an outline or a flow for our conversation. And then we are now having a conversation with just the general guidelines being directed by what AI was able to come up with. So we're not following a script, I'm not asking questions that were written by AI but we're loosely following the structure that it helped create. But all of this again came from your brain and then it was just used as kind of like the organizational tool. So I'm curious, where else are you using it and where have you kind of drawn the line when it comes to AI in your personal brand?
- [23:19]
B
And this may change right at the when AI first came out, I was so excited and was ready to completely outsource my weekly newsletter. And we started seeing diminished returns. We started seeing people like, I literally got a message from a friend of mine who said, did you write this? And at that particular newsletter I had not read. And that's when I realized like, okay, this is. I'm sending this out to the world and I'm trusting AI. This is a couple years ago. This could be very dangerous. And it doesn't feel right to me, even though it saved me a ton of time. So now my personal stance is it can be enhanced by AI, but the final read, the final version needs to be me. I think typos are the new goldmine. Like a typo. I got a message the other day from somebody who read my newsletter and they said, it is so refreshing to know this wasn't written by AI Because I see your typos. I'm like, finally my typos are paying off. So for me, it's anything that just, it just, you can tell it's cheesy. It's so obviously AI. The EM dashes, the way it writes things. It's like AI tries too hard and it's just not good at being who we are and knowing what things are. Cringe. When it comes to my image, there's. We have an absolute zero tolerance now for AI. Another example is I had a thumbnail editor who was creating images for us and I said, you know, I don't want any AI edited images, any AI generated images is what I said. And I had someone on my team who said, chalene, I don't think this is you. And they sent me a screenshot. Of the thumbnail. They said, I think this is AI generated. And I said, no, that's me. That's the photo I took and uploaded. But what had happened is the editor had shifted my eyes to look off or whatever, you know, to capture the emotion that they needed. I didn't notice it, but somebody else who's younger and who pays like, you know, like really pays attention to those things. It just looked off to them. It's me. And I couldn't even tell that it had been AI generated. So I think there are people who pick up on those subtle, teeny tiny little differences. And you think, oh my gosh, this looks like a photo shoot of me. But in our heads, I think we've been confused by our own filters and AI images. And you think you're fooling the world, but they can tell and it hurts your brand. I mean, there's a lot of kind of like lower level celebrities and people who are like on reality tv. And a lot of these creators are my age and they love and they're not doing. I have altered my image using plastic surgery. So, you know, I'm the first to be authentic about that. And I understand that sometimes people are uncomfortable with their appearance and they don't want to get Botox, they don't want to go under the knife. That's fine. But then own up to like what you look like. Because altering your image with a filter, it's damaging your trust, it's damaging your authenticity. You're much better off just saying like, okay, I'm not looking my best. And don't change the shape of your nose. The shape of your eyes, the shape of your belly, the shape of your body. Eventually you're going to have to go out in public and people see you. And then if you're willing to shift and change all of those things, what else are you covering up? I just think it really diminishes trust.
- [26:51]
A
Yeah. So is that, in your opinion, the difference between an AI optimized business owner versus a trust optimized business owner?
- [26:59]
B
The difference between an AI optimized and a trust optimized is that someone who's focusing on AI optimization wants perfection. I think it's okay to use AI to optimize your productivity. I don't think it should be used to optimize your personality, and it certainly should never be used to optimize authenticity. You can't optimize authenticity. You have to be honest. And the way you do that is by being imperfect, by allowing people to see your human side. That's what we're looking for. Like, people are so afraid of being scammed. Every time they open up their app and you see, like, you've seen the penguin that does a backflip and you're like, wait, wait a second, is this AI? You know, we're watching things because we don't want to be scammed. And I think it's really important for people to realize you signal trust when there's imperfection.
- [27:56]
A
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that the scary thing is that a year from now, it might be impossible, even for the most keen eye, even for the, you know, 17 year old who was raised in the world where AI has always been around, it might be at the point where even they can't distinguish and can't recognize. And so when you're asking this question of who can I trust yet?
- [28:17]
B
How close do you think we are to getting to a place where, like, almost no one can tell?
- [28:23]
A
I. I think a year. I think we're a year, maybe even less a way where even the. The farthest thing, you know, if you consider the entire spectrum, the farthest end of the spectrum is like video. And video with audio too, like talking videos. That's the farthest end of the spectrum. And I think we're a year or less away from pretty much anyone being able to not tell because we're already at the stage where AI video, you know, not to be ageist or to say anything about your generation, but where I'm getting videos sent to me on Instagram from people who are of your age who are saying, like, oh my gosh, check this out. I Love this person's content. And I'm having to tell them that's an AI avatar. That's not a real human being. And to me, it's a glaringly obvious. But I legitimately think that within the next 12 months, it might be indistinguishable.
- [29:09]
B
I think it's in the next six months. I think we're already at a tipping point where 95% of the population has no idea. I'm gonna share with you this video, Brock. I can't tell you how many women in my community have told me I need to have this woman featured at my next Camp Be More Live event. And I mean, I was sent this by my own girlfriends. And this is not a real person. This is AI. This is a. And in my opinion, this is a really bad one. Now check out the comments, Brock. All people are like, oh, my God, amazing girl. Give me your secret. So now she's becoming a paid influencer. Not she. This is just, you know, it's probably some dude sitting in his mom's basement who's invented this character. And he's getting paid the brand deals, he's taking money away from creators, and more importantly, he's robbing everyone who's out there creating real content of the opportunity to connect with real customers. And he's making everybody. We're all becoming very distrustful, and it's going to get better and better. So I think the one way to double down on that especially, and I can speak to our Gen Xers and millennials and even the boomers, and I can tell you guys, I know that you feel like you're falling behind when it comes to the AI. Go ahead and learn as much as you want about how you can improve your productivity and efficiency, but don't spend any time trying to figure out how to create videos of yourself, how to duplicate your voice, how to create a clone of yourself. I think you need to double down on your life experiences, and that is what differentiates you. That's what people are looking for, and that's how you get ahead in 2026, 2027 as a creator.
- [30:55]
A
Yeah. Now, there's this idea within personal branding of, like, your core message. But I know that you have a principle about, like, the anti message. So what the heck is that? And can you tell me more about it?
- [31:06]
B
Yeah, you know, I think a core message really mattered when people, you know, when we didn't have AI, people didn't know what their core message is. Now you can say, hey, I'm in. I'm a business coach and these people are the ones who I aspire to be, like help me replicate their core message. It's just so easy. Like no one has a true opinion anymore. And I think the creators who are going to stand out in the future are those who double down on an anti message. It requires you to have thick skin, it requires knowing that you are not gonna be everybody's cup of tea. And it requires you doubling down on the things that make your opinion different. And I'll give you a specific example. So Brock, let's say, let's say we're talking to people who coach others on Instagram, right? So most of those people, and there's lots of people who coach on Instagram have a lot of the same core messaging as you, right? Like how to use the tools, a strong hook, a call to action. But what if you had a message that was very different from all of theirs which might have been, might be something like an anti message which would be I don't believe that creators should be editing out any of their pauses or mess ups in their videos. That would be like an anti message. Cause it goes against what most people in your industry say and that can make you stand out. For example, with me, I speak to women who are in midlife and in menopause and a lot of women in that space, we share a lot of the same core messaging. But where I have an anti message is I just don't believe we need to get as caught up in all the wearable, you know, health detectors, like knowing exactly your step count and your HRT and your HRV and your exact macros and you know, how many hours of sleep you had and how many your telomeres and like all of these numbers that we didn't have 15 years ago and now I personally believe they aren't as important as we're making them out to be. Another example might be maybe you are a health and fitness coach, but you don't believe that women ever need to lift weights for their upper body, that they can have insane results and age powerfully just by doing three days of lower body training. So that's an anti message. It's like finding them one message that differentiates you and that is not something you can get from AI. Like you've got to be bold in your convictions.
- [33:38]
A
That makes sense. So it's kind of like the, you know, the unpopular opinion, the hot take, the controversial thing, the thing that you believe that's kind of counter to what the big names in your industry might be saying or teaching about. I can think of so many others. But how can someone identify what their anti message might be?
- [33:55]
B
Yeah, I think you have to start by going through your core message and then thinking about other people in your space with a similar core message and then really being honest with yourself and saying, if I wasn't worried about anyone else's opinion, what is the one belief that I have that doesn't match up with everybody else's? But I know from my own lived experience I believe it to be true. And I also know that it's not going to work for everybody. But there's going to be some people out there who this is going to work for them, or, you know, this is, this is going to help them, they're going to believe it. So it's being honest with yourself and having the confidence to know that anti belief is going to turn some people off from you, but it's going to make it easier for those people who are like, looking for you to find you.
- [34:44]
A
Yeah, that makes sense. So as we move towards the future, 2027, 2028, this crazy world that we're going to live in, where who knows what is AI generated and what is real, what is the most valuable skill for the future for creators and small business owners?
- [34:58]
B
You know, every time I think about this particular answer, I think for now, like right now, I think the one skill would be being able to go live and speak extemporaneously. But I also go for now until they can figure that out too. But for now, I think that is the win. And who's to say how our opinions are going to be shaped in the next two years about AI? But the one thing I think is part of human nature is we want connection and we want real. And as long as we can hold onto that and the people who really lead with who they are authentically, it just comes through and it makes people feel safe. Like there's a piece of this whole AI thing. You and I both talk about how much we love it and all the tools, et cetera, but there's equally things about it that scare the hell out of me. And I think, well, you know, oh, well, the robots are gonna kill us anyways, you know what I mean? So it's kind of trying to find that healthy balance and realizing we aren't doomed and we need to pay attention.
- [36:11]
A
Yeah, yeah. I also think there's going to be a lot of creators and business owners taking an outward and public stance, or at least making their use of AI known in the next few years. Whereas in 2023 and 2024, you could kind of get away with using an AI generated image. And maybe some people wouldn't know. Maybe even in 2025 you could use an AI video and most people might not catch it. And you think, hey, I'm just going to slide this under the radar and in the near future you're going to be at the point where maybe no one can catch it, but because no one can catch it, we're all going to be like, who can I trust? Like, yeah, this video looks real, but is it real? And so I think there's going to be a lot more business owners and creators and this might even be a recommendation that I give to business owners and creators is have a very public stance about your current where you draw the line with AI. I've myself, personally quite a few times said that I will never use AI, at least currently. This could change. Never use it to replicate my face on video or my voice on video. I'm not going to use it to clone myself. That's where I draw the line. I might use it to improve an image, like maybe clean up my skin a little bit, but I'm not going to use it to completely regenerate a new Brock. And so I think that in the near future it's going to be important for business owners and creators to kind of have a stance and make that stance known so their followers can trust them. It's the same thing of like, like you with your. You're like, hey, I had a facelift. Right? Your audience doesn't trust you less because you had a faceless lift. They appreciate you more and they trust you more because you honestly said that you weren't like one of these influencers who just like stopped posting for three months and then they came back looking totally different. And like, obviously you spent three months getting a facelift. So I think that that, that honesty about where you stand and how you are using these tools is going to be really important.
- [37:58]
B
Yeah, I think it's the wild, wild west and we can't be afraid of it. And the more we are just paying attention to our own intuition, that's going to be our best North Star.
- [38:10]
A
Okay, so with all this being said, how do creators know what to automate versus what to protect and keep for just themselves?
- [38:19]
B
I'm with you, Brock. I have had on my to do list from my team this prompt that they wanted me to read so that they could use my voice to create stuff when I'm not available. And I just kept putting it off and putting it off. I'm like, I don't know why this doesn't feel right. I know that anyone could clone my voice. We're recording our voices right now. I just don't want to, I don't want to give anyone approval to clone my voice or my image or my, my likeness. I think that's the like, it's like selling a piece of your soul. So for me that's, I'm going to continue to protect my identity even though it's being stolen every day, you know, and maybe we'll do a follow up episode about that. But like, you know, people steal my, my, my videos and they put different words on them. And so anything I can do to protect my image, I'm going to do that. I'm not going to make it easier for them to do that. When it comes to automating any silly automated like administrative task, anything that took me a ton of time to do before, I'm automating it, like get it off my plate. I want to have more time and freedom to daydream, to be creative and for the art of creation.
- [39:31]
A
And so if education or information is no longer a premium, it's no longer as valuable as it once was. If pretty polished, perfected content is no longer as valuable as, as it was even just a few minutes ago, or even if polished, perfect content isn't as perfect as it was even just a few years ago, what will be the most valuable thing that creators and small business owners have in the future?
- [39:57]
B
Things that just signal to people, okay, this is real and we're desperate to find those things. I think people are going to be looking for little things that tell us, okay, I know, like the typo, like the food stuck in your teeth, like the mispronunciation of a word.
- [40:16]
A
The, like the mistake that I made when I was asking that question.
- [40:19]
B
Exactly. Yeah. Like that's the stuff that people go like, okay, this, this is a real human, it's the bloopers, you know, And I think, I think, I think it's gonna make people stand out because people are so afraid to be real that it, it really does differentiate you. Your authenticity is what differentiates you.