Kinsey Soderbergh (3:49)

Oh, my goodness. I'm so excited too, girl. I know, guys, we're going to have lots of jazz hands over here. If you're watching the video, that's just because for sure it's. It's not only, you know, exciting for me to hop on podcasts and just get to nerd out about AI, but the fact that we get to nerd out about your specific system that we just created. Man, this is going to be such a good chat. I can't wait.

Annemie Tonkin (4:14)

Yeah. And I guess before we get into that system and everything else, I imagine that there are some people who know you, but you are not specifically in the photography world. So there's for sure a lot of people listening who don't know who you are. I intend to change that sooner rather than later starting today, but I would love for you to just kind of jump in and give us a little bit of a background on who you are, what your expertise is in, and what you do.

Kinsey Soderbergh (4:39)

Yes, for sure. Hello, my friends. I'm Kinsey Soderbergh and my brand is authentic AI. And we essentially just help down to earth women entrepreneurs use AI tools in your business without sacrificing your authenticity or thought leadership or wasting your time or anything like that. And honestly, I mean, I did not start in AI. I started my business about six years ago now. Originally called Feel Good Social. And I was really helping people show up online in a way that feels authentic and good to you, right? And I focus mostly on authentic branding, genuine marketing, all that jazz. And then about two years ago now, I first started hearing about, you know, the AI phenomenon in the online business world. Everyone was like, have you tried ChatGPT? I was like, what are you talking about? When? So I was like, oh, cool, this new AI thing is happening. What's this all about? And I like to share this because I think it's kind of relatable to a lot of people and especially photographers, especially creatives. But guys, when I first heard about AI tools, I like to say I was a total curmudgeon about it because I was totally like a grumpy grandpa, like, shaking my fist at the sky, being like, isn't the Internet fake enough as it is? What's this going to do to our creativity or critical thinking skills? Is AI going to take our jobs or take over the world? Right? Like, all of those AI scaries ran through my brain and I was like, not into AI, right? And then I actually was on a long drive one day and I had one of those long drive epiphanies where I realized that, okay, AI tools are here. And instead of being grumpy about them, probably what would be better is if I turn toward them and get curious about how can we actually use these tools in a way that aligns with us? How can we make these tools work for us? And that's when I just started playing around with AI tools and I actually pivoted my brand now into our new brand, authentic AI. And that's what we fully focus on now. Because, guys, I swear, like, AI tools can feel really scary. They can feel kind of icky, they can feel a little overwhelming or frustrating or, oh, man, I have one more thing to learn, right? But I did find that once I started using these tools and especially figuring out how could I use these in a way that does feel ethically aligned with myself and how I want to show up in the world, world without sacrificing my uniqueness of my brand, which is something that's so important to me, like, okay, I literally have been saving so much fricking time with AI tools. I've actually been. I did the nerdy math and I've been saving 3 hours a day, 15 hours a week, and 70 hours a month on average using AI tools in my business. For the past year. And, man, I've seen, like, so much more growth than I've ever had before, as well as have found, like, the freedom that I truly started my business to find in the first place. Right? Like, I found wiggle room behind the scenes to, like, start crafting hobbies and, like, go rock climbing and actually turn my phone off on the weekends and stuff like that. And, like, honestly, I truly is one of those things. Like, if we can get curious about it and kind of learn how to use it in a way that still feels good to us and doesn't turn our brand into a robot, like, man, it is so, so awesome. It truly is our secret weapon. So now that's what I do. And I also help people take their AI to the next level, which is what Atomy and I are going to be talking about today, so can't wait. But that's just a little bit about me.

Annemie Tonkin (8:15)

Amazing. Well, I'm right there with you. When I first heard about ChatGPT, which actually was from my dad, so, like, my retired dad was like, I was listening to the news the other day, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he was telling me about it, and I. My immediate thought was exactly the same as the first thought that came into my mind. And I remember this like it was yesterday, too. A friend of mine, we're in the back of a cab, or maybe it was an Uber, but I think it was even back in the, like, you took a taxi days. We're in the back of this cab and she's like, I got a smartphone. And I was like, huh? What do you use that for? So my dad starts talking about the ChatGPT. It was specifically ChatGPT. He was like, you can just ask it anything and it'll just have a conversation with you about it. And I was like, so it's like, stupid search engine. And, you know, we were trying. Of course, he didn't really know what he was talking about either. But we went back and forth about it, and my overwhelming feeling was like, well, what am I going to use that for? And then I had many of the same reservations that you did about, like, oh, great, this is just going to be yet another thing that removes our need for critical thinking. And it, you know, like, essentially disables us to, you know, from doing the things that we do well as humans. So I kind of put it out of my mind for a while. Then I started using it, help me code various things and to help me write, like, formulas and stuff, because I was getting into airtable So I was trying to make Air table do what I wanted it to do, and I would get stuck. And I was having a hard time. Like, you'd search Google for, you know, how do I do this? And then you'd end up in these long threads or watching these long YouTube videos. And somebody suggested that I like, oh, go ask ChatGPT. And that was like a total eye opener because it was able to write these, you know, big formulas and all this other stuff and allow me to make this other tool do what I wanted it to do. And that really started the ball rolling where I was like, oh, this actually is super useful when it's. When me, the human, I know what I want. And I know that I could learn how to code a website or write these long formulas. Like, sure, I could. I could spend a lot of time doing that. But that's not actually the goal. The reason that I'm using airtable is not to become an airtable expert. It's to get the output that I want. And so in that particular instance, letting ChatGPT do the heavy lifting on, like, coding or whatever was just a means to an end, A much, much, much faster means to an end, a more efficient means to an end. And once I started thinking about it that way, I then started, like, revisiting some of the prejudices that I had in the beginning. This is the whole, I'm like a super TED lasso nerd, and I'm like, be curious, not judgmental. And I started thinking like, wow, what if we could have ChatGPT learn the things that we wanted it to learn about us and our brand and our whatever, to do the. The work in our businesses. That isn't, in my case, photography. That it's not. I don't want it to take over that part. That's the part that I'm selling because it's what I offer. But if it can help me, you know, write emails or do all the other different little things, then that's a good use of AI. But then I was like, okay, great, now I have to learn how to do this. And that was where. I mean, I had been working on it, but I was talking to my friend Dhamma and I was like, I have this idea. I want to build this tool. For years in the consistency club, we've been giving people templates for emails and social media, and templates work well for those things, but we can't give people templates for blog posts, and blogging is so important. And then once I started thinking about It I was like, how can I create an AI based tool to help photographers write blog posts that aren't generic, that are, you know, that put them and their expertise and their opinions and their photos at the forefront, but do it in a way that's a lot faster and easier. And Dahmel was like, have you talked to Kinsey Soderbergh? And then I set up a meeting with you and the rest is history. So, yeah, so that was a long way of introducing the fact that, that we then put our minds together and built this tool this past spring and into the summer that we're just about to launch. If you're listening to this when it drops, you know, we're a week or week and a half out from the summit. You're going to be speaking at the summit. We'll talk about that later. And if you're listening to it later, then this new blog tool is live and working in the consistency club. And you can come over there and give it a, give it a try. Let's take it back to that first conversation. Cause I did. I had conversations with several people based on recommendations from different friends and, you know, people who are like, oh, you should talk to this person and this person. And I ended up really gelling with you and your take on AI in general, specifically because you sort of center humanness at the forefront of everything you do. I mean, your business is called authentic AI. But talk a little bit about that and how you kind of really specialize in helping people figure out how to make AI enhance their voice and their values and all that sort of stuff, rather than just kind of take it over.

Kinsey Soderbergh (13:49)

Yes, totally. Oh, that makes me so happy. Because exactly like, okay, guys, so I call this a human first approach to AI tools. And essentially what that means is making sure that you are bringing yourself your opinions, your values, your personality, your voice, your writing style, all the different things about you to AI first. And then allowing your favorite AI tool like ChatGPT to expand, clarify, organize, prioritize your ideas so that you are making sure that you're not sacrificing your thought leadership, your uniqueness, the little spark that makes you you. Right? And honestly, that's how I found to get the best, most authentic on brand results from your AI assistant from the get. Because one of those things I hear from a lot of people, one of those, you know, frustrating complaints, which I get it, I've been there too. But they'll go to ChatGPT and they'll be like, write me an Instagram caption And it'll come back with something that's like, overly professional or weird. And you're like, ugh, can you make this more friendly? And then it comes back with like something that's like jazz hands, like super cheesy and stuff. And you're like, ugh, can you make it more this or make it more that? And you go back and forth with ChatGPT and it feels like you're pulling teeth trying to get what you want. And by the end you're like, oh, I wish I could have just done this myself, because it probably would have been faster, right? Like, that is one of those common complaints I hear from people. And believe me, I get it. Because think about it, I like to compare it to a human assistant, right? Imagine you hired a new human assistant for your business, and first day on the job, you know, they walk in the door, they're all excited, and you go write me an Instagram caption. And like that poor little human assistant would be like, like you haven't told them anything about your brand, your customers, your strateg strategy, your content strategy for that part. You know, like they, that human assistant doesn't know anything about your brand. So they would try to write you a social media caption. But not knowing any context or instructions or your strategy, they would probably do a pretty crappy job, right? And the same thing goes for your AI assistant, right? So just always remembering to tell your AI assistant, hey, this is my brand. This is who we help. This is what we care about. This is our perspective on our industry and the topics that we share, right? Like telling it all of that stuff first and then saying, write me a social media caption and then even giving it details about. I think we should include these tips or, you know, start with an engaging question or whatever it is that you want from this tool. The end result, like you were saying, like, then that is how it's going to be able to do the best job for you and give you that end result you're looking for. Right? And so that's kind of how I teach AI. And that definitely went into then the blog tool that we worked on together for the consistency club, too.

Annemie Tonkin (16:44)

Yeah, yeah. So I think that one of the things that comes up a lot when I'm talking to other photographers, and I think that this is probably true for creatives in general. Probably most women AI has been trained large. I mean, you know, it knows what's out there, right? So it's got access to a lot of things, but a lot of the stuff that's available for AI to be trained on is pretty male centric. And then it's also looking at like, oh, what's success look like? And so especially when you're asking it to help you with anything marketing related, you end up with this like bro marketing crap that almost no photographer I've ever met, male or female, is interested in having represent them or their brand. Right? So we have this knee jerk reaction because when we get the more generic output from chatgpt or, you know, the other AI tools out there, it's like it has that sort of triggery effect where we're like, ah, that's the opposite of what I want to sound like. But that's not the thing that's important or the thing that the light bulb moment for me was like, that's not who AI is. AI is first of all, not a who. It's not what AI is, it's not what AI represents. AI is just a mirror, right? And it's reflecting what it sees out there is the most pervasive. And I feel like when we train it specifically, not only are we getting better results for ourselves, but you know, hopefully adding more to the model that is representative of things that are positive and ethical and like coming from a position of service. Again, this is all related to sort of like the sales and marketing stuff. But, but regardless, the more positive stuff that it receives, I feel like the better it gets in general. So that was a sidebar.

Kinsey Soderbergh (18:39)

Oh yeah. Oh girl, I have statistics for this sort of thing if you want me to share.

Annemie Tonkin (18:43)

Oh, well, if you know them off the top of your head, please do.

Kinsey Soderbergh (18:46)

I would love to hear more of that. Oh no, I'm so glad that you brought this up because this for sure is one of those, like, bigger issues for my brand that I love to share and talk about. It's the fact that actually men are two times more likely to use the top 50 AI tools than women. There was a study done about two years ago now, but a more recent study is that I think like 70 something percent of men use the ChatGPT app more than women or something, something like that. But essentially what we need to realize is that often the people using these tools are more masculine leaning than like feminine leaning. And this is an issue because not only if you think about in terms of the workplace and the gender income gap, if more men are using AI tools than women, well, AI tools have been proven to boost your productivity by up to 40%, which is like working two extra days per week. So if men are using them more, getting more done, being more productive, who's more likely to get that promotion or that pay raise, like, really in terms of women's wealth, it's really important that we start getting curious about AI tools. But exactly like you just said, you know, AI tools at this point are trained by the people who are using them, which means that kind of whatever you're putting into ChatGPT, that is kind of being swept into the big cloud of data that it's being trained on, which means that if more men are using AI tools than women, men are being swept into that data cloud more than women. Their perspectives, their language, their whatever, you know, And I always like to say, you know, AI tools really need our feminine energy. They need our empathy, they need our perspectives, they need to know what we care about so that these duels can. These tools can be trained on more diverse data. Right. So that the future of these tools are better. And so I really think it's so important that women use AI tools not just to save time, be more productive, see more success, all that stuff, but also because actually, when you're using these tools, you're doing quite a bit to shape the future of these tools, which I think is pretty cool, actually.

Annemie Tonkin (21:02)

Yeah, that is cool. And it. I mean, it's one of those, like, when you know better, do better. So AI is. Doesn't have judgment about, this is better, this is worse. But when it knows, when it doesn't know something or when some view or viewpoint is super underrepresented, it underrepresented in its database. How can it reflect anything but what it's been given? Amazing. Okay. All of that. I. I was. I walked into this conversation, I was like, we are going to talk for three hours and it's going to be a problem. I don't have one of those podcasts where people are like, okay, I'm on a giant road trip and I'm going to listen to this one episode. So let's pull it back. Even though I totally could keep going, let's pull it back and talk a little bit about the actual tool that we have built. And I would love to kind of get that from your perspective. Do you want to talk a little bit about, like, when we first met? What you like the little lights that went off in your head about what it was that I was trying to put together?

Kinsey Soderbergh (22:05)

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. For sure. And it was so fun when you reached out, because I was like, And I love how this project evolved, too, because when you did evolve, when you first came to me, you're like, hey, okay, I think that I want to create a blog tool of sorts to help my members write blogs that are specific to their business. Because blogs aren't really something that you can templatize very easily, right? And it's one of the hardest, most, I don't know, in my opinion, boring things to write, let's be honest, for sure. But it's definitely like that core piece of content that then you can like, dribble into all the other areas of your content world and stuff, right? And I was like, cool, that sounds great. Like, what's the most important to you when it comes to what this tool looks like, when it comes to the experience for your members, when it comes to the output that you want to get from the blog tool? Right? And what started as what we were going to create in the beginning, just a custom bot, a custom GPT sort of thing, turned into more so this like micro tool where it's kind of like you input all your little fun things and then it whizzes through the cool little AI automation and then out pops your perfect for you, done for you blog at the end, which I just think is so much cooler because one of the things that you. That was really important to you was that quality output. Right? And when it comes to using ChatGPT or a custom bot, like we were thinking in the beginning, one of the hardest things to do is to train that bot to understand exactly who your members are on that individual level. Right. So we're kind of worried about, okay, if we could just give your members a custom bot of some sort. Well, the output at the end might not be as well because we can't personalize it so much to each individual member of your consistency claim, which is then we decided through all the other things to turn it into this micro tool. And now we totally hone, like, each member's specific strategy. We use that strategy every month to create their blog post along with their own personal insights when it comes to each individual topic and all that stuff. And then out at the other end pops a blog that, hey, is like 90% there for each of your individual members, which, you know, you got quite a few in the consistency club, so that was one of the things we definitely had to navigate. But man, this cool, this tool is so much cooler than just the custom GPT. Just gotta put that out there.

Annemie Tonkin (24:36)

Yeah, I agree, I will. And one of the things, and I know I told you this, I had considered just building this on my own Because I had learned about, you know, creating custom GPTs and all that sort of stuff, and I had done a handful of them on my own and I was getting decent results. And it was like, okay, you know, I could probably do this. And I was like, you know what? If I'm going to be doing this that in a way that I'm presenting it to other people to use. Like, this is a tool that I'm kind of selling, right? I want it to be as good as possible. I mean, that's how obviously I always. We all want to create things that are valuable and are not garbage. And so I was a little, I did not yet have enough confidence to just be, be like, nope, I'm good to build this on my own. So I wanted to consult with an expert, work with an expert. And you proved your worth and expertise within like five minutes of getting started when you were. Because my initial idea was each month, like the way that each month I sit down and write email templates and Dana sits down and writes social media templates. Every month I will write a blog template and I will teach this custom GPT. Like, I want you to take the user's input, but here's the basic template that you're going to use this month, right? So each month they would get sort of the prescribed topic or whatever and you were like, okay. But you have, you know, photographers representing something like 15 different niche specialty areas. They're all over the world. They are, you know, somebody might be in a sales cycle, somebody might be in like, you know, I'm, I do this, I don't do this. And so one person writing one blog template, it would either need to be so generic that it would kind of work for everybody, or it would be specific such that it would be interesting for some people, but then it wouldn't apply for other people. And your suggestion was, how about instead we add multiple steps to this process whereby we don't want to leave people with the, you know, what do you want to talk about this month? You know, what's your blog post about? So the first step really is, or the second step is that the, the tool itself scrapes the web each month searching for the top ranking search terms in each niche. So it presents SEO focused topics as options or you can choose like the write your own blog adventure or whatever and then it walks you through the steps to create a blog from scratch. So truly, not one single person's blog is going to be the same as the others. There are some topic ideas out there that might Overlap. But I loved the time that you were testing it and you took the same topic. I'm gonna let you tell this part with the. Where you were comparing like the same inputs for two different posts.

Kinsey Soderbergh (27:42)

Oh yeah, yeah, I. Cause you guys, I tested this topic. It was actually, it was actually so fun to create this tool and we can get into specifics. Maybe we'll get into more specifics like later at the summit and stuff. But like, yeah, it was so fun to create this tool because of course I had my Handy Dandy partner, ChatGPT helping me along the whole way. Guys, still. And ChatGPT helped me create three different avatars for Atomy's Consistency Club members. And they might sound similar to you. I think we had like a brand photographer, Lena, I think chatgpt named her. We had a wedding photographer, a family photographer. Like I created these different ideal customer profiles, right. So that I could test your tool and. Oh my gosh, you guys, my chat GPT got so into it. It was like I was waiting for this moment. It came up with the whole backstory for each of these avatars. Anyway, side note, so when I was.

Annemie Tonkin (28:35)

Testing, it was fully method acting.

Kinsey Soderbergh (28:37)

It was, it was, yeah, getting into it was like teenage drama queen or whatever. But yeah, like, so then I started testing the tool and it was really cool because I would test like we had, you know, of course, all of the different trending topics for your 15 different photographer niche categories and stuff. And I was testing the different top topics and trying different angles with my. All my different customer avatars. And yeah, even when I would fill out the form for the same question, same form for Alina, the brand photographer with the similar topic, the overlapping topic for the family photographer or something like that, like the output would be so different. And it's because the way we set up your system with the AI automation, we're making sure that we're not only focusing on, yes, the trending topics for the 15 different categories for this specific month or whatever it is. But then when we get into the specific topics, we are asking the members individual personalization questions about what do you think about this topic? What tips would you share? What personal stories or experience might you relate to this? Can you think of a time when you were working with a family and blah, blah, blah happened, right? And so when you share your own personal experiences and again, that human first way you hit submit, it goes through the crazy AI automation and out on the other end pops your blog post. It's super personalized to not only your brand voice and your blog strategy, your keywords, but it's also personalized to your specific perspective on that topic, which, that's what makes this so genius, right? Is because we're making sure we're systemizing something that like, in a very, very personalized way. And like, that's what's so cool. And oh my gosh, one of the funniest moments too was when we were like, oh, you have some members who aren't like generally English speaking members, right? They, they produce content in different languages and stuff. And we're like, oh, how can we get around this? And so we made one little tweak on the back end and all of a sudden I was testing out blog posts in like German. I was like, I think this is working. Can you ask one of your German members if this sounds good? And they were like, yeah, this sounds great. So I just thought that was so cool too, how customized this experience can be personalized. This experience can be with the help of like an AI automated tool.

Annemie Tonkin (31:03)

Right, right, right. Because I know a lot of stuff about photography, but I do not speak German and so I can't help somebody in that way. And it was pretty amazing. We had two, two of our 15 beta testers were create content in other languages. Obviously they also speak English because they know me and I do everything in English. But they were our first round. We were like, we're not sure what the output is going to be. If they answer all the questions in their native language, then you know, what's the output going to be? And initially it was in English and then I. We went back like behind the, behind the back end and fixed. Yeah, I think you ended up changing basically just one line in the instructions. And all of a sudden they were getting output in the same language that they were answering the questions in. And I then followed up with them throughout the rest of the beta testing and they both said that it was remarkable how it was mimicking their brand voice and all those different things in their native language. It's amazing. This is like, this is where technology and I know there's a whole other layer of this conversation about like the ethics of AI and the environmental impact of AI. I love that the way that you built this really minimizes the AI part. So there's so much less back and forth. So that the. You really are. It's like 100% targeted. So I feel like we're efficiently using a tool for good and that, you know, promoting artists. Voices has always been the backbone of this business. And I'm Just gosh, I am so excited to launch this tool and see not just our 15 beta testers, but hundreds of photographers around the world get to benefit from, from what we've built. So yay.

Kinsey Soderbergh (32:51)

Yay. Oh my gosh, it was, it was such a fun build out, honestly. And yeah, I love what you brought up about minimizing the energy usage with this tool too. For sure. That is totally a thing where the way we set up the automation. Yeah, like there's not frustration going back and forth which means that you're using up more energy or anything like that. No, we are getting very, very specific, like training the tool on your stuff. So it's uber personalized and literally like first prompt that you send through it spits out like a great blog post for you on the end. And so I'm just so excited for you, for us, for your members. Like, honestly, this has been so fun and like guys, legit. I mean, I've had my round the block with a lot of AI tools and micro tools and all the stuff and, and on me. I think that your tool is pretty cool. I know I'm biased, but like yours has gotta be the coolest tool out there so far.

Annemie Tonkin (33:50)

I love that. I think so too. I really can't like wipe the smile off my face when I go in and, you know, play with it. And I've written my own blog posts with it and it's just incredible. So we are putting this little summit on where we're gonna be doing a live demo. There's going to be an option to try it out yourself. Guys, register ahead. You will get access to a workbook that's going to allow you to do some pre work that's going to make the, the summit itself even more valuable. And Kinsey's going to be speaking. You're going to have the opportunity to ask her questions. So show up, show up and come live and come hang out with us and see this new thing. It really is going to be an exciting. I think it's going to be like an inflection point for a lot of people in their marketing. So not to oversell it, but when people want to get in touch with you and follow you and check out all of your things, Kinsey, tell them where they can find you and connect with you.

Kinsey Soderbergh (34:46)

Yes. Thank you so much. And I am so excited for the summit. So you can find me at my website. DIY with AI is the website and then I'm at authentic AI for entrepreneurs on Instagram. Instagram, that's where I hang out mostly. Send me a message, I'll totally answer you and we can nerd out about AI in the dms. And then of course register for the summit because I'm going to be speaking and man, you're going to be doing lots of fun stuff. Really talking about how you can actually use this blog tool and create blogs literally in like five minutes. Less than five minutes, guys. It's so awesome. So make sure you register for the summit and check it out. For sure, love.

Annemie Tonkin (35:28)

I will have the link in the show notes. It's thiscan'tbethard.comsummit and I'm sure I'm gonna say it when I record the intro right after we hang up. So hopefully they've caught that by now. I will see you soon, my friend. And thank you so much for joining me today.

Kinsey Soderbergh (35:43)

Thank you.

Annemie Tonkin (35:44)

That's it for this week's episode of this Can't Be that Hard. I'll be back same time, same place next week. If you like the show, be sure to check out thiscan'tbethathard.com to explain. Explore all the resources we have for photographers. And of course it would mean the world to me if you would leave a review of the show on itunes or Spotify. As always, thanks so much for joining me. I hope you have a fantastic week.