Meet my business bestie, Claude.
The proliferation of AI has me like a kid in a candy store. I love technology… well, I love testing and exploring technology. Having my mind blown by a piece of tech gets me giddy.
I wouldn’t say I am an early adopter, but I would say I have drank the Kool-Aid. In the last year, I went from being amused by prompting DALL-E to create ridiculous & silly images to using five or more AI-enabled applications on a daily basis to supercharge my productivity.
But hands down the app I have fallen for hard is Claude.ai. Claude has become my business bestie. We chat on the daily. Here are just some of the ways my bestie has cut months worth of work down to just hours or days:
Cleaning up & restructuring a client email when it’s 4pm and my brain is mush
Analyzing a dense industry benchmark study and creating an executive summary to publish to my team
Ripping off and duplicating a great piece of content from another B2B business and retrofitting the outline & content for MACKEY
Analyzing the key drivers of revenue, gross margin and net income growth for my business over the last 5 years and then offering suggestions for how to grow better and faster
Coaching me through a strategic-level business issue from asking clarifying questions to building out an OKR template complete with primary tasks and KPIs
Developing a pitch to a business owner friend on an idea to build deeper into her current client base by adding a new service line
I have to admit that I have found myself impressed by how quickly I went from dabbling in AI to leveraging it every single day. And when I ask how, I come up with three answers:
One, I changed my mindset. When AI was first introduced, I had a very closed mindset about what it could do. I thought it was really just a tool for marketing, sales, and generating lackluster content. Through conversations with other owners and leaders, my mindset quickly exploded. From a client sharing how she revamped her production calendar to a friend sharing her business plan development work to a nutritionist recalling how quickly she can now craft meal plans for her clients, I soon realized the possibilities were indeed endless.
Two, I aligned my use of AI, and Claude specifically, to my way of thinking. I am an external processor. My best ideas and solutions come from call and response. I need to put my ramblings out into the world and gain feedback from others to gain clarity. If things stay in my head it gets messy real quick. Once I started using Claude in the way that I work best, everything shifted. I would start a conversation with, “I’ve got this opportunity at work… and end with, what questions do you have that would help me get clear on the right solution.” BOOM. Supercharged problem-solving powers activated.
Three, it’s all about the prompt. When I first started using chatbots, I would ask very basic, one-sentence questions and get very basic answers back. Now, I write novels as prompts, and the answers/responses I get back are insightful and sometimes unexpected.
It is natural to be weary of AI. It’s new and, let’s be honest, a little creepy (akin to how well-targeted social ads have gotten), but for any owner or leader, it will give you superpowers. Imagine having a business strategist, executive coach, content marketing specialist, data analyst, and administrative assistant at your beck and call 24/7 for under $300 a year.
Yesterday, I gave a quick presentation on my favorite AI tools to my roundtable. After the presentation, a few commented that I should start a side hustle teaching leaders about leveraging AI. While amusing, I love my job and who’s got time for that, but it got me thinking. Is there anyone out there who would want to join me for a 90-minute AI for Leaders session covering some of my favorite tools and use cases? If there’s interest, I’d happily set up a Zoom meeting.