Welcome back to The COO Solution Podcast! In this episode, Derek sits down with AI strategist and educator Marnie Wills for a practical and eye-opening conversation about how founders can utilize AI not just for content or marketing, but as an operational partner that functions like a second brain or a “silent COO.”
Marnie explains how AI can support decision-making, streamline communication, accelerate execution, and enhance every aspect of your operations. She also shares how leaders can shift into an AI-first mindset, how to involve their team, and why the future of business belongs to those who learn to collaborate with AI, rather than compete with it.
If you’ve been curious about how to apply AI beyond simple prompts, this episode will change everything about the way you work.
In This Episode:
[01:04] Why AI, and Why Now: How Marnie’s entrepreneurial journey and early adoption of AI tools changed her confidence, capacity, and efficiency as a business owner.
[02:54] The “Second Brain” Approach: Why your AI model must be continuously updated and trained with your meetings, notes, research, brand identity, and operational context.
[06:43] Your Silent COO: How tools like Claude, Perplexity, and Recall AI can support your strategy, execution, workflows, and team collaboration—not just marketing.
[09:40] The Power of Recall AI Using AI to capture what you read, watch, research, and learn—so you never lose track of insights again.
[11:33] Claude vs. ChatGPT How Claude’s deeper reasoning, memory, and questioning create better thought partnership—and why Marnie uses it for strategic work.
[14:09] Where Execution Meets Strategy: Why the magic happens when AI asks you questions, not the other way around.
[17:41] The Mindset Shift Leaders Must Make: How curiosity, behavior change, and new habits shape you into an “AI-first” thinker.
[20:26] Becoming an AI-First Leader: The four-step identity shift that helps you stop resisting AI and start leveraging it meaningfully.
[24:43] Privacy & Security What founders need to understand about data training, toggling off training settings, and when to use temporary chats.
[28:01] Why Some Businesses Need Their Own AI Platform: How white-labeled AI ecosystems keep your data safe and create the future foundation for AI agents.
[30:20] How to Bring AI Into Your Team Culture: Real examples of how Marnie built AI tools for her team, gamified adoption, and built SOP creation into their weekly workflow.
[39:57] The Future of AI: Agents & Monetizable Tools How businesses can create AI tools based on their IP—for lead generation, customer experience, or paid offerings.
[43:29] The Emotional Side of AI Adoption: Why even experts feel behind and why curiosity, consistency, and intention are the keys to staying ahead.
Why This Matters
AI is no longer a trend. It’s a foundational shift in how every business operates. When used as a strategic partner, AI can help founders make more informed decisions, streamline operations, empower teams, and eliminate the bottlenecks that slow growth.
This episode shows you how to move beyond “prompting” and start using AI like a true operational asset.
Action Steps for Listeners:
- Add a sticky note to your laptop that says: “Can AI help me do this faster?”
- Select one AI tool (Claude, Perplexity, or Recall) and integrate it into your daily workflow.
- Begin training a “second brain” by feeding your AI meeting notes, ideas, goals, and brand guidelines.
- Discuss with your team: Where could AI help remove friction or accelerate your workflow?
- Explore how your business could eventually build its own AI tool using your IP.
Resources & Links:
Transcript:
Hey, everybody, it’s Derek Fredrickson here from the COO Solution podcast and welcome back to another episode. We are joined with a fantastic guest, Marnie Wills, who will be talking with us today about all things to do with AI.
00:51
Derek Fredrickson
That’s right, artificial intelligence, which is a very popular and well-known topic in every aspect of entrepreneurial business growth. So we’re excited to have Marnie join the show today. Welcome, Marnie. Great to have you.
01:04
Marnie Wills
Hi, Derek. Thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited to crack on with AI Chat.
01:11
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, me as well. I know this is gonna be a very popular subject with our audience because in the work that we do with our clients, it’s always something that’s on the conversation board in terms of talking about AI and how to use it and how best to strategize and where does it step in and everything else. So we’re going to get into all of that and some great questions and information to share with our audience. But I always like to start first, you know, here on the podcast, we always like to bring in guests that have a subject matter expertise kind of outside the scope of what our core focus is. And obviously, AI is a great topic that we’re going to dive into. But I always like to ask first for you, Marnie, as an example, why AI?
01:48
Derek Fredrickson
I mean, I’m going to say why AI? Why now? And of course, because it’s such an important element with what’s happening today, but also, to an extent, share with our audience why AI is such an important topic for you, specifically, like, how did you get started with all of this? And then we’ll dive into some great conversation.
02:03
Marnie Wills
Yeah. So I guess the why AI pierce for me comes down to being an entrepreneur for the last 11 years, I’ve had to keep up with trends. Now that we know AI is not a trend, but I’ve had to keep up with how to do business. You know, whether it’s a brick and mortar business, whether it’s an online business, whether it’s an SME, I’ve always had to keep up to date. And I guess the why AI part links very much to that kind of solopreneur journey that I was on where I was outsourcing everything from somebody to write my copy to do my website to, you know, even do my email marketing campaigns. And then all of a sudden, you know, I stumbled on a tool before ChatGPT, let me add something called Jasper AI which was a copywriting tool.
02:54
Marnie Wills
It changed the way I did business. But I think most importantly it changed my confidence as a business owner in just what I could actually deliver and achieve. That journey has just, you know, snowballed massively since ChatGPT and then where we are in 2025 and how ridiculously smart generative AI tools are, how many LLMs there are for us to use. So I guess the why AI bit is I stumbled on maybe super confident as a business owner and I’ve been able to progress many businesses since then. And the why now I guess, is it’s not a trend as I just started about is definitely a fundamental shift in the way that we access information, the way we make decisions, the way we communicate to each other.
03:51
Marnie Wills
And I do a lot of thought leadership workshops where we look at how businesses changed, what businesses no longer exist and what were created and how job and job descriptions have changedsince the Internet era and then the smartphones and the social media era. And then we look at AI and how that’s gonna change different businesses and more importantly us as humans because we’re the consumers at the end of the day. So how are we going to be accessing information, making decisions, communicating with each other and that’s the why now. Like we really don’t want to get left behind. We’ve been privileged to be given this crazy piece of technology that is literally changing the world but with no education on how to do this. (Derek – Yeah) So yeah, and coming from an education background that is kind of my thing.
04:42
Marnie Wills
I love to help people, love to help understand which links into the why me again, entrepreneurial journey, very multi-passionate, started and stopped and closed and sold a few businesses along the way. You know, nothing big, but I think I’ve yeah since uni life, loved all things business. So I guess I’ve been through the trenches from a solopreneur entrepreneur kind of route. And again, love all things strategy for business and like just looking ahead about what the future holds for a business, now they can stay competitive and serve their clients.
05:23
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, that’s wonderful. I love that because we get so many questions from our clients who say they want to use more AI in their business, but they don’t know how. They don’t know what they should be using it for. They don’t know best practices, they don’t know the right strategy. Some of them are concerned about privacy and everything else. So we’re going to dive into some of that today. But I’d like to start first with a question because one of the things when we spoke initially is that you have this idea that you can treat AI as your silent COO.
05:53
Derek Fredrickson
And I love this because for business owners, traditionally and maybe even currently, they’re looking at AI, whether it’s chatGPT or Gemini or whatever the tools that are out there as a way to like, well, I’m going to use this as a strategy to help with my marketing, right. With you know, email marketing or copywriting or social media or content or anything else. But how can we use AI to help from an operational perspective to kind of be that, you know, partner, if you will, that helps us move the needle not just in marketing but also in operations. Because operations, there’s a lot that needs to be done to, you know, run the business and produce the workflows and collaborate and communicate. So talk a little bit about how you see AI as your kind of silent COO in a business.
06:38
Marnie Wills
Yeah, I think there’s several parts to this. I’m going to break it down really simply.
06:43
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
06:43
Marnie Wills
I use many AI models from Claude to ChatGPT. I use a little bit of Grock and Gemini. Gemini. And I use all of them in different ways. But my probably go-to of which I use as my second brain is Claude. So I’ll do the example for Claude.
07:04
Derek Fredrickson
Perfect.
07:05
Marnie Wills
Second brain is really important. If we want a second brain, our brain has to be involved with everything, right? So we have to almost imagine that we have. I’ve got my little ClaudeAI connect to me here and it’s with me all day, every day from having the information from the meetings, being present at the meetings with an AI note taker that transcribes going to Claude from my one to one meetings with staff or clients in particular, from just me having my own brainstorming session with myself on a Monday morning, right to the quarterly goals to doing some deep research on competitive analysis or to I guess knowing my branding, you know, my brand identity, knowing the sales and marketing journey. It needs and to be able to do that then becomes the knowledge base. And that knowledge base needs to be updated constantly.
08:11
Marnie Wills
But then the extra piece that’s missing is the context. So the custom instructions. So my COO is an AI Assistant, which is a project which constantly gets updated with all that information, like I said about knowledge base is customized to be an expert in the field in my industry. It is constantly, I constantly upgrade updates my custom instructions according to how my industry has changed and how and I do that through deep research as well as following other thought leaders in AI as well being my industry. But if your industry is finance, it would be the same. It would be updating the custom instructions to be the expert in the certain finance area that you’re in. So definitely three parts to I think is constantly knowing that you need to be updating your second brain.
09:10
Marnie Wills
And there’s a tool I want to mention in a second which helps do that. And then it’s about feeding that knowledge base to your chosen AI, your project assistant that you’ve created and then constantly updating those custom instructions. I probably only update the custom instructions maybe once a quarter. There’s a really tool that I use called Recall AI and it’s on my phone and my laptop. And Recall basically keeps up to date with everything that I viewed on my phone or my laptop.
09:40
Derek Fredrickson
Wow.
09:40
Marnie Wills
So you can LinkedIn articles, you know, websites I’ve visited, meetings I’ve been to. And I can go into Recall and I can say at any time, you know, something that I was recently just writing in my newsletter about is about GEO, so Generative Engine Optimization. And I’ve been doing a lot of learning about that and I’m upskilling myself and I remember reading something about adding thought leadership and brand authority to your content. So adding quotes from key people within the business and I was like, I can’t remember where I actually learned that.
10:18
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
10:19
Marnie Wills
Jumped onto Recall. Where did I, you know, when did I hear this information? Something about that. And then two different times I’d seen it or heard or whatever came up. So.
10:29
Derek Fredrickson
Wow.
10:29
Marnie Wills
Yeah, that’s kind of how I think about using AI assistants or projects, whichever one you want to call them as, you know, my second brain in different parts of my business.
10:41
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, I love that. It’s, is that second brain, it’s that kind of strategic thought partner that helps you do what you’re doing. And I think especially for our audience, you know, there’s such a view into. I use a tool, let’s just say, for example, ChatGPT, as a way to like execute or implement and get something done. But there’s that strategic kind of thought partnership that’s a really key component to kind of develop the idea, to strategize, to brainstorm, to do the research as opposed to, you know, execute this email or do this social. It doesn’t need to be so transactional. It could be kind of bigger picture thinking. And that thought partnership is, as you know, is really integral. So I want to, for our audience, just recap. So there’s ChatGPT, Gemini, and then Recall is the one on the phone and then Claude.
11:28
Derek Fredrickson
So our audience may not know that much about Claude. Can you just describe it briefly in terms of like, how you use it and what it is?
11:33
Marnie Wills
Yeah. So ClaudeAI is from Anthropic, which is linked to Amazon, Jeff Bezos, I believe.
11:41
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
11:42
Marnie Wills
And it is. It used to be very well known for like copywriting. So it’s got a really good vibe around writing. It’s very good at coding now. It’s one of the leaders. And they just released their new Model 4 Sonnet 4, I think it’s called. And now the reason I use it more is because it’s memory. So when I’m in the projects, it will. I can easily have a conversation and use that conversation to add to the memory base.
12:13
Derek Fredrickson
I see. Okay.
12:14
Marnie Wills
Always remember, the other reason I like using it is because I feel like ChatGPT is very agreeing. It’s very “wants to please you” you know. It likes to be very creative. But sometimes for me, it doesn’t think outside-the-box creative. It doesn’t go into enough depth unless you really go back and forth with it. Whereas Claude, I feel like you just have to say something, but I know something nuanced or a little bit more thinking outside-the-box, you know, And I feel like it can really go deeper. And the great thing I like about Claude as well is he’s really good at asking really good questions. And we don’t know what we don’t know, or we know it, but we don’t realize we know it.
12:57
Marnie Wills
And that is our domain, that’s our knowledge, our experience and perspective, which we want the AI to know and we want the AI to be able to collaborate with us and contribute to. And yeah, I think I also use Claude because the voice mode on Claude is amazing. So you talk to Claude and then you press the button and then it will listen to everything and then reply. Whereas on ChatGPT and especially on Gemini, you start to talk to the AI and all of a sudden it interrupts you. You’re like, hang on, finished.
13:30
Derek Fredrickson
It’s like, let me finish, let me talk. I’m the control here.
13:33
Marnie Wills
My turn.
13:34
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, I mean that’s interesting. I, again, I’m not the subject matter expert. I use it and I’m. This is, this is just as much for me as it is for our audience. But what I’ve realized and what I’ve learned and just it’s kind of being cemented by what you’re sharing is that again, it’s not so much of the execution like ask it to do something based on a command, it’s when you ask it a question and the response are questions that are coming back to you to then answer. There’s that exchange, there’s that two sided conversation, if you will. Having that be your kind of silent thought partner. That’s where it really starts to go to the next level.
14:09
Derek Fredrickson
It starts to get under the surface of what you’re really trying to accomplish and do it in a more strategic, a more aligned, a more impactful way as opposed to here’s a task, go and do it, ask me the questions about the task to get the knowledge, to get the understanding, to get the awareness. And then from that it makes the execution that much more effective and more efficient as opposed to trying to do it from the ground up.
14:30
Marnie Wills
Yeah. And the next level that people need to be aware of is that actually Anthropic created something called MCPs and I’m probably going to get the name wrong. I think it’s Multiple Connector Processes. But basically an example is on ChatGPT you can connect your Gmail now and you can connect a few different things. But on Claude or Anthropic it has an MCP code which you can connect to any API to another model or say Zapier. So what I’ve got it got set up is I’ve got my Gmail account connected to Zapier, which the MCP connection then connects to Claude. And what I can now do is I can go into Claude verbally or write and say I need to put a meeting in with Derek on this day. I need it to have a Riverside link and it can, Zapier can connect to Riverside.
15:29
Marnie Wills
I need it to have questions that I would like to talk about and I also need him to fill out a form that goes on a Google sheet Done. The agent goes off.
15:41
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, yeah.
15:42
Marnie Wills
And that. That is where we’re going. Where? Where? I think like some CRMs. So, for example, HubSpot CRM, they have an AI inside HubSpot, but they also connect to ChatGPT, but they also have an MCP connector as well.
15:56
Derek Fredrickson
Wow.
15:56
Marnie Wills
So. So the idea is we’re moving to agents, right. We’re moving to where you ask an LLM to do a certain series of tasks for you, and they need MCPS to be able to do that. And Claude is leading the way in that at the moment. Wow.
16:13
Derek Fredrickson
Okay, great. I love that example. It’s a simple example, but it’s something that we would be using all the time. And it’s that operational workflow that is kind of like an assistant or an operator. And say, can you create this? Here are the different connections, the different integrations. You’re talking to Gmail, Zapier, ChatGPT, it can connect to Drive, Riverside, whatever that is, and kind of create that for you. That just helps get things done more efficiently and just kind of another step to get things like I’m always talking about, like, how do we get traction and momentum in the business from an operational perspective? And this is just a perfect example to leverage not just the tools, but the integration of these tools.
16:51
Derek Fredrickson
So I want to shift gears for a moment because I know for some of our audience, especially in this topic in general, they might be listening and say, okay, I’ve got to like, you know, Claude and Chatgpt, and I got the integration and MCP and everything else. Talk to me a little bit about. In your experience, when working with leaders and entrepreneurs, like, there are mindset shifts that need to take place in order for them to adopt or embrace AI effectively. That’s not just because somebody told them to do it, but they have to really kind of think about how is it going to benefit my business. But that’s a mindset shift like anything else. In order to do things differently, they have to be different in how they’re doing that.
17:25
Derek Fredrickson
And so tell me a little bit about your experience about business owners, entrepreneurs, thought leaders that are maybe, you know, they’ve been holding themselves back because they know they want to embrace and use AI, but they’ve got these blocks or these shifts of, like, what to do or how to do it or. Talk to us a little bit about that, if you could.
17:41
Marnie Wills
Yeah, I’ll actually talk about my journey because. Okay, actually, the uni student who had a BlackBerry and I was sitting on my sofa, you know, emailing away and my granddad was sitting on the opposite sofa with an iPhone and an iPad, having the time of his life. And I just thought that the BlackBerry was the bee’s knees and we would always use it. And like, I didn’t never had that forward thinking. I wasn’t curious enough. And I think it was because I don’t like change. I know my personality trait mine, I don’t like change. It sounds really lazy, but it’s almost like I don’t like effort or to something takes me a long time. Like I’m a really efficient brain, so I really struggle when I’m like, oh gosh, that’s going to take me a really long time, like even changing iPhones, right.
18:31
Marnie Wills
I mean it’s so easy. All you do is everything’s now in your cloud and you just press a button over like. But in my head, you know, that feels like it’s going to take effort. Oh, and I’ve got to get used to that. And you know, so the first thing I say to a lot of people is be curious to see how quick and easy it is to create an AI-first mindset, you know, and actually I think the first thing when you’re trying to create a new behavior is you set an intention. So when I first set intention, it is literally when I work with leaders, I say I want you to put a sticky note on your laptop and a screensaver on your phone that says, “Can AI collaborate with me to do this faster, just faster thing.” Right?
19:23
Marnie Wills
Because that’s normally the quick gains we’re asking for us. So that’s like setting an intention of having that like AI first kind of can it be. And then it’s about the behavior, right? So the behavior is then instead of going to Google, I want you to go to your AI model, ChatGPT or even better, download Perplexity AI and skip straight over Google and go straight to Perplexity. That behavior change is going to form a new habit. And that habit is that when you realize that you need to get access information or you want to create something, that habit is going to be, gosh, I know just the two, right? Yeah, you’ve got two. You’re like, oh, I know the two. So then that becomes, you know, your habit of like, oh, which tool will I choose? Right?
20:14
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
20:15
Marnie Wills
Now that you have already set the intentions, you’re doing the behaviors and now you’ve got the habit. The next thing is the identity. The identity now is you’re an AIfirst leader.
20:26
Derek Fredrickson
I love that.
20:27
Marnie Wills
Transforming a business.
20:29
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
20:29
Marnie Wills
With an AI-first mindset. And yeah, any transformation in a business, operations or not, must start with the leaders. And unless they know what AI is capable of, it doesn’t mean they have to do it. They just need to know how capable it that it is. That’s the only way. There’s going to be a transformation of systems, workflows and then creating customization tools. Right. Like that’s the only way it’s going to be transitioned. As if the leaders know, you know, the opportunities that are out there for the business thanks to AI.
21:03
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, I love that. The good thing is I’m doing that to an extent. I do have perplexity. I’m kind of developing the habit of using that more. I love it because it is for me. It is, I don’t want to say a replacement for Google, but I’m leveraging it more. And it was again, it was more of a adoption of that into my workflow. So I have it on my phone, I have it as that default browser that I go to when I’m going to do some search or research or anything else. And I loved how simple you made it because like anything, it’s really based about shifting their perspective and setting an intention. Like what’s the objective? As opposed to just diving in and starting to use it and not really clear on the strategy or the outcome.
21:42
Derek Fredrickson
It’s like get clear on what the outcome, what you want the outcome to be and develop the kind of mindset or the pattern, the behavior in order for that to be in place. I think especially with technology, this is my experience, is that, you know, whether it’s AI or whether it’s, you know, using a new tool like a project management tool, or when people were like, oh, I need to get really familiar with how to use like Facebook and Instagram when they came out, or whatever it is. It’s not so much the technology, it’s the mindset. And so when you focus on the mindset first with some of those hacks, if you will, or best practices, it’s not the tool like the tool can be figured out.
22:17
Derek Fredrickson
It’s just like any tool that we’ve had to adapt to, whether it’s from BlackBerry to iPhone or using a computer or leveraging Google or whatever. So it’s another evolution. But don’t let the tool or the technology get in the way. Become really clear in terms of shifting your mindset based on what you’ve identified and just establish that as a habit. I love that. It’s just very practical and very real.
22:38
Marnie Wills
Yeah. And this might be a bit controversial and I don’t know if I’m right or wrong but I’m just going to put it out there. I hate with a passion when AI gets mixed up in technology chat or automations chat. Chat automations don’t automatically have AI, especially generative AI. It can do, but it doesn’t automatically happen. And is a generative AI tool techy for the person using it. All you do is talk to it. So and then that’s the biggest myth that I have to bust a lot. But it’s almost like well I’m not techie for this and I’m thinking well are you techy enough to use your microwave? Like are you techie enough tv? Like you know, and all of a sudden you went from one app to a thousand apps on and what you’re not techy?
23:24
Marnie Wills
Like I just, yeah, it’s really, yeah, it’s a bit controversial but it kind of gets me a bit worked up because I just think you’re getting in your own way, you’re self sabotaging yourself for some reason of fear and I think fear comes out of doubt and indecision. You’re just, you’re indecisive about whether you think this is a trend or not. But you know, I’m like you, it’s not a trend. It is a fundamental change in our operating systems as humans and human run businesses and humans are the consumers of business. So yeah. No indecisiveness needed.
24:04
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah. So how so I have a question. So you mentioned like the fear, maybe the block. I mean how do you think some of that for some individuals, entrepreneurs, business owners, I mean really just the general public. Do you think there’s an element of that? Because it’s such, still an unknown in the sense of like you know, in terms of security and privacy and you know, if I’m putting all this information in like where is it going? I’ve heard that from some of our clients and so I’m curious what your perspective is because I know that’s what’s people, you know, what people are sharing. But is it valid? Like what’s your take on that? Because there is a, a thought about it’s maybe still in its beginning stages although it’s not a trend, it’s here to stay.
24:43
Derek Fredrickson
But you know, in terms of just privacy and security and kind of giving it so much information that’s all out there. Like, what’s your thought on that?
24:49
Marnie Wills
Yeah, no, it’s definitely valid. And I think it’s kind of like we’ve been given this technology but with no literacy of how to use it, you know, and it doesn’t come down to AI literacy. And AI literacy is really simply about the what, why and how. And we almost have been given the what, what this is, but not the why and not the how, you know, so you have to fill in those pieces as you kind of go along your AI journey. Right. Security is a big thing and it’s very valid. And just in the last month, I’m working on creating AI platforms for businesses that allow them to access 20, currently 21 AI models and then keep their own data. And that data does not get trained, does not allow the AI models to get trained. And the reason I’m doing that is twofold.
25:44
Marnie Wills
One is say you use ChatGPT, and if you use the normal chat, if you haven’t already go into your settings, go to privacy and security and toggle off the bit that says this data can be used for training. So you don’t want that because then that data is recycled and that, you know, we all have ip, you know, like, whether we think we do or not, we all do. But then kind of on the other side to that, I do have a little bit of a belief that if we don’t train the AI models now, like, what about the future that use it? So my daughter’s almost 8, you know, she uses a few AI tools to make music, to make a website, you know, to research things.
26:33
Marnie Wills
If we’re not kind of adding value to the AI now and training the AI, will it learn along the way? So sometimes I sit in the middle.
26:45
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, I can see that. It makes sense. Yeah, like.
26:48
Marnie Wills
Yeah, yeah.
26:49
Derek Fredrickson
It’s going to learn, so guide it in its learning as opposed to having it be kind of free form, where. That’s where I think the fear is maybe the just the misconception of, like how that’s being done. And so when you get clear on it and kind of give it the structure, I mean, even the little hack again, I mean, most people probably don’t know they’re just going to ChatGPT because it’s all the rage and they’re going in there. But that privacy thing is like one step just to make sure that your information is more secure and your data is being isolated into your own ecosystem as opposed to out there, you know, for everyone and anyone to see. So yeah, I love that.
27:21
Marnie Wills
If you’re on a teams account or an enterprise account on the other AI models. The IP is naturally not you, so it’s naturally not trained. But I do keep my data trained on ChatGPT and if I have anything sensitive, business related or even personal related, I’ll use a temporary chat window which is up on the top inside in which you can use. (Derek: Yeah.) And then I often go in and delete a lot of the memory of ChatGPTjust to you know, old stuff, don’t need it anymore, you know, maybe out there anymore, you know, all my old conversations. Yeah, so they’re the two I need that.
27:59
Derek Fredrickson
Keep it fresh. Yeah.
28:01
Marnie Wills
One of the reasons that I am moving towards. I haven’t completely moved towards it at all but I’m moving towards building an AI platform. I just white labeled something already so I’ve not gone and created it myself. I just white label the platform. That is because we are moving to AI agents like I said and in business data is very valuable. If we need to train agents about our business, about our workflows. But we’re using say ChatGPT even on the teams account. How do we get access to that information, how do we get that memory, how do we get that data?
28:38
Marnie Wills
And I feel like you know, if we are in our own platform of which we can access all of open AI, we can access anthropic, we can access metas and X AI, we’re able to keep those conversations, we can pull up those chats and use that data for training and whenever I’m developing like intellectual property tools so whether that’s, a lead generation tool for an executive coaching company where they ask their, you know, potential clients a whole lot of questions to see their journey, are they a good fit before they talk to somebody? We don’t use ChatGPT and GPTs. We do that on their own platform so they can keep that data because.
29:22
Derek Fredrickson
That’s really interesting. That’s a great idea. I was gonna ask about that. So you mentioned a little bit like with teams as an element but let’s say as a thought leader, entrepreneur, business owner who’s fully embraced AI because as part of the workflow they believe in it, they love it, they leverage it and then let’s say they have a team who’s not so familiar or comfortable in using it but they know the thought leader knows that it’s a way to just provide more leverage and get more kind of clarity and structure and strategy. How do you cascade that in a small business, an organization where you have team members that might be in marketing, that might be in operations, how do you do that?
29:59
Derek Fredrickson
I’m assuming it’s more like the mindset and kind of shifting the habit, but also kind of more practical level. What are some ways that you’ve done that with other organizations that can cascade that? Because most of our clients have teams and they may have team members that are using ChatGPT or not. But how do we kind of cascade that? So it’s a part of a workflow of how we do things around here in order to provide better value to our clients.
30:20
Marnie Wills
I love this question and you’re gonna find it really really exciting because it’s like my favorite thing that I’ve done so far. So I did this for my own. I’ve done this for a few business but I’ll give an example of my own business. So it’s an early years physical education business. I have business partners in different regions. Their main job is to go out and deliver PE lessons but they also have to run the business right and they’ve got little time and you know, they’re very new to business, let’s say. I moved off ChatGpT teams and moved into my own platform like I said. So it’s called Sporting Minis AI and I created a whole lot of AI assistants already in there and they have access, all login, right. So an AI assistant is our email campaign generator.
31:05
Marnie Wills
Another AI assistant is our pipeline follow up workflow. Another assistant, I trained this as an AI system. It’s our sales generator, sales academy training everything about our business. Our business development manager drops in, drop some information about who he’s about to call and then it talks through the process, then he puts his feedback in it and it learns on it and it becomes super easy. And then what I did, and this is I think a very important bit for people is I created a GPT. So a general pre-trained transformer within the platform. But you can train them on ChatGPT as well. But just know that once you create a shareable link, anybody can access it. So that’s just important to know.
31:55
Marnie Wills
But because this GPT is built on our platform and we’ve embedded it’s just in our WhatsApp chat and they just click on it and it’s trained on them, right. So I got them to answer a whole lot of questions about themselves, like a personal branding almost for themselves and then their job description and the business. So now, whenever they’re trying to ask questions about their role within the business or just generally, you know, put an article on LinkedIn or anything like that, they just go to their GPT and they name them, you know, something funky like.
32:27
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
32:27
Marnie Wills
I can’t remember what my business operations manager called Jack. I think he called it like Jumping Jack or Jack, something like. He named it something like super funky. Right. Which is really funny. He just goes, that’s his second brain linked to the police and himself. And because I made it about them and not the business processes, they were really able to see its capabilities and now it’s almost gamified for them.
32:55
Derek Fredrickson
Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I was just thinking that I.
32:57
Marnie Wills
Go, Matthias, you’ve only had 10 chats with your GPT this week, and Jack, you’ve had 20. Like, you know, we know who’s rocking out. Like, it just. (Derek: Yeah) It’s quite fun. So I don’t know if that answered the question, but that’s what I’ve done.
33:09
Derek Fredrickson
No, it does. it’s a great example. I mean, again, I don’t even know that you could do some of those things, it’s like an SOP. It’s like, this is how we do things around here. And when you get that, like with anything, like when you get the team members on board and understand that it’s a win for them and what they’re doing and their role, so they could be more, you know, empowered and more, you know, efficient or effective in what they’re doing. And it’s just simplifying it, but it makes it about them almost kind of like personally or individually in some respect, as opposed to, it has to be done this way because the structure, this is the process, it’s that, but it’s also the human element.
33:45
Derek Fredrickson
And that’s what I love about this conversation, is that leveraging AI, but referencing it more and more with the human element in terms of how you can, I would say, kind of, you give it more context or more clarity or more, you know, information or more learning or whatever that is, as opposed to just kind of that transactional thing. But I love that element of using it more with teams because, you know, it’s, it’s another system, it’s another workflow. It’s another way of how we do, you know, what we do.
34:12
Marnie Wills
I’m sorry to interrupt you. And actually we’ve done is again, we’re all very athlete teacher based, so we’re very competitive. But you know, we’ve almost got this again, this AI first mindset. Someone will pop into the group, you know, I need to enrich this data list. Anybody used an AI tool and it almost becomes a competition to find the best AI tool, you know.
34:33
Derek Fredrickson
Oh, wow.
34:34
Marnie Wills
And you talked about SOP’s. We use two amazing AI tools, Guide and Scribe. And all of a sudden, you know, if, our ops team are doing something new, every time they do anything new within the business, it is. You’re either doing that on Guide or you’re doing that on Scribe, depending on the kind of task. Guide is a bit of a cheaper version and kind of puts it more writing, whereas Scribe, like, is the video part of it. So they’re different things, you know, and almost a challenge every week to have a new SOP created. Like, did we ever think that was gonna be something you want to do?
35:17
Derek Fredrickson
That’s so true. People don’t jump up and down. It’s one of those things. Entrepreneurs love the idea of SOPs, but they don’t like to be involved in the creation of them. They love that they’re there as a way to cascade for their team so they know what to do and how to do it. I can see how AI is just another component of leveraging that. It’s like, it’s the workflow, it’s the mindset shift, it’s part of the workflow, it’s the embracing of it and just realizing that it’s going to help them. I say the team in general, including the business owner, do what they’re doing, just. But doing it at a higher level, which is, you know, again, like you’re saying this is no longer a trend. This is inevitable. This is where we’re going.
35:51
Derek Fredrickson
And so we need to embrace it and adapt to it, but also use it where it matters most to us.
So this has been super helpful, Marnie, before we wrap up, I’m just curious if you have any other idea, strategy, thought about what we’ve shared today and maybe in the context of, we’ve talked today about where we are currently with AI and a little bit about kind of where we’re going. But, in your world and your perspective, where do you see AI taking us? Like, what does the future hold when we work with AI and what can we, you know, start to think about in terms of what it might look like in the years ahead?
39:57
Marnie Wills
Yeah. So I think we know we’re moving into AI agent world, but I think almost before we get there, I think there’s a step for businesses to be able to create their own AI tools that they can monetize to their own intellectual property. I’ve got a couple examples, but one example is I’m working with an interior designer who’s created a whole course. Now we know that courses can now be created with AI, but this is genuinely his stuff. But to help his clients through the course we’ve created his own, his name’s Dr. Craig Thompson, so it’s called Dr. Craig AI and it helps them through that course. Another example is a solicitors firm they spend a lot of time and money on those initial consultation calls, right. Of which sometimes their clients don’t feel a valuable or worth the money. Right.
40:56
Marnie Wills
And then other times the solicitors are resenting it a little bit because yes, there was paid, but it doesn’t work into clients. So we’ve created a tool that allows them to almost ask those same questions but linked to a trained LLM model that is able to go deeper with the client or potential client. You know, the things that the client would normally always be open to be speaking to a solicitor about and then what ends up happening is two things. One is the client feels like they’ve been supported through the journey whether they need a solicitor or not, you know, at no cost because they don’t actually do this as a cost, they just have to sign up through the system.
41:35
Marnie Wills
And then also for the solicitors, they are having a much more enriched conversation and almost like valuable next steps conversation when they actually do get to talk to this client and they almost become a client on the spot and it’s sped up that process so much for the solicitor firm and I think that’s where businesses should start to be thinking is how can we create an AI tool that has our IP that either enhances the customer experience or is part of our lead generation strategy.
42:17
Derek Fredrickson
Wow. Wow. And what business owner is not thinking about either one of those two? I mean those are like the primary, you know, marketing, the client experience, delivering the service. It’s amazing. One last little follow up. I’m just curious, are you optimistic about what the future holds for AI? Are you a bit, kind of not skeptical but you know, are looking at it to see like is there going to be another whole evolution that perhaps we haven’t even been subject to yet? Like is it a little bit of like the unknown? I’m just curious what your thoughts are. In that type of way.
42:48
Marnie Wills
I have a confession. I freak out almost every day that I feel behind. And just this week I’ve been meaning to do it for weeks. I’m creating my first agents, right. But I’m using automations. I’m not using your general Zapier or your make dot com. I’m using, starting to use a platform. There’s quite a few of them. But I’m, I really like Lindy.AI. So I’m going down the rabbit hole of creating agents to automate things. And that scares me, right. Because I’m also like, well, how do I go and add that to my business, you know, offerings? And I just constantly feel behind. I mean, I am massively optimistic and I am super excited.
43:29
Marnie Wills
And one of my favorite things to deliver is like a thought leadership workshop where we look at this particular industry and we look at what the future holds and then we reverse engineer what we do. Right. And that’s like my favorite thing to do. And I learned so much in those because I’m not industry experts in other people’s industries. So I am very optimistic, but nervous on every step of the way because, you know, no one’s taught us anything. We’re just setting an intention again, get better at something because, you know, get 10,000 hours.
44:08
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah. I love that. Yeah. And it’s the same thing. It’s the intention, getting curious, adapting to it, learning it, embracing it. It is change, but it’s embraceable change. Right. It’s not something that no longer, as you said, this is no longer a trend. We have to live not just with it, but live by it and incorporate it. Fascinating stuff. So if somebody’s listening, said, okay, I need to reach out to Marnie to find out more and see how she can help their business and what they’re up to. How can people find you online and where can they go?
44:39
Marnie Wills
So I think the best place to find me is LinkedIn.So it’s just my company’s on LinkedIn as well, so it’s business with AI Strategist. I am on all the other platforms, but I’ll be honest, I repurpose the content thanks to my AI assistants. And if you speak to me in a few weeks time, Lindy will also be posting for me. So catch me in real life on LinkedIn is probably.
45:02
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, I love it. Well, thank you for this real life conversation on a very important topic. I really appreciated it. So thank you again, Marnie. And thank you everybody for watching. We look forward to seeing you on a future episode here at the COO Solution podcast. And yeah, have a great day.