#112 - AI for Creatives: Where to Use It and Where to Stop

Transcript

Welcome To Pattern Shift

Saskia 0:00

Hey, and welcome to Pattern Shift. I'm Saskia a creative life and business coach for fiber loving makers, teachers, designers, shop owners, and all around creatives. I help you way find your next step, organize your business to fit your life, and launch ideas with joyful action. Together we'll untangle the tricky bits like branding, marketing, and sales, and build something sustainable, soulful, and truly. You.

AI As Organising Tool

AI Paralysis And Personal Voice

A Real AI Workflow In Practice

Imperfection, Trust, And Taste

Branding Work AI Cannot Do

Curiosity, Creativity, Care Framework

Three Questions To Reflect On

Speaker 0:30

Today we are talking about artificial intelligence. I know you're sick of it, but, um, I'd love to share, my thoughts and with my thoughts. Also a little bit about, the. Ideas that my Business Circle people had around ai. So every month I run a Business Circle, which is basically a group coaching session, with people from the creative.§ Industry. these are creative business owners, and we talk about different topics. And today we talked about ai. we landed on a topic and it took over the whole session and it turned into this really interesting, Discussion about what AI means to us, how it helps us, what we fear, and I'd love to share some of that with you because I'm just really curious about it. And so I hope you will share your own thoughts and opinions about this. wherever you are listening to the podcast, or just send me an email info@ja-wol also Pattern shift FM will lead you to all the ways to get in touch with me. AI as a tool for organizing, not creating. That's how I want to talk about this. definitely this is my perspective and I will weave in some other thoughts as we go. We're all entitled to our own opinions, and that is actually the underlying topic here is whatever you do, as long as you do it consciously and informed, you know that it fits your. Brands and your business values and your goals, your good, and that's kind of how I look at everything I do with businesses is who are you as a person? what fits, what doesn't fit? Who are you as a business owner? Who are you talking to in your business? Who's your clientele? And what? Conscious decisions do you make around this. And AI is a topic that, can really sneak in and take over without you giving it too much thought. And that's why we're doing this episode today so that you can pause and reflect and I'll give you some questions at the end to really do some work around it. So that you are, a little bit more prepared perhaps, and I hope that's helpful for you. Alright, so in the Business Circle session, my group coaching, I do monthly. there were four people including myself this week and. We all had such a different relationship with ai. a whole range from avoiding it completely because of very conscious thoughts about it in terms of, a critical view of it in terms of how it can change society and, all that kind of thing. to someone who uses it daily, but in a very distinct way. so I wanna talk about something that I. Struggle with as a small business owner, what I've started to call AI paralysis. It's something that is very real for me, especially now that I am updating my website with my, new coaching offers. What happens is that I. Want to do something, and I know that AI can help me do it faster, but I don't want to lose my own voice. I actually also love creative writing, but AI has really changed that for me because. If I don't use ai, it will take a long time. One of the things I struggle with is I think everything's important. Even in my high school report cards, there was always a note of she needs to, distinguished between the actual topics and everything else. and that has been. Difficult for me always. And before ai, when I made my website, I noticed it. I, I noticed that I do, I can write in a very, I think, engaging way. but there's a lot of it. It. And so I solved that by hiring a copywriter. I gave her my text and she narrowed it down to the core things in a way that still kept my voice and still was mine because. Copywriting is also a craft, a skill, something that you can learn and something that you can become good at. Now you think AI can do that for you because it can really take on your voice Well, yes. And no, first of all it can, but you'd have to be good at giving AI the, the right prompts and you have to know how to get there. so that's one. You have to know something about it to make it do the work for you that. Could really still sound like you. And even if you do, for me, I'm very sensitive about those things, especially when it comes to images and text. I just start noticing patterns and I figure out this is ai, this is not, this is ai, this is not, and I have an opinion about it. and the opinion, is not always fair because. I know that small businesses really don't have much time or budget, and so it makes a lot of sense that they use a tool like ai, in a creative way. But when it comes, when it clashes with our creativity, that's when it comes, becomes a little bit more complicated. if you're not a creative, if you're about numbers and about organizing and that kind of thing, it's a little bit of a different discussion perhaps. but as creative. People as creative business owners, it becomes a little bit more complicated, so. This AI paralysis for me means that I want to get my own voice across. I want to do the writing. I want it not to be completely organized. It, there is a little bit of a bad sense of humor in that because that's who I am. There's a little bit of a. A sharp edge to it, because that's who I am. Sometimes I'm a little bit of the tough love kind of type. And that's important that, that comes across in, in the way that I communicate to my, clients and potential clients because they are choosing to work with me and they're not choosing to work with an AI model. So what happens is I freeze. I want to start writing, but knowing that it'll take a lot of time and it could be a lot faster, I freeze. And so I'm trying to deal with that Now. I'm trying to figure out ways to, to kind of hack that. And especially with my A DHD brain, it's, it seems like it's extra complicated and I don't really know how to explain that. Yes. Um, I might in the future. So I need to realize for myself that the end result will be much better if I do it myself and, and I will pay the price of time to get to a better result. Sometimes you pay the price, of. Money to get to a better result. I just had a brand shoot with a photographer rather than doing some selfies and, and having AI change that for me. I actually, did a small workshop, where this expert showed us how to use a picture of ourself in different settings with ai. I wasn't convinced. So I just paid, serious money to a photographer who is going to photograph me as I am. and then she will take like the better I will choose, the better versions. And she, helped me to look my best self. So I guess. That is a core thing here. How can you show up as your best self, like self? and for me, that means that AI is great to help me organize and filter and sort through what I have already created myself. So I'm taking away the. The creation, the creativity from the organizing, sorting and filtering. That's what I use AI for. It makes a huge difference in, working in my business. And the best example is what's happening right now. Three hours ago I had the Business Circle session. It was an hour and a half. I recorded it, I had it transcribed by ai. And then what I do is I share notes from that session on the pattern shift Studio, that's our platform where we come together and work together, when we're not in a Zoom call. I shared the transcriptions there, but I, it took me like 20 minutes to go through it and correct mistakes. So we have two people in this group who have a very similar name, and the AI just turned it into one person. It also misquoted a lot, and had I not made my own. notes on paper. And had I not immediately started to work on this, I would have not remembered who said what, and I would've made mistakes and, This is a great example of how you still have to use your own brain, even if you use it for these kind of practical things, not really creating. I translated it into English, that was just a click of a button. and then I decided I wanted to do a podcast episode about it. So I go into, Claude and. I give Claude the transcriptions of our meeting and I say, I wanna do a podcast about this give me a few talking points. not a full script. And so that's what I'm using now. just a reminder of the things that came up and, Getting it in a sort of a storyline. I'm already messing it up'cause this is just me talking about it and just glancing at the notes every now and then. So creating the podcast, the organizing around it has come from an actual conversation and I'm turning it into an actual, uh, podcast situation. Um. And that's why I say, um, a lot. Okay, so once I finish this recording, I will use DS script, which is my editing tool. DS script also has ai. It, helps to take out the thousands of ums I use because that's the reality of me. Talking and not reading from a script is that I say a lot of, um, and I have a lot of different words that I use over and over again, and I never cut all of it out, but I cut some of it out because it just, it flows a little bit better. So when we come back to using it for, filtering, sorting, summarizing, structuring generation options, and, not using it for creativity, I wanna say that, it doesn't know. Who you are, what you've lived, what you've been to, your experiences from the past. your specific, very specific point of view. You can teach it a lot. You can feed it a lot, especially if you do the work around it, if you know more about it. but that's a choice. And so if you don't, if you're just. skimming the top layer, yeah, it doesn't really know who you are. And so the, the soul of your creation, the Probably has a lot to do with the imperfections that you have with the ums. You're saying, with the typos you make in your newsletter, like a typo right now is a sign to me that someone is actually, written the text in the, in the newsletter, of course there will be Smarty Pants who will put in a typo just to. Fuck with you, but let's not go there. Um, so yeah, for me, I feel like there's going to be a counter movement where, you don't want the, the shiny images. You don't want that kind of veneer that's, on top of, your emails or your posts on social media. People will start splitting up into, that's for me, that's not for me, and will make choices about it. It's already happening to me. I've had a few newsletters that were just full of AI generated images, and it just doesn't, it doesn't speak to me. And so, I'd rather have one. Picture or then seven AI generated images that are very clearly just, yeah, I dunno, it's not for me. Uh, but also that's not really the point. You can make your own decision. The thing with decisions is that you have to, think about it. You have to really form an opinion about. How you relate to it. when people just, skim the top of it, what happens is that, it's really clear that it's ai. the same type of illustrations pop up everywhere. people were talking in the, in the Business Circle about this event where people actually didn't come because the promotional image was AI and people reacted against it. and that's interesting. Of course, this is in the creative industry, so it's probably a little bit more highlighted in this industry than somewhere else, but it's really interesting to think about if you don't think about. Using AI too much. other people might, are they your people? Who are you trying to reach? And so moving into what this whole thing actually means for your business is the branding. How does your branding land the branding landing? What happened was in the Business Circle is that one of the members said, after I said, one of my fears. Before was that people might start asking AI questions about branding and marketing and that my work, wouldn't be so important anymore. And then one of them in the, in the group said, yeah, I might actually ask AI about branding.'cause I made a joke, like, if you dunno what branding is, you can ask ai. She's like, yeah, I might do that. And then she corrected herself and said, no, wait, I'll probably just go to the course and, read it again and do the exercises again. Because doing the work actually ingrains it in, in your knowing for, I dunno what I'm saying, but yeah. it is like writing by hand. Helps you to remember things more. That's why I love the Bullah Journal, quick Bullah Journal, uh, promo here. Um, so yeah, that was interesting to hear. branding is so important. So it's, there's work that you do. With yourself as a person, your, what are your values? what's important to you? How do you wanna live? How do you wanna move through the world? What kind of person do you wanna be? And how does that translate to your business? So further on, how does that translate to how you are communicating with your clients or prospective clients? what's the tone of voice? What's your imagery? Knowing who your client is specifically means that you need to know how to communicate to them. And that takes work. That takes doing like a step-by-step process where you look at yourself and then look at your clients and then figure this out. Um. Your verbal identity, the words you use, the tone, the things that you say, and you don't say come from knowing who you are and what you stand for. AI can help you organize that. Once you've found it, it cannot find it for you. So it's still the connection to the human. You as a human, but also your client is something that you really need to do yourself. PSI can help you with that. and the same is for your visual identity that, some promotional images feel wrong, and that is because it hasn't been. Thought through in the same way as one of the members of the Business Circle said, I use Canva to make images, but I do it ex on purpose, really over the top, like, frogs in space. very, very I am. A different example because. You know, privacy. But yeah, do it over the top specifically so that it's clear that it's ai or even mention it. Like, I love that people say, this is mentioned. I love that people say this is made by ai, or not made by ai. This podcast was sorted, filtered, summarized, structured by AI and created by me. I think that's something that's important to be clear and, transparent about it. And this connects to my personal values. So my three, Biggest core values that I use in business and life is Curiosity, creativity, and Care. So, let's use them to filter and, as an example of how you can do this work yourself. So curiosity, if I, If I put that next to ai, it means to me know enough to make a conscious choice. So even if you don't particularly are interested in ai, I think it's important to know. Some about it to be informed so that you can make an informed choice so that you can make a conscious choice. creativity. Where does AI stop and where do you begin thinking about This has really helped me to make a distinction, and how I can work smarter instead of harder. But also be the creative person that I am and show up as that person, to my clients and potential clients. And then care, goes right into that, just to be honest about it and transparent and, so that they know what they're getting. Because at some point we don't really know the difference anymore. that's what I think is going to happen, that you don't really know, where the information has come from. It's going faster and faster. And, um, I used this as an example in our talk before is when I had my yarn shop, there was, there were a lot of people that, um. Were uncomfortable using, credit cards or, even, there were a bunch of people uncomfortable using bank cards to pin to use, cards for payment. They just wanted to do everything in cash because they felt like that was safer. Yeah, I thought that they would have a hard time when, time speeds up and, the everything that's digital is speeding up and at some point they would probably not be able to keep up with it. AI is so much faster that just having general, information about it and general, knowledge about it is something that we. I believe we all should have so that we can make a conscious choice. So in terms of way finding and who you are, the question is how do you distinguish yourself from the rest? very much a branding question as well. You can only. Know that and answer that if you know who you are. And that is work, that is human work. and that's work that I do with clients. I do that human work way finding. Coaching, where we figure out who you are and what's happening for you, where you're stuck, where you wanna go, all of that. And then we do also do work around your business and your branding and connect it all together. depending on where you are, you might wanna do way finding one-on-one coaching or do my intensive, WOL wayfinding organizing and launching. Intensive, which is a six part, coaching course hybrid where we use the course that I made, to get you through those steps, in six, one-on-one sessions where I take you by the hand and I help you do all that work. That's how my work comes in here and that's why I don't worry about AI taking over my work. Of course, you can ask questions about branding and marketing, to ai. Of course, you can even get coached by ai, but. Their sense of humor is not as good as mine is. And, I will sometimes ask you uncomfortable questions. I will not, always say yes to everything, depending on what we're doing. So it's going to be, an interesting future and. I invite you to think about this, and I have three questions for you write down the following things. What is my biggest question about AI right now? And then proceed to answer the question. What is my biggest fear and how do I actually want to use it or not? use your bullet of journal or another piece of paper and a pen, to do that work. And take some time to really connect with yourself. Don't get the answers from outside. Get them from inside. I hope this was helpful. Please let me know, in the comments or email me. if you wanna know more about this kind of stuff, find me on pattern shift FM and reach out. Next I will do the show notes. I will not write them myself. I have done this talking and I will let AI organize it and put it in show notes. I feel like show notes are not like a blog. A blog should be written by me. And show notes is more of a transcription type thing. I think that's okay to let that be organized by ai. Alright, bye.