Hey there, my fabulous listener, welcome to episode 263 of the Small Business Made Simple Podcast.

Thanks for lending me your ears today – I know you have lots of choices, so I sincerely appreciate me being one of them!

If you’re enjoying this podcast – I’d love you to take a screen shot and share it on your socials and tag me in it.  How cool would that be!

Don’t forget you can get the show notes for this podcast at www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au/263

Did you have a listen into last week’s episode? I did a podcast episode last week with Jessica Osborn, and she shared her amazing wisdom around how to put up your prices without losing customers.  There was some great gold in our conversations. So make sure you head back there if you didn’t get a chance to listen in already- click here to listen to ep 262 – www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au/262

But before I get started, I wanted to give a shout out to this week’s podcast sponsor Turn Back Time Radio. My friend and great supporter of me, Neil Butler who is Turn Back Time Radio will tell you more now:

Support Turn Back Time Radio here: https://www.turnbacktime.radio/

Today I wanted to share with you 3 AI tools that I am using pretty consistently in my business that are making my life simpler – well my business life actually!

The first is ChatGPT.  Probably no surprise there! It has become a very integral part of my day.  I use it as a sounding board like I would use you if you were in the room with me and find I use it more than google, if I’m honest.  I ask it questions like “what websites would you recommend to find information on UX design” and it spits out some websites. BTW UX design is about designing websites with your user in mind. And If they aren’t what I am looking for, I write a better quality question.  Whereas if I went to google and just googled “UX design for websites” it might give me some good websites to look at but probably they are the ones with good SEO rather than the information I am after.  Actually probably trying to sell me UX design rather than telling me what UX design looks like.

In the past few days, I’ve asked ChatGPT to help me formulate some questions for some podcast interviews are International Rural Women’s Day, I’ve asked it to help restructure some headings in my new book Small Town Big Impact, I’ve played with the Canva Plugin available on the paid version of ChatGPT and asked it to find me some reference for some quotes – so I know who said they quotes.  So, yes, I use it a lot.

If you have never used ChatGPT, then I’ll put the link in the shownotes for you to go and open an account.  There’s lots of copycat urls so make sure you use the one in my show notes – https://chat.openai.com

I just asked ChatGPT to recommend some websites or some guides to how to use itself if you were a beginner and it gave me a big list of things to do and read.  So perhaps that’s your first job when you sign up – ask it that question and do some research! But honestly, following people like Tracy Sheen from the Digital Guide (she’s writing a book called AI and U – which will be out in the new year) or head to YouTube and watch some videos.  Or use the #chatgpt on Instagram or LinkedIn and get some tips from there.

Ok, so now I’ve said how much I love it.  Let’s chat about some limitations of ChatGPT – there’s lots but here’s a few that play on my mind.

Firstly, it’s last data point was September 2021.  So any information on the internet after that date, ChatGPT cannot give you.  So, our Big Small Business Survey 2022 results would not come up as data statistics – it’s basically still in Covid lock down!

Secondly, it is only as good the question you ask it.  If you don’t like the answers it gives you first time around, get more specific.  There’s two instructions I always give it – 1 – pretend you are a (insert expertise – eg/ an expert marketer, an expert in web design, a world renowned e-commerce expert, you get the picture) and 2 – use friendly language (and/or Australian based language – but sometimes that gives G’day mate shit – which is really not how I speak!).  So be specific and keep being more specific to get the answer you are happy with.

Thirdly, it’s only as good as the data is has to read.  Which makes me wonder if it will get dumber or smarter with more people using it! If people put dumb data into it, will be get dumber – I assume not because it’s not just using it’s own data but using the whole internet up until September 2021.  But an interesting thought.

Fourthly and lastly, be careful how you use what it spilts out.  Now admittedly, if 10 people asked it the exact same question it will give a different version of the same answer but because it is an AI learning machine, it doesn’t have a mind of its own and therefore everything it spits out is the content of someone essentially.  So, just be aware of copying and pasting what it gives you and calling it yours.

Interestingly, I was speaking to a book coach a few weeks back and he made reference that there will come a time when authors will need to acknowledge in their books how much of the book was written by AI – so that we can ensure we are reading content from an author not a machine – if that is what we thought we purchased.  For those playing along at home, in my new book Small Town Big Impact the chapter about AI was written by AI – and that was on purpose!

Okay, that’s enough on my favourite tool almost ever (only pipped by Canva of course), my second tool that is making my life simpler is Castmagic.  Now if you don’t have a lot of audio or video, it might not be a good tool for you but if you do do a lot of audio and video in your marketing – it is magic!

Basically you upload your mp3 file, and it will convert it to show notes, summaries, highlights, quotes, social posts – like LinkedIn Posts, quotes, hooks, call to action and more, and it will break your record down into timestamps and show each one broken into different speakers. It gives me titles, keywords, key bullet points, Reel scripts, a newsletter (probably more like an email actually), and it even gives you threads for Threads (the new Meta platform). Now it’s not free and on the website Castmagic.io prices start from $23 a month (US of course) but let me give you a little secret if you’re super keen and really want to try it out – go to appsumo and type in Castmagic and they currently have it for sale for $23 for a lifetime – not a month, a lifetime! The link for that is in the shownotes https://appsumo.com/search/?query=castmagic – PS – its not my affiliate link, just a link – I’m just sharing stuff to make your business simpler!

Ok, so the third tool I use all the time is Canva.  It’s not all AI but it is bringing out more and more AI tools on the platform and I encourage you to look at them and play with them.  In fact, if you are listening to this when it is released, Canva had a huge launch over night and added a load of new tools for us to play with.  Go and check them all out. Watch the videos of them and have a play.  If you go to your Canva, they will be probably up the top on the home page – they can calling it more Canva magic!

But the AI tools canva has that you might be already using or don’t release they have (or that they are AI) are:

• Text to Image – creates images based on your text prompts. They are not brilliant, but always improving – watch this space.
• Magic Eraser – in love with this! It removes unwanted objects from photos – something that used to take ages, now takes seconds!
• Magic Edit – the graphic design tool you never knew you needed! With one click and a few words to takes an image and turns it into something different. Eg/ a vanilla birthday cake can now be a chocolate cake with birthday candles.
• Magic Write – the AI text generator making it easier to generate short or long form written content for your social media posts, blog articles and presentations.
• Magic Design – Simply upload a photo or enter a text query that describes what you need, and Magic Design will generate relevant design templates to match. No more building from scratch.
• Presentations – Instant Presentations is a Magic Design feature that lets you generate entire presentations from a single text prompt. It won’t generate the WHOLE presentation, it has limitations but it will give a pretty awesome first draft.
• Beat Sync – Here’s the problem: syncing the beat is a tedious process (just ask your 15-year-old cousin). It involves manually tweaking the timing of multiple audio and video clips over and over again. Beat Sync uses AI to take the pain out of this process while producing a professionally polished end product. With this feature, even amateur creators can “harmonize” their videos in seconds.
• Translate – With Canva Translate, you can translate your content into multiple languages (134 to be exact).

Want to know how to use any of these Canva AI tools, then just go to Canva’s helpdesk or head to YouTube, someone over there has fabulous tutorials for you!

So, there you have it.  3 AI tools that I use constantly in my business that are helping me make my business life simpler.  Do you have some or one you could share with me too? Email me or head to my Facebook group – Like Minded Business Owners and share it over there – make sure you tag me so I can see it.

Of course you can find the show notes for this episode at www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au/263 if you want to see any links or just read what you have just heard about!

But, that’s it for episode 263. If you loved this episode and found it valuable, please take 30 seconds out of your day to leave me a rating and review if you want where you are listening.  One more goal of mine is to reach more people with this podcast, and you can help me achieve that, by leaving me a review!  Thanks in advance.

See you next week on the podcast for episode 264!  There’s only 12 podcast episodes left for the year – YIKES!

Thanks again to Turn Back Time Radio for your support – visit them here: https://www.turnbacktime.radio/

But in the meantime, let’s hang out on social and get social on social – you’ll find me on Instagram, Facebook and my fav LinkedIn.

But whatever you do,

……..remember small business peep, as my opening song says, there’s no point in dreaming small!