Making AI Simple!

Making AI Simple! 

✨Hello, I’m Fran, Your NLP & Business Coach. I’m exploring a wide range of business ideas and money-making paths, with practical takeaways you can apply.

In this episode, I'm interviewing Julie Begbie.

Julie is the founder of The Happy Business Company, where she helps heart-led small business owners use AI in a way that feels human and simple. 

Known for her warm, down-to-earth training style, Julie makes tools like ChatGPT feel less intimidating and far more useful, especially if you’re sales-averse, busy, or quietly overwhelmed by marketing.

You can connect to Julie in the following ways⬇️
https://juliebegbie.com
https://www.facebook.com/juliebegbie
https://www.instagram.com/thehappybusinesscompany
https://www.youtube.com/@thehappybusinesscompany

Find me @ https://melancholymentor.com

As a coach, I listen without judgment, understanding that others views may differ from my own.

#nlpcoach #nlpcoaching #creativity #inspiration #transformation #aiforbusiness

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Fran 0:00

Hello everyone, welcome to the Melancholy Coaching Podcast. Join me as I interviewed our business owners and private speakers while exploring business building, quantitizing ideas and practical takeaways. Let's ignite our creative potential together. Hello and welcome to Melancholy Coaching Podcast, the show that highlights different business owners and ideas. I'm Fran, your NLP and business coach, and I'm pleased to introduce a motivational guest. Julie is the founder of the Happy Business Company, where she helps heart-led small business owners use AI in a way that feels human and simple. You didn't think you'd hear all of that in one sentence, did you? Known for her warm down-to-earth training style, Julie makes tools like ChatGPT feel less intimidating and far more useful. Especially if your sales averse, busy, or quietly overwhelmed by marketing. She's all about supporting you to show up with more ease, clarity, and confidence without turning into a content machine. So I like that a lot. Julie, welcome to the show.

Julie 1:23

Thank you, Fran. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking forward to this.

Keeping Humanity In An AI Brand

Fran 1:26

Oh, that's okay. You're very welcome. I've got a couple of questions for you, and we'll have a chat around that if that's okay with you. Um and the first one I'm really curious about, it's a buckle up, is um you you focus on helping heart-led business owners. Where is the line between using AI as a proficiency and losing that vital human soul in a brand?

Julie 1:54

Yeah. So Fran, it's always, well, I think currently it is AI plus human, right? And I I don't think, obviously, I don't know, 10 years in the future, it's very hard to know where this is going. But certainly right now, there is more need for human interaction. Like so you see, my my goal is to help people use AI in a way that magnifies their genius. And somebody said to me the other day, obviously, AI has given you that sentence, magnify your genius. And it genuinely did it. Like that, I that that's the way I speak, right? And I think that we all have, so we all have like a message to share. We all have whatever our business is, we've got an impact that we want to have on the world. And the way I look at it is, what if we could just do we audit on our businesses and go, right? See that stuff we hate doing. Could AI help us speed that up, be more productive? Is there a way that we could use AI to free us up to spend more time in our zone of genius? So that thing that only we can do. So for an example, you know, the example there where I was saying that marketing machine, right? If you're already a brilliant copywriter, do not use AI. Like continue to brilliant copyright. But I'm not. And as a small business owner, the copy that I do, the posts that I create, I'm not, I just, it's not my, I can talk, I can talk. So before up to AI, I was like talking my posts and then having to grammatically change them and all of that. Now I AI can do that job better than I can, but it's because that isn't my zone of genius, right? So so that so the line is work out where your humanity is the bit that you want to emphasize, and then only use AI for the stuff that's not completely you.

Fran 3:42

Yeah, and I see that as well as not necessarily taking work away from you. The example you use was copywriters, so other business owners, because it could lead you to other services, because even with AI, it's only going to get you so far.

Julie 3:58

Completely. And and for copywriters in particular, and I know it's a very, you know, there's there's a lot of controversy about AI at the moment, and and you know, people are wondering what impact it's gonna have. And that's you know, we're in a period of massive organizational change or massive world change. So I I completely get that. But I think so. I I've got a really brilliant copywriter who, you know, does everything from scratch. You can tell, like, no matter how good my AI is, and no matter how I train it, her posts are always totally draw me in. And and more so now that more posts are written by AI, like that human thing absolutely is the thing that's going to make the difference. It's just that not every small business owner can afford all these services immediately. Do you know? So you might not be able to afford your copywriter and your marketing person and whatever. So it's like, I think it's a good way to get the kind of money coming in, get the visibility, all the things we know we should be doing as business owners to then invest in other experts because the future will be human-led, absolutely.

Fran 4:58

Yeah, so it's a part it's a pathway to you know the next stage that you need. And AI itself, I'm by no means an expert, however.

Julie 5:07

No one is, no one is.

Jobs Change And Productivity Jumps

Fran 5:08

I do I'm gonna claim that I know, I do know that it's been around since the 1950s, but before that, it was a probably some kind of concept. I feel that Alan Turing had a lot to do with it. So there would have been early kind of concepts of it, because I'm I'm quite a science fiction fan, and a lot of it is referenced in early science fiction writing and stuff like that, and you can, without them necessarily saying that it's AI, you can kind of read that that that's what they're talking about. So there are early concepts, and then it's actually been used since the 50s in things, and it's used in a lot of medical things as well. So I think for talking from sort of small business owners' point of view, and the fear potentially that's involved in that and the environmental issues and things like that, is that we we're not privy to how much it's been used already, how much it's already in service in the world. And I'm sure that there is a lot in place to get this moving forward. I think because it grew in a certain way quite exponentially, didn't it?

Julie 6:16

Yeah, absolutely. And and you're completely right. I mean, it's like for anybody of a certain age, it's like tomorrow's world back in the day was always about AI. That was just like that's everything they were presenting that was going to be in your lifetime, is is basically now about AI. I think I think the point you make about the medical profession is is a really great one. That where AI is amazing is that crunching of data that it just takes humans, you know, a long time. And you know, we well, certainly I don't have the attention span for that, where you can sift through data and find patterns and all of that is so exciting. Like, you know, there are real possibilities now that we just wouldn't have had in the past. However, there are jobs I think that probably are going to change. So, for example, one of my friends works in financial services and she has a team that includes an actuary. And the actuary up to now has been the one, you know, so they've gone, right, we need to work out the premium for this, and the actuary will go away, do the actuarial calculations. And it might take seven to ten days for them to actually come back and go, right, okay, this is the thing. That actuary now can do that same piece in probably half an hour to an hour. But I can't do that because I don't have that actuarial knowledge, I don't know what to ask it, I don't know how to sense check that. You know, I don't know the actual system that that actuarial brain is going through. So I don't think to take an actuary as a job example, I don't think actuaries will not be needed. I just think they'll be more productive. You know, I just think they'll be able to do more.

Fran 7:48

It's gonna change. Yeah, it's gonna change. And generally, as human beings, we think that we want change. And this is a very sweeping statement. I know we think we want change, actually, we're quite scared of change because our brains like to keep us safe, don't they? Our minds like to keep us safe. So, of course, there's a lot of fear involved and thinking that jobs will be lost. Jobs will pivot and and change. Yeah.

Julie 8:12

It's like it's like the typing pool back in the kind of 60s and 70s, you know, we don't have a typing pool anymore. But the people that worked in typing pool then just, you know, so but it's uncomfortable, you know. I get it. And that was uncomfortable then. It was like when Excel was invented, when Microsoft came out with Excel, people went, Well, we'll never need accountants again. No, we will, because we still need their we need accountants using Excel. That's what we need to speed up to make them more productive, you know. So, but but we're we're still very much in this flux period where we don't quite know what it's going to look like. So that kind of you know, that that discomfort because of change is completely normal.

Fran 8:48

I think you've just mentioned typing pools, so I'm stuck on that for a moment because when when I learnt to touch type back in kind of mid 80s, 1980s, I could only I thought a very old typewriter. Yeah. And so it was like it was very, very heavy, really, really heavy. And the bottom kind of letters, I could only press them down if I used my fist. So I used to type with a little bit of my fingers, my fist and then my elbow. So the first time I ever used a plug-in electric typewriter, I was like, Oh, I've got this, I can touch type, I'm so good. And I plugged it in and I went to use it, and it shot off the paper because I hit one letter and it just went wild because I was using too much force on it. So, you know, we we learn and we adapt and we grow. And for a little while, I was terrified of electric typewriters. Now I haven't seen one for a very long time because it's just all about general keyboards and things like that.

Julie 9:57

So you know and that, you know, and it's funny because I I didn't learn to type like I should have, but I didn't. I've never learned how to touch type, right? So my kids will go, Mum, look at I mean, I'm like the one finger with the tongue out person that's typing. And and even a few years ago, I was thinking, I should, I should learn this, I should learn this. Now I think it's not long till we'll just think the thing. Like now if I'm, you know, if I'm doing a a long post or whatever, I'll just dictate it. Like so, I I think I think almost we're moving out the other side of even needing to, we're still kind of in it, but I think probably another few years and probably keyboards will be gone as well, which is which is exciting but uncomfortable, right? Because we don't know, it's different.

First Steps In ChatGPT

Fran 10:39

Yeah, it's it's about embracing the changes, I think. Yeah. Um you know, you're you're talking to an old CB here, like I started off on CB radio. C B Radio, I love it. A long long time ago, a long, long time ago. Right. So the other thing that I'm really curious about I'm gonna mention Chat GPT here. So for someone that's never opened it, never used it, they've heard of it, might be a little bit scared of it, you know, maybe they're intimidated. What is the first thing that you recommend they type in?

Julie 11:13

So the first thing I recommend people create in Chat GPT is what I call, so so this is basically a Word document, but I call it an AI super sheet, right? And I think this is what everybody needs to start with. And effectively, so I've got some bots that kind of help people with this, but effectively, what you need to teach ChatGPT is, you know, your name, your business name, a little bit about your story. You need to teach it about your brand, about your brand voice, how you want to come across. You need to teach it about your ideal customer, and you need to teach it what differentiates you from other business owners. So your kind of secret sauce, your the legacy, the impact you want to have on the world. And if you can do that and get and get ChatGPT to summarize it, so effectively have a conversation with it, right? And I I would just start by using the little microphone as opposed to typing. So you can just do this on your phone. I would do this if I was out in a walk or something like that. Ask ChatGPT to summarize that into a document and then just save it in Word or Google Docs or whatever. And then the next time you go to use it, when you when you decide what you want to use it for, you just upload that document, and all of a sudden, the output you get is completely different from starting from scratch and you know, and that that kind of learning process. Because normally, if you just go in and type one thing into ChatGPT and you've never used it before, the output you get will be pretty mediocre. But if it fully understands everything, if you, you know, it's like if if you were, if you had a member of staff, right? So quite often the government talks about, we're gonna put some money into getting people back into work and we'll give, imagine if they said, we'll give every business owner one member of staff and they're gonna turn up at your door tomorrow morning. I think we need to think of AI like that, because they would come in, they would sit opposite me at my dining table, and they wouldn't be particularly any use until I had trained them, until I had explained everything that I needed, what I what I wanted to know. And then what I would do the first time I I used that person is I would check their work very closely and I would make sure that I was making any changes, I was happy. And eventually it's something that that that person or AI can get on with. But it's very much viewing it like that process where that brand new person that comes in to help you in your business is going to be not much use to you until you train them all the information. Yeah.

Fran 13:37

Yeah, I love that. Thank you. And that's given me a lot to think about as well. Because I'm I mostly use ChatGPT for for looking up words, like I use it as a bit of an extended theosaurus. So you know, but that's that's the sort of thing that I engage with it. What we are not getting into and we're not going to within this podcast is the environmental issues, the concerns, the worries, and obviously Julie and I are both aware of that, and we're aware of what some people's fears where they're stemming from. And if anybody is kind of triggered by this or you know they they want more of a conversation about it, then by all means, I presume they can approach you, you know, not not with hate, obviously, but just to understand.

Julie 14:26

Yeah. I I it it's just it's about being thoughtful. I mean, life is voice their concerns.

Fran 14:32

So anybody's interested but they're worried because they've got concerns.

Julie 14:36

But it's just like thoughtful use of AI is the answer, really. You know, it it it it's uh it it it's it's even if we think we don't use AI, we're using it in Google. Clear anyway, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. But it's it's about just not you know, not overusing it to make nonsense photos that you know just like you know, just think thinking carefully about mind and be just being mindful about how you use it is the library.

Ethics Copyright And Environmental Concerns

Fran 15:01

And being aware that there's a lot of creators, there's a lot of other businesses out there, and potentially it could just be your gateway and your pathway to think to the person that you need for your business to move you forward. Absolutely. Because you know, there's there's humans behind everything, isn't there? Even AI. Yeah, completely. What I'm curious about now is what's next for you?

Julie 15:24

So so I've been main so how this kind of AI thing came about for me is I I've been working as a business mentor for about I've had businesses for about 20 years, I've been a business mentor for 10 years. I went on an NLP journey like yourself, and and I so so I've had online memberships for that time, and I used to help people, the first thing I did was help people to start a side hustle, but everything has always been underpinned with happiness. So uh so my business was called happy side hustle back in the day, and it was like work out something that you love doing, and then let's see how we could make money out of it if you choose to do that, right? Sometimes you don't want to monetize something that you love, but helping people that if they're going to start a business anyway, let's look at where their talents are and and and work out how to do what they love. That that happiness thing has has kind of woven through all of the businesses that I've had, and I've had product and I've had service-based businesses. I had a hypnotherapy clinic for a while, and I had a and I've got a I had a hand-stamped jewellery business for about 10 years, just sold it last year. But happiness has been kind of the underlying, as I said, kind of foundation for everything. So now I'm looking at how can AI just make people happier, right? So the entry-level AI, I think, is ChatGPT. That is the one that most people are familiar with and got sketch have got started with. But there's been quite an interest in moving across to Claude because there's been some kind of negative pussy about ChatGPT recently, kind of political stuff. But also Google Gemini. I think those are the three big players. There's Google Gemini, there's Anthropic Claude, and there's OpenAI ChatGPT. Those are the three kind of players at the moment. It's going to be so interesting to see how this pans out. Because I feel it's kind of a bit like, do you know when do you know when like TiVo came out? Do you remember TiVo where you know the ability to kind of record things right? And that they were, they were kind of a, you know, nearly like a challenger company that went, this is how you record things, and then Sky just went, okay, we'll do that. And now TiVo is, you know, is a is a distant memory. I'm not sure, I don't know, but I'm not sure ChatGPT and even Claude will will last the distance. I think Google absolutely have the money and resources and everything to make theirs, you know. So I'm good, you know, if you think about Google, Google have turned their company name into a verb, right? But but probably people are not necessarily using it as much as they did five years ago because we're not Googling things anymore. We're going into AI and we're asking a question and we're getting a much better answer than a list of websites or whatever we used to get. So, so I guess going forward, my job. So, what what I do for so I've got an online membership for business owners who want to kind of lean into AI, but mainly it's for people that don't want to be AI gurus. Like they don't want to know everything because AI is changing all the time, right? We're just saying there's no AI experts, really. What I want to do is keep up to date with what's going on, not just with ChatGPT, but what's going on with Gemini, what's going on with Claude, Microsoft Copilot, like all the things that people have access to, and then just explain to them very briefly, right? This is what it means for you as a small business owner. Here's how to easily use it. So that's that's going to be an ongoing, evolving process for me, which hopefully puts the businesses I support kind of just, you know, gives them the peace of mind that they don't need to add in that extra thing to their, you know, and they can spend more time doing it.

Fran 19:02

Yeah, so they don't need all the things. And also if there's any fear involved. And it's it's so interesting, isn't it? The the the way that AI is is going and it's changed already. And I do feel that again, I said I wasn't going to mention it, but from an environmental point of view, these companies are working towards something more efficient, less water use, etc. And I think because it just it just had that exponential growth all of a sudden, without regulation, probably without regulation. And I feel that this is a little bit of what needs to come in as well. It's that mindful use, it's that, you know, being more intentional, more, more aware of not only what we're doing as business owners, but the companies that are providing these tools. You know, it comes down to ethics, doesn't it?

What’s Next And How To Connect

Julie 19:52

It it does. And that is where the kind of the switch from Chat GPT to Claude was really big because Claude are perceived, Claude have a mission statement. They're perceived as a more ethical company. ChatGPT have have since kind of changed their stance a little bit. So, you know, everything is alert.

Fran 20:09

That's good. That's good though, because then they were bring their their kind of thinking up, you know, up to environmental standards.

Julie 20:17

Yeah, and I think you're right about the law. The law is struggling to keep up because this is just changing so quickly that the law is, you know, and if you think about the law around copyright and you know, artists and all understandably concerned, there are cases going through the courts now which hopefully will make that more reassuring, safer, reward artists, you know, like Disney Disney had done a deal with, I think it was with Anthropic, and then I think they they they ended up changing it, but they were going to allow them to use their, you know, trademark characters, etc. So that but but anthropic were going to pay them obviously big money to do that. So, you know, if we can get to a point where artists who are comfortable would be able to have their work sampled, but would then receive a very fair payment for that if they chose to, you know. So so there's there's there are more reassuring ways that this is going forward. Like even like if we take Elon Musk's Grok, they are looking at having data centers in space because they don't need the cool-in mechanism in space, right? So if they can just launch them and they can be, you know, just like the satellites that are firing around Earth at the moment, what if the data centers were up there? You know, so they're they they they there's so much research. Companies are really aware of that that the environmental thing will either make or break them because people feel really strongly about it. But we're still sort of at the beginning of that environmental journey, so I completely understand why it's you know, it it's on people's minds.

Fran 21:40

And and also the copyright issue. So you've got music artists, you know, uh people creating actual artworks or books, writing books. And I can understand why they've they're very worried or very fearful.

Julie 21:51

Absolutely. And I think if you've ever read a book that's been written by AI versus a book that's been written by a person, you know, we've got a while to go before the need to worry, I think, but I but I completely understand because then uh and Amazon is really doubling down in that night. You know, if you if you upload you know a KDP book to Amazon and there's been a heavy AI you know use to create it, you have to label it as such an Amazon is scarring for yeah that's fine.

Fran 22:15

See I've I I agree with the labeling it because I've I'm I'm a YouTuber as well. So you know there's there's content on on YouTube that uh one of our channels is some of the content is AI generated like the videos. Yeah um so you know I'd I get I get the worry. I think that it should be labeled. I think that things should move more towards regulation. And it's also the bit about with things like I mean I don't know for a fact but things like AI like ChatGPT they search the internet and can take bits.

Julie 22:52

So possibly if they're taking paragraphs or sentences from people's books and um or people's lyrics then there's a no involved in that isn't there I know I know I mean I think I think how it works is they would sample so many and then they would kind of go okay let's create something that's you know inspired by this but ultimately yet I mean there will be artists that will be sampled in that and then the inspiration thing's fine. I mean let's face it you know there are there really any new new ideas you know yeah are we regenerating thing upgrades of things that we already know as humans we're all inspired by each other right you know there's sometimes that I'll I'll find myself coaching somebody and I think oh I should go I learned that from my NLP coach you know because because I got it from somewhere else it's not I didn't create the concept you know so so yeah it but we're just trying to work it out aren't we we're all just trying to work out how how does how yeah how can we be good people working with AI and not working with AI. How can we just be good people and and leave a positive impact on the world and continue to do the best that we can with our with the resources we have available.

Fran 24:00

Exactly NLP in action right you know all right thank you so much Julie for joining me showing us how to embrace AI I think you know embrace it it's here anyway yeah might as well embrace it but keep humanity you know at the heart of everything that we do and just be really really mindful of the fact that some of this is unregulated we need to just be really careful about what we are using even if we're using AI to to generate it.

Julie 24:33

So for those of you interested in Julia and I don't see why you wouldn't be she's got a website which is juliebegby.com her website so I presume your memberships and everything is it's all on there all on there if people want to have a look and I did I do free AI trainings most months so the the next free training will be advertised there as well. I thank you and you're on Facebook as well so it's Julie Begby on Facebook I am the only the the joy of having an unusual surname is I'm the only Julie Begby on Facebook. So if you just put in Julie Begby that's me connect connect with me or a friend request me. Happy to do that.

Fran 25:09

So complete transparency for anybody listening or or watching as this goes out on YouTube as well is that Julie and I we don't know each other do we we've met online which is one of the amazing things about the internet before we started recording I actually checked how to pronounce your name because I wasn't sure so and it's it's it's quite phonetically isn't it that it's said so it is it's just one of those I so my maiden name was Wilson and that was dead normal right and then as soon as I got married I've had to go Bravo echo golf like every single time I'm talking to anybody on the phone after spell out because they go sorry what so that's my husband's fault. Oh well I get called all sorts of things from Farley because my surname's Barley my name Fran over the phone and I get called Sam and all sorts of things. So I tend to use my long name which is Francis. Right yeah it's harder it's harder to mistake that yeah yeah so there's like different ways of saying it but anyway beg me if you're interested in more content like this be sure to visit www.melancolymentor.com so that's me follow for the latest updates and the latest podcast episodes are on there as well and until next time stay curious keep igniting your creative potential and go and find Julie especially if you're interested in AI if you if you're concerned and just want reassurance about AI you know and how to use it within business and find Julie and for anything else come and say hello to me. So there we go. Thank you so much. Thanks Brian thank you for listening I'd love for you to subscribe and visit www.melancolymentor.com for the latest updates. Till next time stay curious and keep igniting your creative potential