Self-Employed People Know The AI Problem Best

I make business easier for my clients by sharing my knowledge, tools, and insights so that they can optimize their business for the most profitable reach. And because I’m constantly thinking of my clients, I realized a pattern in the AI problem and in one of the most common self-employment/small business problems.We are halfway deep into Fungal Disease Awareness Week, and in preparation, I have been digging deep into something I’ve been letting fester…turning quick, robotic answers into AI-assisted systems that actually get used. My resources (for now) include:

1. Some great books (reading list forthcoming).
2. One to two AI bots, no more than three.
3. Youtube.

The most common problem I hear my clients battling is the hiring conundrum of (part a): finding someone who can do the job and (part b): being able to find time, resources, and the holes in understanding and/or processes to truly train the employee on what is expected and what is needed.

With a new hire, training them allows them opportunities to catch on and to prove they can take on larger projects. AI is my assistant/new hire, so I treat it the same way. I give AI bots only one plan/problem/project at a time in any one area. Then patch the holes in the process. Employees have 1:1’s, management takes feedback from clients and peers, and clients need the proper expectations and then updates to the expectations. Everything in business needs to be tweaked.

AI, like the people you’ll hire over the years, has loads of potential. But without knowing how to communicate the plan/problem/project effectively, it won’t even be the assistant’s fault if things fail. So the employer (of the technical process or the employee) needs to get clear on the most fruitful tasks to assign at every level of difficulty and every level of trust. Take in the data on what the assistant does well or not. And the most essential piece: the employer must give feedback. My purpose is to solve as many problems for my clients as I possibly can. Alas, this AI conundrum is the hiring conundrum. Whether a system turns into a clean-running machine will be up to you.

Challenge: Challenge yourself to follow, point for point, detail for detail, an AI schedule through the full week, or any short time period that works for you. This will do 2 things: (1st thing): help you in an area where you have admitted you could use help/optimization/tweaking and (second thing): tell you how to tweak your bot/AI assistant/tools so that the next calendar is a better fit, or you decide you don’t need calendars afterall. Now you can trust your assistant with weightier tasks. Remember: AI is your assistant/new hire.

Challenge example:  Content calendars 

The point of them: There is so much content to create that things need to be whittled down to have an idea of where to start.  

The scope: Most people only need to see 30 days of content at a time before burnout creeps around the corner. So, around 30 days of planned content should be enough to start. Over the course of that short time period, you come up with tweaks. And I’ll give you the overarching theme right here: everything involving AI needs to be tweaked often.

We never let AI do our writing. We’re not saying it’s better or worse, wrong or right. It just helps our writers sleep better at night.