A.I. is Here – Are You Ready?

5 Keys to Leveraging A.I.

 

Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is here and it’s gaining momentum like a freight train on a downhill grade. It’s getting more intelligent by the day as it trains on our usage.  Soon, A.I. will replace knowledge work, displacing hundreds of thousands, even millions of professionals.  The hardest hit will be those who bury their head in the sand and refuse to acknowledge the massive impact heading our way. Those who will be less impacted by A.I. are the ones who become good at using it. Even those in the trades can benefit from A.I.

The key is not to try to master all the new A.I. tools that come out (that is completely overwhelming), rather use the ones that can benefit you and your business. Most individuals are dabbling with A.I. as a sophisticated Google, to get answers to questions. Some have asked A.I to complete tasks with unimpressive results. A.I. gets it wrong… a lot. That’s not A.I.’s fault, it’s our inattention to training our A.I. to know us, understand us and to give it complete context of what we want it to do.

Used correctly and trained properly, A.I. can save you countless hours and potentially improve your results.  Here are several tasks A.I. can do relatively well:

  • Email management
  • Research assistant
  • Content creation
  • Problem-solving
  • Meeting prep

Here are 5 keys to leveraging A.I. to your fullest:

Frame A.I. in the proper context:

Used and trained properly, A.I. can be your “digital twin” or at the very least, your digital assistant. A.I. is a tool, much like a nail gun, which gives you an exponential increase in productivity. It’s a tool… a very, very smart one. Like any tool, it has many benefits, but if mis-used, can cause some damage. 

Choose your A.I. tool:

There are 3 major A.I. providers: Chat GPT, Claude and Perplexity. I use all 3. Perplexity for general fact finding, Chat GPT as my personal assistant and Claude as my business assistant.  They are relatively inexpensive with free limited subscriptions and paid access for as low as $20/month.

Begin training your A.I.:

This is the most important step.  Your A.I. assistant needs to get to know you, your business, your values, and what you like and dislike.  If you are using it to help you with your business, your A.I. needs to get to know about your business.  Treat it as thought you were on-boarding your personal assistant, giving it access to elements of your business.

  • Assign A.I. tasks to complete… Clarify & refine the results:

Your A.I. will become more useful to you the more you work with it and begins to learn. In most cases, the first result from your A.I. assistant will not be optimum.  You’ll need to clarify and refine the results a few times to get the desired result.  As it learns, it will get it right more often. The key is to give your A.I. good prompts that are contextual and detailed.

  •  As your A.I. “assistant” gets to know you better, create A.I. agents to really save time.

Over time, your A.I. partner will be able to anticipate what you need. This is the step where you and your A.I. can create “Agents” that can help manage your email, provide weekly research, help manage content creation, posting content and so much more. This is where you can reclaim a lot of your time.

Don’t be afraid of A.I.  Embrace it!  Just like when driving a car was a bit scary at first, A.I. can be a bit intimidating, but like a car, driving it will become second nature and can take you to some amazing places.

The question isn’t if you’ll use A.I., it’s whether you’ll learn to use it well.

BTW, I wrote this post, not A.I. ; )

Rick Wickizer is a trained and ICF credentialed business coach and a successful entrepreneur. Rick has served the building industry for over 30 years and is dedicated to adding value to all he works with. For information about coaching services provided by Rick, go to: rickwickizer.com

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