Episode Transcript
Kyle James (00:00.75)
Hey, welcome to the A.I.'s Chronicle podcast. I'm your host, Kyle James. And today we're going to be discussing how a professional training and coaching company called Speaking Your Brand is using AI inside of their own business. And we'll share the exact steps that you can take in order to implement AI for yourself. Now, before I dive into that, listen closely. Are you looking to implement AI inside of your own company or maybe just struggling to get your AI to stop hallucinating? Speak to GPT Trainer.
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Today I have with me Carol Cox, is the communication strategist and the founder of Speaking Your Brand. Carol helps leaders harness the power of their voice, whether on stage, on podcasts, or using AI to amplify and scale their message and impact with intention and authenticity. Hey Carol, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?
Carol Cox (01:19.684)
I'm great Kyle. Thank you so much for having me.
Kyle James (01:22.06)
Yeah, absolutely. I'm so excited for this conversation. So tell, give us some context here. Like what is speaking your brand? Like how did it come to be? Give us the origin story with it.
Carol Cox (01:30.333)
Yeah. So speaking of your brand, we're a very human to human service. We work with our clients on their public speaking and thought leadership, helping them to create compelling and engaging business presentations, tech presentations, Ted talks, keynotes. And how it all started, though, was that I was a software developer in the first part of my career and I founded and ran two tech companies. And you're like, well, where did this speaking your brand come from? And so I did a lot of presenting and speaking.
when I had those technology companies and I noticed going to those tech conferences that most of the speakers could have some room for improvement. And I got a lot of great feedback about how fantastic my presentations were because I really enjoyed it. But then when I did that for about 12 years, got burnt out on the tech side of things and really wanted to work with people directly. And so that's when I started speaking your brand in 2015.
Kyle James (02:25.998)
Yeah, that's amazing. love that. so right now you're using a little bit of AI over at Speaking Your Brand. And I think it's fantastic what you're doing. And tell me, why did you start? Because I love how you said human to human. love how you start off with that in AI podcasts. We are human to human, not robots. But why did you decide to start using AI in the first place? And what types of challenges were you trying to solve by implementing AI?
Carol Cox (02:52.797)
Well, like many of us, when Chat GPT came out at the end of 2022 and it kind of blew up the internet by storm, I was all over it. I guess once a techie, always a techie. And I realized right away the potential, even though looking back, that version of GPT was so bare bones compared to what it can do now. But I knew it had so much potential to transform our work. the saying that has come to me now is that
Let the robots do the computer work and let us do the human work. I mean, there's only so much of like data entry and project management and even content production. It's like that hamster wheel that never ends. And I see AI and AI agents and what you do at GPT trainer as being a way for us to take all that computer work, give it to the AI, which is incredible at doing it. So let us do the public speaking, the thought leadership.
the podcast appearances, the media appearances, and doing the client work that we really enjoy doing.
Kyle James (03:55.202)
Yeah, absolutely. So we talked a little bit, you have a podcast, you've been on multiple podcasts, but specifically you talked about like an AI generated podcast, like walk me through that a little bit and then maybe even some of the AI step by step and like, how is this process of using AI like making an impact for one, of course you, and then even some of like your clients that you're working with.
Carol Cox (04:17.181)
Yeah, so I have my human podcast called Speaking Your Brand, which I've been doing for over eight years. So I just released episode 433. So a lot of podcast content. I have podcasting nailed down. Like I know how to podcast. So then when I found 11 Labs, which allows you to do AI voices and voice clones and some of these automation softwares, I like this little light bulb went on in my head and I thought, well, if I can clone my voice,
and I can get OpenAI's API to write the script and write the show notes. Can I just hook it all together and have it create podcast episodes? And not to replace what I'm doing, but a companion podcast to give listeners answers to common questions that they have, because it's really hard to go through 400 plus episodes of my podcast to find what they're looking for. So these are short, about four to five minute long episodes that talk about
what to charge to speak or how to find speaking engagements or how to put together their signature talk. So they get targeted content. It increases my footprint and brand awareness and also as another channel for lead generation.
Kyle James (05:28.344)
So is it kind of like a, I'm just thinking like a Q and A, cause it's short, right? mean, how long, how long typically are the, are your AI generated podcasts last? Like, okay. And so if they're looking for a specific like type of question online or whatever, they can go to your, your podcast and it gives them that quick answer versus having to go through a 10 page long document on how to figure out how to do whatever, whatever the troubleshooting tech, you know, thing they're trying to solve.
Carol Cox (05:37.157)
like four to five minutes.
Carol Cox (05:55.431)
Right, and so, and here's what's special about the podcast is it's not just generic content. So sure, they can go to chat GPT or Claude or what have you and ask, what should I charge to speak? And they'll get an answer. But a lot of my audience, they like the way we do things that speaking in your brand, our mission, our methodology. And so my, that companion podcast is trained on all of my other podcast content. So I'm using a rag.
So, so that when the script is generated, it's not just generic, you know, here's some information. It's still, it's like my voice, my processes, my methodology, but I don't have to sit down and record it and produce it. It is literally like I have cloned myself.
Kyle James (06:37.954)
Wow. And how long have you been like, I guess like, how has it been like, how long you been doing it for? And like, what types of results have you been seeing since like you've created this podcast using just AI? Like that's incredible.
Carol Cox (06:49.959)
So I launched as of the time of this recording, it's been out a week. So it's relatively new. And from people who know me well, who listen to my other podcasts and my clients, they listen to it and they, what I've gotten back is, wow, mind blown. I cannot believe this is not really you. It sounds very much like me. And again, the content is really solid. It's really good. It's enjoyable to listen to because it's like it has a whole flow.
This, you the script has a whole flow of beginning, middle and end. And so it's not just like, here's an answer. It's not like, I don't like your robot answer. It's like, right. Exactly. Like, yeah, that's right. Like there's stories in it. And again, it's taking this from my rag, like in incorporating stories I've told on my podcast in the past. So it is, it is so cool. And I'm just excited to like get it out to more and more people. And I'm very transparent on it that this is.
Kyle James (07:17.367)
Hmm.
Kyle James (07:24.374)
Yeah, yeah, it's not like, welcome to my podcast. Like, I'm so glad you're here.
Carol Cox (07:44.667)
written by AI, narrated by my voice, I'm not trying to hide that this is an AI generated podcast, but I think it's actually really cool that we're now at the place with our content that we can do it in an authentic and intentional way with integrity. And that's what I want to make sure that we're doing.
Kyle James (08:02.348)
Yeah, absolutely. Sorry. started laughing in my head here where I was like, what if we just told our audience, like actually we're all AI. You have no idea. Like Carol's AI, Kyle, your podcast host AI. Okay. I promise you we're not AI. We are humans. As of right now we are humans, but I just, love that concept of like, putting like going back to what you initially said, Carol, like the, the, machines, right? Let the machines and machine stuff. And then let the humans do the human human thing is like the one of the most like
Carol Cox (08:15.389)
At least as of right now.
Kyle James (08:31.406)
important aspects of business and doing more of that, so that way you can have AI do more of what it's good at. That's where you have a little bit of that segregation, that gap of, okay, we're going to allow the experts to do the expert stuff, but the humans do what humans do best at. You know what mean?
Carol Cox (08:47.803)
Well, yes, and it's interesting, Kyle, that you use the word expert. I talk quite a bit on my human podcast of what I call the expert trap. And what happens is that a lot of times as leaders, we get stuck in what I call the expert trap, which is that we're so, we're so like, we want to like just dump all this information on our audience instead of leading them through a transformational journey when we're speaking to them. And so in the process that we use with our clients, with our frameworks,
Kyle James (08:55.022)
You
Carol Cox (09:16.987)
we focus on what is that transformational journey you want to take your audience on, not just an information dump. It goes all the way back to those tech presentations that I had to sit through in the earlier part of my career and realizing we could do something different. And that's what I love is talking to our clients, taking all those things out of their heads and then organizing it into a talk that's really compelling and engaging not only for their audience, but also for them.
Kyle James (09:42.83)
Yeah, so talk to me a little bit, kind of shifting gears a bit. You've worked with different clients and helping them really get a presentation, speaking engagements, paid, unpaid, right? What types of results have you been seeing that they've gained from working with you? And not necessarily just on the AI side, but just maybe just on the speaking of your brand.
Carol Cox (10:05.405)
Yeah. So our clients include TEDx speakers who have millions of views on their talks. And so they have gotten a lot of visibility for their businesses. They get book contracts from that. They also get very well paid speaking engagements. We have a number of clients who get paid 10 to $20,000 for one keynote that they deliver. And these are not famous people. They're not names that you would recognize, but they do very well in their industry and in their niche.
We have international keynote speakers. have executives who work at companies that we work with them on their business storytelling and their executive presence. So what they gain mostly is clarity because we are individually, we are so close to our own content. We can't really make sense of it because we know too much. And I like to say that I know enough about basically any topic to ask you the right questions, but I'm not so close to it.
Kyle James (10:46.092)
you
Carol Cox (11:00.657)
that it kind of gets really muddled or you can't figure out what to share with your audience. And so that is really what they get is clarity, but then the confidence to know that their message has been validated by someone like myself or other coaches who have been doing this for years and have literally worked on hundreds of talks.
Kyle James (11:20.172)
Yeah, that's amazing. I love that. And I think like just the fact that you're, you're, you have like the, the, not just AI, but like the, the, the IT development experience on top of like the speaking and like the public speaking and then confidence. that's, there's so many AI companies out there today and even startup companies who are like, I'm, I'm up coming and I just got asked to speak on engagement. have no idea what I'm going to talk to you. And I don't want to pay like $40,000 to have Jim quick or some other famous person come in here and like teach me how. So it's like.
It seems like, Carol, you'd provide the best services for them to go to, like, hey, look, help me just organize my thoughts and get clarity. So when I do have that talk, I actually know what I'm doing. And then they actually understand where I'm coming from. You know what mean? So talking a little bit, as we kind of start transitioning here, talking on the AI side, what types of like maybe initiatives?
you foresee in the next year or two and like where do you see AI playing the biggest role, especially as you're dabbling in like the AI with the podcast and having your own voiceover, like that's incredible. Like where do see the operations playing the most value next?
Carol Cox (12:27.429)
Yeah, so the marketing side we've talked about and AI is so powerful for that. But then there's another side of it, which is providing a DIY service to our audience. So I mentioned that the work that we do with our clients is very human to human, is very high touch. So it is a premium service and not everyone has the budget or even the time to devote to do that. And we recognize that. And because our mission is to see more and more
people with a message that they want to share on stages to make a positive impact within their industry and within their society. We want to be able to provide this to more people. So what I'm building right now is an AI app to take our frameworks and to use an AI agent to guide the person through the process that we right now do on Zoom with our clients one-on-one, but to guide them through creating their talk from beginning to end, and then create all the assets that go with it, their speaking proposal,
their pitches, their website copy for their speaker page, maybe some social media post. So building that infrastructure for them so that they can do that. And of course, they want to talk to us and add on a Zoom call so that they can go over, they are able to do that as well.
Kyle James (13:40.204)
Yeah, that's great. And I imagine like being able to like automate that, you know, one, one, one approach, right. You said is like, they go to you directly and work with your team directly, it's saying, Hey, look, here's another option where you can go through AI if you're to work with like our application. And it's a lot more of a seamless process using, using the power of AI, which I think can save a lot of time. And then maybe even a lot of funds for, for smaller companies or even bigger companies. So.
Carol Cox (14:03.973)
Yes, absolutely. Cause here's the thing, and trust me, I have tried for two and a half years. Chat GPT does not write good presentations. And I'm not saying that as someone because I want people to come to me, but it is good. Yeah. It will create an outline for you, but honestly it's either it's, it's like, it's boring or it's too cheesy. If you try to make it to add humor to it, like the humor is not, I have tried the humor is not good, right?
Kyle James (14:10.764)
Mmm. That's well said.
Kyle James (14:25.966)
Yeah, yeah, gotta be careful.
Carol Cox (14:29.717)
and it doesn't take the audience on that journey. It just gives you, again, a bunch of bullet points in an order, but it doesn't like, doesn't put you into it. It doesn't put your personal stories or your mission or why you do the things that you do. And that's why you either need someone to walk you through that process step by step or because with this AI app that we're building, we're putting our framework, basically the three hour VIP day process that we do, we're putting that into the app.
to teach the AI agents basically how to do what we do.
Kyle James (15:01.996)
Yeah, I love that. That's super exciting. And as we start wrapping up here, Carol, where can people learn a little bit more about you and then maybe a little bit more about speaking your brand?
Carol Cox (15:04.881)
Yeah. Yeah.
Carol Cox (15:10.629)
Yeah. So go to speakingyourbrand.com. That is the best place. And there is a work with us navigation menu. You can find the different online programs as well as we do offer one day speaking workshops in Orlando, Florida, where I live and definitely check out both of my podcasts, speaking your brand for the humans and the other one, the AI generated one is called confident speaker.
Kyle James (15:32.59)
Awesome. I love it. I love it so much. Thank you so much, Carol. It's an absolute pleasure to have you on today. I'm sure our listeners are to be super excited to able to listen to this podcast. That is human. It is human to human. We promise it's not AI, but who knows? One day you might be able to tell. Who knows? So yeah, absolutely. And remember for those listening and you're looking to implement AI into your business today, don't try and do it yourself. The time and stress that AI could cause just isn't worth it.
Carol Cox (15:45.821)
Right. thank you so much, Kyle.
Kyle James (15:59.182)
schedule a call with GPT Trainer and let them build out and manage your AI for you. Once again, that's gpt-trainer.com to schedule your consultation. Signing off for now, have a wonderful rest of your day and looking forward to seeing you on the next episode of AI Chronicles.
