The Speak Up: Surrendering your voice to AI 🤖
Friends,
A few weeks ago I received an invitation to join a 4-week business accelerator for FREE. It was hosted by a tech/software company that would ultimately be a more-than-useful tool to have to move my client work in the direction I wanted to head. Of course, I knew that joining this course was part of their sales strategy, but they had hired outside experts to talk through and teach some business basics that I needed to reset.
I accepted the invite.
Week 1 was incredible. I got so much clarity and confidence around the direction I wanted to head with my work, I revisited my artist and vision statement from earlier this year, and recalled the many conversations I've had over Zoom with new colleagues with the running theme of "this year has been hard for you and your business, but please keep going, your work matters and people need you."
I left week one with a new business model, tools to take the next steps, and the energy needed to keep trusting the quiet internal voice that was cheering me on and guiding me through.
It's Week 2 of the program and on Monday I cringed at the theme for the week: Finding your personal brand.
I cringe because I've used that phrase "personal brand" a lot in past iterations of my work. I've spoken about it as an expert on panels and as a podcast guest. Those conversations are still out there.
But where I am now with my work, my own identity, and what I believe in for other people is that the term "personal brand" can lead people to ignore their true light, and instead choose the glow of an artificial sheen.
We'll get back to that word artificial in a second.
For Week 2, I saw that many of the modules revolved around social media content and I had to fight eye rolls and judgement and choose the parts that I knew would be useful.
It was also a reminder to myself that I know what truly matters for myself and my business in the world of "personal branding." And while that could be a mainstream placeholder term for what I help people develop, it's not the truth and I have an alternative and more expansive approach.
But I put judgement and concern aside, and I stayed open to learn from the facilitators and see if there were any new nuggets of knowledge that would support me as I continued in the program.
On Tuesday, the lead facilitator started talking about content pillars, something that I believe in and help people discover via their artist or vision statement and their core story. The phrase "content pillars" feels a little stuffy and robotic (foreshadowing) but I knew what he was getting at and I could get on board and refresh my own.
But then he continued on to talk about generating the actual content that will broadcast your personal brand and he said
"Just use ChatGPT. Type one of your content pillars there and see what kind of articles, social media posts, and newsletter content it will give you. You can use that but if you want to make it more personal, put a story from your life in there too. You could also get ChatGPT to help you with that."
For the next hour he continued to talk about AI (reminder that this stands for ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE) as a tool to help people find and establish their voice.
I could have left the session, I wasn't even on camera or unmuted.
But I chose to stay to listen to his perspective and sit with the discomfort of getting a robot to help someone take up space and make a name for themselves.
When the session ended, I knew I had to speak up about this.
And while I might be preaching to the choir here, I need to get this out now. (I'll share my feedback with the facilitators at the end of the program).
🆘 Please do not use ChatGPT or other AI software to find your voice.
I believe the more that individuals use these tools to create content or communicate, the more they will lose their true voice.
And the more humans lose their voice, the more they lose who they are.
Truly.
For years, I have talked about TRUST and the Trust Trifecta. This is now what I believe in the most. To build, grow, and expand your trust in yourself, your story, and your audience is the key to finding presence, reclaiming your narrative and taking your power back, and deeply connecting with other human beings.
If you surrender your trust to AI to share yourself with the world, I guarantee you will lose trust in yourself, your story, and your audience and ultimately it will become impossible to rebuild those three pillars of The Trust Trifecta.
My original plan for today was to tell a story about my challenge with the word "transformation" and how I look at it now that I'm on the other side of a fitness program that was literally called "The Transformation Challenge."
But then this whole AI thing came up earlier this week. And it came up again in a session yesterday with a different facilitator who was suggesting to use Chat GPT to create a tagline for your business.
What?!? If you don't know what your business offers people, how in the world will you ever deliver services or sell products?! Okay, I am getting too fired up with the wrong kind of energy, so I will stop there. You get it. You probably already did before my rant.
Anyways, I will be back next week with the story about the Transformation Challenge. I want to share it because moving forward, in addition to the word Trust, I am using the word Transformation in my work.
I am making that choice, not ChatGPT.
I also planned to share more about the TRUST Audit that I spoke about last week and what else you can expect about how I am working with folks from now on.
More info to come, but here is a sneak peak of how you can work with me moving forward.
It starts with The TRUST Audit, which I announced last week. The link above creates more context around it. The essence of the Audit is a way to assess where you are currently in terms of the trust you have in yourself, your story, and your audience. Depending on what you (and I) discover through the assessment, you'll then have a better understanding of how you can build, grow and expand any or all of these three pillars. I know that still sounds a bit elusive, and I will have more concrete language around it coming soon.
In the meantime, if you are at all intrigued and have a gut feeling that the TRUST Audit could really help you out, then read the info on the web page that I linked above.
If you read it and it gives you more trust in trusting the process, then I invite you to sign up for the TRUST Audit.
You can learn more about (and book!) this 90-minute 1-on-1 session here: https://tellmeastory.info/audit
The TRUST Audit is an assessment that will help you determine next steps for yourself, but it will also help you determine if you want my support on those next steps and if the more in-depth work that I do with clients is the direction that makes the most sense to take.
If you do decide to continue to work with me (see the web link above for more info), the cost of the Audit is then deducted from the cost of the full program (The TRUST Transformation - more to come).
I realize I am spewing a lot of logistics at you. If it is easier to have a quick Zoom chat about any of this, I am happy to. Just hit reply and we'll find a time to speak.
In the meantime, trust your voice. It's more powerful than the robot.
Speak soon,
Hillary
😘 Thank you for reading!
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