Podcast LIVE: The 30% Time-Saver You're Probably Missing With Cheryl Laidlaw | EP308

Ever wondered how the world's most efficient entrepreneurs are leveraging artificial intelligence? In this illuminating episode captured live at the Mindset in Action event, web design veteran Cheryl Laidlaw reveals the transformative potential of AI for small business productivity.

The conversation quickly dispels the common misconception that AI is simply ChatGPT. Cheryl, who's been building websites for 22 years, initially feared AI might take her job – then made the strategic decision to master it instead. Her candid assessment? While reports suggest AI saves business owners 30% of their time, she's actually doubled her business capacity through strategic implementation.

We explore the remarkable difference between free and paid AI services, with Cheryl detailing how she's created approximately 20 specialised AI "assistants" for different business functions. The results are astonishing – tasks that once consumed hours now take seconds. Her proposal process exemplifies this efficiency: recording client discovery calls, feeding the transcript into her custom AI assistant, and generating comprehensive proposals instantly.

The episode doesn't shy away from important considerations. Cheryl addresses sustainability concerns (every five AI prompts uses roughly the same energy as boiling a kettle), privacy implications when handling client data, and the embarrassing pitfall of publishing obviously AI-generated content without personalisation. Her practical advice emphasises that AI should complement your business toolkit, not replace your unique voice and expertise.

Ready to transform your relationship with technology and reclaim hours in your week? This episode is your practical roadmap.

Connect with Cheryl Laidlaw on LinkedIn or Website

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www.donnaeade.com

Chapters

• 1:03 Welcome to Mindset in Action
• 2:04 Introduction to AI with Cheryl Ladlaw
• 3:10 Understanding AI Beyond ChatGPT
• 6:15 Custom AI Assistants for Business
• 10:12 AI Sustainability Considerations
• 16:09 Avoiding Common AI Pitfalls
• 20:57 Q&A: AI Implementation Challenges
• 24:47 Future of AI Regulation

Transcript

Donna Eade: 0:33

You're listening to the Mindset in Action podcast, the place to be to grow and streamline your business. I'm your host, donna Eade. Let's jump into the show. Welcome back to the podcast.

Donna Eade: 0:51

Everybody, I'm so glad to have you here today for this live session from the Mindset in Action live event. Today, we have Cheryl Ladlaw and we are talking all about AI in productivity. This was a really interesting conversation because AI is something that is relatively new to most of us, and so I hope you enjoy it. Do make sure that you are checking the show notes so that you can connect with Cheryl and all of the other speakers that I had at my event. All the links will be in the show notes under each episode. So we have this is the third one and we have three more to go, so I hope you are excited and let's jump in to the AI conversation. Welcome, thanks, I'm so excited to have you here. Conversation welcome, thanks, I'm so excited to have you here. So this is a key, and I know andrea likes the word community, but I run the business women unlimited online networking group and we're a fabulous network of women as well. Um, and this is the power of networking community. Whatever you'd like to say, because I was looking for a speaker to come and speak on this particular topic and I didn't know anybody personally and I put it out to my network and I had a few suggestions from a few people. Thank you, judy. And Cheryl came to me through Enves, who's not here today, but I'm sure many of you in the room know her and I am so excited to have her here. So this is really exciting.

Donna Eade: 2:16

We are going to be talking about productivity and the little known beast that has crept onto our stage recently AI. Anybody know AI. Anybody use it. Anybody terrified of it? Oh yeah, so there we go. So we've got a bit of a mixture in the room. So, cheryl, tell us a little bit about what you do and who you are. I meant to say that the other way around. Could you tell the stumble? That's fine. That's fine, we'll get there.

Cheryl Laidlaw: 2:43

So for those of you that don't know me, I'm predominantly a web designer. I've been building websites for about 22 years, had my own business for 15 years and in the crazy world of the internet, AI came around.

Donna Eade: 3:01

Cheryl, I don't want to stop you, but we're not going to pick that up on the podcast. Eat your microphone.

Cheryl Laidlaw: 3:05

There we go. Sorry, the lovely world of the internet AI came about in. Well, it's been around years and years and years, but on the main platform platform around 2021. So I was like shit, it's gonna take my job because that's what we all think, right. So I made a decision that I'm gonna get behind this and uh, start a podcast all about web3 AI and just naturally just fell into it as a result of just being a huge tech geek.

Donna Eade: 3:44

Love that. So, before we get started into how we can use AI in our business, can you tell us what is AI, because I think a lot of us just think it's chat, gpt, because I think a lot of us just think it's chat, gpt, god.

Cheryl Laidlaw: 4:00

what is AI? It's basically a. I don't even know how to explain it the best. It's a. It's an intelligence. I mean it's an intelligence that we've been building for years and years. It actually came around in 1930s and we've been building it up to make it as intelligent as us for years and years and years, and it's just basically information that's been fed into a machine that's now a beast.

Donna Eade: 4:33

Yeah, but there's lots of different tools that we can use. It's not just chat, gpt, it's not just chat I'm going to just call it chat now. There are other models of chat, but then there are different softwares that integrate different elements of AI aren't there. So can you tell us some of the softwares that we may use on a daily basis that actually contain AI that we might not even realise? That is actually?

Cheryl Laidlaw: 5:03

AI. Well, most of every single software now has some kind of integration of AI. I mean even from your Zoom meetings through to obviously Canva's got it in and probably not long before we've got it in Outlook. Has that just come about? I think in emails it has, hasn't it?

Donna Eade: 5:25

Do we still use Outlook? Yeah, some people do Brilliant.

Cheryl Laidlaw: 5:31

So really it's everywhere. We just don't know it, and if we are aware of it, then we can make use of it yeah, which is what we're going to talk about today.

Donna Eade: 5:40

So how do you actually use AI in your business?

Cheryl Laidlaw: 5:45

I use it for absolutely every single task because I am ADHD, dyslexic and it helps move my business. And some say it's a bit of a lazy way because I don't write anything myself anymore. I just whack it through AI and it just for me. If there's a process, if there's a system to something, I will just run with it. So everything pretty much.

Donna Eade: 6:16

I love that. So everything pretty much I love that. So we were talking before and you were talking about some of the ways that you use it in your business and you said you use the paid version of chat, and I don't currently. But after this I'm like, oh okay, so I wanted to enlighten you. If you didn't know, what is the difference between the free version and the paid version and why should we be looking at using the paid version?

Cheryl Laidlaw: 6:48

so chat gpt, for example, or claude or gemini, they all start to get to know you and your business, whereas the paid version, we can customize it a little bit more and chat gp, call them agents, others call it ai assistants, but you can basically create these small assistants that can generate your jobs faster. So I've got about 20 of them ones for emails, ones for social media, ones called fort leadership. Another one is where, if I record the whole of a discovery call, I will then put it through my proposal AI assistant. So I've got about 20 different ones and, of course, you can go, you can start creating them for clients and it yeah, I can't praise it enough, to be honest with you so give us an example.

Donna Eade: 7:42

So take your proposal one for example. Take us through the process of what that looks like, from that initial call to how you use chat, and, and how it actually works and saves you time okay.

Cheryl Laidlaw: 7:57

So I use a fantastic proposal, um software called better proposals, highly recommend it, um, my clients love it. They're like, oh my god, this is like a website. So I've taken that setup that I've spent years and years and used to take a couple of hours to do a proposal. And I'll run that through chat gpt and say this is how I lay out my proposals and say, for example, you've got a particular industry that you focus on mine's, medical, for example. I would say this is the parameters that I want you to set out at design goals, build opportunities and software. So I just level it all out and say this is the perfect proposal and you can upload several of those. So tell ChatGPT this is a good proposal. Then what will happen? I will do a Again.

Cheryl Laidlaw: 8:49

This is when you have a Zoom call with your clients. Ask them are they happy to have it recorded? Because I've been in a situation where they're not overly impressed with that and they'll say no. So ask them if they're happy. Record the meeting Again. You would ask them all the questions that you normally would on a call and you can use an additional tool that's attached to Zoom. There's one called Phantom and another one called Otty or Otto and you can use an additional tool that's attached to Zoom. There's one called Phantom and another one called Otty or Otto I can't remember Otter, otter, and it will basically record the call, summarise it. So I take the summarisation, whack it through my AI assistant and I've got a proposal in seconds and it used to take you two hours.

Donna Eade: 9:43

So that is one example of how that chat assistant, that one specific chat assistant that you have built and you've fed into it what is good. This is what is good. These are the questions that I need answering. This is how I need to lay down and it does it for you, and you have different assistants for different things exactly, and you can build them for clients so each client could have their own assistant. So if your client particularly likes things a certain way, you could program the assistant to do it that way and you don't have to think about it again and and that's the difference between the free version.

Donna Eade: 10:15

Right, because the free version doesn't have such a good memory of thinking about everything. Is that?

Cheryl Laidlaw: 10:21

well, it does start to um, get to know you. But if every time you have to put the same prompt in I if I didn't have the paid version, I'd probably have a word document full of all my prompts of I, copy paste that. Put that in. You know, make sure it's UK English. Make, don't use those dashes, don't use the word unlock, don't use the word unleash, like you need to give it the rules so that people know that it's you that's talking.

Cheryl Laidlaw: 10:50

And another thing where people are really getting it wrong lately um, there was a big company last week, um, that sent out their newsletter and it was really obviously chat gpt. So, although it should have been a brand new launch, everyone just went on the chat and said on the comments and said, wow, you guys really didn't make any effort here. Look at all the dashes, look at the telltale signs of ChatGPT, for example. So it's really important that you upload your brand voice and that could be 10 blogs that you wrote pre-2020. Because, let's face it, anything after 2020 is a little bit of chat assistant. So I would recommend uploading the way that you talk, your blogs, the way that you write blogs, the way that you write anything that's going to aid, basically your assistant, to really grasp who you are and write in your style.

Donna Eade: 11:44

Yeah, that's brilliant. So you're a quite a big advocate of taking courses for AI rather than just, you know, having a go and seeing what it is we were talking actually about, and the reason that we actually want to get educated on AI and and take those courses. And you suggested some platforms, so I'll let you suggest those, but can you talk about it in terms of one, why we should take a course, and two, um, about the sustainability towards it?

Cheryl Laidlaw: 12:16

yeah, I really loved that chat we had okay so they say that every small business owner is saving 30 percent of their time, which I think's a lot. I would honestly say, hand on heart, that I reckon I've doubled my business because of ai, not 30. And if you use it to its full capacity it's pretty impressive, yeah, yeah. And then the sustainability is uh. So lots of people don't know I grit. I say through gritted teeth because about every five prompts that you put into ChatGPT it's the same as boiling a kettle. It uses as much energy as boiling a kettle. So what can we do? Well, we're small business owners. We're probably doing a lot to offset our energy, as is right. We're always the ones flying the flag for sustainability. They are working on greener energy sources so that we can use chat gpt a little bit freer, but at the moment the advice is be mindful with chat gpt or any ai, which I don't think is very helpful.

Donna Eade: 13:32

So that's why I say it through gritted teeth, because I love it and use it all the time, but yet I'm ruining the planet but one of the advantages of having the paid version is that you're kind of putting all of that skill set, all of that knowledge in at the beginning and then it's a rinse and repeat. So rather than having to do all of those prompts again and again and again, you've already got it set up, so it's just a one prompt, rather than having to go oh no, I forgot to tell you to do it in UK English. Can you change?

Cheryl Laidlaw: 14:04

I like your thinking. I'm not sure if that is correct because you still have to prompt it, but I do like your thinking and I think possibly you might be right. You might have less prompts.

Donna Eade: 14:15

Yeah, I think, because that's what I do. I don't know about anybody else, but I'll put it in and then I'll realize that I haven't asked it to do UK English and it's got zeds in everything.

Donna Eade: 14:22

So I'm like can you change that please? And then I'm like oh no, actually you you've used my wrong name, like it always. Always puts mindset in action. So if you ever see that that's because I haven't caught it, um, but I'm like no, that is not my name and that's not how I say it. But yeah, so all of those little adjustment things which you wouldn't have to do because it's already there, saves you some prompts, ladies. So, uh, the how much is chat gpt, the one that you were talking?

Donna Eade: 14:49

16 pounds a month so it's not a huge, huge price. Um, so, and I think, given the amount that we use it and it, obviously it depends on your business, but I use it almost every day, so, uh, well worth it, well worth it. Has anybody got any questions for cheryl? And I've got one on here to ask, um, whilst we are moving, okay, bear with me, catherine. Have you experienced any negatives to using?

Cheryl Laidlaw: 15:18

AI. Well, exactly what I just said about people just basically copying and pasting straight into LinkedIn and it again. It's so obvious. But if you're just being introduced to chat GPT or Claude or Gemini, you get overly excited. You think, oh my God, this is amazing, I don't have to do anything ever again.

Cheryl Laidlaw: 15:40

Copy paste, copy paste, copy paste. But it's not a copy paste tool, it's an aid. It's just part of your toolkit. So everyone's scared that it's going to take over. It's just part of your toolkit, just like photoshop would be, just like canva would be, just like any you know software that you would be your email supplier, etc. Etc. It's just part of your toy toolkit. So, um, that is the number one thing just people copying and pasting. Um, we're going to get in. In the next five years, the internet is going to be flooded with absolute AI bullshit really, because we've all got excited, we've all pasted the same stuff in and it's all going to be the same. So it's going to be overrun with the same crap because people do not invest in the actual, real capabilities of it.

Donna Eade: 16:36

Brilliant Catherine.

Nicola Tonsager: 16:40

Is she unmuted? When you say about taking older blogs, do you literally copy and paste them and just put them in where you type things in? Do you tell it to learn from it? How does that work?

Cheryl Laidlaw: 16:57

Yeah, so again, depending on what platform you're using. So, I've got a paid version of Gemini. Okay, so you can just say this is my tone of voice and the five documents that I've uploaded, and then you name them individually. This is my tone of voice. Always make sure you use this style of writing so you tell it you. The more you tell it, the more the outcome would be. That's strictly not true either. Just keep telling it gets it right.

Julia Wadrop: 17:27

No bitch, that's wrong okay, julia the first one is have you named it and do you have a conversation with it?

Cheryl Laidlaw: 17:39

my chat gpu is just called chat. I had a conversation. I said what would you like to be called? And then we go through the names out. No, don't like any of them, we, we'll just call you chat. Okay, cheryl.

Julia Wadrop: 17:59

Oh very. I introduced Lindsay to something last night and I want you all to try it because it's like mind-blowing Sesamecom forward slash research. Type it in when you go in and it's a talking AI and it's either Maya or Mike. Have you heard of it? Have you go in and it's a talking ai called and it's either maya or mike?

Julia Wadrop: 18:15

have you heard of it have you done it yeah and it breathes, it sighs, it talks. You like this, honestly, try it. It's hilarious, but I think we're going to get a lot of that, aren't we?

Cheryl Laidlaw: 18:28

again you're. We're at a stage now where we can duplicate ourselves and it will feel like we are doing the Zoom rooms. People have got jobs because they've duplicated it using that platform. It's quite expensive at the moment, but it won't be for long.

Donna Eade: 18:49

I love that. I actually have chat on my phone and you can talk to it and you can choose different ones on there as well. I have that and I actually have chat on my phone and you can talk to it and you can choose different ones on there as well, and I have conversations. So my cat's really poorly. What should I do? And she's like take her to the vet. And I was like I can't take her to the vet.

Cheryl Laidlaw: 19:03

You need to tell it that it's the vet I said I can't take her to the vet, blah, blah, blah, blah blah, and she was so sorry to hear that.

Donna Eade: 19:14

I can understand how that could be made and I was just like she's my friend, you know. You know how you're saying. You were lonely, andrea, I think a lot of us are just found yourself a new friend. Yeah, brilliant, okay. Well, anybody else got any questions? Oh, one at the back, please, katherine thank you.

Claire Rulton: 19:32

I was just going to say I use chat GPT quite a lot and you were saying about that. You can set up different chats. I use it with my partner. He does a completely different job to what I do. I'm an accountant, he's a bid writer and it the chats work amazing for both of us with the paid for version, um. But also I would say, just be careful about what you are uploading because it is learning from you. Now on chat gpt with the paid for version, there is a temporary button now and it will only hold that information for a certain amount of time and won't put it on the wider network. So it's worth pressing that button sometimes with the information that you're uploading, if it's confidential, like a proposal, and it's got client names in, etc oh well, yeah, just to add to that.

Cheryl Laidlaw: 20:24

Um, it's learning everything. So if you're signing an NDA and you're working with clients, do not not use chat GPT to write anything or do anything on there, I would say even the temporary one, because it's going to come back on you.

Debbie Gilbert: 20:41

So there are things to be mindful of.

Cheryl Laidlaw: 20:42

Yeah, you really do. I mean, it's a good point and one that we need to take responsibility for, and eventually we'll need to have ai policies on our website and how we use it, because people are going to start asking questions what you do with my information. Are you putting it through ai? Are you? You know what's your policies? So I mean you can get chat gpt to write, it's fine, but, um, it is important to think about how we are using our information for GDPR purposes okay wonderful, thank you very much.

Donna Eade: 21:21

Any more questions? What? Oh, look, you've got all the questions. Cheryl Becky thank you.

Becky Sanderson: 21:28

Um, I've been kind of avoiding getting on the ai bandwagon, but it comes to a point, as a digital designer, that you can't avoid it any longer. So, yeah, I've overcome that little hurdle and tentatively making my way around chat, gpt and that's as far as it's got so far. Um, a client of mine uses and trains AI for academics, so in her specific niche you can see how that's really going to accelerate and change that industry or that sector. But I guess it's the same across many sectors. Myself I'm a digital designer.

Becky Sanderson: 22:09

I publish books and help my clients to publish books on Amazon, and one of the issues with Amazon is obviously the use of AI to create and write books, which people are doing and getting away with and then other people doing and getting their accounts shut down because they've unknowingly broken the rules. So my question was do you see in the near future that there's going to be any kind of regulation around the use of ai across the board? Obviously, amazon's stance on it, I feel, is the right stance, that they're being quite tough on it, and I think that's there has to be that for publishing, uh, particularly as an industry. But what? What are your thoughts on that?

Cheryl Laidlaw: 22:56

it's a shocker, isn't it? Because we can say we could take one of your beautiful logos that you've designed or a book design and say this is the new type of the book. I want to do it in this style done, upload, finish and people will do that. People are are copying and pasting. It's that whole copy-paste. Everything's easy. People will do it because they don't want to work for it. There are going to be things in place that's going to help prevent it.

Cheryl Laidlaw: 23:24

Whether or not it's going to be beneficial or used in the right way, we are yet to see it. So there's an artist at the moment that's suing open ai because the new model that's come out in literally the last week or two, um, you can duplicate her work and you know it's. So it's really. It's becoming a really popular subject now amongst AI because at the moment, we can still do that. We can do it now. We can go to our phones now and duplicate something quite beautiful and everyone's like, yay, I can do something in five minutes. And people always want that Easy fix that people work really hard for for 10 years, 20 years, and they can get it overnight. Good point. So it will come, but I don't know how effective it's going to be.

Donna Eade: 24:18

And I would like to say that the books that you have in your bags are all written by hand by real people that put hours into them, so just be aware. They're not AI books, so just be aware they're not AI books.

Nicola Tonsager: 24:33

So I can put my natal chart into AI and it can interpret my natal chart for me, presumably because it has pulled that information off the web and it's learning. So I work with a really specific approach called soul signatures. If I put all of that information into AI over a period period of time, would somebody else be able to access their soul signature information and gain insight into their profile, their soul signatures profile, or would that be something that would be only available through my account?

Cheryl Laidlaw: 25:06

it's a good question because they're saying that the ai models are learning from everyone.

Nicola Tonsager: 25:13

Yeah, it would be beneficial because then people would be able to get an interpretation, rather than necessarily in an easy way, rather than necessarily always coming to work with me or my trainers.

Cheryl Laidlaw: 25:23

So, but it's just that was going through my mind well, they're saying, like someone said, uh said, be careful what you put in because it will come back. Yeah, a question I get a lot is how can I show up on AI if people ask questions? But ultimately, ai is still getting a lot of its information from the internet. So if you're not on the internet, if you've not got good SEO which is why it's all all relevant, which is why websites still need to be built professionally seo is still important because ai is getting their information, learning from us and learning from the crap on the internet so technically, if you put all your soul signatures on a website and put all the information it would need, it would trawl that when somebody goes into chat and says what is my soul signature?

Donna Eade: 26:12

it would go oh soul signature yeah I found that, so it is.

Nicola Tonsager: 26:15

So that would work really well, actually, because you know, like people are able to download their, for instance, their human design chart or the natal chart, they could download their profile information and then obviously they could work with me or one of my ambassadors if they wanted more information or wanted to go deeper well, what you would do is create your own assistant and then you'd put that assistant on your website oh, something to talk about with cheryl later.

Donna Eade: 26:37

Fantastic, thank you. Did you have a question?

Debbie Gilbert: 26:40

debbie, because I've done mmc, learning the ai qualifications with them, and I just wondered where you'd done yours oh, I haven't got an official um certification.

Cheryl Laidlaw: 26:52

I get all my courses from udemy. I go on youtube and I've had to learn quick, smart if there's a podcast coming up. So I've had no choice.

Debbie Gilbert: 27:01

Well, I would recommend them and see learning. So I've done both the generative ai and the imagery, and it's not hugely expensive it was about 350 quid. Per course, it was a whole day online, but the great thing with them is that you've got free access to all the updates after that.

Cheryl Laidlaw: 27:18

Yeah.

Debbie Gilbert: 27:19

And it will blow your mind what ChatGPT can do on the paid version.

Cheryl Laidlaw: 27:24

Yeah, we're just scratching the surface really today.

Debbie Gilbert: 27:27

Yeah, I mean there's so much you can do on it, and do not upload personal data without consideration, because, yeah, that's one thing I would say.

Donna Eade: 27:40

Brilliant. Thank you so much. Thank you, you can turn that one off now, babe. Thank you, cheryl, very much. I really appreciate you coming in today. Thank you, really appreciate you coming in today.