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AI will create 2 types of companies. And while everyone races to automate everything, we’re asking, how do we make things faster without replacing humans?

In this episode, I’m sharing what’s happening behind the scenes as we build an in-person team, implement AI across the company, and focus on one question: How do we use AI without losing depth?

Key Takeaways

• Why I think you’ll eventually have to pick a side when it comes to AI
• The part of your business I don’t think technology can replace
• What we’re doing to make things faster without losing depth
• How I decide what gets my time when everything feels important
• The simple shift that’s helped me stay focused through a season of growth

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh:

Eventually, I think everything will start sounding the same, and the people who double down on authenticity and their voice are going to stand out.

And that’s where you have to find this place in your business of How do I integrate with AI so it’s an amplifier to what I’m already doing, to what I’m already good at, to my authenticity, to my voice, and not a replacement

We will not be the marketing company where you push a button and all your marketing assets are made by AI. You will have the human touch, and you will pay for that because I really think that’s gonna become more valuable.

How do we actually make the customer experience the delivery the results that we can get clients even better?

Embodied CEOs don’t chase trends. They pave the way they lead from within. Move by purpose, unshaken by noise. When you are the source, you do not need permission.

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I accidentally took a little week off. You know when you just have one of those weeks or for me it’s like week and a half where

literally as hard as you try you just can’t get to everything? That has been my last 10 days, and it’s been good things. It’s not like there’s fires or things happening that are stressful.

It’s just growth and a lot happening at once, and I just literally couldn’t record the podcast. Which is not really acceptable, I’m being honest. And I have my new in-person office. We all know this, ’cause I talk about it so much, but I haven’t quite like figured out the flow of I need to record in here when nobody else is in here.

And I now have three team members, two full-time. The other’s my content girl who’s not in here full time, and nobody’s in here full time, but because I was training them and I’m training them, they’re in here all the time. And so I just I just haven’t figured out my flow yet. I haven’t figured out the cadence, and so that’s honestly what happened.

But I thought I’d do an update episode and just see where it goes. I have so much that I could talk about. So many things that are incredible right now in the business and just across the board. Like I, I was falling asleep last night, and I’m in this mastermind group, and we meet every six months, and we’re meeting again in July, and I love this mastermind.

It’s a peer mastermind, and so it’s just a group of really awesome heart-led successful entrepreneurs. You have to be at a certain level to be in the group just to be able to contribute, and challenge each other. And at that meet, I left so inspired. It was at the end of last year. I’ve talked about it before when I got to go to Cody Sanchez’s headquarters, and I set some really big goals for myself.

And I was using the six months that I knew I would see them again as the, timeline. And as I was falling asleep last night, I was like almost slightly emotional and just like one of those moments where you know when you just don’t stop enough to acknowledge all that you are doing and all the, and how you’re showing up.

And you’re just doing the thing. And I realized, I set some really big goals, and my two big focuses were in-person office and my content. And I’ve done both of them. I actually think the in-person office turned out bigger and better than I could have imagined. I don’t think I thought I’d have this many team members this quickly, but it’s happened kinda through connections in Austin and con- connections in my gym.

If we won’t go there. And so it’s happened really fast, but it’s been incredible, and I have this feeling that we’re gonna outgrow this space quickly, and I’m- I’m just pumped to have my team at the event, the live event happening in July. I fly some of my team out, but to have even more team members there and just the culture and collaboration, I’m obsessed.

I’m obsessed with the in-person. And yeah, last night as I was falling asleep, I was like, “Man, I’ve really showed up and stayed focused on these goals,” which I had, which were around team and content. And consistency has been a big thing for me this year. So I thought I’d just kinda update you guys, and I’d talk about some takeaways and where I’m at and maybe also get into, like, how do I handle these extremely busy seasons?

Because for the most part, I work 25 hours a week. That’s where I’m at, and this has really stretched me a little bit. I’m figuring out my schedule again because having my team in the office, driving to the city, to the office, just… when you have a lot of changes and then you kinda have to re-find your footing?

That has been the last few weeks for me, and I’m gonna re-find my footing, but I’m in this leap. And so how I literally manage that because I did have some days that I was super overwhelmed just purely from the fact that it was like, “I can’t get to everything.” I literally needed a whole extra day to be able to do everything in a week, and I hate that because then I become a bottleneck to either team members.

I missed my workout one day. That never hap- never happens, but I was doing this heavy AI implementation day with my team, and I was like, ” I gotta stay. I gotta stay in the office. We’re in it. We’re locked in.” So how I have been managing that and hopefully you’ll, get something out of that.

I think that in the summer it can become challenging ’cause a lot of you guys listening are parents. And so I understand, you’re pulled between… And I feel it right now. You’re pulled between, “I wanna make a, an incredible summer of memories with my kids, and I don’t wanna work as much.” Al- also in my case I don’t want the business to slow down.

I have to actually sometimes work harder in the summer for the business to maintain and grow because summers can be slower months. Can be, don’t have to be. So let’s talk about that. So first, just overall update is the in-person office and where I see everything going and my priorities as a business.

I think that more and more, as I implement AI into our company and see how it helps, how it’s taking resources what is helping, what is not, I think that there’s gonna be two companies, basically, in the coming years. Two types. There’s gonna be the company that has to go all in on AI and has to automate a lot of things and be able to operate in that really slim margin and really integrate it, is what I’ve been saying on the podcast.

Integrating AI and making sure that you can operate at the level that you’re gonna need to operate because of the reality of AI. And then I think there’s gonna be this other entire bucket of companies that are gonna use AI but not to the extreme, and are gonna be heavy on the human touch and heavy on the human connection.

And people are gonna pay more for it. And I don’t think there’s gonna be an in between. I don’t think that… I think there w- obviously there will be an in between, but where I’m going with this is I think you have to almost pick a camp. And you have to go I’m either gonna go all in on extreme automation and, within that I think that there’s gonna be also people who go…

We’re gonna talk about that, who go too far to the automation side, and they actually have to pull back. But for me, one thing that I’m realizing is everybody’s so obsessed with AI. And rightfully it’s it’s massively changing. It’s changing so much. But I’m of the mindset of I want to not lose depth.

And we’re building automations, but my entire priority in my business right now is, like, how do we actually do what we’re already doing better and with more depth? And how that shows up in marketing is really messaging. It’s content. It’s the voice of the brand that we’re representing. It’s that authenticity.

It’s that magic that the founder has. And I actually think we’re gonna see, over the next few years, we’re gonna see a lot of people use AI to replace ideation, to replace their voice, to take shortcuts, cut corners, and build a business that might initially have some success, or it might initially help their business and help them mass produce.

But eventually, I think everything will start sounding the same, and the people who double down on authenticity and their voice are going to stand out. And that’s where you have to find this place in your business of how do I use… How do I integrate with AI so that it is amplifying? It’s an amplifier to what I’m already doing, to what I’m already good at, to my authenticity, to my voice, and not a replacement And so for me and our company, I look at what we’re doing, just so you have the b- like literally behind-the-scenes pictures.

We’re taking a part of the company. Right now we’re looking at client onboarding and client management because that takes the heaviest amount of resources. And we’re saying, “Okay, here is what we’re doing. Here’s what team members are spending time doing. Here’s what’s taking the most time.

Here’s what’s the repetitive, the more manual side. And how do we build an automation to help them do something more streamlined, but not actually automate the art of what they’re doing for clients?” We do not use AI for any strategy development in our company. The actual strategy development, every single client in every single level gets a strategy call.

We look at their, we look at their intake, we look at their business, we look at what they’re good at, we look at their offers, all of that. We do that in depth, and then we have a strategy call and we develop their strategy, and we do not use AI for that. The only thing we use AI for in that process is summarizing.

So it takes their intake form and it summarizes and says, it organizes the information. But the actual strategist, the human being behind the strategy who does hundreds of strategies who… That’s their art. I truly believe all these things are people’s art. This is what I call it is not being replaced.

The copywriters, the designers. Are we gonna use AI to sometimes get copy 60 to 70% of the way there? Sure, but we have the foundation, too and the messaging strategy. So are they using AI to help? Yes. But are, am I replacing with AI? No. So we’re going through the different roles and we’re saying, “Okay, what is basically the art that somebody brings to this role, that the human brings to this role, that brings depth, it brings innovation, it b- it brings creativity?”

AI just it… I personally don’t think it’ll ever get to that level that a human could bring in terms of the creativity. And how do we create automation and systems so that the person can do more of their art and less of the things that take them away from their art? So that’s what I’m doing right now and we’re going through every part of the company and massive streamlining, and it’s taking a ton of mental power because we’re looking at every single part of the customer experience, the steps.

How do we make it more efficient? How do we make it better? How do we make it more clear? How do we make it faster? Like, how do we launch a funnel and launch a campaign faster, but not replacing the team with AI? So I actually wanna be in the camp of human interaction. We will not be the marketing company where you push a button and all your marketing assets are made by AI.

We won’t. You will have the human touch, and you will pay for that because I really think that’s gonna become more valuable. We’re gonna use AI to be more efficient. Yes, we do use AI, right? But it’s not a replacement. So that’s one thing that I’m doing right now in our company. We’ve had tremendous growth since I relaunched my offers into implementation offers.

It’s been incredible to see the response and just really hit this very streamlined experience of having these offers that just are so dialed-in. Such a… Our value ladder and customer experience, and I’ve been doing weekly wi- live webinars. So we’ve had a lot of growth, and now I get to look at, okay, what, how do we make it better?

How do we actually make the customer experience and the delivery and the results that we can get clients even better? And we’re going literally step by step, like really deep work. And having my team in person, I’ve been simultaneously training our new head of client delivery while updating this, so she’s part of it, and we’re resetting it all.

And it’s allowed me to be a part of every single step which has been really deep work. And so it’s been an opportunity to just go deep in areas that I probably haven’t been in a few years. And that happens in a company, right? And you move to a different spot, and I feel like this is where we’re focused.

So that, plus my social media content. I did a training inside of my membership, Obsessed, and gave the behind the scenes of… I started posting twice a day early April and gave a full behind the scenes of the results and what’s working and what hasn’t worked. And I feel like we’re really hitting a stride with the content creation.

But it takes time. It takes time. I have to create the content. And, a big thing that I want to point out and that I took from that training that I brought, or I brought into that training is, for me, the investment in media is the investment in my long game of my company.

It’s not im- I know it’s not immediate ROI. It’s not driving our leads. It’s not driving our sales. It’s driving the impact and the growth that the company can have, that the brand can have. And attention is currency, and so media is a great way to do that. And so I’m investing in that as a long-term, consistent investment.

I know long term it will pay off. I know without a doubt it will. But we still have our avenues for lead generation, for visibility ads that grow our audience, for, getting people into my weekly webinar, into booking a call and through the pipeline regularly. And I think that’s an important differentiation because when I was teaching this training I, what I explained was, like, you have to meet yourself where you’re at right now.

And a lot of you, if not every one of them on there, you’re not in a place where it makes sense to say, “Let me post twice a day,” or even maybe once a day, right? And so meet yourself where you’re at and say, “How do I create consistency? How do I challenge myself to take my current content creation to the next level?”

And Make consistency the goal. Make… I am personally I’ll tell you guys, and I create a lot of content. We’ve created… This is over 800 episodes of the podcast. I’ve created content for 10 years. I’m pretty good. I’m a one-shot girl. I’m good at recording videos. I’m not afraid of videos.

I can bang content out all day long, and I have had to get better at creating content in this process, and I have improved, and I have taken it to my next level. And then I look at some of my friends, or I look at Cody Sanchez, or I look at, the Hermoses, and I’m like, “I’m nowhere near their level,” because I haven’t put in the reps. But I have had to specifically get better at hooks on a video, that first line that you say, and learn, what makes a good hook what is that focus, and really get better at that. And the only way to get better at that is through doing it. If you’re listening to this and you’re like I definitely can’t post twice a day,” I’m not saying that you should.

I do think consistency is such an important factor to your marketing strategy and to your business. And so what does that look like for you? And for me, I made a commitment of I want to try two times a day posting for a consistent period of time, 90 days plus, and build the systems, and build the process, and build the support so that I can do that and see what it does for the business.

And that’s kinda what I’ve done, but we’ve refined it a lot as we’ve gone. It’s been, What is it? Been almost two months now. So this will be almost two months of working with my content manager and doing twice-a-day posting, and we’ve played with the, we’ve played with the cadence of the posting and doing trial reels, and I shared it all in my Obsessed workshop.

If you go to embodiedmarketing.com/obsessed, you can get that replay. It’s $7 to join Obsessed. But I shared all the behind the scenes. I shared my top content. And it was really interesting. I shared the top content on views was different than the top content on what got followers. And so that was interesting to look at, and so I shared that, shared the strategy, what worked, what hasn’t, all of that, and I’ll continue to share that.

But that’s been another big focus, and those were my intentions for the year. So it’s June. We are how in June, and I really I really this is an invitation if you’re listening to this of, okay, we’re coming up halfway through the year. What is the magic I’m gonna create the rest of the year? What is that reality?

And I, I can’t stress enough, I think one of the things that I did well this year so far that has led to so much coming to fruition is I stayed really focused. I didn’t try to do too much. I still feel like we’re doing a lot, but I really stayed focused on core initiatives. And one of those was content, the other was the in-person office, and the other was consistency in our sales.

And so that’s come from my weekly live webinar, which I’m go- I’ve been doing it since February. Every single week, haven’t missed a week. I do that webinar, and it converts incredibly, and it’s created this consistency where I actually don’t have to live launch as much. But I think one thing I’ve done well is gotten so clear on where we’re going and then maintained my own focus and my team’s focus this whole year so far.

And so that’s my invitation to you as we look at, okay, we’re halfway through the year. And, what is that … If you could- had to choose two or three main initiatives, what would those be? So Those are some, where- what’s working, some updates. I’ll also share this fun idea. So I did this with my kids where I went and got this mini poster board with them.

And I was like, “We’re gonna do a summer challenge. We’re gonna call it Summer Hard. And it’s gonna be your list of what are your goals and what, what are some bucket list things that you wanna do?” And so we all made, my husband, my kids, me, we all made our list and are saying June through August here’s the things we’re doing to make it an epic summer, both fun things but also challenging things.

So my kids put my daughter wants to do 1,000 pull-ups, which is a lot in three months . My son wants to do, my youngest, my six-year-old, wants to do 100 pull-ups and 100 pushups. So that’s been… That was fun to kinda reset too, halfway through the year. Okay, what are the habits? What are the things that I wanna really dial in the summer while also balancing having fun and experiences and making it a fun summer?

So we did that, and I’ve been messing with my kids like, “It’s Summer Hard, you guys. M- make it the best summer. Take it serious,” and they love it. They’re my kids, so they love it. But it’s a fun little challenge or thing you could do with your kids or your partner or your friends. And I think it’s fun to do that in the summer because I think the summer can be a time where people fall off, and I’m all for having fun and making memories and not working too much in the summer if that’s aligned with what you wanna do.

And also, how can you still have the discipline and the accountability that you wanna have so that at the end of the summer you’re like, “I showed up as the best version of myself”? And for me, that looks like some unplugged experiences with my family as well as really making some big shit happen in the business and in my own life and in my training.

I was like, “I need a goal. I need a goal to train for. I’m injured. My shoulder’s still injured. My back is still injured. Whatever. We’re not talking about it.” So I need a goal, and so I ma- I made my goal run 200 miles in the summer because I am doing a lot more running ’cause I can run. So that’s one thing I’ve been doing.

And then last thing I wanted to share is just in a busy season what I do, like real time, share that with you because I… I- it’s just been, the last few weeks have just been one of those weeks where it’s, I have way too much on my plate, and I just physically can’t do it all. So one thing that is critical in these seasons is understanding what is top priority, because everything feels like somewhat like priority.

And really getting clear on if the day ends and I don’t do this, that’s the biggest needle mover. And I think that is one of the most critical skills as an entrepreneur, is having focused time with the highest leverage things you could possibly do of either only I can do this, or if I do this, it sets everybody else up for more success tomorrow or whatever.

And so r- really what happened is I got to a point where I was ignoring a lot of things, and it wasn’t ideal, and it was a little bit overwhelming, but I knew I only had so much capacity. And so my biggest priority became, how do I just stay fully present to what’s in front of me? So whether that was recording content, whether that was in a meeting, whether that was training my team member, or sitting in here and doing our AI implementation strategy, like whatever I was doing, I was fully present.

Which means last week, like my text messages, my Slack, my email got so backlogged that I basically was just like I gotta throw my phone away.” And I did get… I got caught up. I actually worked Friday night. My kids had a friend over, and they were occupied watching a movie, and I was like, “All right, whatever.

I’ll just spend an hour and a half,” and I just banged through everything, all my emails, my Slack messages, everything in an hour and a half. And so the lesson in that is when you are in a season of overwhelm It’s not becoming the overwhelm and allowing that to then put you in a reactive state. And I think that is the thing.

I w- I work with my team on this. I train my team on this. I work with entrepreneurs on this because it’s really easy when you have more to do than you can physically do with the time that you have that day, which happens. It’s a constant game of a making a decision around what gets your t- attention, what gets your time and energy.

And it’s discipline because there are sometimes things that could get your time and energy that feel productive, but don’t actually move the needle to the level they could and what is actually needed. And so I went into massive I was very strict, and I was like, this is the only thing.

This is all I can do.” And, I would tell my team “I see these messages. I just can’t get to them yet.” And I get that they are important. They’re not important. It’s just there’s a list above it that’s even more important, and eventually I’ll get caught up. I genuinely feel like last week…

I said this to someone on Saturday. I was like, “I feel like last week, today, this morning, Saturday, I…” Not that I’m recording this Saturday, but I said this on Saturday. I came up from wa- underwater and got my head above water and it was like, “What was that?” That’s how I feel like last week was.

Combination, too, of summer starting, short week with Memorial Day, just all the things, okay? So my point being, you’re gonna have times, and it’s summertime. We’ve got kids home. Your schedule might be different. I get it. How can you be not reactive to your environment, not reactive to the email the client sends, the social media post that didn’t go out, or whatever happens in your day?

How can you be super intentional with where your time and energy goes and constantly be reassessing and constantly be going, “Is… If I spend the next amount of time doing this, is that the highest leverage thing I should be doing, or is there something else?” And then you gotta have the skill of you just ignore everything else, especially as a CEO, because you should ideally, and hopefully you have support that you can do some of that.

Obviously if I had clients and I was managing clients and I just decided to ignore them, that wouldn’t work, but I have a team who, manages our client delivery, so I can do that. I can ignore my email. I ignored my email all week. I didn’t even open my email because I have someone who’s checking for the urgent things in there.

And then what are your non-negotiables? And for me, I did miss one day of working out, but I made up for it on the weekend which never happens. I did not like, and I felt Not even mentally bad. I didn’t feel guilty that I missed it ’cause it was an intentional choice. I made the intentional choice to miss the workout, but I felt off.

It felt weird to me because I’m so consistent with my workouts. But the rest of the week, I would just come time to work out, and I would just set everything down and walk away and walk into the gym, and it was like I did everything that I could today, and these other things have to wait. And it’s kinda like a jigsaw puzzle every week of how do you fit everything in that you need to do. I don’t want to or like being as busy as I was anymore. I used to be really addicted to that And I need white space. So that is coming in the coming weeks. It’s just a season. It’s mostly ’cause I’m training these new team members and just have a lot more demands on my time than usual and just figuring out my new schedule.

But all that to say this summer, here’s my takeaways for you guys from this episode. One, reset your goals. We’re coming up on six months through the year. We’re at, we finished five, we’re in the six months. Reset your goals. What are you going to create in the next seven months? And what are the top three focuses that have to happen for that to come to reality?

Get clear, ’cause nothing happens if you’re not clear. Be so clear on that direction. And then two, it’s summer. And in the summer, a lot of times we can fall off routine, we can fall off eating well, we can fall off working out, we can fall off committing to the things we should in our business, and all it takes is intention.

And you getting clear on “These are the things I’m still committed to,” whether that is habits or health a challenge that you create for yourself, how much you’re gonna work out, whatever. Take into consideration the vacations, take into consideration the fun, but it’s not like that just means everything else goes out the window.

What are the things and the places you need to show up consistently in your business for your team, creating content? All of those things. Just shift to intention and clarity around that, and then your actions will follow. And with the different schedules and the vacations and the travel, get clear on “What do I still want to be reality in my business?

Do I wanna grow? Is it gonna take an extra push to grow? Do I not wanna grow? Do I wanna take a sabbatical this summer?” You’re free to do whatever you want. My encouragement is do it intentionally. Don’t do it as a reaction to, “Oh, my kids are out of school, so I can’t work. I’m annoyed at it. I’m resentful, and so then this falls through.

I’m telling myself I’m gonna do it. I’m not doing it.” That’s reactive. You are in charge. So get in that driver’s seat and be intentional with it taking everything into consideration, and then make the next three months of summer incredible. That’s how I’m looking at it. I always complain about the heat, but I’m like, to my kids, “No.

We are gonna make friends. We’re gonna go out on boats with people.” I just got invited to this really cool, I’ve been doing better with my networking. I got invited to this really cool like sauna party on Friday that’s on the lake with some cool people in Austin and I’m like, “This is gonna be the best summer.

This is gonna be the best summer because we’re gonna all…” I told my kids, “We’re gonna all get better, we’re gonna all grow, and we’re gonna have a lot of fun.” The discipline Of working out and doing these things and these challenges and showing up doesn’t take away from the fact that we can also make memories and let loose and whatever.

Same thing in your business. What do you want your business to look like over the next three months? Don’t react or be a victim to the environment of summer. It is real that kids are out of school and that schedules change, but what does that mean you have to change for your own schedule? Be intentional with it.

All right, guys. I’m sorry for my hiatus on the podcast. am figuring out the recording schedule. I’ve got some guests lined up soon, so that’s gonna come back. And I think we’re gonna do something fun where you can actually call in and ask me a question, because I want to create some interaction on here with you guys.

So stay tuned for that. Thank you so much for tuning in. I appreciate you guys so much. I am so beyond grateful for this community, and I will talk to you next time