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The magic of your business can’t come from AI.

In this episode, I’m taking you behind the scenes of a week that felt like months of work compressed into a few days. We completely overhauled our client experience, rebuilt parts of our delivery process, and looked at every single step, from onboarding to implementation, to make it easier, faster, and clearer for our clients.

Key Takeaways:

• The CEO’s role is to set the standard
• Growth creates pressure on delivery; it’s a balance
• 80% of your role is finding bottlenecks; the other 20% is fixing them urgently when you find them
• We’re using AI to increase efficiency WITHOUT losing the human touch

 _____________________________________

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh:

I’m not obsessing over AI. I said this to my team, I said this on the podcast, like my goal with AI is how do I continue to leverage it so the team can do what they’re really good at? So the copywriters, the designers, the funnel builders can do what they’re really good at more and keep that, there’s gonna be all different ways that we can use AI that wouldn’t make sense today, ’cause it doesn’t exist yet.

People are gonna lose their voice in AI and with content because they’re gonna over-rely on it, and they’re gonna lose their authenticity. Our job is to pull out that magic. That magic can’t come from AI. That has to come from you as the foundation.

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 got a little change up in here. You can’t fully see it in the picture, but I put it on my stories. I got some art up. I am still very obsessed, if you can’t tell, with the in-person office. Just so grateful, and I just can’t believe sometimes that it’s come to fruition, and it feels like it actually did fast in terms of having a team work in here.

So anyways, I have been… I feel like I am finally… It’s been two weeks of a sprint that I think that I’m coming up above water, and catching my breath, and gonna be good moving forward, and figuring it out, getting back ahead of recording and just in a groove a little bit more for now. And so I thought I would do just a chat podcast.

I was thinking of sharing behind the scenes of what we have been working on, and just giving you a perspective as somebody who has a team of 18, and how I manage and really f- organize, like, where I put my attention in the business and why, and then also walk through a process that I have been through in the last week.

And it’s interesting. It’s like I joked that it’s like once a year, this version of me comes out that is like this insane machine. I don’t know how else to describe it besides I get into this zone, and I get clear and connected to a project or something that we’re gonna launch or ship or change or whatever, and I’m like, “I’m so clear, and I want it done yesterday.”

And it is that crazy part, that crazy entrepreneur part of me that pushes for that and pushes for the excellence and turns it into this sprint, and then it turns into something amazing. But it’s normally, I work, 20, 25 hours a week, and I have the team, and I have the systems. There’s projects I’m working on and things that I’m working on, but not to this extent.

But it’s like once a year this comes out. And so last week, this version of me came out. And I have some new team members here in Austin, and it was kinda cool because it was a great introduction to being a part of Embodied Marketing and just seeing the way that I care about client delivery and just seeing the way that I overhaul something and kind of reset the foundation. And so I want to talk about what we worked on and how I look at it, because I do think that the way that I build offers and the way that I organize delivery, I’m fortunate in the sense that I think I do have a little bit of an operations mind.

I don’t like doing operations, and I don’t keep myself there because it’s … I’m not quite detail-oriented enough for it. But I can think in really clear step-by-steps. I’d say that’s one of my gifts, is I can say, “Here’s where we’re trying to take somebody,” whether that’s in a marketing experience or an actual delivery experience through, an offer, right?

And for me, a service, like there’s a lot of steps that go into it. And I can say, “Here’s where we’re trying to take someone,” and then break it down step by step so that it is really clear for the other person, really easy for the other person, going through it, and that they can get the result.

And so what we worked on in this last week, and it just so timed perfectly because I had two new team members starting in the delivery department of our business. We launched two new offers, Activate and Scale, I think now close to four months ago. And so that story’s on the podcast, but I basically stopped selling programs and any done with you, any teaching any giving you templates, any doing any of that.

I stopped selling that, and I went all in on it’s all done for you. It’s implementation. It’s implementation at different levels in your business, depending on where you’re at. And it has really crushed it. And so at a high level, like these offers did really well, and we had the initial launch of the offers and the process.

But then, of course, after selling quite a few of them and having a lot of clients through the– go through the process, we can go back and say, “Okay, where can we get better? Where can we improve the communication? Where can we improve the efficiency?” Which is really important with how I set these up, because I basically was like, “I’m gonna charge the price of a ra- what a program would be, where you teach somebody how to do this, and I’m gonna charge that for done for you.”

And so on our end, as a company, efficiency in delivering it is super important because I don’t have a ton of margin on it is basically my idea. And my thought was being able to streamline systems, to use AI where it made sense and not AI in the deliverables as much ’cause I’m been really leaning in on like very human-led in terms of the assets we create because it does better in terms of conversion, but AI in the process and the systems.

And so I had two new team members starting in the delivery department, and it just was like the perfect opportunity for me to go back through every single step from when a client signs on to work with us to basically launching all the things that we launch. And every single step, every step internally for the team, every step for the client.

And this is a project That for most people, how long? I would actually be curious. How long do you think that should take? I think that for the average person it would take a month, and e- and even that’s fast. You go into a corporation and you’re like, “We’re gonna completely overhaul and…”

Not rebuild, because we kept the foundation. The foundation was good. But overhaul, improve every single piece. Fine-tooth comb look at every email, every task template that we have, every piece of communication, videos for the clients. Like, how do we make it literally as easy as possible? That is what we were going for.

As easy as possible to understand what they are gonna be doing, what we’re gonna be doing, what we need from them, like, all of that. And we did it in a week we went through and, fine-tooth comb, like I reviewed every piece of communication, every step. I reset the expectation for our team on how I wanted it to be.

One of the things i-in my business is I am just like our ideal client. I understand from the perspective as, of a CEO, and I actually said this to my team this week when I was doing a training. I put together a training for them and brought everyone together and was like, “Here’s the process.

Here’s what everybody owns. Here’s the important components that go into the success.” And one of the things I said is, “We work with CEOs who are maxed out. They don’t want to make more decisions. They are overwhelmed a lot of times. They’re being pulled in multiple directions, and so our job is to make it as easy as possible for them.”

So if there’s a question such as, okay, they’re doing a live launch, “What day do you want to open the cart?” We don’t ask, “What day do you want to open the cart?” We say, “Based on what we know works, here’s the day we’re suggesting. Is that good with you?” Because that’s so much easier for a CEO to answer that.

So I went through every step. I fine-tooth combed every step, every, like, where we could be more efficient, where we could make it easier for the client. For us, another thing is we build funnels. And so getting logins and the codes and all of that is always a thing that just slows things down and can be annoying.

How can we streamline that? How can we make it easier? So we did that in a week, and there was one day I was… We were basically done, and I was like, “Okay, we need to get the whole team together,” because one of the things in our delivery is there’s multiple players that all play a part in the actual end result, because you’ve got ads managers, strategists, copywriters, designers, tech, funnel tech, and then you have the actual strategic advisor that the client’s working with.

They all play a part, and they all do a great job at their part, but I hadn’t sat down and said, “Here’s the whole picture from beginning to end, and then here’s what each part owns.” And so I n- we were having this team meeting. I was like, “Get everybody together. Schedule the meeting. Schedule it for tomorrow,” right?

‘Cause I like to move so fast, and my team’s their head’s spinning. I’m like, “Schedule it for tomorrow.” And I got up that day. I went to bed that night, and I was like, “I need to put together a presentation. I want this to be, like, a really good meeting, really clear, lay it out visually.” And so the next day, I got up at 4:45.

I couldn’t sleep, and I was like, “I’m gonna build it right now.” And so I got up, I meditated for a while, and then I built it in an hour, and it was, like, so nice, which also Claude did help me. Side note, Claude with the presentations, the design’s so s- impressive. But anyways, so that’s what I’ve been working on, and so I…

Tying that to you and your business. I think there is a lot of power in about once a year sitting down and going, “Let’s basically take this like a snow globe and say, ‘How do we shake this up and look in every corner, every crevice, every piece of this to make it even better?'” And to take data and feedback, like data on, we have data on how long it’s taking for us to do things.

We have data on client results. We have data on client feedback, but then we have feedback from the client that’s more, things that… situations that have come up, scenarios that have come up. “I was confused here,” or, “We ran into this.” Small one was we had this tech issue of being able to integrate PayPal with a client’s order form, and it was like, because it doesn’t work that well with GoHighLevel, and okay, that took 10 hours of team time to do it.

That’s not gonna work. We gotta have a new process. Feedback from the team, feedback across the board. And so sitting down once a year, and maybe this is the time. Maybe you’re gonna, copy what I did. Sitting down once a year and going step by step. You can do this for your marketing. You can also do this for after someone buys.

And I think that after somebody buys, it’s such an important thing to look at because, of course, like client results and customer satisfaction leads to referrals. It’s like one of the most underrated parts of marketing is delivering a good product or a good service. And I look at everything from marketing and in delivery, I look at it very much As these step-by-steps, but also an experience.

And so I put myself into the shoes of the person either on the marketing side, it’s like before they buy from us, or the customer side and go step-by-step, like how do we… The biggest thing you’re looking for is ease, speed, and clarity. So you sit there and you go, “Okay, step-by-step, let’s take a snow globe.

Let’s shake this up. Let’s look at all the feedback. Let’s look at all the places somebody got stuck. Let’s look at all the areas they were confused, or we didn’t make it easy for them, and let’s make it even better.” And so I went step-by-step through and focused on that. And I think once a year, it is so important to do that because especially if you are in a place in your business where you have a team.

I have 18 employees. The actual client delivery, I’m not in the day-to-day of it. But here’s the job of a CEO. No matter what size your company is, your job is to set the standard. That’s the job of a CEO. That’s the job of leadership. It is to set a standard and really make sure everybody’s on the same page.

And you set the standard for the specific things you wanna look out for quality, for nuances. There’s little nuances and little details that I think about in our client delivery because I understand our clients so intimately that my team may not think about. You don’t know what you don’t know, so I have to set that standard, and that is my job because then infused in all of our delivery is me without me being in the day-to-day. And that’s where having a process that everybody follows, and it’s like this is your methodology. So very much so our process, like for example, our, one of our levels is our scale, and this is probably our most popular one, which is where it’s not quite all the way done for you.

But you come in, we do your strategy, we do your messaging, we come up with all the details around your strategy, and then we launch visibility ads for you. We build and launch an entire lead gen funnel with a small priced offer and execute a live launch, and we build all the assets. We do all that for you.

Now, our secret sauce, our proprietary things are, for example, in the live launch section, we have done hundreds of live launches. Both I’ve done them in my own business. We’ve also helped clients all the way from first live launch to eight-figure live launches with some of the businesses we’ve worked with.

And so details like How many emails to send, when to send them, live show up bonus, urgency during open cart, all of those details are a part of our proprietary process. You are not getting that if you use AI. You are not getting that if you use another company. They might do it differently. We take the blended of everything that we know works, and we put that into a process.

Now, I’m in charge of setting the standard of that process, of saying, “Yes, I have, strategists who can weigh in on best practices,” and we’re always trying and testing new things with clients, but setting the standard for this is how you execute a successful live launch. And so what I’m saying is, if you are somebody who has built a business where you’re out of the day-to-day, you should create a process where at least once a year you go back into every detail of how something is operating, and you pick it apart, and you rebuild it better.

And it… you’ll never really stop doing this. What I find is that you do this, and then either things change, right? In a year from now, there’s gonna be all different ways that we can use AI that wouldn’t make sense today, ’cause it doesn’t exist yet. You also get more feedback. And then the other thing that happens is, throughout time, you hire, people, team members change, you bring people on.

Sometimes people become… They forget a certain detail, something falls off. And so you need consistent quality assurance on the way things are happening. And what I find is I will alternate during are- two areas of the company and pour into it, and then I move to the next. And so this season, this kind of last 30 days, has been heavily focused for me on delivery.

And I will be shifting my focus to our marketing once we wrap this up. But just a lot of times bringing on a new team member, that s- that kind of spurs that, ’cause you’re training them, and then you’re like, “Oh, there’s this thing in the process. We should change that.” And it’s a can of worms, and it can be…

It was overwhelming at times, ’cause it was like a can of worms. I’d go down this road or this rabbit hole of one thing, and I’m like, “Oh, I found this, and I found this, and I found this.” But eventually it all comes together. So it all came together. We’re pretty much there. We rolled it out to the team, and it is now the new process is rolled out for all of our clients.

So my challenge to you is to, if you haven’t done this in a while, or maybe you have a new offer, or you’ve never done this, I think a lot of us entrepreneurs, myself included, I build the plane as I fly. It’s something I’m amazing at, is like launch it, we’ll figure it out, we’ll get better, we will put all the details together.

And when you do that, there’s always room to go back and improve it. But here’s the thing. Here’s why building the plane as you fly is such a skill Because most of the time, the feedback that you need to get has to happen through action and not through planning. And I’ve realized that I was coaching a team member on that You can only plan and prep so much.

And you can over plan and over prep, and from there not even understand the things and the nuances that are gonna come up because you’re not doing. And you have to have enough energy that goes into doing and kinda just get thrown into things, and then you figure it out. And that is a skill, and I think it is a really important skill for entrepreneurs.

And so throw yourself into an area of your business that you haven’t looked at in a while. And maybe it’s not delivery. I think for us sometimes it’s the podcast. It’s the things that we have done over and over again for a long period of time, and we haven’t questioned in a while. You have to rotate your attention as a CEO to come back into and reset and set the standard and work with the team and get everybody on the same page.

And the team loves it. The team loves being clear. They love being heard. They love being able to take feedback that they’ve gotten and just feel in momentum. So where is that area of your business? And then the second kinda lesson here that I just think is worth noting ’cause I was having this thought last week around this crazy version of me that, that comes out.

It’s truly unhinged. The just… I guess it’s a grit and a speed, but it’s not reckless speed. It’s like when I am clear on e- either something new I wanna create or something I wanna fix and change, it is painful for me to not have it done. So when I am clear these are gaps in our delivery that I wanna fill because I found them, because I went step by step through it, and here’s where we can be more efficient, and here’s how we can make an even better experience for the client.

It was already a good experience. Here’s how we can make it an even better experience. It is painful for me to be like, “Oh, it’ll take us two weeks.” ‘Cause then I’m like, “No, but in the two weeks there’s people that won’t get the experience, and it could be really good, so let’s just do it now, today, tomorrow, this week, as fast as possible.”

And the last time I did this was probably… When I got into this crazy mode was probably when I built that basically software. I built that product, if you guys remember. I think it was, like, a year ago, and I did the same thing. Worked the weekends. I had my computer. I was, like, coding at the gym. It’s when I found vibe coding, and I found that, oh my gosh, you can talk to an agent and, , build whatever you want.

And I went crazy, and it was, like, painful for me to not have it done. I feel like you guys are gonna get this. I feel like it’s crazy saying that, but I feel like you’re gonna get it. And that energy, that drive, is what sets an entrepreneur apart from everybody else. And I was thinking about this week of how it is good to have that come out sometimes in business.

And I get asked so much “What contributes to success for an entrepreneur?” And I think sometimes it’s hard to even remember the answer to that because you don’t remember the things that you do if you’re not doing them right now. But these are one … This is one of the things I do that does set me apart because it’s like it’s a relentless pursuit of

whatever that goal is, of whatever that outcome is. But it’s also an ebb and flow. I can go pedal to the metal and freaking grind it for a period of time, and then I gotta chill and I will crash. And that happened when I built the app. It happened this week. By th- by Thursday this week, I felt good with where we’re at, and I had done that wake up at 4:45, and I was, like, freaking just I don’t even know, delirious by the end of that day.

And then “All right, we’re gonna chill now. We gotta take a, we gotta take a break.” And I think the early days of me didn’t know those signals. I wasn’t in, in tune with my body. The point being this, the point is this: So many people get so caught up on nervous system regulation and, not being too stressed and Being in flow and whatever, ease.

I think that nervous system regulation… Here’s what I’m gonna say. Nervous system regulation does not mean that there is not stress in your life, and I actually think the more regulated you are, you can go through a sprint, like what I did, with extreme efficiency and execution that is out of… unheard of.

Because if you think about an athlete, you think about a professional athlete, they do so much work so that come race day, they can give 110%, right? And that’s how I see moments of entrepreneurship. It’s like you don’t want every single day to be like that. And if it is, something has to change. You probably need more help.

You probably need to hire help. You probably need systems. You probably actually have too much on your plate. My regular week to week, I should be fully out of the day-to-day of my business. I should not even have to work. That’s a good week. I get ahead on content. I don’t even have to work. That’s the way it should be.

Normally, I work about 20 hours a week, but there’s nothing that it’s like, “Oh, you gotta lock in because we gotta get through this,” on my regular day-to-days. So then when there is a calling for that in the business, which usually comes with growth, it comes with we’re launching something new, we’re…

This is growth. We’re having to respond to growth that is putting pressure on our delivery systems that we have to adjust and adapt and improve for the next level. So when you’re in these sprints, if your day-to-day is not that level of tension and energy and stress and chaos, you’re like, “Let’s go.”

And you can bring it. And I think that’s what I realized this week, is it’s so important that all CEOs still have that ability, and it’s fun. It’s fun, ’cause that is the part of entrepreneurship that you’re like This is the game. It is a blend of creativity and vision with execution that is borderline insane with you actually enjoy it.

You get pleasure out of it because you’re like, “How hard can we go?” But it can’t be every day. And so I think in the very beginning of my business, that was my every day. It was, I was working every waking moment. 10 years ago, I

didn’t have a nanny, I didn’t have support, I didn’t have a system, I didn’t have teams. I was doing everything. I was in that phase. The goal is to not always be in that phase, but have sprints in your business where you come back in, it’s “Oh, there I am.” Let’s lock in and let’s do this, and then we’re gonna tap out.

And we’re gonna probably do this again in six months or 12 months. So point being two things. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with a season, maybe it’s a week, maybe it’s a month, of grinding. For people, this could be you’re launching something like a book or a new big product or an app or whatever.

You’re gonna grind. That’s what we signed up for as entrepreneurs. This is not a nine-to-five where we do the same thing every day. And the goal is not to have every day be like that. And if every day is like that, we’re missing support and we’re missing systems. But if we make it so every day is not like that, then when that is needed from us, we’re like, “Let’s go,” and we’re a 10 out of 10 delivery.

Because the way that I showed up in my business last week, nobody else could have done it. It was a CEO’s job. I was leading the way, I was directing the team, I was training new team members, and I was setting the standard for the way that I wanted the overhaul to be. So something for you guys to think about.

And next time you are in that grind season, y- one thing that I think is helpful is if you hit a moment of overwhelm I just try to find gratitude for it, is like what a privilege it is to f- get to feel overwhelmed because I have a business that is growing and I’m bringing on new team members and I have clients and I get to onboard a VIP client in the midst of all this and what a privilege that is.

So the gratitude for that and then also knowing it’s just a, it’s a season and there’s a plan, there’s a light, and I just, I try to have fun with it ’cause it’s pretty wild and it is entrepreneurship and building a business at its core. Because I do think that speed to implementation is such a key part of being successful as an entrepreneur.

The more that you can go from idea to execution, the faster you can do that, the less time you spend in over-planning and over-preparing, the better. Obviously, you have to be clear and you have to be aligned, but when you are it’s full speed ahead. Not every day, but when the business calls for it. All right, guys.

We’re back on the regular schedule for the podcast. That is one thing that mostly I have to… H- I said this on the last episode but it was like my whole team’s in here now and so I have to kick them out so I can record. We’re just figuring it out. But I’m back ahead. I’m good. I’m getting back regulated, like we’re, we are so back and that was fun.

That was months of work in a week and I’m very proud of our delivery and our process. It’s top-notch. The experience that you get working with us as a client, like I said, it was already good. I’ve been in business for 10 years, like I have so much foundational process, but we took all this to the next level and I’m really trying…

I didn’t say this, but we did bring in some AI automations and things to automate, but I’m really trying and leaning into like I’m not obsessing over AI. I said this to my team, I said this on the podcast, like my goal with AI is how do I continue to leverage it so the team can do what they’re really good at?

So the copywriters, the designers, the funnel builders can do what they’re really good at more and keep that. Because more and more I’m gonna talk about this more, but I just think, People are gonna lose their voice in AI and with content because they’re gonna over-rely on it, and they’re gonna ler- lose their authenticity.

And that’s something we’re really focused on, is actually bringing that out of founders. So regardless of what offer someone works with us in, and that’s really my kinda proprietary piece, is you’re the magic of your business. Our job is to pull out that magic. That magic can’t come from AI. That has to come from you as the foundation.

So anyways, alright, guys, I will talk to you next time