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What would change in your business if you could spend 90% of your time doing the work that only YOU can do?

In this episode, I’m talking about using AI to streamline where our time and energy go – not to replace humans, but to increase their capacity.

I’m sharing how I’m using dashboards, automations, and AI agents inside my company so my team can spend more time on their art and less time on chores.

Key Takeaways

• How I know what’s a distraction vs worth my time with AI
• How we’re using AI to streamline delivery & increase team capacity (without losing quality)
• The AI that had my brother saying “I think we’re screwed”

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh:

“Have AI do your chores, not your art.” Because there’s a lot of cool stuff you can build with AI, and I found myself doing that where it’s like this cool dashboard or this automation or this setup. And you can get sucked into this project that you’re like, “Is this actually what I should be putting my time into?”

How can you use AI to not replace your art but give you more time for art? Because that creativity, the things that only you can do, are the things that separate you and your business from everybody else.

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. Sorry it has been a minute. It actually feels like it’s been a really long time since I recorded a podcast, ’cause it has. I am so extremely grateful for the life I have built that allows me to live out my dream of being able to travel. And, in the summer, in Texas, it kinda creates this excuse that I wanna get out of the heat.

I was actually just saying to a friend of mine, like, “I don’t really know why I live here.” I don’t love it. Like, I love Austin. I love so much about Austin. I love my house and our community, and like, our life here, but I just need nature. Like, I feel most connected and grounded and at peace with nature.

And so we always go on trips that leave me going like, ” Either I’m gonna move or we need a second house, ’cause I can’t do this.” So I got to go on this epic 10-day trip with my kids, and we went hard. We went to the coast of Oregon up to the Olympic Peninsula, up to Vancouver, Vancouver Island, Whistler, and like, British Columbia area.

And it was just amazing. Like, so much nature, hiking, trees. So fun. Came home for a few days, and I did a solo trip, in Colorado. And I do that about once a quarter. I tend to go… I like going to Boulder, Colorado. I have some friends there, and also, it’s just a good vibe. It’s like, you wanna, you wanna know my dream trip?

It, dream solo trip is either a big adventure or somewhere with great coffee shops that I can work at and great food and hiking. And that’s what Boulder is. So I got a ton of work done. I, last week, I call them CEO weeks. And I worked on so much AI. Like, those projects that have been kinda in my queue for months and months that I just can’t get to on the day-to-day when I’m juggling calls and team and podcasts and content creation.

And this was my week to just, like, focus. And I had days where I just went from like 9 to 4:00, and I was straight like, just stuck in it, working. And so I will be talking more about what I built. I built a lot, with AI. A lot of dashboards, a lot of agents. We have all these agents now in our company, like, helping the team that I built, and I named them all after Office characters.

So… ‘Cause if you’re not having fun, what are we doing? So now we have like Oscar and Dwight and Erin and Angela and Pam in our Slack. So I’ll talk more about that stuff. I’m not quite, like, ready, You know, it’s very custom to my company what I did, but there’s also some things, especially the dashboard that I made, that we are gonna take what I did and bring it over to elite and VIP clients first because it’s, like, legit so cool what I made.

I was freaking out. It’s this just, like, mega dashboard that is connected to everything, so connected to Ads Manager, our CRM, our Calendly for calls, and it’s one place where every metric from my weekly webinar metrics to sales calls, it goes through and can search the whole contact history of the contacts, know exactly where they came from, where the sales are coming from, how long they’re on our list, like, one place.

That really takes stuff that we’ve done in spreadsheets and put it into a dashboard. So anyways, I did a ton of that. I got… AI is so funny. It’s like, I swear I sit down and I’m like, “I’m just gonna do this one thing,” and then it’s like two hours later that I’m, like, building this now, like, mega thing, and I think you have to be careful with that.

But it was fun last week. And so I figure we’ll just do a little catch-up, on some things I wanted to ch- to chat about and bring here. It’s been a bit since I did that. I, would say that’s one of my failures is I came back from my trip with my kids, and I only had two actual work days in between that in Colorado, and I didn’t get to recording a podcast, and, like, I failed at that.

I was also sick, and so when I get sick, my eyes water, and it looks like I’m crying. And so I went to record content with Haley on that Friday, and I was supposed to record the podcast, and I was like, “I just can’t.” Like, my face is all swollen. I can’t talk without my eyes watering. Even the content that we recorded, like, we posted it on social and I’m like, I literally look horrible.

Like, my face is all swollen, so that’s part of the reason, you know? But you know what? Like, I want you guys to see too, like, I fail or I flop or, like, I don’t meet all the expectations. I will say one thing for myself for the rest of this year and into next year that I need to be better at is getting ahead on the podcast.

It’s just one of those things that I like… If I want this podcast to be, you know, a top 50 business podcast, I gotta treat it more like that, and I think the content is, is really good. I always pour myself into the content, but I need to be more ahead. I wanna have guests back on here. It’s, it’s a place that I wanna hold myself more accountable, and I think my social media content has actually gotten more of my time ’cause I’m trying to master that.

And so Anyways, just thoughts. So I wanted to talk about something today, like I have thought a lot about AI. I’m not gonna necessarily break down all the things I did last week, ’cause again, it’s like pretty custom to my business and I am gonna bring some of that, into our clients’ and into our offers.

But I’ve just been thinking a lot about AI, how to look at it, what to be aware of, what to be careful of, and like a perspective I have on that. And we’ll see if there’s other things I end up bringing up. But this is a conversation that I’ve been having with people, which is, I think number one, it is actually really easy to get sucked into AI projects that feel really productive but actually aren’t.

Like actually don’t make you more money or save you time, therefore make you more money. Because there’s a lot of cool stuff you can build with AI, and I found myself doing that where it’s like this cool dashboard or this automation or this setup. And you can get sucked into this project that you’re like, “Is this actually what I should be putting my time into?”

And so the way that I’m looking at AI, I have a friend who posted on Instagram a quote the other day, and I love this. I’ve repeated it like 10 times since they posted it because, it’s so good, which is, “Have AI do your chores, not your art.” And that is how I’m looking at AI, is how can I leverage AI for myself and for our company to create more capacity, meaning time and creative capacity, to do our art and not our chores?

So we can spend more time doing our art and being in a place of only doing what we can do, and then AI does the chores. So what does that tangibly look like? That looks like, okay What is your art? Your art is not… I’m not talking about, like, painting or drawing. Maybe that is , but I’m talking about your art in your business.

Your art and your business are the things that only you can do. So for me, my art is my webinars. It is my content creation. It is getting on trainings, hosting workshops, trainings for clients, trainings for potential clients, communicating with clients, doing one-on-one calls. It’s my mastermind. It’s leadership and leading my team and being able to pour into them.

Those are the things, my podcast, that only I can do. That is my art. That is where I shine the most. I could get into flow. And so hypothetically, if I spent about 100% of my time, which would be almost impossible, but let’s say we could even get it to 90% of my time, I got to do was my art, that would massively not only grow the business, but it would allow us to stand out more, to elevate the creativity of our strategies, of our content, of our media, of everything we put out there, from copy to my webinars, to communicating with clients and actually, like, making an impact.

And that means everything else, how can I get AI to do it? Or yes, a human who’s also leveraging AI. But if I look at my team, it’s the same thing. If I take a marketing strategist on our team, somebody who takes the new client calls when they come in and builds out their strategy, their art is speaking to the client, taking all the intake and the information from their business, and building out a custom strategy.

In my opinion, AI sucks at that. Like, I think that business strategy is one thing AI… You’re just gonna get a, a hodgepodge of suggestions that at first sound really great, but then are not really great. So that is an example of that’s somebody’s art. So if we can create more capacity for our strategists to actually spend more time and have more depth in their art, then we have a better output.

By using AI to help automate things like the strategy presentation creation, you know, taking their strategy and helping input it in the slides, or, you know, communication or automations to help, you know, with gathering client intake forms or whatever it is that they’re doing, sending recordings, all that’s their chore.

That’s chores. So if we can use AI to automate our chores and amplify how much time you can spend on your art, I’m also looking at that for my team. When I look at my leadership team, like, their art is managing our team, managing the team members below them, coaching them, guiding them. It’s quality control.

It’s questioning. It’s thinking like, “Oh, this happened, and so how could we future-project that this is gonna be a problem or that we need more process here?” Those are things AI can’t do, at least not yet. Arguably, I don’t think it would do it well ever, like that, that level of like human critical thinking.

So if we can create capacity to where that team member can do more of their art So the question that I would encourage you to think about today is, like literally make a list of what is your art. What are the things that not only, only you can do? And be honest about that. Like, don’t put something on the list that only you can do that like really somebody else could do, but you’re like, “I just don’t know how to delegate it.”

Like, truly nobody else could come here and record my podcast. Like, it would change the entire podcast, right? Nobody can come up with content ideas the way I can. I can collaborate with Haley and she can help me, but like our actual ideation and strategizing and pulling out what’s happening during my lived experiences right now and in my life, to translate that into content, only I can do that.

Nobody can host a workshop for our clients like me. Yes, we can deliver, we can have it the way we have it, but nobody can do that like me. What’s truly the things that only you can do? And then how can you leverage AI, leverage automations, leverage team, and leverage support to create more capacity for you to have more time in your art, less time in your chores?

And this is my perspective on AI. I think that we originally, when seeing AI, think that we thought it’s gonna take over for things like video editing and graphic design and copywriting and, art basically And while I do think it can help, I think that actually what AI is going to take, quote, “take over more of” is more like operations, HR, finance, the chores.

The chores and the things, I do believe you’ll always need a human in these places. I think you’ll have humans working with AI agents, and you’re gonna have a company with, like, 10 people and 40 AI agents. That’s what I think the future is. But I think we got it wrong initially. I think we looked at this and we thought it could replace humans in doing art.

And, you know, building an SOP or auditing a bunch of numbers and putting it in a spreadsheet is not art. But being able to have AI do that and then take that and then analyze it right, or even knowing how to ask AI for what you want, that is art. That is something a human has to do. So how can you use AI to not replace your art but give you more time for art?

Because that creativity, the things that only you can do, are the things that separate you and your business from everybody else. So naturally, if you spend more time doing that, then your business is gonna grow and you’re gonna stand out. And I really think that, over the next few years, if creators and CEOs and business owners do not create, and I’ve said this before, but intentional time and the disciplined ability to sit with their thoughts, to process, like, lived experience and lessons and things happening with their clients or in their life or whatever, and turn that into authentic creative expression, they will just sound like everybody else.

So now when I’m creating something with AI, I look at it and I go, “Okay Is this gonna make us more money? Is this gonna save a significant amount of time? And/or is this gonna create more capacity so that I can spend my time doing what only I can do and actually create more depth? Like, I think it is about the depth.

It’s not just about can I just do more? Can I pack more into everything that I’m doing? I think it’s about how can I have more depth with what I’m doing and create the capacity for that? And that’s gonna show up in things like your messaging, your copy, your content, and your creative. It’s gonna show up in things like ideas for your marketing strategy, for what opt-ins, what webinars, like how to create experiences for your ideal customer.

It’s gonna come up in your offers, the experience of your offers. Like, everything in business from the first touchpoint through experiencing your offer is just an experience, and it’s an experience that’s creating connection. It’s creating trust at all different levels. It’s creating transformation. It’s creating clarity.

And it’s creating something that is forming an opinion on your brand and your brand identity. And that dictates if someone takes the next step, if they take another step, if they come back and buy more, if they buy at all. And so the more depth you can have in making that intentional and making that yours and really, like, tuning out the noise to an extent and going, “How can I bring me into this and allowing the time for that.

So that’s really a lot of what I’ve been doing is like That’s how I look at it with my team. Like, I’m not really looking at AI to say, “How can I replace humans?” I think that we have to increase the capacity of people. So where, you know, somebody would maybe be able to handle this much, now with AI, they can handle one and a half or two times that, and that’s just gonna have to be the reality of like keeping up, I think.

But I’m looking at it of, as how can I streamline where our time and energy goes as individuals, as a company, as a whole. And I think a lot of this game is that, right? Because our only limited resource is time and energy. And so if you are constantly being extremely discerning and intentional with where your time and energy goes, then you’re constantly using it for the highest leverage thing.

And I think that’s something that I do really well naturally and has for sure contributed to my business growth is a constant evaluation from daily to weekly to monthly of like tune all of this out and just laser focus, put blinders on on this, and then once we get there, we move to the next thing.

Because you have to have a discipline with your time and your energy and really your attention too. Like, we only have so much capacity to make decisions, to come up with content ideas, to brainstorm. And if that’s being wasted right now and like leaked in areas that aren’t actually moving the needle, only you can kind of bring it back to center So those are my thoughts.

I’ll tell you a story. It’s funny. So my brother found this kinda new really powerful AI, and he kept calling me on my trip. I was in the Pacific Northwest, and my brother’s a CEO, and my dad’s a CEO, and they’re super into AI. And he kept calling me on my trip, and I was like, “Listen, buddy, I don’t care.

Like, I am hiking in the Pacific Northwest. I don’t want to know about this AI.” But he kept calling me, and I finally answered, and he told me about it, and I was like, “Okay, that sounds really cool.” And I’m not gonna share it yet. But anyways, he got me to download it. It’s pretty cool.

So then we went on this like two weeks where it was like my brothers and my dad were all in this group chat, and we’re like doing all this crazy stuff with AI. Then my brother calls me when I’m in Colorado, and he’s like, ” So I mean, all this is so cool what we’re doing with AI, but I think we’re like really fucked.”

And I was like, “What do you mean?” He’s like, ” I’ve listened to like two podcasts, I mean, I’m just depressed, like what’s gonna happen to the world for our kids and da, da, da.” And I was like, “Look, I know, but I think you need to stop consuming all of that stuff.” Like, to me, this is where I’m at, it might be wrong.

You might have a judgment on it ’cause I understand there is a massive negative to AI on our planet, the data centers, the worry about like the AI that’s like breaking out of their sandboxes and doing crazy stuff. Like, I get it. I really do get it. Yes, I am concerned like what my kids’, life will be like.

But for me, maybe this is just completely naive and not really, you know, logical, but here’s what I come back to is I can’t control any of that. Like, I have no way of controlling that path and what happens. All I can control is like literally me, right? My beliefs, my thoughts, my contribution to the world, the way that I’m using it.

And so to me right now, I see a golden age. I see a ton of opportunity because it is redefining everything in the way that we’re doing things. And so I’m choosing to see that golden age and go, “How can I use this for good? How can I personally use this for good?” And the reality is, You have to adapt to it.

It’s like kill or be killed, I mean, maybe it’s a sad reality, I don’t know. But that is the reality, is like the people who are very resistant to it and, like, refuse to use it eventually will be left behind. And, and I don’t say that to make people scared, but I see people in, like, day-to-day, like, who are not entrepreneurs who are like, “Yeah, I never use AI, you know, and I’m so against it.”

And it’s like, unfortunately, you will be replaced with the person who can use AI and who is AI-trained. And so the only thing I can control is, am I using it for good? Am I using it to increase my impact in the world, to help other people, to serve, to solve problems? And I believe that I am. And the other thing I fully believe is light always wins.

Always. Like, I do believe in humanity. I believe in the bigger whatever’s happening, I believe that this was already preplanned and meant to happen. You know, call me crazy, call me woo, but I believe we knew we were coming into this life at this time when this was gonna be the reality, and we are here to make an impact in this time of humanity.

And I believe in humanity. I really do. I think eventually light always wins. There may be suffering, and I do think we’re gonna go through a crazy next two to three years as every industry has to adapt. And there’s gonna be a lot of job loss, and there’s gonna be the people who, you know, do jobs that don’t really have a true skill or a

Like, they, they’re disconnected from their purpose as a human are going to struggle. But I don’t think that struggle is always a bad thing, ’cause it could push you to a better thing. You know? But again, I kinda have my blinders on. Like, I don’t listen … My brother called me, like, “I listen to these two podcasts.”

I’m like, “I don’t wanna hear them.” Because what good is that gonna do? You know? Like, It’s just knowledge, and it’s also just theory about what’s gonna happen. and then the last thing I think is when every media source is pushing the same message, I’m always like, ” That’s suspicious.” Right? So these, like, ex-Anthropic employees who come out and this and said, you know, “There’s a 10% chance we’re all gonna die,” he still can’t explain how.

Like, he still hasn’t said how we’re gonna all die. I think that’s bullshit. Like, that story I think is bullshit. Like, that’s planted. They want us to be scared. I don’t know why. Maybe they’re scared. But you cannot tell me that all of a sudden these companies are going, “Oh,

we actually care now, and we wanna let you know that this is really bad.” No. You’re probably running out of money, and you need an excuse why you gotta slow things down. I don’t know. So there’s my rant. But I truly believe right now that more than ever, we need to put our blinders on, and we need to focus on only what we can control, and serving and making an impact and making space for that art to, like, your purpose.

Why are you here in this life? And can you maximize that? And then we let it play out, and then we trust that whatever unfolds, we’re meant to handle. And if that is the end of humanity, then, like, that’s what was meant to happen. I don’t know. We don’t have control over that. Yeah, it will be a very interesting next few years. I do think, and I do wonder what my kids’ life will be like when they are adults. But again, I have no way to predict it. I did say to my brother, I was like, “Can’t we just stop? Like, AI’s just, like, good enough now. Like why, why do we have to keep developing it?”

Like, I think it’s pretty great how it is. Like, let’s just stop. Let’s stop here, because it doesn’t need to get more powerful. I know that’s not how it works, but I’m like, ” This is good. Like, we could just live like this, and, like, we have this huge benefit to us and huge advantage, and let’s just, like, leave it at that.”

So, all right, everybody, there’s some thoughts on AI. Every time I talk about AI, I’m like, “Are people sick of hearing about AI?” Yes, probably, but it was a big part of my week last week, and I’ve thought about it a lot, and there’s so many funny videos on AI. But I saw this one funny Instagram Reel where this guy was like, ” Point of view, you’re a CEO today,” and it was like, “How about we just AI?”

Like, “We AI. We ask it. We gotta ask it how to print more money.” And it was this, like, a comedic skit that I was like, “That is true.” Every company, AI, AI, AI. So, I don’t know. Don’t let it take over your, life, but allow it to create more capacity for your art. That’s what I have to say. All right, everybody.

Sorry for the break in the podcast. We are back. I am back. I’m here in Austin for a while. I’m gonna get ahead, and we’re gonna finish this year strong. Thanks, everybody. I’ll talk to you next time.