Episode 105 Transcript
Heather (00:03.64)
Hello, Nici, welcome to the show. How are you?
Nici Sweaney (00:07.053)
Fantastic, thank you so much for having me.
Heather (00:10.776)
You guys, Nici is camping right now. She's actually chatting to me while she's camping. Where are you?
Nici Sweaney (00:13.678)
I'm on the New South Wales South Coast at a place called Potato Point. So we are absolutely beachfront. It bucketed down with rain last night, but we're dry now this morning. Everyone's in one piece. The kids are all running off somewhere, so we should be uninterrupted for a few minutes.
Heather (00:22.104)
Beautiful.
Heather (00:34.84)
Excellent. So yes, we have school holidays going right now in New South Wales. So basically if there's kids or sounds or whatever, you now know why that's happening.
Nici Sweaney (00:42.414)
Yep, that's what it is. Yeah, there's bikes, there's surfboards, there's a lot happening.
Heather (00:47.224)
So good. Um, guys, I'm really excited to bring Nici on the show because I've had so many different business owners on so far, but actually surprisingly no one that specializes in the space of AI. And that is going to be a great conversation. Of course, like always, Nici, I'm going to talk to you about your business and how you grow it, but also very specifically how you're working with people around using AI in their businesses. So exciting. I can't believe it.
Nici Sweaney (01:04.653)
Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (01:10.222)
Yeah. Awesome. I'm, I feel so lucky that I'm the first AI person. I think my, my world is so saturated with AI people that I feel like everybody's talking about it at all times. So it's nice to be somewhere where it's fresh.
Heather (01:22.04)
It is fresh and everyone is always, everyone is talking about it. And that's what, that's why this is going to be such a good chat. Okay, cool. So let's start with you first. I want to know a little bit about your business growth. Cause I'd imagine you're, are you growing quite quickly right now with the direction you've taken in AI? Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (01:28.751)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yes!
Nici Sweaney (01:37.679)
I am. Yeah. So I'm, I'm a long time, uh, side hustler, multi passionate entrepreneur. I'd like to describe it. So actually I've got a background in science, but I've had so many different things. I've had my first online business was a fitness business. I used to train people for, um, bodybuilding competitions. I had a business making cakes. I had a clothing line. I used to sew bikinis for a little while. You know, I've always had something because.
Heather (01:46.36)
You
Heather (01:52.728)
Wow.
Heather (01:58.936)
Oh my God.
Nici Sweaney (02:07.311)
just everything, I think I could be happy doing so many things for the rest of my life. But the AI business, I officially, I've been talking about AI and people have been inviting me to talk about AI since very early last year. But I officially launched it into a proper business in June of last year. And since then, it has just gone gangbusters. I've gone from myself, I now have a full -time employee and about six contractors working for me.
Heather (02:12.216)
Yeah.
Heather (02:30.104)
I'm sure.
Nici Sweaney (02:35.279)
It replaced my nine to five income within six months. I quit my nine to five and we're now going to the sort of next level. I've got lots of exciting things in the works and really starting to scale it to a proper, proper business, not just something that I happened to be very kindly offered to accept money for.
Heather (02:56.152)
We will be talking about that later, things in the works. So while you're growing your business, because you are in high growth right now as well, what are three things that you do personally to support you in the growth to help you sort of stay grounded and not so overwhelmed and stressed out?
Nici Sweaney (03:13.358)
Yeah, yeah, it can be difficult. I think especially because I was working in 95 and scaling this in some ways that really forced me to be smart about how I did it because I also have four children and I was also commuting from my nine to five. So I was commuting two and a half hours away, staying away for half the week, coming back home, doing my business and doing the nine to five. And I had to find ways to not pass out. So, so for me,
Heather (03:19.48)
Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (03:40.142)
I think one is, I mean, especially because I am in the AI space, it's automate or eliminate people that have listened to the four hour work week, you know, that won't be new to them, but it's, it's really looking at how can I design a system that does this for me, or do I really have to be doing it? And then after those two things, as quickly as possible, I hired someone else to outsource the stuff that, you know, wasn't the best use of my time. So that was a huge sanity saver.
automate, eliminate and delegate was really the first one. The second one is I'm a huge fan of time blocking and no surprise, I actually use AI to help me time block. So I'll put all my big things that I'm working on and I'll say when are they due and how much time I have to work on them. And I actually specify that I only have 15 hours a week to do this for, right? So I specify that when I'm planning it out with the AI model that I'm using.
and I ask it to time block those tasks and also to help me work out what I actually have to be doing. What is the most high priority things that should be done first towards those tasks. So I'm a huge fan of time blocking is the second one. And then I think the third one is just really giving myself permission to not do it all the time. I think that's a really hard thing when you have your business and especially when you're passionate about your business is that it's really easy to keep doing it because part of you wants to.
Heather (04:46.04)
amazing.
Heather (05:02.104)
Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (05:03.214)
And, you know, you see the value in it, but I have designated. So, you know, I am prone to working on the laptop at nighttime next to my partner or doing a little bit on the weekends. We actually block time periods out where I'm not allowed to work. And so that includes every Friday. I don't work at all. I don't take meetings on Mondays. Um, I have one weekend every month where I'm not allowed to book in anything. I'm not allowed to prep for anything. I'm not allowed to, you know, work on anything, but.
I guess, you know, a little bit like time blocking, but being precious and safeguarding my time has been really, really important. So those have been my top three.
Heather (05:38.968)
Brilliant, perfectly delivered. Seriously, that was amazing. Thank you. It's like you've never done this before. That was so good. What was your nine to five?
Nici Sweaney (05:41.198)
Hehehe!
Nici Sweaney (05:51.438)
My nine to five, I was an academic for 17 years lecturing and I was also a consulting data scientist. And then in the last seven months, I spent it being the head of education quality and excellence at another university. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, all done and dusted. Yeah.
Heather (05:55.288)
Yeah. Yeah.
Heather (06:06.04)
is phenomenal. Wow. What a transition. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Cool. All right. So for most people sort of loosely know what AI is and does, some people are using it actively in their business. So first, before we start to talk about what you do and how you help people, I want to talk to you around AI. And I have the first question is going to be what can.
Nici Sweaney (06:18.67)
Yeah!
Nici Sweaney (06:28.334)
Yeah.
Heather (06:31.672)
it do for your business? And the second question is what can't it do just to give you context. So let's start with what can it do.
Nici Sweaney (06:35.858)
Yeah, yep, sure. Yeah. So yeah, artificial intelligence. I guess the best way to describe it is it can do all the stuff that you don't like doing. So the capacity of AI is growing really, really quickly. Data shows, and it might be the case with people listening to this, data shows that most people have used a single digit number of AI tools. It's usually a large language model. So something like chat GPT or Claude or Gemini.
and they've used it for a single digit number of reasons. So first and foremost, I guess I wanna say what it can do is probably more than you know it can do. You can do music with it, graphic design, websites, customer care, you can automate your email management, you can do your sales pipeline, you can lead Jen with it, you can make an avatar doppelganger of yourself that you can send to meetings on your behalf that can interact with people. It can do so much and it's increasing all of the time.
Right. There's, there's about a thousand new AI tools released every single month. So if you're wondering if there is an AI that can do it, there probably is. But from a business point of view, I always say, write down a list of things that you do often in your business. So the things that are repetitive, get out a highlighter and anything that you'd feel comfortable teaching a grad or an entry level worker to do. Those are the things that AI can do and are probably going to be quite good at. Right. What I can't do is AI.
works within bounds, right? So all of AI has been trained on a certain set of data, and it's trained to look for patterns. This is also why AI is bad at reinforcing stereotypes and bias, because it's been trained to look for patterns. Now what that means is when we're asking it questions, it's usually looking for the pattern in the responses. So if we're asking you about business strategy, it's going to go and pull this data about business strategy. So it's going to give us advice, it's going to be solid.
but it's not going to be particularly creative, right? Because it's been taught to look for those patterns. So the things that AI is not really great at is thinking really outside the box and pulling together concepts from varied disciplines. So having a look at a big picture idea and seeing how different bits of information can fill in that answer. And that's the sort of human brilliance that we have and business owners and entrepreneurs especially.
Nici Sweaney (08:54.324)
We are the creators of the world. We look for solutions and we come up with those solutions and those solutions are new. That's what makes us entrepreneurs. So that's the stuff that AI can't replace. And that's the beauty of it as well, right? Because AI can do the rest of it. So you can do more of the stuff that makes you really good at what you do.
Heather (09:06.136)
Yeah.
Heather (09:11.224)
So you said sort of, you can ask it to give you advice around certain things. Would you say it's a strategist or could be a strategist or do you still need a human being for that?
Nici Sweaney (09:15.923)
Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (09:21.652)
Oh, I think it definitely can be an entry level strategist. So I describe it like this is particularly, I focus on teaching women how to use AI because notoriously and stereotypically women don't spend money on their business until later in the piece. They think I have to have this capital before I hire help. It is those people that really benefit from AI because it can give you.
Heather (09:25.304)
Uh huh, yep.
Nici Sweaney (09:45.651)
basic marketing advice, basic strategy, it can give you a content plan, it can tell you where to go and look for clients, it can even do some research on those things, it can, you know, outline your sort of next 90 days of your startup, right? That's really solid information, because it's based on patterns. And so it's looking at all this information out there. So instead of going down the rabbit hole and getting overwhelmed with, you know, the internet and which blog should I read and whose advice should I follow?
I always recommend going to AI to help you set out those plans because it definitely can act as an entry -level advisor across multiple parts of your business.
Heather (10:20.024)
Incredible. Love it. Okay. We're going to transition now into what your business does. So what's the name of your business again?
Nici Sweaney (10:24.595)
Yes, it's AI her way.
Heather (10:28.184)
Perfect, and what do you do in your business?
Nici Sweaney (10:30.581)
So I, it's basically, I do AI consultancy. So I focus on women and female founded businesses and making AI solutions for them. And then I also do teaching workshops, seminars, speaking events. Yeah.
Heather (10:43.64)
Amazing. Okay, cool. So based on that, can you think of somebody that you've helped recently? I want to walk through a before and after with you because I feel like this is going to be the easiest way. And even like the tools that you told them to use. Like, so think of somebody, what happened when they came to you? What happened as a result of them working with you? What was the whole process?
Nici Sweaney (10:48.116)
Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (10:55.892)
Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (11:02.1)
Yes. So at the moment I have an online course that teaches women that have their own businesses about not only just using AI, but actually building AI powered automations. So the difference with that is if you think about using something like chat, GPT, it can get you to write something quicker, faster, maybe better than you could have done it yourself, but you still have to drive that process. So setting up an AI automation actually enables you to delegate the task fully to AI and you only come into the picture when it's kind of done.
and you're ready to review it. So we're working with a group of women, but one that I can think of in particular is she was really kind of not struggling, but wanting more lead generation. She was wanting to look for speaking opportunities for her business where she did business coaching. And she was finding that that was a place in her business that she just didn't have the capacity to keep on top of. And she didn't have the resources, but she needed that for exposure, right? And to generate those next opportunities.
So we built an automation for her that every week it goes and looks through the internet completely outside of her. She doesn't have to do a thing. It looks on the internet for speaking opportunities that match her niche. It finds those speaking opportunities. It gathers the contact details for those speaking opportunities. And then it does research on who that speaking opportunity is with. And it writes a bespoke individualized email, propositioning her and her niche and what she does to that contact person.
And then it sends her an email saying, we are ready. We've got these 10 speaking opportunities. Here are the drafted emails. She clicks send and every week she can do 10 more lead generation activities with speaking opportunities, particular to her niche. It doesn't have to lift a finger except to say send, right? Because again, I always think that you need a human in the loop. So I don't ever encourage people to have it fully automated. I like you to review it to make sure it sounds like you.
Heather (12:43.)
That, wow.
Nici Sweaney (12:52.117)
but so much work saved, right? And also the uplift in how much business she was able to generate just by delegating that. And that process costs less than one cent to run every single time.
Heather (12:52.376)
Yeah.
That's amazing.
Heather (13:04.472)
God, that's phenomenal. Wow. So what tools, cause you mentioned Gemini, you mentioned ChatGPT. Is there a couple of tools that she used specifically?
Nici Sweaney (13:10.037)
Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (13:14.327)
Yeah. So with this one, um, she did it through chat GPT four. So, but what we actually build the automation with is we use a program called respell. So there's a couple that do similar sorts of things, respell Cassidy and make. They're a little bit like for people that haven't played with them before. It's a little bit like, um, I never know how to say it. Zapier Zapier. How do you say it? Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. Okay. Yeah. I call them zaps, but then I call it Zapier and it all feels very, anyway, confused, but yeah.
Heather (13:34.904)
Yeah, both ways. I'd say both, yeah.
Same.
Nici Sweaney (13:42.679)
So it's kind of like Zapier had a baby with ChatGPT. So you're able to pull together different programs and connect them, but then also write prescriptive instructions for either ChatGPT or you can choose Claude. You can choose a whole bunch of large language models. And the way we design it is that it's a, we call it AI agnostic. So at the moment it runs on ChatGPT 4 because that gave her the best results. If at any point it starts to be a bit funky in its answers or a little bit weird or it goes offline.
Heather (13:46.264)
Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (14:11.67)
we can easily switch that model to Claude or Gemini or something like that, and then keep running that automation. So yeah, those are the sorts of tools that we use.
Heather (14:20.408)
Phenomenal. Oh my gosh. So, okay, another question around challenge of growing a business. So people that come to you, you know, they're probably some of them are very time poor. I mean, at least the people I work with are very time poor. They're like, just do it for me. Do you train VA's assistants, coordinators as well as part of what you do?
Nici Sweaney (14:31.318)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (14:39.414)
Yeah, so I have I have BAs that are in my course and they come to me to learn this new skill set so that they can better serve their clients as well. Because this is what it is, right? Like, I mean, I advertise that it's it's teaching you how to build an assistant with artificial intelligence, but it's not so that we can fully replace humans. It's so that we can optimize the way that we work and we can get your humans either doing more, being more productive.
Heather (14:46.872)
Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (15:04.728)
or we can get them doing things that only the humans can do so that higher order thinking, that more kind of critical thinking and problem solving. Or my favorite is that you just buy back time, right? So it's not always about being more productive and filling that 40 hours with something else. It's being more productive, leveraging AI so that you actually can work 10 hours a week, 15 hours a week in your business.
Heather (15:30.68)
How many kids do you have? So you have four kids. How old are they by the way?
Nici Sweaney (15:33.751)
I do. They are 2, 4, 9 and 10.
Heather (15:37.816)
Oh my God. I'm blown away. I know, cause I was hearing them a little bit before I'm thinking, wow, I love like you're camping with your kids. This is brilliant. So good. I had to ask. Oh, okay. So back to what AI can do. So we gave a really beautiful case study around the speaking opportunities and using it to automate that. Um, what else are there some other things? A good shush to the kids. Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (15:42.871)
Yeah, they're like, they're playing skipping somewhere over there.
Nici Sweaney (16:00.567)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, there's so, so we do a lot of like research automations. Also really popular with people that come to me is automating your social media content. So your plan and your strategy as well as the content creation. And that's from graphics to caption to knowing, you know, what you should post about what platforms you should be on designing your customer avatar, all those sorts of intricacies. I use AI a lot for that.
Heather (16:13.016)
That's a good one.
Nici Sweaney (16:27.991)
And that's something that a lot of business owners are just like, Oh my God, I know I have to be doing this, but like really, I, you know, I don't want to, or I've run out of ideas or I can't afford to outsource this yet. So I want to use AI for doing that. That's a really, really popular one. And the other one is lead generation. So there's lots of different platforms where, especially for LinkedIn, you can put in what your ideal sort of customer is, who they are, where they would work, what sort of age range.
Heather (16:43.128)
Great.
Nici Sweaney (16:57.655)
These AI tools actually find those people on LinkedIn and they can send them messages as if they are you just offering to connect. And then once that person connects, then the AI tool registers that that lead is now qualified. They at least want to have an interaction with you and you can take over at that point. So instead of sending 200 cold messages, right? You can have an AI tool do that for you and you're just involved once that person actually wants to interact with you, which again, this is something that we would have had to outsource to humans before and we just don't.
Heather (17:18.232)
Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (17:26.746)
have to do that now. We can leverage these tools. They are very, very cheap. They're very affordable. A lot of them will give you a free trial for the first week or so. And then you can find your new clients without more workload from you.
Heather (17:40.728)
I'm just thinking a lot of our listeners and how some of them would say, oh my God, this is like a dream come true. If I could get my assistant in there to learn how to actually do the social media automation and the lead gen, because I find the same too as well. I mean, no surprise. So do you feel like with your business academy, do you feel like it's okay for the business owner not to be involved and then for the assistant to just go straight in and learn and do they get their hands held enough?
Nici Sweaney (17:46.649)
Mmm.
Nici Sweaney (17:51.865)
Yeah. Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly right.
Nici Sweaney (18:08.089)
Yeah, so yeah, I have I have a few people doing it as professional development. So they are doing it on behalf of the business that they work for. They are not the business owner. And that's really where I see the uplift. I don't necessarily, you know, I only think to a certain point, the business owner needs to be aware of these things. If you are at a point that it really is just you and that's how it has to be for now, then yes, this can get you doing more faster and better and you can make more informed decisions. That's fantastic.
Heather (18:16.792)
Nice.
Nici Sweaney (18:37.753)
But I think ideally what you want is you want someone in your team to have that skill set and then to take over doing those sorts of things. And they can use that skill set to do it faster, better, cheaper, and do more of it. Because as a business owner, you want to stay in your strategy mindset in that entrepreneurial, what is the next solution? What is the next problem that we're looking at? That's ideally where we want to be as entrepreneurs.
Heather (19:03.064)
Absolutely brilliant. So I totally agree with that. I'm loving this. And now I want to talk a little bit more about, so it's AI powered business academy. That's the name of it. Yeah. Okay. Excellent. Intakes. Do you have intakes? Is that ever grain open all the time? How does that work?
Nici Sweaney (19:10.106)
Yep, yep.
Nici Sweaney (19:16.538)
Yeah, so it is now open all the time. It used to be intakes, but we've now flipped it to an evergreen model. So how it works is you come inside, there's about six weeks worth of modules, but about halfway through, we start teaching you how to actually build these automations. So often people will take longer until they get through that process when they feel comfortable building them. But there's six weeks worth of modules. Twice a week, we have live, what we call the AI powered business academy build club, where you can come in optional.
Heather (19:19.928)
Okay. Nice.
Heather (19:36.696)
Yes.
Heather (19:43.288)
Okay.
Nici Sweaney (19:44.986)
I'm there every second week and you can actually build automations in a group so you have that support. And we've got a Facebook group where all the women that are currently part of that course share automation, share advice. And then in the course platform as well, we also have a shared drive where everyone puts their automation. So it's really cool because most of business owners have really overlapping stuff. They're using the same sorts of software. They have the same sorts of needs.
Heather (19:51.608)
Yes.
Nici Sweaney (20:10.268)
They hate doing the same sorts of things. So they build automations for those things. And then we share it as a community with each other, which is really cool. And anyone that comes in has lifetime access because AI moves so fast that I didn't want anyone to learn something in six weeks and then it will redundant two months down the track. So everyone gets lifetime access. So as I update things, it's all there and you can come back and you can refresh on stuff. And all the members also have a graduate lounge, whereas where we put member only content. So there'll be.
bonus extras like how to build a customer service chat bot for your website in two hours or how to build a custom GPT using chat GPT plus or how to clone your voice so you can write scripts from a podcast and publish them instantly. So just little tidbits about extra helpful things that are outside that true automation circle.
Heather (20:55.)
amazing.
Heather (21:01.368)
Amazing. And I was looking at your, like you have really, it's really reasonable as well. You have three different payment options. Yeah. For people to join. Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (21:07.259)
Yes, yeah, so I've got upfront and then it's over, I think the longest one is over about six months that you can pay for it.
Heather (21:15.192)
Absolutely brilliant because it keeps it really affordable for people as well, depending on where you guys are in your business development as well. So that's amazing.
Nici Sweaney (21:23.387)
Yeah, exactly. And the promise is, you know, if you hire a virtual assistant, they cost you around about 30 grand a year. You're looking at starting prices. And so we're talking about, you know, a month to two months worth of the very cheapest virtual assistant that you can find about a month or two months worth of that salary. And you can build an assistant that does most of those tasks for you on autopilot. That's free to run forever.
Heather (21:32.6)
Yeah.
Heather (21:39.96)
Smart.
Heather (21:48.184)
So good. Okay. So I want to flip gears a little bit, um, just to talk about trends that may or may not work that you see coming up in AI. And I'm going to give you some context on that as well. So, um, I'm a trainer for Metta, uh, and there's a five of us in Australia. It's really fun. Yeah. It's great. And one of my co -trainers, he's, um, he's a huge e -commerce brand and he used to be a detective in his nine to five. So Dan, yeah.
Nici Sweaney (21:55.356)
Mmm.
Nici Sweaney (22:01.18)
Yeah, cool. Yeah. Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (22:10.46)
Wow! God, talk about a pivot.
Heather (22:15.864)
Like you, like a science -based mind, I think a little bit. So he's always like, let's test, let's test. So he's made this whole series of videos, educational videos of himself, AI generated. So he got AI to write the script, did the voice and also the video. What do you think about that? Do you think, and he's undecided if it's working or better or worse. So what do you think about that whole flow?
Nici Sweaney (22:18.076)
Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (22:21.756)
Yes.
Nici Sweaney (22:28.988)
Yes.
Nici Sweaney (22:38.812)
Yeah!
It's a really interesting one. I so I haven't because I have a higher education background and I'm really passionate about education. I still have an education armed AI her way. So I still go into schools and universities and deliver professional development to teachers. And I also have an EdTech app. So I've designed an AI software for the education space. So I'm very much invested in that. And and the research in that area actually suggests that for a student, they get just as much learning out of AI produced videos and they do from.
Heather (22:52.92)
Excellent.
Nici Sweaney (23:11.998)
pre -recorded lectures and things like that. So that's what the data suggests. I find it surprising because there is a bit of nuance missing. But what I just actually thought of is I have listened and no offense to any of my academic colleagues that are listening out there, but I have listened to some pre -recorded lectures and they are a bit of a monotone and not a whole lot of expression, right? So if I think about maybe where the median online lecturer is sitting,
Heather (23:15.896)
Yep.
Heather (23:35.032)
Yes.
Nici Sweaney (23:41.821)
Maybe an AI avatar is doing just a good job. I guess I find it a little bit hard because I feel like I'm quite expressive even when I'm teaching online. And so, you know, I have an AI avatar and she does not, she uses her hands a bit, but not as crazy as this, right? So, and she doesn't move back and forth as much as I do and all those sorts of things. So I do think there's been an expression that means that it's a little bit harder to grasp onto that experience.
Heather (23:50.04)
Yep.
Nici Sweaney (24:08.669)
But if you are looking at what most students are doing at university, they are just gathering content. I don't think that AI is under delivering in that sense in terms of being able to deliver content. So yeah, it's a little bit of mixed bag. Personally, I think at a certain point, I like to do AI avatars to share little tidbits, little videos. I think once you're getting beyond three minutes, you need a bit of personality in there. And I still think that's a human thing.
Heather (24:19.736)
Okay.
Heather (24:35.384)
I'm so glad you said that. Plus like your own wisdom, your own quirk, your own stories, your own way of answering questions. If then obviously the Q and A or workshopping, right? That's a human.
Nici Sweaney (24:44.735)
Yes. Yeah, exactly. And, and, you know, again, the technology is changing. So there's now beta testing live streaming avatar videos. So they are powered by large language models, but they can respond in real time and they can read nonverbal cues as well. So if you wave hello to me, Heather, I can wave hello back as my AI doppelganger. I imagine at some point that will be integrated into a large language model that you can also then embed your own knowledge base on top of. So I could build.
Heather (24:49.432)
Yeah.
Heather (24:53.272)
Wow.
Nici Sweaney (25:12.288)
chat GPT that's also been trained on the way that he writes, the way that he talks, here's some verbal recordings of Nici. And so that might be a bit closer to how I would actually respond to things. But I still think the cadence in human voice is very difficult to truly replicate with code. And I think my prediction is that people will radiate more and more towards a really kind of human looking element because...
Again, the data suggested about 90 % of social media content will be reduced by AI in the next couple of years. So I think people will really gravitate towards something that is overtly human in the way that it is delivered.
Heather (25:52.856)
That's what I've been saying. I'm not as educated at all with AI as you are by a long shot, but that's how I intuitively feel about it. I feel like, yeah, it's more and more of this AI generated content, it's everywhere. What's going to set that apart from reality? What do you think that is? Is it going to be the videos, like the actual videos of people or?
Nici Sweaney (25:55.071)
Mmm.
Nici Sweaney (26:08.447)
Yes. Yeah, exactly.
I think it could be the videos, but even the way that we write, I mean, AI is improving in the way that it writes, but it's still, the more that you use AI, the more that you can see when something is AI generated. And I liken it a little bit to, you know, I'm 37, so a fundamental movie in my childhood was Jurassic Park, right? That came out when I was eight. And I was so scared, right? Like so scared of Jurassic Park, especially that first scene where the raptors dropped in the...
Heather (26:18.488)
Yeah.
Heather (26:34.68)
Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (26:43.648)
the box and takes down the guard anyway frightening ads. I now watch it as an adult and the special effects have worn off a little bit, right? You can see that things don't move correctly and same, you know, if we go back again to another movie like Jaws, Jaws looks so fake now, right? But it's scared an entire generation out of swimming in the ocean. So I think with AI, it's a bit like that. We haven't yet been trained to see AI generated content because it hasn't been around for very long. And I feel like I'm exposed to it day in and day out. So I feel like.
Heather (26:50.968)
Yeah.
Heather (26:59.224)
Totally.
Nici Sweaney (27:12.961)
I have a bit more awareness, but it'll take us a bit of time before we can truly see that. And then I think at that point, even if it is written, I think it will be easier to see human elements. So I don't know if we're going to have to rely on videos. I think that's probably the best way now because it's very obvious when it's a human and when it's AI. But I think the humanness of our stories and our expression will be more and more important and will be more and more visible as people get more and more used to what AI looks like and sounds like.
Heather (27:40.504)
Great way of answering that. We're going to wrap up shortly, but before we do, what's in the works? What's in the pipeline? You said you have some exciting things that you can share.
Nici Sweaney (27:48.064)
Yes. So yeah, so the AI powered business academy has just gone evergreen. So I'm really excited to see how that grows and that community of women. So that is just a female focused course just for women business owners to connect and to build these automations, all for women that are in the workforce as well. Like I said, we have a few people doing it's professional development. And I'm excited to build that graduate lounge of all these extra bonuses because...
Yeah, like I said, AI is constantly changing. So I always have a million ideas about extra useful things to show that community, but that is really exciting. And then the consultancy side of the business is really taking off. So that's where we go into businesses and companies and we go through all the systems and processes and we build AI solutions that can help save time and increase revenue. Right. And to me, that makes a real difference because I really enjoy working with people that are all about social good.
And so for me, it's not just about making them more money. For me, it's about leveraging those women and scaling their ideas so they can help more people. And that's what really, really matters. So that's stuff I'm really, really passionate about. And the way that we approach consultancy is that we never build anything that you're then reliant on me or my team for. The idea is once it's built, we train internally for you to manage those things. Sorry. There's a four year old asking for a lolly. Okay. Can you go?
Daddy, please, I just got to finish. Yeah, thank you, honey. Sorry. And so yeah, when we do these, the aim is never to have a company or business rely on to us. The aim is to then empower staff to take over and to feel like they can manage those automations. That's why we focus on low code and no code solutions. So we can actually teach you how to do it yourself because I want as many women in particular to be empowered in the generative AI era.
Heather (29:16.376)
Hehehehe
Heather (29:35.576)
Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (29:40.257)
Men are still twice as likely to be using generative AI at work as women are. And to me, that's a really scary gender gap because we've just had one generation of, you know, we no longer have to quit work when we get pregnant. That has not been very long, right? So we are still fighting for the same opportunities. We're still fighting for the same pay. We're still fighting to be seen as as competitive as our male counterparts. And now all of a sudden we have something that if you use it daily, it can give you a 40 % increase in productivity. So that's two extra days of work.
Heather (29:45.688)
Interesting. Yeah, it is.
Heather (29:54.424)
Mmm.
Heather (30:02.808)
Yeah.
Nici Sweaney (30:09.635)
And if we are sitting next to men in the office that are using it, they are getting the extra work done. They are launching their ideas. They are showing that they are productive and effective. So they're getting the promotions. They're getting the opportunities. They get to launch their startup. They get to prep for their venture capital investment meeting, right? Women aren't yet. So to me, it's really important that we empower as many women as possible so that we all have a seat at the table and women can launch and scale their ideas because the world's about a place when women do more and.
Heather (30:10.168)
Wow.
Nici Sweaney (30:38.786)
you know, have their ideas seen and noticed.
Heather (30:41.656)
God, amen to that. That was absolutely, I'm like, I'm feeling all inspired right now. This is absolutely brilliant. No, thank God that was amazing. And social good, like what you stand for. I love it. You're doing such beautiful work in the world. How do people learn about you, sign up, do all the things?
Nici Sweaney (30:43.298)
Thank you.
Nici Sweaney (31:00.867)
Oh, sorry, you just pause for a second. Now you're back. Cool.
Heather (31:05.24)
How do people get in touch with you and do next steps if they want to?
Nici Sweaney (31:09.506)
Yeah, sure thing. So I'm on most social media as AI Her Way. I hang out most on LinkedIn and Instagram. So Instagram's AI underscore Her Way and on LinkedIn. You can find me at AI Her Way, but I actually post a lot just as me personally. So Dr. Nici Sweeney, that's N -I -C -I S -W -E -A -N -E -Y. So those two places people can reach out to me. You can also email me, Nici at AIHerWay .com .au. I have a website as well.
Heather (31:26.936)
Great.
Nici Sweaney (31:38.084)
But yeah, there's lots of freebies on my website. You can find out more about the course if people are interested or book in to have a chat if you feel like you're ready or at the stage where you're wanting that full scale consultancy. Or yeah, invite me along to talk to you and your team. I love speaking and teaching in front of people and getting them involved and making everyone feel inspired.
Heather (31:58.04)
It's very, very evident just in our very short chat together. Guys, you guys have to go hang out with Nici, go follow her and connect with her on LinkedIn and, you know, go to her site and sign up. You know, I, I'm after hearing this chat, I already know that either myself or one of my team members is going through your Academy already. I'm just, let's just say this is like a little test. No, just kidding.
Nici Sweaney (32:01.315)
Thank you.
Nici Sweaney (32:12.9)
Thank you. Yeah, exactly. That's right. It's nothing to do with the podcast. Just want to ask 20 questions about how it actually works. This is a discovery call. It just turned into a podcast. Yeah, I love it.
Heather (32:20.376)
No, no, no, it's personal. I know, right?
Heather (32:27.32)
Pretty much. Oh my God, it's so good. As we wrap up, first of all, thank you so much for giving me your time and our listeners all over the world. It's been amazing. I know you're on school holidays with your kids and it's been really entertaining and great. I'm loving it. Are there any last words of advice or words of wisdom that you'd like to impart before we say goodbye?
Nici Sweaney (32:38.275)
No, thank you. Thanks for putting up with the interruptions.
Nici Sweaney (32:55.429)
I think just a call to arms. I really encourage women to be involved. I think if doing training, you know, I've now spoken to over a thousand people about AI. If doing any of that, what that has taught me is that women by and large are more skeptical about artificial intelligence and as we should be, but it's actually by having women involved that we make sure it lets us.
tackle and solve some of humanity's biggest problems because women by and large are the ones that are concerned about empathy, they're the ones that are concerned about bias and ethics, they're the ones that want the world to be a better place for our children and our children's children. AI absolutely could do that, but only if we are seen and heard and part of it. So ladies, take action and if anything, get started and get involved and be heard.
Heather (33:44.248)
It's happening. It's not going to stop. So I like what you're saying. Jump on ladies.
Nici Sweaney (33:46.628)
No, yeah, the cat is out of the box. Yeah.
Heather (33:50.392)
It's out well and truly. So yeah, we need more drivers of the technology that are, you know, here for good things. Uh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I will let you go back to your amazing holiday with your kids.
Nici Sweaney (33:57.124)
Yeah, exactly.
Nici Sweaney (34:02.052)
Thank you so much Heather, it was such a pleasure. Thank you very, very much.
Heather (34:07.256)
Thank you so much.
