Should Coaches Learn AI?

Deep Dive by Tony Wang

“The Internet won’t change anything”.

That was an article published by Newsweek in 2005. It talked about all the possibilities of the internet, and dismissed them. Now, that same quote has made a list of the top dumbest things said about the internet.

Today, AI is the new internet. And we’re still so early. 

I’m sure you’ve heard all the hype. And as a coach, you might feel lost or confused. Or maybe you don’t see what the big deal is yet. You might even see it as, “Oh great, another new thing I need to learn on top of the marketing funnels, sales and billions of other things to operate my business”. 

So in the next 5 minutes, I’ll show you what I believe are the best ways to leverage AI as a coach that can help you get more clients and grow your business, while also freeing up your time.

What AI Is Not

So first of all, AI is not a “business opportunity” like some ads and posts I see. It’s not the new gold rush. It’s simply a tool to make your life and business easier and more streamlined. So what this means is, in order to really leverage AI, you need to have specific systems and processes in place. If not, start creating them now. 

Assuming you have somewhat of a working business model already, AI can help you scale and operate to a consistent and desirable level without you working yourself to death or having to hire and train other people. If you have a VA or other team members, it could be wise to have them learn AI too.

Why You Should Focus On Volume of Output

One thing I’ve learned about business success is at the beginning, your results come from your volume of output. Putting out X pieces of content per day. Or Launching Y ads per week. The higher your output, the greater chance something takes off and you gain momentum from there. 

When I first learned PPC marketing, my mentor told me to launch 100 ads per day with different images. 

“Wow that’s a lot”, I thought, but I did it anyway. 

But then I saw why he had me do that. From those 100 ads, about 5 of them did 90% of the sales. The majority were unprofitable and I had to turn them off. It was the 80/20 principle at work.

And what would have happened if I only launched 5 ads per day, or 10 ads per day? I’m sure I would have found success eventually, but it would have taken a much longer time. 

My point is, your sales and marketing success are going to be determined by the volume of your output. At least initially. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing content or ads. The more you put out, the better your results generally. That’s why most successful coaches have marketing teams instead of doing everything themselves. 

But when you’re new-ish you may not have the luxury to hire or outsource to an agency yet. So learning to use AI evens the playing field and allows you to have a virtual team at your disposal. And in many cases, AI generated content is BETTER than what you can get paying “expert” contractors or agencies thousands of dollars.

3 Ways To Leverage AI In Your Coaching Business: 

Content Idea generation – If you’re ever stuck trying to come up with fresh content ideas (that won’t be boring to your audience), you can ask ChatGPT to do it for you. The more specific you are with who your audience is, what you do, your style or personality, and so on, the better your output will be. 

When you try this, you’ll see some of the ideas it produces are terrible. But you’ll get a lot of gems in there too. At the end of the day, it won’t matter until you put it out. But this saves you time from trying to rack your brain and getting stuck in indecision.

Content and Copywriting – Most people don’t like copywriting or don’t fully get it. As a copywriter myself, I used to be in the camp that no AI could outwrite me. And now I’ve been proven wrong 🙂 Writing is one of the best use cases of AI because of how the technology works. 

You can use AI to help you simplify your writing, make it more clear, make it more emotional, make it more casual and tons of other ways to improve the clarity and persuasiveness. You can also use it to generate headlines, bullet points, email subject lines, landing page copy, and other sales elements. 

Design – I used to never give a rat’s tush about design because I believed the copy was always more important. But that’s only for certain types of business like direct response. If you’re building a brand, you’ll want your brand to give people a certain feeling, and that requires the right design and images. 

Midjourney is a great tool to generate professional looking graphics for almost anything. 

The most important part: Use the right prompts!

Now one very important part to all of this: AI is NOT going to give you perfect outputs every time. You can get it to 70-80% and will have to tweak and edit the rest on your own. The key to getting it to 70-80% is using the right prompts. 

By right prompts, I don’t mean to go out and pay for prompts that you copy and paste. I mean understand what “ingredients” your prompts must have to get your desired results. If you miss this step, you’ll get low-quality results that you’ll never use in your actual business. 

Here’s a tip: Whenever you can provide AI with examples of what good outputs look like (successful copy or content from yourself or your competitors), then you’ll get much higher quality outputs. 

And don’t worry, if your plate is already too full to learn this new thing. You can learn the basics of how to do all this in a week or two. And I guarantee when you do invest the time to learn how to use AI properly, you’ll end up saving tons more hours in the long run, which will allow you to build a thriving business and a balanced personal life. 

If you’d like to learn more about using AI to streamline your business, I invite you to join my private newsletter where I write about marketing, copywriting and personal growth. It’s for you if you’d like to grow your online business to 6-7 figures without grinding yourself into dust. Just mention you’re part of the Next Era Coach to get expedited