Ruth Poundwhite [00:00:00]:
AI is reshaping the online course landscape and our offers can’t stay static if we want to keep connecting and creating impact with our work. In today’s episode, we will explore how to refresh and upgrade your offers for the AI era in ways that feel sustainable and supportive for you and for your clients. Welcome to the Soulful Sales show where we talk about believing in the value of your offers, getting them in front of your right people, and selling more of what you do in your unique way. Hi and welcome back to the Soulful Sales Show. Today I have a guest, Monica Froz, and we are talking about how she has upgraded her offers in the age of AI. Monica is one of the speakers at my upcoming Aligned AI Summit and at the time of release. Doors are open now and it is about to start, so go to aligned AI summit.com and get your free ticket ASAP. So in this interview we cover the real reason lifetime access can be a bit of a trap in the new AI era.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:01:01]:
How to identify and fix those kind of friction points where people are getting stuck in your programs, smart ways to use AI without losing your very important human personal touch, and a few really cool behind the scenes examples of how Monica uses AI to save time, money and mental load in her own life, which I am all about. And before we dive in, let me tell you a little bit more about Monica. Known for her bold, results driven approach, Monica has been featured by major brands, invited to the White House to discuss women’s economic empowerment, and met the CEO of Pinterest. After mastering paid ads for digital products through Empowered Business Lab, AI the Digital Shop Experience and the Empowered Business Podcast, she teaches entrepreneurs how to leverage AI to simplify product creation, optimize sales and work smarter. When she’s not teaching business, you’ll find Monica cheering for the Buffalo Bills, hanging out with her girls and testing the latest AI tools. And honestly, this was such a juicy, timely conversation with Monica and I also want to give a shout out to her podcast where I was interviewed and it’s kind of like a different side of this conversation. So in this episode you’re going to hear us talk about how important it is to upgrade your courses in the age of AI. On Monica’s podcast, the Empowered Business Podcast, we are talking about some of the important considerations and some of the concerns we have around staying human in the age of AI.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:02:32]:
So definitely listen to both side by side and enjoy. So Monica, I am very excited for the topic of this conversation and I want to start by asking you about how you are Upgrading your offers in the age of AI? I know it’s a big question and I’m sure we’ll be able to take it in different directions, but. Yeah, how broadly speaking are you upgrading your offers in the age of AI?

Monica Froese [00:02:58]:
Okay, so that is a big question. I, I feel like for context, it’s important to say that I was not, I’m usually, I wouldn’t say I’m always an early adopter, but I’m a fairly early adopter. I feel like in the tech space because I like, I grew up in corporate tech before I started the business. So I was in corporate tech for 10 years and I’ve been doing the business full time for almost 10 years as, as well. So like my entire adult life I’ve worked with tech and I’ve seen a lot of things. Like when I was in the tech corporate, I remember when cloud computing became a big thing and now it’s like everything we do is in the cloud. And so I, I’ve been around the block a lot and when ChatGPT came out, I was going through like a really rough personal time in my life and I was just kind of like, okay, this is going to be a thing, but I’m gonna. And I did that for two years.

Monica Froese [00:03:46]:
I would say 2023 and 2024. I sidelined it and I may have started a few ChatGPT conversations here or there, but I was not using it regularly, I was not talking about it in the business. And then 2025 came and it was very clear to me that either we jump on this bandwagon or you’re going to get obsolete. Especially on the B2B side. You just can’t ignore this any longer. So when I jump in, I do it with two feet. You know, I go right to the, to the deep end. And so literally the year turned and I was like, okay, we have to upgrade all of our offers.

Monica Froese [00:04:22]:
And I feel like in the first half of 2025, I’ve talked to a lot of people who are like, who agree that AI has taken off significantly. Like every time you wake up, it’s something new has happened. So the very first thing I did when I was upgrading our first program, which is the Empowered Business Lab, that’s the program I created during COVID for helping people create high converting digital products. I got there because I was teaching Pinterest ads for so long, and basically everyone who came into that program did not have a converting offer. Very few people did. And so I got really good at helping people get converting offers so that they would actually make money when they ran their ads. So I was like, let’s create a program on this. And of course that’s before AI was a thing.

Monica Froese [00:05:05]:
And I thought, okay, if I don’t upgrade this program to talk about how to create digital products with AI, nobody’s ever going to buy this again because that’s like all that’s what people want to know about. So I updated it in the Q1 of 2025 and it was very prompt based and it was a huge undertaking. It’s a really big program. I got it done. I was so relieved. And then I like woke up the next day and suddenly prompts are basically obsolete. Now people are onto custom GPTs and talking about agents and automations. And I kind of had a, one of those, like one of those scare emoji moments where I was like, okay, this is not enough.

Monica Froese [00:05:44]:
We have to really rethink how we are going to run all of our programs moving forward. I’ve. I’ve likened it to when I did the Promoted PINS course. One of the things that happened, this industry always talks about lifetime access, right? Which I’ve always found to be pretty goofy to say lifetime access. And it’s not even like something you really should say for legalese. So we say now that you get a minimum of 12 months guaranteed access and you’ll have access for as long as we’re actively selling the program. And what I ran into when I was running the Promoted PINS course, every time Pinterest changed something, I had to change something. So let’s say someone bought a paid me 190, like 197 for the promoted pins course when it first came out three years later.

Monica Froese [00:06:28]:
They had access to our student community, access to our monthly calls, and I’m answering these really in depth questions without getting paid for it three years later. And it was a terrible business model. And honestly, it’s probably why I burned out so bad and I shut everything down. I woke up one day and I was like, I’m done with Pinterest. I am noticing that’s going to happen in the age of AI as well. And I’ve talked to so many people about this because in order to keep our programs fresh and updated and relevant in the age of AI, you can’t, there’s no more. You record it and it can even be good for a year at this point you really have to be pretty agile. So.

Monica Froese [00:07:06]:
So one of the things we’re doing, we just added a bunch of custom GPTs based on our frameworks. And that’s awesome because that, I mean, I’ve been teaching this for 10 years. So all the content and data that I could put into those GPTs, I find I’m actually kind of surprised by the answers it comes back with. I’m like, wow, this is like me on steroids almost. So we did that. We are creating agents so people can actually chat. Right. With my clone when I’m not available.

Monica Froese [00:07:34]:
And we are. I’m now to the point where I’m not going to make the program lifetime. Lifetime. I say this in quotes. Lifetime access. We’re going to have to have a container around it in order for me to be able to update it and stay relevant and which is what people want from us too. So that’s like the overall where I am with this.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:07:53]:
I love it. Like, there’s so much for us to talk about from that, from that initial question and I think this question of, yeah, realizing how things are changing. And I guess a lot of people, especially this year, are really feeling this now. Like, we’re really like coming face to face with this. Okay. Things are changing and we don’t know exactly where they’re going or exactly how long things are going to stay just the way they are right now. And then when things are going to shift again, I mean, like you and your prompts and then suddenly that changed. You put all this effort in.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:08:24]:
It’s a really important point that you made about the Lifetime access thing. Because I know a lot of people like me. I felt really great about offering lifetime access to a lot of my programs. And now at this point I am coming to this stage where I’m like, I do have to change. I maybe there’s some that I might just retire. I am someone who has a lot of different offers and some of them, you know, maybe they’ve run their course and I retire them and people can contact. They will have access to the older version for a while. But some of them are like, you know what? Yeah, they do need updating, they do need changing.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:08:55]:
Things have shifted. But it feels like a lot of work.

Monica Froese [00:09:00]:
It does feel like a lot of work. And I agree, like, I felt good about lifetime access for the first version of the Empowered Business Lab because really the strategy and tactics of creating a high converting offer don’t really change. And still, I would argue, don’t change. Like our buying behavior, like the way you convince people to buy something is not necessarily different just because of AI, but the way people want to access your information is changing. I would Say, and so like when we do workshops, we do quick win workshops. They’re like 90 minutes, you’re going to keep access to that replay. I’m not going to cut you off from the replay or anything like that because once I deliver it, I deliver it, it’s done. But when you have these, I even started referring to our bigger programs, not even just as programs.

Monica Froese [00:09:41]:
We’ve been calling them a system because that’s really what it is. It turns out that how you use our system to create your products, how you use our system to get your shop up and launch, because that’s the other big program that I have to update next, which is our digital shop experience. And that’s all about now you have all these digital products. And in some ways it’s great because basically I teach people how to create these high converting digital products and then they have so much, so many of them. Then I teach them how to put them into a shop storefront because like me, I was running into this issue of having like 40 different sales pages and it became too much to manage. And so we’re like, hey, we should be in an E comm model here, which is our shop. And so in some ways it’s great because AI is helping me teach people how to create their products faster, repurpose the content, content they already have faster, and get them into the shop model. But here comes the conundrum.

Monica Froese [00:10:30]:
Every time I wake up, Shopify is launching something new or there’s a new Shopify app that we can, that can make, you know, more better conversions. And if I’m going to keep teaching these strategies, I have to get paid for it. There’s just no other. I can’t, I can’t do it if I’m not getting paid for it. And the conundrum I ran into with the Promoted Pins course was what was happening was all these people were getting support from, from me for free for years. And what that meant I had to launch more frequently because in order to provide the support for the people who had already paid, I had to be making money. And to make money, I had to keep selling. And it was this terrible loop of burnout that was happening to me.

Monica Froese [00:11:06]:
And then Pinterest would change something. Then they went public and it was, it’s honestly very reminiscent of what’s going on in AI And I think if people don’t rethink their offers, they’re going to burn out and become obsolete.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:11:18]:
Honestly, it’s really important to frame it in the context of burnout and doing what’s best for you as well. Because I think especially so many of the people I work with are just like the kindest people and they want to do right by their clients, but it’s not right for anyone if you, and if you did burn out, you cannot support, continue to support those people who already bought anyway.

Monica Froese [00:11:39]:
Right, exactly. And that’s, and that’s the thing. What I’m noticing now in this age of AI is people almost want access to us more because now everything’s coming off like, robotic. And now the human connection, I feel, is becoming even more important. And that’s the thing, like, the more you need me, it’s even more important that we stay profitable and that you’re getting paid ongoing because you will end up. It’s great to have a big launch. Right. And take in a bunch of money.

Monica Froese [00:12:10]:
Right. We all love that. I love that. I love when I launch and it goes well, but then on the back end of that, the delivery six months out, what are you doing? If, if they still want you and they want your updated, they want you to be on top of what you’re teaching, then how am I going to do that if I’m not making money? And that’s, and that’s the thing that it’s just becoming. It’s almost like we’re in a hyperdrive situation of like, the information is readily accessible, things are changing rapidly and, and people want you to show up more. And so it’s like it’s going, it’s going to come to a, like a crash if we don’t address it sooner than later.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:12:49]:
Absolutely. And I’m going to ask you in a bit about some of the specifics about how you’ve been making this work for you in your office. But first, I just want to back up something you said. It’s not necessarily that the information that we’re delivering is changing, but the way people access the information. I was like, that is so spot on. And just for the benefit of anyone who might be listening and who is like new to AI, I mean, or like not dug into all of the stuff yet that you mentioned, like agents, custom GPTs, all of that, can you just give us a quick fire overview of those things and then how you decided where to take the information that you already have and apply. Give people ways to use that differently.

Monica Froese [00:13:32]:
Yeah. So, okay, first of all, I think when you’ve been creating content on the Internet before AI, it puts us in an advantage because there’s so much stuff that I did before AI was ever A thing. So it was truly just out of my brain. No one, I had to structure it, I had to come up with it. And that gives me a pretty good jump off point for leveraging things like custom GPTs, because when I create my custom GPTs, I’m creating them off of my framework. But this framework was developed before AI was a thing and I feel like that it, it’s making it way more unique because of that. And when I say like, the way people are consuming information is changing, or at least honestly, I think it’s the perception that’s changing. The perception is that you can get anything you need out of ChatGPT.

Monica Froese [00:14:23]:
And to a degree that is true. Right, I can go to ChatGPT. Let’s just take my shop course for an example. I go to ChatGPT and say, hey, give me step by step instructions on how to do X, Y, Z in my shop. Maybe it’s how to structure a product page, how to do the meta fields. I don’t care what it is you ask it and it actually is going to give you step by step instructions on how to do it. But here’s what I think people are where, where like course creators like us can connect dots. It’s okay, first you have to know what to ask ChatGPT, right? So if you don’t know what to ask, if you’ve never created a shop before, there’s a whole lot of stuff that you probably won’t even think to know to ask.

Monica Froese [00:15:01]:
And you could even say to chat GPT, what am I missing? And it would probably fill in a decent gap. But if you don’t have the overall strategy, like if you don’t understand the overall strategy, that’s going to be an issue with getting the right information out of there. The second thing is that’s great. Chat GPT can tell you how to set up a shop, but does it run a shop? Does it know the actual human side behind how you get people to buy? Does it have that experience that it can give you? But I’ve, I’ve helped hundreds at this point, probably over a thousand people set up their shop so that you, you can, I can’t replace that, that human experience. I also think people still want to buy from people at the end and I think that’s where we’re seeing this poll for like my trainings that I’m doing now. Almost the, the number one question we’re getting is how do we access you? How do we get access to you? And so I’ve learned, I’ve now had to learn. Then this goes into the agent conversation and like automating stuff is what I started telling people. I have coined it the Monica seal of approval.

Monica Froese [00:16:03]:
Essentially I find that people just want me to, to validate that what they’ve come up with and what they’re doing is on the right path. So I tell people now our custom are built with our framework so they get you 80 to 85% of the way there. Then you be cloned in the process of cloning ourselves with AI and testing it to see how good the answers get back. So essentially it’s like we’re calling it Monica Bot, right? You go to me, the AI form, it has 10 years of my trainings, all that stuff loaded in there and you can ask it. That’s going to get them like 90% of the way there. And then people just want me to look at what they did and say this is correct or this is what I would change based on my experience. I mean it’s great for me and it’s great for them if you think about it, because one, they don’t need me by their side to get that far in the process. And, and if leverage, if we leverage it right as course creators, we can actually serve more people because we’re not helping them start at either 0% or the 25% line.

Monica Froese [00:17:04]:
We’re helping them now at the 90% line. And that’s kind of how I’m attempting to see it at this point. Like, well, I mean it’s got to play out. We have to see as things, who knows what’s coming next. That’s the other thing. Every time I think I’m like, I have it figured out, it’s like, well now look at this tool. It just came out and everyone’s asking me about that. So now we have to change the game again.

Monica Froese [00:17:26]:
So you know, I think it’s going to be, I don’t know if we’re, I keep asking myself like, are we ever going to level out here? Are we going to get to a point where, you know, every, when there’s something major changes, usually you get to that level out point and I’m like, I don’t even know if we’re going to get to that point with AI. I think it’s going to be so evolving that we are just going to have to stay agile.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:17:45]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think the way you described it as people’s perception of how they want to engage, I guess it also gives people options. So I know for me I am someone who can find it really hard to start something and AI chat GPT, custom GPT, however, it comes with an offer. It just gets me over that first hurdle, you know, and actually gets me doing something, you know. So I think, yes, it’s about giving people options for how they engage as well as increasing your own capacity as the creator. Right, yeah. And, and yeah, the importance of that human connection. So, so important.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:18:24]:
Let’s let me dig in slightly to one example that you’re talking about. So there are custom gbts, so like customized versions of chat GBT that we train. You also talked about cloning yourself. Can you talk a little bit more about what that means for someone who’s like, what, what is she talking about?

Monica Froese [00:18:42]:
So, again, I do think that this is the advantage of having been on the Internet. Personally, I feel like a dinosaur sometimes when I talk about it, but when you think about how many funnel reviews I’ve done, how many shop reviews I’ve done, and these are all recorded, right? I record them, how much data I’ve seen behind paid ad campaigns, behind funnels, behind shops, how many coffee chats I’ve had with my membership students, and how many podcasts I’ve recorded. The amount of content that has. I have recorded that I can train a bot on to essentially sound like me and answer like me is oh, it’s, it’s kind of awesome actually, when you think about it. And so when I talk about Monica Bot, I’m talking about it literally, it looks like a chat box. And you, you, you are chatting with the clone of me, right? And on the back end, we’re using form wise for this. On the back end, you can then audit how your clone is answering. So I don’t expect it to be perfect out the gate.

Monica Froese [00:19:40]:
And I will give. We haven’t, we haven’t released it into the wild yet. I will give disclaimers on there that, you know, basically I, for a while, I’m going to be human, checking it to make sure that we’re not leading people astray. I’m not actually sure how I’m going to disclaim it yet, but, you know, the same thing with custom GPT too. You know, I can’t control the outputs that ChatGPT comes back to. It’s trained on my frameworks, but. And I can’t see the conversations. And so that’s one thing to keep in mind.

Monica Froese [00:20:11]:
I think I tell people this a lot. It’s like, you know, I test it and try to break it, but again, I can’t control that I can’t control the outcome. And this is another reason why we’re not going to be obsolete as program creators, you know, because here’s the thing, AI could still lead them astray. It could, you know, and so it’s still important to have the human knowledge there on these topics so that they can say, hey, like that sounds good, but that’s actually a really bad idea.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:20:41]:
Yeah. And what you’ve described is. And I’ve been doing the same and so far I’ve only been using it for my own personal use, training with all of this back information, all of the transcripts from my coaching, not private coaching calls, but like group Q&As and all of that kind of thing. And I’m using it myself to like, you know, give me some, something interesting I said about this and like coming up with content ideas or journaling prompts or what are some of the most common questions people ask me. It’s so, so helpful. But all of this relies on us having the information in the first place, like, you know, of how we’ve been showing up and the calls and everything, and also the discernment to know what actually is relevant and what isn’t and training it on the right thing. And it sounds like you’re, you said you haven’t released it yet publicly and it does take a while to train this properly. I found with a custom GPT that I released to my members, it kept like, it would do the thing it was trained to do and then it would go off piece and give them information about all kinds of things and they would, my members would think it was me that was saying that, not, not literally me, they’re saying about, you know what I mean, that I had trained it and all that other stuff as well.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:21:51]:
So I have had to add disclaimers as well, saying if you’re like, you’re going past the point of which this custom GPT is trained, this is now not coming from Ruth. Yeah. So really, really important.

Monica Froese [00:22:04]:
I like to do live demonstrations, walking through the GPTs. And I actually like when it goes off course so that they can see me. Okay. I have to like reign it back in. Like the one time I, I, we were, I think I, it was like funnel copy that we were working on and it said to me, it came back and asked me all these questions, but I had uploaded all the documents to it. I’m like, I already gave you this information and, and it was interesting for my students to see that because it’s like, I, I Do feel like people have to understand that AI is not perfect and just because it said it doesn’t make it true. And that you honestly have to, if you’re going to, if, if you’re going to use AI in your business, especially to create content, you have to get good at pushing back at it. I push back at it constantly.

Monica Froese [00:22:48]:
And just because you got a custom GPT from someone does not mean you’re not going to have to push back. And, and again, that discernment, like one of my favorite GPTs that we’ve been using and I was telling you before we were recording that I just released it 10 days ago and it already has 50 conversations. So clearly people are attempting to use it and it’s our data one. And the reason I love this is because it is one of the hardest things of teaching digital products was getting people to read and analyze their data. Everyone wants to. Most of the people that create digital products, they’re creatives and they, they love the creative side of creating their digital products. But then when it comes to the data side, which is where I thrive because I have my MBA in finance, I like numbers. Very rare I find in this space for people to like numbers.

Monica Froese [00:23:33]:
And so the hardest part about teaching this before I was I had a lot of if this, then that statements, but it was just to get people to look at their data was like pulling teeth. And now I find that people are kind of excited about it because they’re like, wait, I just have to plug it in and, and it’s going to give me the answers. And it’s like yes, if you. So now I’m finding before I couldn’t even get people to fill out their funnel tracking spreadsheet. Now they’re filling it out because they know they can upload it somewhere and get answers from it. And I will say I’ve tried to break it and I haven’t been able to yet. I’ve uploaded so many, so many different data sets hoping that it was going to give me like just junk answers. And so far, knock on wood, it has given me.

Monica Froese [00:24:17]:
It comes back and I’m like, oh wow, this is really good. It sounds a lot like me. Sometimes it even comes up with things that I haven’t thought of. Like the other day I ran some of my own data through it for a funnel that I’m running on the redefining mom side, my B2C side. And it, I uploaded all the data from the funnel and then I upload heat maps from hotjar. I’m really big on behavior analytics, so I use hotjar for that. And it came back to me, and it came back with everything. I already thought, having done this for so long, but it told me to create a sticky checkout bar.

Monica Froese [00:24:52]:
So, you know, when you scroll like the checkout, the buy button stays there. And I’m like, that makes a lot of sense in my shop, when you scroll on a product listing, the add to cart stays sticky. So I’m like, I never thought of this. So that was the one thing I changed on that funnel. And the tripwire conversions doubled. And I was like, huh? And I would not have thought to do that. Even though it’s so. In hindsight, it’s like so obvious.

Monica Froese [00:25:14]:
But that’s how I can really complement the human factor too.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:25:17]:
I love that. And I think the data as an example is perfect because I had, for example, a ton of intake forms for my offers, and I’m just like, what do I do with this? This is so much information. And I uploaded some of the key questions, like, why did you join? And what are you hoping to get out of it? What are your goals? And it came up with this whole, like, summary of, of marketing material for me that I get to then use. And I actually turned it into part of the questions and stuff that I asked. I created like a bot as a. Like, to guide people through where to access, what to do first in the membership based on their goals. Really helped me categorize in that way. Really, really, really helpful.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:26:00]:
And I never would have. It’s just too overwhelming for me. Like, I never would have done anything with that data if not for AI. Like, it’s amazing. And actually when you were saying that as an example, which is great to hear concrete examples like, of ways that you’re creating these custom gbts and stuff like that, what I heard was you recognizing a point of friction in your program where you have the information, you know what to tell people to do, but they’re not necessarily always doing it. And you plug to that gap with AI.

Monica Froese [00:26:32]:
Yeah, I feel like, honestly. So we created three GPTs for this program, and I always considered the program to have essentially three pillars as well. It was okay, I have to get you to create the program now I got to get you to create the assets to sell, to sell your product, and then I have to get you to optimize it with the data. The data one was the biggest friction point, just because, again, creatives don’t really love numbers. And I think that’s also why it’s interesting why People buy from me because they know I love numbers. And I talk about it and they’re like, like, oh, okay. Like, that’s what I. That’s the missing piece for me.

Monica Froese [00:27:07]:
So it, it helped in. I created GPT to follow those three paths and the product creator one. It’s interesting because so many people, one of the people will say to me, I’ve heard it for years, I have no idea what to create. And then I used to send them on and I still have them do this in the program. We do this thing called reverse engineering where we use search engines like Google, YouTube, you know, wherever you go to search and to. To validate their idea. And then once they would do the reverse engineering, they would be like, oh my gosh, I have so many ideas now. And they would get so jazzed about it almost.

Monica Froese [00:27:39]:
We went from I have no ideas to now I have too many ideas. And the before AI, what would happen is now you have so many ideas, and guess what? It is up to you now to narrow it down. There’s nothing that can help you to narrow it down. It’s all on you. You have the ideas, you have to pick one to run with and you better. And people would get overwhelmed because they’d be like, well, what if it’s not the best idea? And I’m like, hey, until you test it, at the end of the day, you’re not going to know until you put it out into the wild. But now we take that reverse engineering exercise and that’s where the GPT picks up. So they, they say, they, they say, hey, this is what I discovered.

Monica Froese [00:28:11]:
I have a whole spreadsheet that they fill out. As you can tell, I love spreadsheets, even if it’s for content. They fill out the spreadsheet, they upload it, and then they work with chat to then organize it, like, organize their content. What’s going to go into it, what kind of format it’s going to be in, get the suggestions, and it gets people over that, that biggest objection that I had, oh, I have so many ideas, I just don’t know where to start. Now they’re like, oh, I have like this brainstorm partner that’s helping me figure out how to structure and how to start. So then we get to the design process so much faster than we were and we still believe we don’t. We’re not really using AI at this point to, to do too much of our design work because we find that our students really, that’s like what they love to do. Again, they’re creatives and they, they like to have that personal touch on their product and then we move them when it comes to creating their funnel copy.

Monica Froese [00:29:03]:
There’s so much that you have to create for your funnel. But, you know, the thing is, is that like, I don’t like, I’ve never liked copy. I’m not, I’m so. I’m such a literal person that I. The hooks and stuff, it’s like, you just buy it, it’s good. But that doesn’t work, right? Like, that does not work. So over the years, I’ve had to develop a lot of ways to help my literal brain be creative. And so we came up with a whole framework about.

Monica Froese [00:29:26]:
Around that and I’ve trained on it for years. So I simply uploaded it into the GPT and I’m like, this is so much better than I could do, honestly, because I’m. Because I’m so literal. People would ask me for like, copy reviews and I’d roll my eyes almost and be like, oh, this is like, painful for me. And now chat is again, like getting them 85 to 90% of the way there. And now it’s so much easier when they give me their copy because it’s, it’s so much more refined based on the framework. And it’s so much more fun actually for me as a teacher to look at it because I’m not starting from scratch and my brain being like, almost smoking because I’m so literal that I’m like, I don’t know how to turn this into a transformation for you. Now.

Monica Froese [00:30:07]:
Chat does it for them and they come to me and I’m like, that’s good. Or it’s not. Because I’ve done it for so long that when I see it, I know if it’s good or not. And so it’s honestly way more enjoyable for me too.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:30:18]:
I love this. So you’ve basically, I hope that people listening have so many ideas for their own programs, like, based on those friction points, based on where people are getting overwhelmed or those objections are coming up, or the points where you as the creator, it’s not your zone of magic. So you can outsource some of that to AI. Like, so many different ways to look at it. And I think the way that you’re talking about it shows very much the importance of you as the leader in your business and the one with the ideas and the frameworks to begin with and AI as the complement to what you’re already doing.

Monica Froese [00:30:52]:
And you know, another thing, I think we all at this point if you’re, especially if you’re in the B2B space. It’s kind of easy to call to see or understand when something’s purely written by AI. And so I kind of picked up on that early on. And I have made a concerted effort to always edit. But AI gives me back, which I think is good practice. But what I’ve been doing lately and it’s actually led to a lot more sales in my opinion. I now before I open chat, I used to open chat and say hey, I need to write an email about this. And we’d kind of come up with a draft.

Monica Froese [00:31:28]:
Me, me and my chatty would come up with a draft together. I’m not doing that anymore. Instead what I’m doing is I’m doing the intro. I’m writing some sort of personal connection, some like real time something that happened. Like this morning I wrote about how my kids, I couldn’t get them out of the house this morning. And I had a call at 9:15 and I was stressed out and I wrote that out and then I went to chat and said hey, this is the beginning of the email. This is what I need to sell today. How do, how can we transition this story into like a lesson to then sell? And it’s been working a lot better that way.

Monica Froese [00:32:00]:
When you let AI lead, I kind of feel like it strips out your personal. No matter how much you train it, I do think it strips a bit of personalness from you. And so going the other way and leading with my voice, which I used to do, it’s, it’s, it’s honestly throwing me back to like beginning practices that I kind of got out of in the business. Like for the first three years I was the only one that wrote the emails and I wrote really like connection based emails and people loved it. We got so many responses from our emails than your business grows and so what ends up happening, you start outsourcing things. So Haley was writing a lot of emails for years and she could talk a lot like me because she worked with me for six years. But now I’m noticing that since. And then we swung the way of having AI heavily involved.

Monica Froese [00:32:45]:
And now I’m swinging back really to the origins of the business and people. Our responses are up again. More sales. This is we, this is our highest grossing month. We’re 20, 20, 21 days in, right? Highest grossing month this year. And I feel like I did a lot less work which is funny but goes to show that if you are leveraging AI to do. I hate to say the word the right way because I don’t know if there’s any right way. Right.

Monica Froese [00:33:15]:
We are all going to leverage it differently. I guess I would say I’ve learned to leverage AI in my weak points. That has made my business stronger and now it’s giving me the capacity to show up in the ways that people actually want me to. And I kind of always have known this, but there was just so much on my plate before that I couldn’t do that. And now I can, I guess.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:33:36]:
I love that. Yeah. And I’m totally there too. And I know we’ve been having this conversation, like behind the scenes and talking about let’s use AI in, like you said, there’s no one right way, but let’s use it in the ways that allow us to show up and connect with our people, you know, on the front end of our business. And I can take care of other things that make that more possible. Speaking of which, what ways are you using AI, like both in your business and your personal life that allow that to happen?

Monica Froese [00:34:07]:
Yeah, I, I used a lot in my personal life, actually. So one of the examples I give a lot is, so I got divorced two years ago and I have a very amicable co parenting relationship with my ex. But it’s been really interesting getting a new groove in life. I mean, I was with him for 15 years. We had this whole way our family functioned and then suddenly I’m alone half the time. And what I was finding was I was wasting a lot of money on groceries because we’re on this five, five, two, two schedule. So on my two two day turnaround, I would order groceries, the girls would be here and then they’d leave. And I had weight loss surgery, so I cannot eat a lot of food.

Monica Froese [00:34:51]:
And I was just throwing stuff out like crazy. And I’m like, there has got to be a better way than this. So I train, understand my custody schedule. The days I do and do not have the girls, what their preferences are because they eat a lot different than I do. I have to eat a very certain way because of my surgery. I trained it on what that meant. I trained it on the macro, my specific macro counts. And so now I.

Monica Froese [00:35:14]:
I’ve kept this updated running list of what I have in the house. So I basically did a whole inventory of my kitchen, from pantry to the freezer to the fridge. And that’s where I kicked off with it. So every time I go back for my weekly meal plan, I’ll say, this is the schedule this week with the Girls, this is what I have to update for freezer, fridge and pantry. And I want to. I’ll tell it, I want to spend $75. This is where I’m shopping. And if there’s any specific recipes that I know I want to eat, I’ll give it to it.

Monica Froese [00:35:45]:
If not, it has so many of my recipes stored that I’ll be like, this is it. Like, this is how many days I have the girls, how many days I don’t. Oh my gosh. The meal plans that I get, I have. I was actually just because I take my another way. I use AI personally and I do this in the business too. I upload all of my transactions and I have it tell me where I’m like being wasteful, which, let me tell you, it’s a little. It calls you out.

Monica Froese [00:36:10]:
I have, I have slashed so much stuff off of both my personal spending and the business. It honestly kind of blows my mind. And I just came back, I uploaded my June credit card statement statements to it just the other day and it said, I said, can you tell me how much money, how much less? Basically compare last year to how much I’ve spent this year. I have spent 66% less on food. 66%, yeah.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:36:38]:
I love that I such a specific example. I also think as business owners, as parents, there’s so much in your head. Let’s take some of that out of the head and let a ideal literally today I’m like, like I’m going away in January, but I’m supposed to be training for a marathon that’s happening in April. How am I supposed to take that break from my marathon? And it’s like ChatGPT figured it all out like where I need to get a bit ahead before that. And it’s just like. And it knows about my injuries and all of the stuff that I need to be mindful of in my body. It’s just like, yes, thank goodness. I don’t need to worry about that.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:37:12]:
That sorted. So like, yeah, I feel like that mental load wherever it can help. Yeah, I love that example.

Monica Froese [00:37:19]:
One of the things I was really bad at was taking my vitamins. But they’re really important after having the surgery for me to do and I was having. One of the side effects of the surgery is losing hair. And so I’ve been working really hard for the last four years to get my hair growth back. But it was really difficult because I was missing my medicine probably half the time. So now I have it trained every morning. I’ve. Well, I’ve Trained myself first of all to actually I, I have it tracked my macros every single day which is fascinating because it can give me all this historical look back and it actually has gotten to the point where if I’m feeling off one day like I tell how I’m feeling, it will tell me it’s because my macros have been off and it, which is wild.

Monica Froese [00:38:00]:
So every day I start with telling it like this is what I had for breakfast. And it will immediately ask me, did you take your medicine? That’s what it asked me every single morning. And so I honestly in the last six months I’ve probably missed taking my medicine a handful of times versus like it was like 50 of the time before.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:38:18]:
I love it. I feel like I could talk all day about these uses but we don’t have the time unfortunately. But thank you so much. And I hope that it’s just sparked like obviously the ways that the people listening to this will use it will be different but I hope it sparks my days like brilliant. So before we wrap up, I have three quick fire questions I ask every guest. So the first one is beyond financial success. What impact do you want to have in the world through your work?

Monica Froese [00:38:45]:
I am very, very adamant that women have equal access to financial freedom. And that is something I’ve always said that the business has allowed me to help women in a way that I couldn’t do if I was still sitting in corporate. Like employing moms paying full maternity leave benefits when we don’t get that in the States. That is very fulfilling to me because I just, I, I’m very as especially a mom of girls. I’m very passionate in us as women being able to take care of our ourselves no matter what situation that we’re in.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:39:25]:
Absolutely. Second question, if you could give a message of encouragement to past you earlier on in your business, what would that be?

Monica Froese [00:39:34]:
Oh, you know, honestly, people suck no matter what. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that, but of course, you know, the thing is is that part of when I started the business it was very mission driven with redefining mom and it was based on my postpartum ptsd and there are just negative people no matter where you go. And so I would go back and tell her, don’t acquiesce to people like that because what I have learned in all these years of doing it, if someone doesn’t like you, they don’t like you. Don’t waste your energy on it because there’s so many other people out there. That love you for you and you can really help them. And I think in the early days I really like let those negative Nancy’s get to me and now I’m like go learn from someone else then it’s fine.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:40:24]:
That is such good advice. Yes, absolutely. And finally, what does Soulful selling mean to you?

Monica Froese [00:40:31]:
I believe everything that I put out should be transformation based. I really strive and I love when people compliment that. I over deliver. I don’t even mean to, it’s not what I necessarily set out to do but I, I love that people recognize it because for me I would hate for people, honestly I would hate for someone to pay me money and not get value out of what I’m offering. So for me it’s I guess it’s an alignment of values.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:41:00]:
I love that. Thank you so much Monica. This has been such a juicy chat. So much more we could have dug into. And I will say Monica is speaking at the Aligned AI Summit. I’m actually not sure the date that this episode is going live, but if I’ll make sure there’s a link with Monica’s affiliate link you can go and sign up either to the wait list or get your free ticket and hear a little bit more about what Monica has to say about AI. And obviously I’m going to share all of the all of Monica’s links as well with you to go follow along. Thank you so much.

Monica Froese [00:41:31]:
Thank you.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:41:32]:
And if you want to find out more about Monica and her work, you can find her@monica froze.com empowered shop.com on Instagram or LinkedIn @monica froze. And I will put all of those links in the show notes. And of course get your free ticket to the aligned AI summit at aligned aisummit.com to hear Monica speaking alongside a whole bunch of incredible business owners sharing how they’re using AI to free up capacity, sell more offers and not replace their unique magic in their work. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Soulful Sales. If you have a moment to rate and review, know that it really does make a difference. And if you’d like to carry on the conversation then you can connect with me on Instagram @Rudy Pound White. Sign up to my newsletter@ruthpoundwhite.com forward slash newsletter or my personal favorite, join me inside the Low ticket membership@ruthpoundwhite.com membership and keep doing what you’re doing because your work really does matter.