Expectation vs. Reality - How to Actually Use AI to Enhance Your Small Business

Rachel Cossar: Welcome everyone to another episode of conversations in the future of work. I am your host, Rachel Cossar, and I am thrilled to welcome our next guest on the show. So Fay Wu. Fay Wu. Welcome. I would love to just hand the torch over to you if you want to say a few words about yourself, your background, and what it is that you’re most excited about in, the future of work today.

Fei Wu: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Rachel. That’s the first thing I wanna say for content creators collaborating with other content creators. So First of all, I’m a creator. I primarily publish on YouTube and LinkedIn, and I love working with businesses, specifically Creators and small business owners. Know we’re gonna target a lot of topics around these 2 cohorts. And right now, I focus on content creation collaboration with AI Companies as well as lever leveraging AI strategies to work with small business owners. And you can just tell that I just I guess, so much energy from talking about it, from working with them together, and that’s what I do. And a lot of my work can, be found under faceworld.com and Chinese. So spell my name, f e I s w o r l d. Awesome. Well, welcome welcome to the show.

Rachel Cossar: I thank you. Have loved following your work on LinkedIn and, so it’s certainly an honor to have you here.

Fei Wu: Thank you, Rachel. Can’t wait to get started. Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: So speaking of, you know, one of the things that I really wanted to get into with you is, you know, AI has come on the scene. It’s big. It’s fresh feeling. Like, everyone’s got an opinion. But in terms of, like, what it actually is and what it can actually do for us, I feel like there are lots of misconceptions. So I would love to hear from you if not what is the biggest, like, what are some of the main misconceptions you see when it comes to AI. Yeah. Absolutely.

Fei Wu: The first thing, and I’ve been talking about this a lot, is that AI cannot replace a lot of what we do. It can certainly assist us and help us maybe ideate and draft ideas a little bit more easily, but Right now, I think the misconception with craters and small business owners is that they have the expectations to say, okay, I finally allowed you in. You know, I’m, oh, you know, very open minded. Let’s play with AI. Let’s explore, but it doesn’t do everything. It doesn’t complete the workflow. Or whatever you’re working on. And then people tend to give up on AI solutions very easily as a result of this. And I think that is the number one misconception It cannot do everything for you. So the real solution to this, which we can cover a little bit later, is how do you integrate?

Rachel Cossar: How do you truly integrate ai into your everyday work. Yeah. And that’s, that’s a big part of why I wanted to call this episode, you know, expectation versus reality. Right? And if maybe you could talk a little bit more specifically about that in terms of, you know, there there still requires a human in the loop in, like, a pretty, critical way. Mhmm.

Fei Wu: Right? Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: And what I wanna say about that, so for instance, we can use examples.

Fei Wu: We’re both creators and we’re using AI tools as we speak, for instance, like this recording studio, And micro content creation as well as content repurposing is a very hot topic right now. I know this because I’ve been writing a lot about these tools. I can watch ahrefs and, you know, Google search console to see what people are searching for. And I wanna target my content specific to them. And the truth is Contencration is not really an easy task, especially when you decide that you wanna be a professional. So when it comes to micro content, You know, we slice and dice a long form content into these smaller pieces. And chances are they’re probably not perfect when it’s generated by AI, specifically things like, you know, topic, keyword driven, these, all, of these clip and even their tools such as Munch, it’s gonna give you relevant scores, SEO scores on top of that. But I strongly believe that for you as a creator, you have a say in this there is such thing as a gut feeling as your intuition to decide the clips that are relevant for your audience. It’s not just what’s hot and popular. On the market right now. So I’m gonna pause there to see if you have any reactions. Yeah. No. For sure.

Rachel Cossar: I I mean, I think in my experience, and the way that I leverage AI for the content piece in particular, I think it’s super helpful and so I mean, I saved so much time. I wouldn’t, to be honest, I would not be doing this talk show if it wasn’t for the AI features that make it so much more convenient, but nothing goes out to the public. Without first, like, a pretty fine comb through the the summaries that we’re developing, you know, the words that we’re using because it can often end up there’s almost like always, like, one word or, like, one sentence that you’re like, I wouldn’t say that. And, like, I think people know people really notice.

Fei Wu: You know, I’m really impressed by the content you have really published out there, one with Rosemary Ravenel, for instance, And there’s a lot of intricacies to the work that you do. And I’ve, you know, I’m on your newsletter. I follow your work. They’re grown up. Right? So my question back to you is for instance, when you share one of the micro content were snippets out on say LinkedIn. Do you use AI tools to generate social copy, or how do you create your copy? I’m curious. Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: So I am if I’m doing just like a general, like, LinkedIn posts or social media posts, I’ll just I’ll just do that myself. But I do work with here’s where the AI really comes in handy as I I have an assistant and she’s phenomenal But, you know, I I ask a lot of her and I ask a lot of her in terms of, like, create a summary of this, session. Tell us about this excerpt or recap or a tiny little piece of of information that I’d like to share. And AI really helps her get to some kind of foundation based on the content that, like, I myself have already approved. And so for her and I know we’re actually already getting into the second question here, so I’ll move forward. But for her, it’s really helpful to have AI support her with, like, here’s something that you can start with. Mhmm. And then it gets sent over to so she doesn’t have to create anything from scratch. And I think you know, especially because she’s still finding her footing in terms of my voice and the voice of the company, it’s really helpful to develop that together. And AI is kind of like that bridge. Yeah. Isn’t that wonderful?

Fei Wu: Because otherwise, it’s gonna take her a long time to put something together to summarize, to listen, to engage with a content. Yep. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: So moving moving forward to this next question, which I think really gets to some of these concrete takeaways. But what advice do you give small business owners and content creators when it comes to incorporating AI and video into their workflows.

Fei Wu: I love this question because both you and I are very keen on video content to not to our surprise because the video as a medium is still the most popular engagement tool for for any creator, any small business, all of you can check out HubSpot’s annual report, And it’s like 4th or 7th year in a row.

Rachel Cossar: And so video, whether it’s long form or short form or live stream, they’re very engaging.

Fei Wu: And so I think all of us, number 1, should be working with this medium. Now AI has played a huge part in the past year or so. You know, we started exploring here at face world. We started exploring AI tools for videos before the big launch of chat GPT. So we knew a thing or 2. Number 1, to understand what AI can do. It can literally help you ideate, even script your videos these days. It can help you edit your video, as well as publishing your video, following keywords and themes on SEO, and it can help you analyze based on the, you know, deepen analytics of what works, what resonates, so forth, and so on. So there is a lot that it can do. Now The question here, there’s a piece of advice in terms of, what you wanna start with. I think ideation and script, you know, rough draft, like what you just said, Rachel, That is a really safe place to start with because very easily you’re gonna look at the script, the outline, what we call like the hook outline as well. You know, you have your hook You have your intro, content, content, call to action. So once you give AI a format, even the chat, GPT, these are the things I’m gonna fill in. Here here is a video idea that I have in mind. We’re 3 ideas I have in mind. It’s gonna give you the draft. That’s really gonna, you know, help especially business owners. We’re so new to video to break the ice. I see too many people stand, you know, sort of staring into the 3rd, like, the blank screen to say video isn’t for me. So I think that’s gonna be really really good. Another tip I, I learned recently is that also, AI can help you focus your eyes. So right now, looking to the camera, not so much into Rachel because this is the way I’m used to. Now if this is a heavily scripted interview, things like that, it happens, or you’re trying to record your YouTube video, you might have to look at the screen a bit. And for that reason, you know, I can actually dial up and make sure your eyes are looking into the camera when you’re not actually doing that. Pretty trippy and interesting.

Rachel Cossar: Yeah. So to your first point, I think it’s so I think AI can be really powerful in helping you break the ice you said, I think. I’d be curious, like, do you have, like, if someone was like, oh, you know, like, that’s actually a good idea. I have this post coming out. I’d like to include a video. Like, what would be a good prompt that they could use to kinda get get going? Absolutely.

Fei Wu: I think there are several tools that you can consider, but we can start with the one that everybody has access to, which is chat GPT, I believe, even the version chat GPT 4 is available for free now, data up to 2022, and I’m currently on the paid version. Of chatty PT 4. So, prompts, by the way, quick word on that, you know, when it was first launched in November 2022, We had to really learn how to do this. There always seems a better way or best way to enter your prompt. These days, prompt engineering itself, it’s allowing us to freestyle, and you still get a lot of what you need. So if you wanna test out a very simple prompt and chat to BT, you can build on that. First of all, is Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: Could you, right?

Fei Wu: Like, for instance, I am a content creator who loves writing about AI. Could you give me 3 video ideas? And literally it’s gonna give you 3 of them. If you don’t like them, you can regenerate. And from here, you can, say that, okay, I wanna follow a format of you know, hook, intro content call to action as a format. Could you please help me script the first video for the first idea? Boom. It’s right there.

Rachel Cossar: And can you refine it further?

Fei Wu: You can say, I wanna record a 5 minute video. And guess what? The script is gonna rejigger either it’d be longer or shorter based on the previous version. Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: Absolutely. I think that iterative process is key because I think sometimes, as you said earlier, right, if you you come out of the gates, you put in your prompt, and you get something back and you’re like, oh, wow. This is like totally It’s, like, not really usable. But, right, that that’s okay. Like, you know, refine it, refine your question, say, okay. Now make it more in this tone or that tone or make it shorter or whatever, you can really kinda iterate that way. It’s powerful. I saw we had another guest on the podcast, in the first season of of this show, Roberto Ferrero, who shared with me, wow, one of the most involved, like, prompts for for a chat GPT that he used for his blog when he wanted to take this episode and publish it in his, you know, in his own words and his own format. And that was, like, the most sophisticated prompt structure I’d ever seen, but it was like, it really showed me how you can, like, you can go deep with these tools if that’s what you want. Yeah. Absolutely.

Fei Wu: I wanna add one more thing is that, you know, a lot of brands, a lot of small business owners, like you said, you have a very specific tone or or voice you wanna project forward. Because the last thing you wanna get is a script or a blog post that they do not sound like you at all. So A trick you can do, especially for people who already create and write, you can feed your entire article, let’s just say 500 words, and sometimes there’s a word limit character, limit, of course, You can feed a piece of your writing into Chachi BT and say, could you please analyze the style of my writing? You can do that with other tools as well, such as Claude, of course. And it’s gonna give you a pretty detailed analysis. Now you can then feed in your video topic to say, Hey, you know, I wanna create a video about 50 best AI tools for 15. That’s, if that’s too aggressive.

Rachel Cossar: You can say, could you please script it like the way I write like, from the previous style.

Fei Wu: So I actually really like that approach, like, iterative approach because I know a lot of engineers tend to give you a really intricate, detailed prompt, and you’re afraid to even make a mistake. Which is like, am I coding something? It’s very rigid. But what you can do, you can actually build on top of that as if you’re having a conversation with Chargebee T. That can feel, you know, I think just a lot more, fluid and easier to adapt. Yep. Absolutely. No. That’s a great point. Awesome.

Rachel Cossar: And one one other thing I was just gonna say to your second point about using The one the one thing that I I I like to just say needs to be you I think we need to tread carefully with AI in the sense is how we use AI for any kind of deep faking purposes. I gave redirect, at least from what I’ve seen, is tricky because so much of what makes us personable and helps us connect with people is the way that we use our eyes And I would almost say, like, spend a little more time memorizing your script instead of using something to redirect your eye gaze because what I found is that the eye gaze redirect features leave out some of the more intentional moments where you, like, you actually do want to kind of just reference something on your page or break that eye contact for a moment. I don’t know what if if you’ve felt that too, but I know lots of other speaker coaches are like, it’s it like you said, it’s a little creepy, and I agree.

Fei Wu: Yeah. Very much so.

Rachel Cossar: I know these script already came, came out with, eye gaze, I think, 6 months ago.

Fei Wu: And now there are other tools in case people are interested in checking out, you know, Hey, Jen is the one that I’m exploring. Synthesia, probably synthesia, you know, months ago didn’t really have a character you can build on your own. Now they probably do. And, hey, Jen, it’s literally me sitting here talking for a couple minutes. Now you can create infinite infinite number of videos with me. And so I agree with you, especially with your line of work, I since the very beginning 2019, there’s certain things I just I crave and that I enjoy being a YouTuber by looking away by making mistakes. And now when I see someone making the mistake, whether it’s writing or videos, I, I feel I, I don’t know. I just feel a sense of connection almost instantly because Yeah. I’m almost allergic to a degree when I see a full blog post that’s completely generated by chatgbt. I can tell right away, and I don’t wanna read it.

Rachel Cossar: So, So now I I definitely love that the human element.

Fei Wu: I really appreciate it so much more than I did even before. Yeah. Totally. I I love that point.

Rachel Cossar: So moving on, like, what are you most excited about when it comes to AI and the future of work, the future of content creation? Yeah. I think I’m living in a space of MarTech, Marketing Tech in general, and content creation.

Fei Wu: And I’m super excited about all of this. I feel so privileged because genai or generative AI is certainly one of the pioneers who people have most access to when it comes to AI. But with that said, I’m actually secretly really interested in learning more from different industries as well. So I have friends, for instance, working in finance, working in healthcare, working in health insurance, of all places. And they say when it comes to insurance claims, usually it takes a long time. I think we living in the US here. We all resonate with that, but now with AI, there’s certain companies implementing, with AI solutions that allows a majority of more Trivial straightforward insurance claims to be processed easily, and they’re always gonna be edge cases where human are stepping in to really deal with these more intricate and more sophisticated cases. As a result, my friends, people ring the industry in general, they’re happier because they know that their time is spent on more important things. So that’s one, observation.

Rachel Cossar: I also have friends working in education, working with young kids, you know, as well as underprivileged population.

Fei Wu: So as educators, instead of saying, well, I don’t wanna some educators may be pushing AI away where they may be thinking, like, our students are using AI to write articles, essays. This is the end of the world, whereas my friend, Steven, for instance, like, who’s learning and pioneering AI to come up with different assignments for different kids. And, it was really, really interesting to watch and work And, I just wanna give a shout out to people in these industries who are like teaching me so much about the future work. Totally.

Rachel Cossar: And I I love the especially in academia. Like, I understand that this the advent of AI can be very scary. And, you know, you think of cheating and plagiarage platrism and all that. And, of course, that that’s very warranted, but I agree with you. Like, you can really lean in and you can help students understand how to incorporate tools in a way that is still authentic, that allows them to critically think about things and, you know, go to primary sources, like where did that Where did that piece of information come from? Is it even true? Like, that’s like a very valuable exercise even when you just read the news.

Fei Wu: Yeah. That’s so true. You brought up a point which I, you know, forgot to mention at the very beginning is that, you know, AI is not human. It doesn’t have doesn’t process emotions, And another misconception, like, you actually called out, is not all the information is accurate. We know that, but on top of that, it’s totally not, like, completely unbiased either. So I think we as human beings, number 1, to validate and verify the information we get and providing feedback. New for Google, for Microsoft, for OpenAI to say, this answer isn’t helpful or it’s inaccurate and how to make it better. And that act can actually go a long way. Yeah. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: And to wrap up, I know we’ve touched on some of these already, but just to to provide a nice little wrapper around it. Like, what does in your opinion AI actually do to move the needle for small business owners, content creators?

Fei Wu: For content creators, or for small business, what we call the content based businesses, which is primarily the business I work with, They have saved so much time and money and even stepping into the type of content they didn’t think was possible to create video is being one of them. Microcontent being one of them was so expensive. Just resource wise, it was draining for them. Now I’m seeing so much these micro content with captions, music, emojis are popping up left and right.

Rachel Cossar: So people are experimenting a lot more I also think, you know, like, what we talked about earlier, how do you really integrate this?

Fei Wu: So don’t try AI for a day or 2 for a few weeks or you know, you don’t have to be the secret agent within your organization trying to try it and test it out. Instead, I think inviting, we’re creating a cohort of people like minded people who are curious and and maybe can explore AI together with you, especially if you’re a leader. You could be a small business owner and run a a business five people, but I think it’s important for you as a leader to stand up, acknowledge the process, and to be involved. I don’t think AI requires the person to be leading the change, to be necessary, the smartest, to be a prompt engineer, data scientists, anything like that. I think it’s just someone who is willing to create a comfortable environment, a trust, a trusting environment for people to explore to make mistakes, to move on. And, ideally, the last thing I will say is anybody who did not work in program or product management I have for 10 years, is that start encouraging there to be a process and workflows to be designed with a whiteboard, with a mirror, whatever your tool, a choice is. But start documenting what you’re doing and then refine it and and create a very iterative process. That’s so helpful to hear.

Rachel Cossar: I think the invitation is really there for people. Right? Like, these tools have been made pre pretty beautifully accessible in the sense that it’s, you know, you can go and play around with almost anything. And I think to your point, Faye, if you can build a little bit of a cohort or network or community around that, it can maybe feel a little less daunting because you can explore together instead of just kind of you in the machine. Yeah. Absolutely.

Fei Wu: And also sometimes it’s true that within your organization, you may not find the perfect person where people may not say, Hey, I wanna do this. So thanks to Zoom and, you know, the the virtual reality that we live in, So you can actually reach out to other people, you know, join these networks, even Facebook groups. I’m not a, you know, I still find have trouble navigating scored and learning slowly.

Rachel Cossar: But you can find a community. You can find a couple of people who are interested in what you’re doing.

Fei Wu: You know, like, I am doing all my my mastermind are all over the US and party worldwide at the moment. So that’s super helpful. Don’t just look by proximity. Find people we can learn with you.

Rachel Cossar: Love that. Awesome. Well, Faye, thank you so much for joining us for our audience. What is the best way that they can grab on to more of what you’re saying and follow your work. Great.

Fei Wu: Thank you so much, Rachel. Again, for the interview, I really appreciate your time and expertise. To connect with me and find my work, you can go to phaseworld.com. So that is feisworld And on the homepage, you will find that there is a free master class I developed for, and it’s called the full stack content marketing with AI. You’re thinking about just content, content strategy, or you wanna start implementing AI with it, I think that would be a really good one to look into. Awesome. Great. Well, thank you so much.

Rachel Cossar: And, Always always happy to to talk more about this stuff. I think it’s fascinating. Awesome.

Fei Wu: Likewise, Rachel. Great.