July 12, 2025 • 21 mins
We reveal how AI empowers moms to build businesses. Discover how to overcome time constraints and achieve success with AI tools, balancing family life and entrepreneurship. We'll show how to utilize AI to streamline your work. #AIforMoms #BusinessTips #Mompreneur #AIinBusiness #Entrepreneurship #WorkLifeBalance #SuccessMindset #DigitalTools #Innovation #BusinessStrategy
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
welcome to Strategic AI Coach Podcast.
Today we have a very special guest, my name's Jillian Agnew.
I'm a mom to a 10-year-old boy and I'm also an Ontario certified teacher.
Awesome.
On our show we've had a lot of interesting people.
Most people have a technology or AI background.
Or they worked with me in the marketing world for years.
(00:20):
You have none of those, backgrounds, I'm excited to have you because, you reached out to me online and talked about, starting a business.
I'm a teacher.
My background is in education.
That's where all of my degrees are and courses I've taken over the last 18 years.
And of course, I'm a mom, I'm very much invested in my son's life and, the activities that I am running from him around too.
(00:42):
I also had my own, weight loss story.
Over the last year.
I've lost 45 pounds.
Somewhere along the way I realized I might be.
Suited for something more than teaching, getting out of the public sector.
I started to think about creating my own company or my own brand and it never went farther than that.
We, had spoken a week ago, and you already had this idea of the coffee business 'cause you already had some success in it.
(01:06):
But you want to, think about creating your own brand and doing it on your own.
People have these ideas and they typically go nowhere.
We had spoken about AI and leveraging AI to help us.
Walk us through that.
I wanna get the dates right in last week or two, you'd started using chat gpt bit more.
Walk us through that.
Starting off with, ground zero knowledge of chat gpt and then let's talk about how it transformed the business idea.
(01:33):
Yeah, I really had not, used AI before.
I had asked it a few questions.
I don't think I had even downloaded the app prior to seven days ago.
The entire domain was new to me, and I had no prior skills.
So the reason I wanted you on the show today is a lot of people that listen to our show, and a lot of people I talk to every day.
Might be running hundred million dollar businesses.
(01:55):
But the amazing thing is they're not using ai.
When I ask them, to show me this chatgpt they're not even using chat GPT, they're using some knockoff version.
This is extremely common.
What we're discussing right now is what I find 95% of people are doing when they say, I've used that, but they're not even using.
The real chat gpt, they're using some knockoff app and they're using a Google search.
(02:16):
Would you say that you were in that category? Absolutely.
So this is a big step because we're gonna go from an idea to a business and we're gonna use the real chat g bt.
The first thing is you got the correct app.
On your phone.
When you did that, were you using voice mode for example? I find most people still type into it, 'cause they're used to typing into Google.
Did you start using voice or what happened from there? No, I started typing because I didn't know what I was doing.
(02:40):
What I was surprised at was how easy it was.
It was very user friendly once I had downloaded.
The correct app and it didn't take too long for me to pick up a little bit of speed a few days into it I switched over to voice notes, to be more, time effective.
Did you have any aha moments or holy shit, this is amazing moments before we got to the business part? Oh, I would say within a few minutes of using chat GPT and speaking back and forth with ai, I realized that my world was about to explode and all these doors were about to open for me in ways that I had never seen possible before.
(03:10):
And I think this is important because your role isn't just a teacher, you're coaching teachers.
And maybe you could talk a bit about that.
'cause I think this is important because we have an education system that despite AI taking over the world.
There is no curriculum that I know of.
And I've got kids from, high school to university.
There are no AI courses.
There's nothing and it's incredible.
(03:32):
You're coming from the education world.
Tell us a bit about what you do in the education world and, why you think this is important for teachers as well? My job title is Learning Resource Teacher.
I work for the district and I'm sent into schools to work with teachers, and I coach and mentor them on best practices, introducing new programs, doing an audit of the programs they already have in place and helping them tweak and refine those and would you say that the education system's a little bit behind the time, not just for ai.
(04:02):
I think you told me off camera about a QR code for your classroom, but none of the other teachers wanted to adopt it.
Talk a bit about that.
I find that education is a little bit old fashioned.
We haven't changed very much.
If you look at a classroom from a hundred years ago, it might look identical to what classrooms look like today.
A few years ago, eight years ago, I attended a Google summit for educators.
I was introduced to creating your own QR codes.
(04:25):
So I had this idea of creating a QR code to put on the outside of my classroom door.
Anybody, whether it's a parent, another teacher, the administrators, even the janitor can scan the QR code because everybody carries their phone.
I had created a Google form that had intentional questions where I wanted people that walked into my room to look at specific spaces or something I was teaching.
(04:49):
Give me feedback.
The good, the bad, and the ugly, or maybe other ideas.
And I remember pitching this to my staff of about 60.
I put the QR code up on my door and nobody went for it.
One person filled out the form because they were my friend.
Teachers are very uncomfortable with change.
They can be uncomfortable with, innovation if it's not, written in the curriculum yet.
(05:12):
Teachers could be afraid or nervous of feedback, constructive feedback is highly valuable, we preach that to our students, but as educators and teachers, we struggle to be in that discomfort and space.
So this explains why we don't have any AI education yet.
Do you remember, was it one week ago or two weeks ago when you downloaded that chat GT app and you started using it properly? When would you say that was? Probably only seven days ago.
(05:39):
Okay, perfect.
This is a great example and a lot of people that are listening to this can relate to this.
Yeah, I'm not really using chat gpt either.
So people can relate to this.
One week ago we had spoken on the phone, and you said, about this coffee business, and I think I said to you, Hey, I think you could just get your own product do it yourself because you are a distributor for another company, correct? Yep.
For about three years now.
(05:59):
I have sold their coffee.
I've done really well with it.
I've earned a few trips around the world and met some great people when I said to you, have you thought about just creating your own coffee line? What was your initial reaction? I think I laughed, and said I can't do that.
I'm just a teacher.
Because you hadn't launched a business before.
No.
So in my world, coming from the marketing agency, run a marketing agency for 28 years around the world.
(06:22):
This is what I do, so I understand what it takes to launch a business, but I also know how hard it is.
What I've learned in the last, two and a half years because of AI is how easy it's become, especially the last year.
It's incredible.
I think I said to you, Hey, why don't you do some market research and validate, the opportunity with chat GBT and walk us through what happened after that.
(06:43):
Yeah.
The first thing I did was download the app.
It was user friendly and I started asking it about what the top 10 coffee companies in North America are doing.
I started exploring their websites.
So walk us through that.
How did you do that? I think I asked chat, GBT what are the other top 10 companies doing and can you show me some of the market research that's out there? At day one, I didn't have the language or terminology.
(07:07):
I didn't know how to.
Use marketing language or how to specifically ask it a question.
So I just started by asking it what I may have popped in a Google search the day before.
From that point, we had spoken and then I used a couple AI tools to help out.
Chat, GBT is what I use primarily.
Chat, GBT has a mode, called O three o three is really important.
(07:30):
It's the only AI in the world that really reasons like a human.
So I did put that prompt into O three and it give us some really good market data.
And then what I do with all ais is validate it by cutting and pasting that research.
Into a different one.
I'll say, Hey, Claude I want you to fact check this for me.
It'll go through the document, each item and fact check it and I'll say, Hey, I want you to improve it.
(07:53):
And then I'll go to a third one, I'll go to perplexity and do the same thing.
I used Perplexity Labs, which is another deeper research one.
Each of these ais will give you good information using the basic version.
If you learn how to use 'em a bit more, some have a deep research setting or chat.
GBT has O three perplexity has labs, they have different versions.
So we bounced around with some market research.
(08:16):
Once we realized, okay, you're onto something really big, this whole healthy coffee idea.
The next step I think was, figuring out in terms of marketing and a website.
Wanna talk a bit about that and coming up with a name, walk through that process? Yep.
So I asked Chet GPT and, the other AI apps that you had mentioned that I had never heard of prior to seven days ago.
(08:37):
So asked it to check the top 10.
Coffee manufacturers or suppliers to look at their websites.
I wanted to see what looked really good on their websites, what maybe wasn't gonna work for me.
Then I had it giving me feedback, that I was able to immediately start implementing into the website I wanted to build.
(08:58):
Key components, I was able to do this all within 25 minutes.
The research I sent you from perplexity Labs, something from, Claude something from chat, GBD, I think four different ais.
Just to put this in perspective having run a marketing agency 28 years around the world, the documents that you got back from these ais are things that we would've charged clients a hundred thousand dollars for.
(09:24):
What have taken a team of 20 weeks to put together, and I would argue that the research you were sent is better.
It's hard for people to even understand what these ais are doing.
It's like having a Mackenzie Consulting, a Bain, and Bain Consulting guys come in and it would take them weeks or months to put together kind of data, the analysis that we're able to generate in minutes.
(09:51):
So you were able to, sidestep literally huge amount of costs and.
Weeks or months of time and go right into, okay, this idea is real.
This is the competition, here's what they're doing.
And there's one that you found that had the same business model.
What it found was, here's one that does 90% of its business with subscriptions, which is your whole business idea.
(10:14):
Do you want to talk a bit about that? I have been in sales a bit as a side job from when I was 21, I always remember.
If you're going to work hard for a sale and put in the time to build that relationship with a potential customer and get to know them, find a problem, they have to solve it.
I don't wanna have to do that again next month.
So for me, I thought the subscription is the best way.
(10:35):
When you're trying a new product and doing something.
For your health and wellness, like weight loss, you're probably not going to get the best results within just four weeks.
So we really do want our potential customers to be with us for at least 12 weeks.
I think that's why the subscription service works really well.
I got excited when I saw that research because.
In the nineties, I started a pet food business with some partners we had no money, started some credit cards, but our claim to fame was we created an auto ship program, before we had Amazon Prime and all these subscription models.
(11:06):
and we did it with, in Canada, we did it with Purolator courier.
So we sold a, a case of dog food, about 40 pounds, and it got shipped to you if you had a German Shepherd, say 60 pounds, we knew that in 30 days you'd need a fresh supply.
We built a hundred thousand customers across Canada I am very fond of this subscription model.
When I saw the coffee business one company with, 90% of the customers on subscription, I got very excited because coffee is dog food.
(11:33):
It's a consumable that use every single day.
Coffee's almost, maybe it's better than dog food because everyone's addicted to coffee.
You've got something that literally they're addicted to.
I don't have to convince you to drink coffee.
Everyone's already drinking it.
I just have to convince you It's better for you.
And that's what we had in our dog food business because our dog food was no chemicals, all natural vitamins and real meat.
(11:55):
It wasn't a tough sell.
And that's what I found interesting about the research.
On the companies that you were looking at because these are mold free, 'cause there's a lot of crap in our coffee.
It actually said, Hey, if you're gonna model some company, look at this one.
Mm-hmm.
So with that research walk us through what did you do next? After you saw the research and you're like, okay, I see this company, they're really figured out how to do subscriptions.
(12:17):
Walk us through what was the next thing that you did? I think the next thing, was that I needed to come up with a brand name, recycled tap water.
Dasani or Nestle made these waters.
But then one day somebody had this great idea about.
Hey, let's put vitamins in water, make it seem, healthy.
And a friend of mine, Edward Obi, started a company called Smart Effects.
Which was very successful.
(12:37):
And so it didn't taste that great, but it was a good idea because he had some pretty good things in it.
So I think the next part of your research was you looked at the 10, most successful companies in the us.
That we're in the water business, but had a healthy angle.
Did I get that right? Correct.
Yep.
Okay.
Why did you do that research and what was the result of going to that research? Well, in Teacher's College, I learned you don't wanna ever reinvent the wheel.
(13:00):
So my thinking was go to who's already doing it well.
Take a good look using ai.
There wasn't, enough time in the week I've gotta take my son to 10 different places to sit and audit 10 of these websites.
So asked AI to do it for me and it was able to tell me.
The benefits or, reasons behind why they chose a brand name or why was this name better than that name? Right.
(13:24):
And the companies that you looked at were the 10 most successful, Vitamin Waters in America.
These are very successful companies.
Out of those 10 names you found one that you liked did I get that right? And then you said, Hey, ai.
Can we use this for a coffee? Mm-hmm.
Will you walk us through that? Yeah.
You really need to understand how you're speaking to AI to get the answers back that you require.
(13:44):
And I wanted to know if I was going to be copywriting or if things were going to be illegal and I needed to get that information right away.
And of course, it guided me through how to follow this process.
Legally and ethically so from that research, you're able to come up with a name, and then you went to AI and you said, okay, how do I find a domain now, find a domain name that has the word coffee in it, but it's available.
(14:09):
walk us through that.
Where a lot of people get stuck.
They're like, I can't come up with a name.
And if they came up with a name, I can't get the right domain.
So walk us through that.
I knew that I couldn't come up with my own name.
I have no prior buyer, experience in this industry.
So I had to put my full blind faith trust in ai.
It gave me a few options.
I asked a few friends, got some feedback and I settled on one that felt authentic to myself.
(14:32):
In a matter of days, we went from idea market research, validate the idea.
Then we did market research on healthy, beverage companies, healthy water companies.
You came up with a name, then used AI to find which domains were available.
It came up with some options for you.
Correct? Correct.
I didn't know, you say just go register a domain to me.
(14:55):
I have no idea what you're talking about.
I wouldn't even know what website to go to, to register a domain.
AI did that all for me.
Not only did it crosschecked that those domains were available.
So I wanted, a.com,
a.ca.
It told me what was available, what was not available.
I think that it even told me why some of them might not work because they're very similar to other brands that are out there.
So it started steering me, away from certain, domain names, landing on what I've landed on.
(15:20):
Got it.
So that was the first time you actually spent money because up to now you're using free ais.
Right.
The first time you spent any money in this business was to register the domains, correct? Correct.
Okay.
So money gets spent, domains are done.
Next step is, you've got a brand name, a domain name, now you need a website.
So what did you do next? I went to AI and asked it how am I going to build a website? I went back to my original research with those top 10 brands and asked AI to look at their websites.
(15:51):
I didn't wanna copy things.
I needed to be inspired I also needed to get a really clear vision of.
What I wanted my website to look like and my brand.
It helped me with, details like coloring layout photographs it's almost like AI had become my co-founder it was helping me through this process that I didn't even know at the time.
What direction this was gonna take me.
I think your point is really important because.
(16:13):
If you think about all the tech companies or all the really successful companies that we use every day, usually at least one of the founders, was a tech person, a coder, a software person probably from Silicon Valley.
Think about every company that we use every day.
The story.
It's like, oh, that's a coder software guy, your website was done.
(16:37):
To me that's mind blowing.
I'm a person that had teams of full-time web designers, coders, developers.
I know how long it takes to build a real website.
It doesn't happen in 10 minutes in Asana.
There's a designer, a coder, somebody's hooking up your DNS, all these steps to it.
You gotta find hosting, all that was done in minutes, so now you end up with an incredible website.
(17:02):
You've got, an idea that's been validated through incredible market research.
A brand, a name that you love.
So Jillian, how was your first week as, a founder of a new startup? Well, the fact that you're even calling me a founder is blowing my mind because eight days ago I would not have described myself as that.
I probably would've said I'm a public servant.
I didn't realize how much you would be able to achieve with AI in seven days or less and little to no experience.
(17:29):
You be willing to go for it.
Lean into that discomfort a little bit.
Teachers know best that we learn through failure.
I wasn't worried about that, but I was worried that I wouldn't have the expertise or, background experience to do something like this.
Within, the first few hours of using AI on day one, I realized I actually do, and anybody does.
the reason why you're on the show today is I've been working with hundreds of companies around the world.
(17:54):
I've been blessed to help five startups go to a billion dollars.
I've done this a lot of time, but never would I've ever imagined that we could take an idea and go to, I'm talking fully researched, we have a business plan right now.
We could take to any bank.
You've got enough research, you can go to any bank and get funding from.
That's how good the research is.
(18:15):
Created a business plan, and found government programs that would love to give you money to launch this kind of business.
Which is crazy.
you picked an incredible brand name and with the brand name and the website you already have.
It's a multimillion dollar business.
There's no doubt in my mind now it's execution.
To witness this all with AI and your total spend, about 50 bucks for the domain.
(18:37):
Yep.
Know how much, real businesses would pay for this.
Even if you're in India, everything we've talked about so far would cost tens of thousands of dollars and would take you months.
So yeah, super impressed.
.0585287So you had a great first week, but what's your plan now with your AI co-founder? What's the plan for this week? I think the next step is that I need to hit social media. 268 00:18:59,822.0585287 --> 00:19:09,782.0585287 I need to, open some accounts, on different platforms with my brand name, start gaining followers, start building that trust with clients, and, putting out some content. 269 00:19:10,112.0585287 --> 00:19:12,932.0585287 In terms of content, I'm going to go back to ai. 270 00:19:12,962.0585287 --> 00:19:15,572.0585287 I'm gonna ask it to create a content calendar for me. 271 00:19:15,652.0585287 --> 00:19:18,622.0585287 It can even create my reels posts and carousels for me. 272 00:19:19,32.0585287 --> 00:19:24,312.0585287 Based on what I'm needing it'll all be done for me and for people that haven't done this before, I'll give you some, examples. 273 00:19:24,702.0585287 --> 00:19:28,122.0585287 If you went to X right now, pick any platform and yourself. 274 00:19:28,122.0585287 --> 00:19:31,542.0585287 Without ai, you're trying to find your brand name. 275 00:19:31,602.0585287 --> 00:19:35,622.0585287 With X, you're gonna spend a whole day because there's a million variations. 276 00:19:35,892.0585287 --> 00:19:47,432.0585287 To get your brand name that isn't already taken you could spend a day, then you could spend an entire day trying to do the same with Facebook and TikTok, you could spend a month on this in ai. 277 00:19:47,582.0585287 --> 00:19:54,572.0585287 In seconds it's gonna go through a million configurations and go, okay, based on your brand, this one's available. 278 00:19:54,572.0585287 --> 00:19:57,752.0585287 That alone will save hundreds of hours. 279 00:19:58,152.0585287 --> 00:19:59,802.0585287 I think that's a very good point. 280 00:19:59,802.0585287 --> 00:20:01,842.0585287 He's at gymnastics on Friday, it was soccer. 281 00:20:01,842.0585287 --> 00:20:05,852.0585287 So keep in mind that I'm doing all of this in between, being home full time with my son. 282 00:20:05,962.0585287 --> 00:20:08,872.0585287 And on the side also doing a little bit of lesson planning. 283 00:20:08,962.0585287 --> 00:20:13,222.0585287 So all of this needed to fit into some pockets of time during the day, and it easily did. 284 00:20:13,672.0585287 --> 00:20:18,702.0585287 So this is why, most moms right now don't run multimillion dollar businesses because. 285 00:20:18,987.0585287 --> 00:20:20,997.0585287 You couldn't have physically done this before. 286 00:20:21,297.0585287 --> 00:20:22,707.0585287 It would take too much energy. 287 00:20:22,707.0585287 --> 00:20:23,757.0585287 Too much time. 288 00:20:24,57.0585287 --> 00:20:28,287.0585287 I mean, Like you look at Sarah Blakely, Spanx, but she did all that before. 289 00:20:28,287.0585287 --> 00:20:28,977.0585287 She had kids. 290 00:20:29,77.0585287 --> 00:20:33,397.0585287 There's very few people that can pull this off Today with ai it's gonna be more common. 291 00:20:33,737.0585287 --> 00:20:42,487.0585287 One of my beliefs is if you look at all the founders right now, all these, billionaire tech guys, they all dropped outta university and started their company. 292 00:20:43,57.0585287 --> 00:20:49,807.0585287 I believe we live in an age right now where it's gonna be high kids drop outta school, outta high school, grade nine, grade 10. 293 00:20:49,867.0585287 --> 00:20:51,487.0585287 cause they made a million bucks with their app. 294 00:20:51,707.0585287 --> 00:20:52,427.0585287 I'll give you an example. 295 00:20:52,427.0585287 --> 00:20:57,497.0585287 I take a picture of what I eat and it analyzes the amount of protein a 17-year-old built it. 296 00:20:57,557.0585287 --> 00:21:00,227.0585287 He did $20 million his first year. 297 00:21:00,737.0585287 --> 00:21:04,457.0585287 With this app, I believe you're gonna have high school kids drop out. 298 00:21:04,677.0585287 --> 00:21:06,187.0585287 Because ai, I agree with you.
welcome to Strategic AI Coach Podcast.
Today we have a very special guest, my name's Jillian Agnew.
I'm a mom to a 10-year-old boy and I'm also an Ontario certified teacher.
Awesome.
On our show we've had a lot of interesting people.
Most people have a technology or AI background.
Or they worked with me in the marketing world for years.
(00:20):
You have none of those, backgrounds, I'm excited to have you because, you reached out to me online and talked about, starting a business.
I'm a teacher.
My background is in education.
That's where all of my degrees are and courses I've taken over the last 18 years.
And of course, I'm a mom, I'm very much invested in my son's life and, the activities that I am running from him around too.
(00:42):
I also had my own, weight loss story.
Over the last year.
I've lost 45 pounds.
Somewhere along the way I realized I might be.
Suited for something more than teaching, getting out of the public sector.
I started to think about creating my own company or my own brand and it never went farther than that.
We, had spoken a week ago, and you already had this idea of the coffee business 'cause you already had some success in it.
(01:06):
But you want to, think about creating your own brand and doing it on your own.
People have these ideas and they typically go nowhere.
We had spoken about AI and leveraging AI to help us.
Walk us through that.
I wanna get the dates right in last week or two, you'd started using chat gpt bit more.
Walk us through that.
Starting off with, ground zero knowledge of chat gpt and then let's talk about how it transformed the business idea.
(01:33):
Yeah, I really had not, used AI before.
I had asked it a few questions.
I don't think I had even downloaded the app prior to seven days ago.
The entire domain was new to me, and I had no prior skills.
So the reason I wanted you on the show today is a lot of people that listen to our show, and a lot of people I talk to every day.
Might be running hundred million dollar businesses.
(01:55):
But the amazing thing is they're not using ai.
When I ask them, to show me this chatgpt they're not even using chat GPT, they're using some knockoff version.
This is extremely common.
What we're discussing right now is what I find 95% of people are doing when they say, I've used that, but they're not even using.
The real chat gpt, they're using some knockoff app and they're using a Google search.
(02:16):
Would you say that you were in that category? Absolutely.
So this is a big step because we're gonna go from an idea to a business and we're gonna use the real chat g bt.
The first thing is you got the correct app.
On your phone.
When you did that, were you using voice mode for example? I find most people still type into it, 'cause they're used to typing into Google.
Did you start using voice or what happened from there? No, I started typing because I didn't know what I was doing.
(02:40):
What I was surprised at was how easy it was.
It was very user friendly once I had downloaded.
The correct app and it didn't take too long for me to pick up a little bit of speed a few days into it I switched over to voice notes, to be more, time effective.
Did you have any aha moments or holy shit, this is amazing moments before we got to the business part? Oh, I would say within a few minutes of using chat GPT and speaking back and forth with ai, I realized that my world was about to explode and all these doors were about to open for me in ways that I had never seen possible before.
(03:10):
And I think this is important because your role isn't just a teacher, you're coaching teachers.
And maybe you could talk a bit about that.
'cause I think this is important because we have an education system that despite AI taking over the world.
There is no curriculum that I know of.
And I've got kids from, high school to university.
There are no AI courses.
There's nothing and it's incredible.
(03:32):
You're coming from the education world.
Tell us a bit about what you do in the education world and, why you think this is important for teachers as well? My job title is Learning Resource Teacher.
I work for the district and I'm sent into schools to work with teachers, and I coach and mentor them on best practices, introducing new programs, doing an audit of the programs they already have in place and helping them tweak and refine those and would you say that the education system's a little bit behind the time, not just for ai.
(04:02):
I think you told me off camera about a QR code for your classroom, but none of the other teachers wanted to adopt it.
Talk a bit about that.
I find that education is a little bit old fashioned.
We haven't changed very much.
If you look at a classroom from a hundred years ago, it might look identical to what classrooms look like today.
A few years ago, eight years ago, I attended a Google summit for educators.
I was introduced to creating your own QR codes.
(04:25):
So I had this idea of creating a QR code to put on the outside of my classroom door.
Anybody, whether it's a parent, another teacher, the administrators, even the janitor can scan the QR code because everybody carries their phone.
I had created a Google form that had intentional questions where I wanted people that walked into my room to look at specific spaces or something I was teaching.
(04:49):
Give me feedback.
The good, the bad, and the ugly, or maybe other ideas.
And I remember pitching this to my staff of about 60.
I put the QR code up on my door and nobody went for it.
One person filled out the form because they were my friend.
Teachers are very uncomfortable with change.
They can be uncomfortable with, innovation if it's not, written in the curriculum yet.
(05:12):
Teachers could be afraid or nervous of feedback, constructive feedback is highly valuable, we preach that to our students, but as educators and teachers, we struggle to be in that discomfort and space.
So this explains why we don't have any AI education yet.
Do you remember, was it one week ago or two weeks ago when you downloaded that chat GT app and you started using it properly? When would you say that was? Probably only seven days ago.
(05:39):
Okay, perfect.
This is a great example and a lot of people that are listening to this can relate to this.
Yeah, I'm not really using chat gpt either.
So people can relate to this.
One week ago we had spoken on the phone, and you said, about this coffee business, and I think I said to you, Hey, I think you could just get your own product do it yourself because you are a distributor for another company, correct? Yep.
For about three years now.
(05:59):
I have sold their coffee.
I've done really well with it.
I've earned a few trips around the world and met some great people when I said to you, have you thought about just creating your own coffee line? What was your initial reaction? I think I laughed, and said I can't do that.
I'm just a teacher.
Because you hadn't launched a business before.
No.
So in my world, coming from the marketing agency, run a marketing agency for 28 years around the world.
(06:22):
This is what I do, so I understand what it takes to launch a business, but I also know how hard it is.
What I've learned in the last, two and a half years because of AI is how easy it's become, especially the last year.
It's incredible.
I think I said to you, Hey, why don't you do some market research and validate, the opportunity with chat GBT and walk us through what happened after that.
(06:43):
Yeah.
The first thing I did was download the app.
It was user friendly and I started asking it about what the top 10 coffee companies in North America are doing.
I started exploring their websites.
So walk us through that.
How did you do that? I think I asked chat, GBT what are the other top 10 companies doing and can you show me some of the market research that's out there? At day one, I didn't have the language or terminology.
(07:07):
I didn't know how to.
Use marketing language or how to specifically ask it a question.
So I just started by asking it what I may have popped in a Google search the day before.
From that point, we had spoken and then I used a couple AI tools to help out.
Chat, GBT is what I use primarily.
Chat, GBT has a mode, called O three o three is really important.
(07:30):
It's the only AI in the world that really reasons like a human.
So I did put that prompt into O three and it give us some really good market data.
And then what I do with all ais is validate it by cutting and pasting that research.
Into a different one.
I'll say, Hey, Claude I want you to fact check this for me.
It'll go through the document, each item and fact check it and I'll say, Hey, I want you to improve it.
(07:53):
And then I'll go to a third one, I'll go to perplexity and do the same thing.
I used Perplexity Labs, which is another deeper research one.
Each of these ais will give you good information using the basic version.
If you learn how to use 'em a bit more, some have a deep research setting or chat.
GBT has O three perplexity has labs, they have different versions.
So we bounced around with some market research.
(08:16):
Once we realized, okay, you're onto something really big, this whole healthy coffee idea.
The next step I think was, figuring out in terms of marketing and a website.
Wanna talk a bit about that and coming up with a name, walk through that process? Yep.
So I asked Chet GPT and, the other AI apps that you had mentioned that I had never heard of prior to seven days ago.
(08:37):
So asked it to check the top 10.
Coffee manufacturers or suppliers to look at their websites.
I wanted to see what looked really good on their websites, what maybe wasn't gonna work for me.
Then I had it giving me feedback, that I was able to immediately start implementing into the website I wanted to build.
(08:58):
Key components, I was able to do this all within 25 minutes.
The research I sent you from perplexity Labs, something from, Claude something from chat, GBD, I think four different ais.
Just to put this in perspective having run a marketing agency 28 years around the world, the documents that you got back from these ais are things that we would've charged clients a hundred thousand dollars for.
(09:24):
What have taken a team of 20 weeks to put together, and I would argue that the research you were sent is better.
It's hard for people to even understand what these ais are doing.
It's like having a Mackenzie Consulting, a Bain, and Bain Consulting guys come in and it would take them weeks or months to put together kind of data, the analysis that we're able to generate in minutes.
(09:51):
So you were able to, sidestep literally huge amount of costs and.
Weeks or months of time and go right into, okay, this idea is real.
This is the competition, here's what they're doing.
And there's one that you found that had the same business model.
What it found was, here's one that does 90% of its business with subscriptions, which is your whole business idea.
(10:14):
Do you want to talk a bit about that? I have been in sales a bit as a side job from when I was 21, I always remember.
If you're going to work hard for a sale and put in the time to build that relationship with a potential customer and get to know them, find a problem, they have to solve it.
I don't wanna have to do that again next month.
So for me, I thought the subscription is the best way.
(10:35):
When you're trying a new product and doing something.
For your health and wellness, like weight loss, you're probably not going to get the best results within just four weeks.
So we really do want our potential customers to be with us for at least 12 weeks.
I think that's why the subscription service works really well.
I got excited when I saw that research because.
In the nineties, I started a pet food business with some partners we had no money, started some credit cards, but our claim to fame was we created an auto ship program, before we had Amazon Prime and all these subscription models.
(11:06):
and we did it with, in Canada, we did it with Purolator courier.
So we sold a, a case of dog food, about 40 pounds, and it got shipped to you if you had a German Shepherd, say 60 pounds, we knew that in 30 days you'd need a fresh supply.
We built a hundred thousand customers across Canada I am very fond of this subscription model.
When I saw the coffee business one company with, 90% of the customers on subscription, I got very excited because coffee is dog food.
(11:33):
It's a consumable that use every single day.
Coffee's almost, maybe it's better than dog food because everyone's addicted to coffee.
You've got something that literally they're addicted to.
I don't have to convince you to drink coffee.
Everyone's already drinking it.
I just have to convince you It's better for you.
And that's what we had in our dog food business because our dog food was no chemicals, all natural vitamins and real meat.
(11:55):
It wasn't a tough sell.
And that's what I found interesting about the research.
On the companies that you were looking at because these are mold free, 'cause there's a lot of crap in our coffee.
It actually said, Hey, if you're gonna model some company, look at this one.
Mm-hmm.
So with that research walk us through what did you do next? After you saw the research and you're like, okay, I see this company, they're really figured out how to do subscriptions.
(12:17):
Walk us through what was the next thing that you did? I think the next thing, was that I needed to come up with a brand name, recycled tap water.
Dasani or Nestle made these waters.
But then one day somebody had this great idea about.
Hey, let's put vitamins in water, make it seem, healthy.
And a friend of mine, Edward Obi, started a company called Smart Effects.
Which was very successful.
(12:37):
And so it didn't taste that great, but it was a good idea because he had some pretty good things in it.
So I think the next part of your research was you looked at the 10, most successful companies in the us.
That we're in the water business, but had a healthy angle.
Did I get that right? Correct.
Yep.
Okay.
Why did you do that research and what was the result of going to that research? Well, in Teacher's College, I learned you don't wanna ever reinvent the wheel.
(13:00):
So my thinking was go to who's already doing it well.
Take a good look using ai.
There wasn't, enough time in the week I've gotta take my son to 10 different places to sit and audit 10 of these websites.
So asked AI to do it for me and it was able to tell me.
The benefits or, reasons behind why they chose a brand name or why was this name better than that name? Right.
(13:24):
And the companies that you looked at were the 10 most successful, Vitamin Waters in America.
These are very successful companies.
Out of those 10 names you found one that you liked did I get that right? And then you said, Hey, ai.
Can we use this for a coffee? Mm-hmm.
Will you walk us through that? Yeah.
You really need to understand how you're speaking to AI to get the answers back that you require.
(13:44):
And I wanted to know if I was going to be copywriting or if things were going to be illegal and I needed to get that information right away.
And of course, it guided me through how to follow this process.
Legally and ethically so from that research, you're able to come up with a name, and then you went to AI and you said, okay, how do I find a domain now, find a domain name that has the word coffee in it, but it's available.
(14:09):
walk us through that.
Where a lot of people get stuck.
They're like, I can't come up with a name.
And if they came up with a name, I can't get the right domain.
So walk us through that.
I knew that I couldn't come up with my own name.
I have no prior buyer, experience in this industry.
So I had to put my full blind faith trust in ai.
It gave me a few options.
I asked a few friends, got some feedback and I settled on one that felt authentic to myself.
(14:32):
In a matter of days, we went from idea market research, validate the idea.
Then we did market research on healthy, beverage companies, healthy water companies.
You came up with a name, then used AI to find which domains were available.
It came up with some options for you.
Correct? Correct.
I didn't know, you say just go register a domain to me.
(14:55):
I have no idea what you're talking about.
I wouldn't even know what website to go to, to register a domain.
AI did that all for me.
Not only did it crosschecked that those domains were available.
So I wanted, a.com,
a.ca.
It told me what was available, what was not available.
I think that it even told me why some of them might not work because they're very similar to other brands that are out there.
So it started steering me, away from certain, domain names, landing on what I've landed on.
(15:20):
Got it.
So that was the first time you actually spent money because up to now you're using free ais.
Right.
The first time you spent any money in this business was to register the domains, correct? Correct.
Okay.
So money gets spent, domains are done.
Next step is, you've got a brand name, a domain name, now you need a website.
So what did you do next? I went to AI and asked it how am I going to build a website? I went back to my original research with those top 10 brands and asked AI to look at their websites.
(15:51):
I didn't wanna copy things.
I needed to be inspired I also needed to get a really clear vision of.
What I wanted my website to look like and my brand.
It helped me with, details like coloring layout photographs it's almost like AI had become my co-founder it was helping me through this process that I didn't even know at the time.
What direction this was gonna take me.
I think your point is really important because.
(16:13):
If you think about all the tech companies or all the really successful companies that we use every day, usually at least one of the founders, was a tech person, a coder, a software person probably from Silicon Valley.
Think about every company that we use every day.
The story.
It's like, oh, that's a coder software guy, your website was done.
(16:37):
To me that's mind blowing.
I'm a person that had teams of full-time web designers, coders, developers.
I know how long it takes to build a real website.
It doesn't happen in 10 minutes in Asana.
There's a designer, a coder, somebody's hooking up your DNS, all these steps to it.
You gotta find hosting, all that was done in minutes, so now you end up with an incredible website.
(17:02):
You've got, an idea that's been validated through incredible market research.
A brand, a name that you love.
So Jillian, how was your first week as, a founder of a new startup? Well, the fact that you're even calling me a founder is blowing my mind because eight days ago I would not have described myself as that.
I probably would've said I'm a public servant.
I didn't realize how much you would be able to achieve with AI in seven days or less and little to no experience.
(17:29):
You be willing to go for it.
Lean into that discomfort a little bit.
Teachers know best that we learn through failure.
I wasn't worried about that, but I was worried that I wouldn't have the expertise or, background experience to do something like this.
Within, the first few hours of using AI on day one, I realized I actually do, and anybody does.
the reason why you're on the show today is I've been working with hundreds of companies around the world.
(17:54):
I've been blessed to help five startups go to a billion dollars.
I've done this a lot of time, but never would I've ever imagined that we could take an idea and go to, I'm talking fully researched, we have a business plan right now.
We could take to any bank.
You've got enough research, you can go to any bank and get funding from.
That's how good the research is.
(18:15):
Created a business plan, and found government programs that would love to give you money to launch this kind of business.
Which is crazy.
you picked an incredible brand name and with the brand name and the website you already have.
It's a multimillion dollar business.
There's no doubt in my mind now it's execution.
To witness this all with AI and your total spend, about 50 bucks for the domain.
(18:37):
Yep.
Know how much, real businesses would pay for this.
Even if you're in India, everything we've talked about so far would cost tens of thousands of dollars and would take you months.
So yeah, super impressed.
.0585287So you had a great first week, but what's your plan now with your AI co-founder? What's the plan for this week? I think the next step is that I need to hit social media. 268 00:18:59,822.0585287 --> 00:19:09,782.0585287 I need to, open some accounts, on different platforms with my brand name, start gaining followers, start building that trust with clients, and, putting out some content. 269 00:19:10,112.0585287 --> 00:19:12,932.0585287 In terms of content, I'm going to go back to ai. 270 00:19:12,962.0585287 --> 00:19:15,572.0585287 I'm gonna ask it to create a content calendar for me. 271 00:19:15,652.0585287 --> 00:19:18,622.0585287 It can even create my reels posts and carousels for me. 272 00:19:19,32.0585287 --> 00:19:24,312.0585287 Based on what I'm needing it'll all be done for me and for people that haven't done this before, I'll give you some, examples. 273 00:19:24,702.0585287 --> 00:19:28,122.0585287 If you went to X right now, pick any platform and yourself. 274 00:19:28,122.0585287 --> 00:19:31,542.0585287 Without ai, you're trying to find your brand name. 275 00:19:31,602.0585287 --> 00:19:35,622.0585287 With X, you're gonna spend a whole day because there's a million variations. 276 00:19:35,892.0585287 --> 00:19:47,432.0585287 To get your brand name that isn't already taken you could spend a day, then you could spend an entire day trying to do the same with Facebook and TikTok, you could spend a month on this in ai. 277 00:19:47,582.0585287 --> 00:19:54,572.0585287 In seconds it's gonna go through a million configurations and go, okay, based on your brand, this one's available. 278 00:19:54,572.0585287 --> 00:19:57,752.0585287 That alone will save hundreds of hours. 279 00:19:58,152.0585287 --> 00:19:59,802.0585287 I think that's a very good point. 280 00:19:59,802.0585287 --> 00:20:01,842.0585287 He's at gymnastics on Friday, it was soccer. 281 00:20:01,842.0585287 --> 00:20:05,852.0585287 So keep in mind that I'm doing all of this in between, being home full time with my son. 282 00:20:05,962.0585287 --> 00:20:08,872.0585287 And on the side also doing a little bit of lesson planning. 283 00:20:08,962.0585287 --> 00:20:13,222.0585287 So all of this needed to fit into some pockets of time during the day, and it easily did. 284 00:20:13,672.0585287 --> 00:20:18,702.0585287 So this is why, most moms right now don't run multimillion dollar businesses because. 285 00:20:18,987.0585287 --> 00:20:20,997.0585287 You couldn't have physically done this before. 286 00:20:21,297.0585287 --> 00:20:22,707.0585287 It would take too much energy. 287 00:20:22,707.0585287 --> 00:20:23,757.0585287 Too much time. 288 00:20:24,57.0585287 --> 00:20:28,287.0585287 I mean, Like you look at Sarah Blakely, Spanx, but she did all that before. 289 00:20:28,287.0585287 --> 00:20:28,977.0585287 She had kids. 290 00:20:29,77.0585287 --> 00:20:33,397.0585287 There's very few people that can pull this off Today with ai it's gonna be more common. 291 00:20:33,737.0585287 --> 00:20:42,487.0585287 One of my beliefs is if you look at all the founders right now, all these, billionaire tech guys, they all dropped outta university and started their company. 292 00:20:43,57.0585287 --> 00:20:49,807.0585287 I believe we live in an age right now where it's gonna be high kids drop outta school, outta high school, grade nine, grade 10. 293 00:20:49,867.0585287 --> 00:20:51,487.0585287 cause they made a million bucks with their app. 294 00:20:51,707.0585287 --> 00:20:52,427.0585287 I'll give you an example. 295 00:20:52,427.0585287 --> 00:20:57,497.0585287 I take a picture of what I eat and it analyzes the amount of protein a 17-year-old built it. 296 00:20:57,557.0585287 --> 00:21:00,227.0585287 He did $20 million his first year. 297 00:21:00,737.0585287 --> 00:21:04,457.0585287 With this app, I believe you're gonna have high school kids drop out. 298 00:21:04,677.0585287 --> 00:21:06,187.0585287 Because ai, I agree with you.
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