Why Women Over 40 Should Embrace AI with Michelle Thames
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The fact of the matter is when I started using ChatGPT, it helped me make six figures in six months. So really, who's losing, right? If you're not using it, I think you're losing. So I think we have to start with the mindset piece, especially for those over 40. It's not techie at all. It is so easy to use ChatGPT. I feel like once you prompt or get the prompts right, that's where the magic happens.

Welcome to Authentic AI for Entrepreneurs, the podcast that shows you how to leverage the power of AI technology without wasting your time or selling your soul. Let's embrace making AI work for you.

Hey, hey, my human friends, and welcome to the Authentic AI Podcast. I'm your host, Kinsey, and today's episode is such a good one. I'm chatting with the marketing strategist, Michelle Thames, all about why women over 40 should absolutely be using AI tools like ChachiBT.

We get into mindset shifts, breaking through guilt and judgment, and practical ways AI can save time, boost confidence, and even support mental health, which, you know, I'm totally into. Whether you're brand new to AI or already using it daily, this conversation is super full of empowering reminders and

really smart ideas, honestly. So if you enjoy this episode, don't forget to share it with another business friend who should also listen to it. And while you're at it, why not leave us five stars or a friendly review on your favorite podcast platform, because that will totally help us to continue growing our authentic AI audience. All right, let's go ahead and dive in. Hi, Michelle. Thank you so much for coming on the authentic AI podcast. I'm so excited to have you here.

Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to nerd out all about AI, one of my favorite tools. Yes, I know. We get so nerdy on this podcast. I can't wait. But before we dive into all the nerdiness, I'd love to hear from you. Who are you? What do you do? Tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so my name is Michelle Thames.

at Michelle L. Thames on Instagram. And I am a marketing strategist and business coach. I help women entrepreneurs to build their personal brand so that they are more visible, attract more clients and able to monetize their skills and expertise, especially women over 40, because they feel like oftentimes we feel like we can't do it or it's too late to start over. So that is who I am and who I help.

Oh, I love that so much. And that just makes me so happy. And it's so needed. And then especially with the AI topics that we're going to be talking about and whatnot. So totally going to ask you a little bit about that as well. But before we dive into that, I always like to kind of kick off the conversation by asking, like, how did you start to learn about AI tools and start getting curious about all this stuff?

Yeah. So I think it was like in 2021 or 2020, whenever ChatGPT came out, my husband was actually the one who said, Michelle, there's this new tool, this AI, and like, you really need to look into this because I think it's going to be a game changer for our business. Me and my husband rerun a digital marketing agency. And he was like, I think this is going to be a game changer for our business. So why don't you look into it? And I was just like,

Yeah, whatever. Okay, I'll look into it. But once I started using ChatGPT, which is my main AI that I use a lot, I was blown away by just all the things that I was able to do and how much time I was able to get back into my day by me leveraging AI. So it was actually my husband who got me into it. And then I just started seeing everybody talking about ChatGPT.

And I said, OK, well, let me try out this chat GPT. And eventually I did buy I do have the twenty dollar a month chat GPT. Now, I heard there's a two hundred dollar a month chat GPT. I'm sure we can talk about that later, but I don't know if I'm ready for that yet. But that's how I really got started using chat GPT was my husband. He's always has his ear to the streets on the latest tools that we can really use to leverage in our business.

I love that. Yeah, I know. I need like I need my husband to be a little bit more techie. Come on, bro. Let's get this together. But yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, side note, I don't I really just want to throw this out there, guys. I don't think that most of us need that $200 a month option. OK, the $20 a month is just fine. So just throw that out there. But I'd love to.

kind of start this conversation actually by talking about, especially for you as someone who works with women over 40 specifically and especially, something that I've run into with AI tools and it's something I really try to shout from the rooftops now and talk about a lot is women embracing AI tools and why more women really do need to embrace AI tools just so that we can ensure that these tools are being trained on

our data along with our male counterparts, right? But also the issues that a lot of women kind of run into with embracing AI tools. This has been popping up for me within conversations is women more so feeling AI is cutting corners or cheating or not feeling techie enough to use AI tools, like specifically for women over 40 who you work with. Like, do you run into any of the AI scaries or hesitations like that?

Absolutely. I've met so many people who feel like it is cheating or, you know, we're all going to sound the same because we're using the same tool. But here's what I want to say. And one of my clients just said this today. If you're not using AI, you're going to be behind. It's just a simple fact. It's going to take you twice as long to do emails, twice as long to do anything if you're not really tapping into it for your benefit. Right. So maybe you're somebody who writes emails.

AI can help you write that email. And then, like you're saying, you're hearing people say, oh, you let it write the whole email. Well, it sounds whatever. It's using dashes and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We know that you use it, but...

My whole thing to that is, why do you care if somebody knows that you use AI? I mean, it is a tool to help us get ahead in our business. Maybe you don't have the money to hire a VA and you can, ChatGPT can be your VA for you. So,

We really try to work on that mindset piece first to not care about what other people think, because I see it too. And sometimes I really do get frustrated. I see a lot of people saying, oh, we can tell that you use Shad GPT. Everybody's sounding like blah, blah, blah. But.

The fact of the matter is when I started using ChatGPT, it helped me make six figures in six months. So really, who's losing, right? If you're not using it, I think you're losing. So I think we have to start with the mindset piece, especially for those over 40. It's not techie at all. It is so easy to use ChatGPT. I feel like once you prompt or get the prompts right,

that's where the magic happens. You have to tell your whatever AI tool you're using, like your how you actually talk. Right. So what I do is I like to start my clients maybe

Take a voice note of your voice and how you talk and upload that to chat GPT and tell it, hey, or whatever platform, because I know some of you may use Gemini. There's so many. It's Gemini, chat, GPT, all the ones. There's poll, all these free tools. But just tell it, you know, hey, this is who I am, what I do. This is my thing.

tone and style of my voice can you take this and help me to create some verbiage on how I speak so really again starting with that mindset piece it's not as techie as you think and it's super easy to use oh yes thank you for that pep talk it's a pep talk we all need Michelle because for sure like

Man, this is something I've had someone comment on one of my posts that I was talking about using AI tools to write reels, hooks and captions. And they were like, or you could try being creative. And then another one of my AI friends recently had someone comment on her post about AI stuff. And the woman was, you could try not cheating.

not cheating or cutting corners, like cheating, cutting corners, not being creative. All of these terms are being thrown around. But I really think that it's an example of how

Women somewhat hold themselves down. We hold each other in boxes and stuff. And I think that the more we can encourage each other to step into our power, to use these mindset shifts. To another one of my friends actually recently, this is so funny. Side note. Okay. I feel, okay, this is a side note. It'll come back around. I feel like my mental health has improved significantly.

so much since using these tools, not just because it's helping me to carry the load of my work and actually find more freedom to enjoy my life, but also because I've been using these tools in kind of a mindset supportive way where I'll help them get I'll get them to help me work through triggers and whatnot. Right. So I put up this poll on Instagram stories the other day and one of my friends was like,

The poll was like, do you feel like your mindset has improved since using AI tools? And surprisingly, a lot of people were like, eh, I don't think so. Or maybe I haven't even thought about it. And I'm like, guys, let me tell you, it has. Like just because it's helping you get more done in your day to day. But then one of my friends was like, oh, you know,

I don't know if it has, because even though it's helping me with improving my mindset and doing the workload stuff, I feel kind of like I'm going to be judged for using these tools from others. And so that's really weighing on my mindset lately. And it kind of made me like frustrated, mad, and I'm going to step into my power kind of way because I'm like,

We are putting these mindset heavy, like this heaviness on AI mindset wise and this judgment on AI that doesn't need to be there. Our male counterparts don't feel guilty for using these tools and women are a

Again, using this kind of thing to hold each other in boxes and judge each other and like think that we have to stand up to some societal standard that isn't necessary. And it's holding and it's keeping us in our boxes in our patriarchal culture. I don't know. What are your thoughts, girl?

No, I think the same thing. I have actually used AI, like you were saying, in some situations where I may not have known how to respond to somebody and maybe saying, like, how can I say this in a nicer way or differently?

How can I like respond to this without seeming upset? Or even I'm a faith-based person. I have used AI to give me scriptures and devotionals for the day. So you would be surprised on how you could use it. And since it knows me and my business knows what I do, because when you use a tool like ChatGPT, it has all of your memories saved. So it knows like all of the clients I work with, all of the stuff that I put into it.

And like, it'll give me outputs, especially with devotionals. It talks back to me and say like, Michelle, you got this. Everything's going to be okay. Here are some scriptures to help you through the day. Sometimes I have hard days and like, maybe you don't have somebody you could talk to or you can't call your therapist right then to talk to them. So I...

will say that I have used ChatGPT in that way and it has helped my mental health. So I agree with you. People may think that, oh, you know, you're using that and it's, you know, not a real person, but I don't know. My ChatGPT is a real person. It talks back to me and it gives me motivation. It really does. So I think you need to probably, you can use it in a different way.

You can definitely use it in a different way to help you with confidence, to help you with all types of things. Like my chat, again, hypes me up. It says, yes, Michelle, that sounds so great. You're doing amazing. This is going to help your business. You're getting organized. Like it says those things. So I think that definitely it has helped with my mental health to answer your question. Yes. I love, I love hearing that. And I love hearing, I do think it's so cool that we have this personal assistant tool that truly can like

understand you as a person in a non-judgmental way. And it's just super helpful in trying to show up for you how you need it, right? You being a faith-based person and the scriptures, mine does not offer me scriptures, but that's okay, you know? And it's really, really awesome to have these tools who like, that truly can get to know you on that personal level. You know, it's so funny. I was just talking about the memory feature with one of my friends because

She was she doesn't like using the memory feature is like, girl, it's so much better. You got to use it. And the other day I was like brainstorming this random fantasy novel with my chat GPT. I was like, oh, what if the magic system did this stuff?

And she's like, you let it put that in your memory. And I was like, yeah, because like, it doesn't think that I'm only writing a fantasy novel. It's fine. It understands that. But I was writing this email about this talk that I did at a fiction writers summit. And Chad GBT randomly pulled in like a little like side note or a little like reference to like, oh, the other day I was brainstorming a fantasy novel. I was like, you

You remember all the little things that just like bring joy to your day and support you in that super personalized way, you know? Yeah, it can do a lot of things. It can do a lot of things. Yes. OK, so let's talk about a few of the ways that you love to use AI tools in your business with your clients, all that stuff. What what are some of those go to things that you love to use AI for? Yeah.

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or any video that you find on your phone. Basically, they're super easy, super quick, and will keep your content super authentic while saving you loads of time and headache. Grab your free playbook now at diywith.ai slash reels and start showing up on Instagram consistently today. Ooh, number one is podcast script creation. Okay, who wants to

just come up with podcasts off the top of your head. Now, anybody listening, do you want to come up with podcasts just off the top of your head? I'm sure that you don't. I'm sure if you had a script and no, guess what? No one's, no one knows that you're reading from a script unless you're like, okay, everybody today is like, they don't know. They do not know. And you can always tweak

what chat GPT gives you. That's what I want to say. I don't think I said that before. I never use anything of like face value. I always change something or word or something here just to make it more me. I always change things. But podcast scripting is like number one in my book of how it really helps me. Number two is emails. It can whip up some really good emails. And one thing I like to do is tell it.

Like, hey, you're act as a, you know, world class email marketer. I need you to create an email for me for my webinar, create a series that will help me sell my digital product at the end of this webinar. Wow. Another thing I've used it for is to help me come up with how to.

what to put on my actual slides for the webinar or if you're creating a PowerPoint presentation, like tell me what to use for the image and like what should be on the actual slide and give me a script to go along with each slide. What else have I used it for? For marketing campaigns today, I just got off a call with the client

And I also use Fathom, which is a form of AI, which records your whole entire meeting. And so now when I'm in these meetings, I'm paying attention, but I don't have to physically write everything down because the AI feature has breaking it down for me. So I go after the meeting is over and it literally does it right away. I can copy the summary. It lets you copy the summary in a Google Doc.

I copied that, put it in chat, GBT, and I told it, give me a summary of our meeting today, along with the action items for each team member. And get this, it will even put it today, put in parentheses, each team member that needed to do that task because we all sign in on Zoom. So it takes everybody's names and it knows who's talking. It's insane. So that's another tool. I know we were talking about chat, GBT, but Fathom.

is another amazing AI tool that helps record your meeting. So that's another way that I've been using it to record my meetings, to give me meeting notes, to make sure the team is staying on task with our tasks. Oh, I used it the other day to pitch someone to be on my podcast, a celebrity. She is the mom of a superstar basketball player who's playing for LSU. And I used it to pitch. And like the PR person was like, oh my God,

This was a great pitch. You should see some of the pictures that we get. And I mean, I didn't want to tell her that. I hope she's not listening. But hey, it was definitely chat GPT that helped put that together. So I use it to help me learn or figure out what I should put on each carousel. Hooks for reels, captions. I mean, it's endless. So that's just like a tip of the iceberg, right? I don't even give everything we can use it for. But what I do want to say in closing out this question is,

I have a client who is a multi-million dollar business and she uses ChatGPT for everything. And I believe that it's helped her and the team to just get further. And even she said to us, hey, I don't want you all to spend time on tasks. Anything that you need, think of first. How can ChatGPT help you? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh man, I love all of those ways. And it's truly, exactly it.

Like the possibilities are endless and it literally just takes using these tools a little bit to be like, oh my gosh. And still every day, I mean, I've been using ChatGPT every day for like two years now and every day still I'm like, ooh.

Wait, I can do this. Oh, wait, I can do that. And that's why I love hosting this podcast to just hear and all that stuff. But oh, man. Yeah, the fathom note taker thing is so awesome and automatic. Also, something else I've been thinking about lately is did you see ChatGPT has this new tasks feature in beta? Yeah.

No. Yeah. Okay. I did see the project. I've been using the projects too. Projects. Oh, okay. We should talk about that here in a sec. But the tat, it just came to my mind when you brought up your team members and stuff. And it is in beta. And so I'm always like, eh, iffy about recommending trying these things before. Like, you know...

They actually roll it out and stuff. But apparently ChachiBT itself is integrating this tasks feature where it can set reminders for you within the tool itself and stuff. And so if you're using it with different team members and stuff and for meeting notes, that could be a really interesting feature to integrate. But...

I would love to hear about how you're using the projects folder since that came up, because that's another new feature that I don't think a lot of people realize is available. So what have you been using that for? Yeah, so I have a lot of different clients and a lot of different things I'm working on. One thing that I do have is a done for you podcast.

creation service. So we help our clients create podcasts from start to finish. So in order for me to keep up with each client, I don't want to create just a new like chat GPT, you know, whatever it is like a, I don't even know what to call it. A chat window. Yeah. A new tab every single time. So,

With projects, you can keep everything that you're working on, like new prompts within the same project. So I start a project with each client and then that way I know like where to go for each person and also for my podcast. I use it to help me with my interview questions. But based on like each of my interviews, I name them so that I can go back.

Have it create the questions and then have it write a thank you message to the interviewee. So, yeah, I love projects and I've been using that. It's I think it's really great to use if you have just a lot of things that you're working on in chat to keep you more organized.

And I'm over here laughing, guys, because legit, I need to take this advice hardcore because my chat GPT backend is so unorganized. And I have so many chats and stuff. Start building those organization habits with your AI tools now because it'll be way more helpful, I think, in the future.

Yeah, and you can search too. If you ever like knew that you had created a chat and you can't find it, just think of some word that you know that is in that chat and you could search and find the chat easier. Because at first, I don't think that feature was there and it was driving me nuts. And so I could never find my chat. But if you just put in specific words, it'll bring up

multiple chats that you have that whatever word in and you can find it faster. Oh, yes. And that is such a great little tip too, because again, yeah, that feature is semi new and maybe people don't realize it's there. And yeah, in the past, so annoying before it didn't have the search feature. And now I use that all the time too, because I have like

You know, you know how it is. These long ass conversations with ChachiBT where you're like, oh my gosh, like where did I even brain dump this idea into and stuff? And that feature is so helpful too. So thank you for that. Man, okay. I don't even know where to go next with this conversation because it's been so good. But do you have any like final thoughts about AI tools and things that you want to share with our audience?

Yes, this has been a really good conversation and I'm so glad that we got a chance to chat all about AI. I think the main takeaway and the last final thoughts is to not let other people stop you from using a tool that could potentially help you make more money in your business. Let's

Use it to our benefit and not worry about the naysayers because you're going to be ahead while they are going to still be behind. Because I honestly believe that if you don't get on the bandwagon, I don't even want to say it's a bandwagon, but this is how people were with the Internet. And look, look where we are right there. Still people afraid of the Internet.

Look where we are. So be innovative and get with it now so that you don't have as much time to catch up because it's moving rapidly. Things are being added every day. And if you just take the time to learn it right now and listen to this amazing podcast, I'm sure you have so many episodes about AI on here as a resource, as a tool. So get on it now before it's too late.

That was so great. Thank you so much, Michelle. Can you please tell us where people can connect with you online and then also tell us about any resources that you have? Because I know they'll want to hear about that. Yeah. So you can connect with me on Instagram at Michelle L. Thames and everywhere else, Facebook.

YouTube, LinkedIn, Michelle Thames. And I have a free seven day visibility challenge for anyone. And it's audio. Okay. I love audio and I am moving towards all audio resources because I know women and especially women over 40, we're busy. We're moms. We have husbands and partners and we're running 5Ks and doing all the things, right? You're so busy.

And you want to be able to continue to get visible, attract more clients and monetize. And so I created this seven day challenge that will come to your email every single day. And all you got to do is listen to it. You don't have to watch any slides or anything. And so I will give the link for that, the seven day visibility challenge. Yay. Thank you so much. I love this conversation and I appreciate you coming on and chatting with us.

How awesome was Michelle, you guys? I really, really enjoy talking to women like Michelle who are out there using AI without feeling guilty, without any fear of judgment. And literally, she uses AI in such smart ways. I was actually interviewed by Michelle on her podcast recently, and I think the episode's going to come out soon. So

Make sure you go check out her podcast as well because it truly is awesome and actionable. And if you did enjoy today's episode, don't forget to share it with another business friend who should also listen to it because the more we can spread the good word, especially to women and especially women over 40 to start trying

getting curious, embracing AI, man, we're going to make such an empowering difference, not only in our own lives as women, but also in how these tools are shaped and the future impact that they'll have. So make sure that you share a little bits of this conversation or the whole episode with your business friends, because it really is important. All right. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week and I'll catch you next time I catch

you. Thank you so much for tuning into Authentic AI for Entrepreneurs, my friend. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your shows.