How She Mapped Her Six-Figure Year with ChatGPT with Dana Johnson
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I asked her that question and it spent out a whole bunch of information. I was like, we need to break this down and break it down to the tools that I'm already using. So I told it that I was like, break this down into the various folders or subcategories and then what tasks need to go under each one. And then I had to go back and tell me how often do I need to be doing this stuff? When is the best time to complete these tasks? So then from there...

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 friend, and welcome back to the Authentic AI Podcast. I'm your host, Kinsey, and I'm so excited to share today's guest with you. If you have ever dreamed of mapping out a six-figure year without burning out on content or getting stuck in the overwhelm of it all, you are going to love this podcast.

this conversation. I am talking with Pinterest strategist and creative marketing nerd Dana Johnson and we are talking about how she's using ChatGPT to simplify her business, build evergreen funnels, and stay aligned with her values, which you know we all care about. We talk about Pinterest productivity and what it really looks like to blend strategy with intuition and a little bit of AI magic.

Plus, Dana shares how she used ChatGPT to plan her revenue goals and her self-care routine for this year. I was geeking out, my friends. This is a good one. So let's go ahead and dive into it. Hi, Dana. Thank you so much for coming on Authentic AI for Entrepreneurs, lady. I'm so excited to have you on the show. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. I feel like this is a long time coming. Oh, yes. I know, guys. Dana has been a part of the

authentic AI community for a while, sharing all her fun little insights about AI tools. And I can't wait for us to dish about those. But before we do, I already introduced you just a little bit in the intro. But can you just share with us who are you? What do you do? Tell us a little bit about yourself.

So I am a Pinterest strategist and organic marketing nerd who I work with wedding planners and creative entrepreneurs. So wedding pros, florists, designers, calligraphers, anything in the creative space, preferably in the weddings industry, I help them harness...

the organic marketing power of Pinterest to grow their business without having to rely on ads or go to bridal shows or whatever the case may be. I did launch my business as a single mom of three back in 2020. I grew it completely through strategic organic marketing. I've never paid for ads and I'm doing it full time now. So I started it as a side hustle, no intention of being a business owner. I just wanted to fill in the gap of my measly budget.

And then I realized my take-home pay from my full-time job matched my revenue. And I was like, well, what the crap? I don't want to do... If I can do this, then I'm going to do this. So that journey has led me to teaching others how to utilize Pinterest more than just a platform for inspiration, but to...

use it as a tool to drive traffic, generate leads, and create evergreen growth for their brand. Because life will life you and sometimes you need to step away. And you don't want to create five to seven stories every day. And you don't want to have posts on other social media platforms every single day. And this allows you to step away or to batch in a place that aligns better and gives your content a longer shelf life.

Yes, I love that life will life. It always does. We could that's the one thing we can rely on. That's my motto right now is life is life in too hard for me and I need to do something else. Oh my gosh, I love that. And yeah, for sure. Like, man, you're speaking my language with this evergreen stuff. That's kind of how I am like.

trying to simplify and evergreen a lot of my systems and approaches to stuff and like how we can use AI tools to help that. And, oh, okay. But also I cannot wait to geek out about AI with you. I do like to kick off the conversations by just kind of asking, like, how did you start dipping your toes into learning about AI tools and all that stuff? What did that look like for you? Yeah.

So I heard about Chachabiti through the interwebs and on my algorithms, but I had a client at the time who was using it and I couldn't get in. I was having trouble just getting my account made up because, you know, everybody was flocking to it. And so he actually helped me test a few things. I was like, Hey, help it, have it help me generate data.

about this topic. And he sent it to me and that helped me for a few weeks. And then I finally got into it. And I just kind of... I mainly used it for social media. I was like, Oh, I'm super inspired by this. Help me recreate it for my industry. But I never...

It was definitely the embarrassing way before I knew better situation of having it be like an assistant and really know my brand in and out. It was, you could definitely see the obvious signs that I was using AI to help me with my stuff. It's fine. We've learned, we've grown and we've moved on. Yeah.

Yeah, I love asking that because that is totally relatable. And that's so funny that like your client has helped like kind of helped you get into it. I do that too sometimes for like my clients and whatnot. Well, it's so funny too. You know me, I'm up AI's butt every day and stuff, but I also have some backend content clients and I randomly let it,

the other day was like, Oh, Elisa, my gardening client, I made this, you know, custom GPT bot for you. It's Elisa's gardening bot. She's like, Oh, thanks. She's like using it now. I'm like, okay, this is how we can start spreading the word about AI tools, guys. But for sure, that happens to

happens to everyone? You know, that's why I always try to take a soft approach to like, okay, guys, like, I know AI is awesome. Once you start using it, and you're like, Whoa, this is great. And then like, slowly, you start to see those telltale signs. Slowly, you start to realize like, oh, like, is the stuff AI producing for

like for me or is it feeling a little generic and stuff? So what did that look like for you? Was it kind of when we started connecting and you started learning about like authentic AI stuff or how did you kind of start like realizing, oh, I need to like use this tool just a little bit more strategically and like train it on my brand and stuff? It was absolutely having you as a podcast guest where I was like, oh, there is a better way to connect

Because I felt like I was still having to go back and basically write it myself. And I was like, this is exhausting. I don't want to do this. So having those right questions to ask it to help build the brand, I immediately dove into that for the Entrepreneur Encounter podcast. I went ham on that and making sure it...

you know, understood who, cause me and Sarah are, you know, we align on a lot of things, but we are very different human beings. And so you figuring out how to, you know, mold us together into a dynamic duo for soft skills is,

I definitely needed help with that. Oh, you know what is so funny? I love that so much. Like, okay, so guys, just a little backstory in case you didn't know. I was a guest on Dana's Entrepreneur Encounter podcast, who she has a co-host, Sarah, who is awesome. But exactly like you guys are two different people. You have two different brands like individually, and then you come together for this awesome podcast. But like,

I totally get that myself how you know I kind of have two sister brands right now feel good social and authentic AI and like

figuring out how to mesh them together in a way that like feels aligned with both and like, and how the messaging like, you know, intersects and how they can work together. I feel like that's similar for you and Sarah for your podcast, but that makes so much sense to me to like have two podcast hosts and like kind of do the branding with ChatGPT of like making sure that your branding is intermeshing together and stuff. Oh, I love that.

Because I didn't want her voice to disappear since I was the one making a lot of... Because we have, you know, the task load is split. I didn't want to make...

all of our captions sound like me, I wanted to make sure that it was including her too. So I was like, I need you. I took her posts from her social channels and I was like, here's... Analyze this so I can include her wit and humor and her tone into what I create for the podcast. And I think it's done a good job. She hasn't kicked back nearly as much as she used to. Oh my gosh. That's so funny. I...

okay honestly like my heart is just melting right now guys I'm just like in like a sappy mode right now but like I love I love that like this is what I love so much about AI tools like

there are so many fun things that you can do to boost like community collaboration, relationships and stuff, you know, like within these tools. And like that helped Sarah feel like seen and appreciated as like your podcast host. And like, you're able to be thoughtful and like, man, just with like, you know, all of the kind of recent bro,

tensions out there. It makes me so happy to hear when people are using feminine energy with these tools. You know what I mean? Yes. And it helps us brain... I love it for brainstorming. I know when you invited me on, you wanted to talk about how I was using it in my business. And that was the biggest thing. I was... I couldn't sleep.

Which is usually the great inspiration for many of the things that I do in my business. And I was exhausted at the end of last year. I know I need one-on-one clients, but I didn't want 10 one-on-one clients because then I can't give them the attention that I feel like they deserve. And tracking analytics for 10 people on Pinterest is just hard. So I...

I had on the back burner for over a year now, this, the style pin collection. And so I was chatting with Chachi Petit was like,

I found this random prompt of asking it to map out a... Generate a six-figure revenue stream with zero to no cost startup, which is what I had, my grand idea. But I don't know what to do with it. Or I need stepping stones. Even if I tweak it, I need that foundation. I like a good blueprint. So I asked it. I was like...

Here's the information that I have about the style pin collection, like all of my brain dumping. I was like, help me map out a way to generate $100,000 in revenue with just this one product. And, you know, there was a lot of back and forth, but in a couple of hours, I had my whole year mapped out. So now it's all about taking action and not just dreaming or testing or whatever.

throwing spaghetti and hoping that it works in this, I was able to streamline a process or an avenue to boost my revenue.

Yes. Oh, man. Okay. So many good things. Firstly, okay. I keep having these like random epiphanies of like, almost like a revelations, I guess, of like looking back and being like, oh, yeah, you know, like AI has actually helped me with this this year, right? So like, for example, someone I was interviewing on the podcast last year was like, yeah, it really helps with like the creative drain and the creative load and stuff. And I had one of those realizations where I was like,

Oh, yeah. Like I used to when I was managing like five one-on-one clients, I used to feel so just like creatively drained, you know, even if I wasn't like tired, just like thinking for that many clients. And I was like, oh my gosh, when now with using ChachiBT, I haven't really felt that this past year. And then what you just said to you, like I couldn't sleep because I had all these ideas and like I have all these dreams and stuff. Like I actually think my sleep has been getting better in the past year too using ChachiBT probably because I don't

have as many like swirling ideas all up in my head. And I'm actually like feeling comfortable and confident being able to like, get them out of my head and onto chat GPT. But anyway, okay, so that is actually why I invited you on the podcast for sure. Like I remember that moment when we were on one of the live workshops, and you were like, guys, I just planned out my six figure year with chat GPT. I was like, Dana, I need to talk to you about this. So let's like

break down a little bit of like what this looked like and like the specific insights and helpful ways chat GPT was able to help you. So it sounded like you used like kind of one prompt and maybe started with that like six figure your number and then kind of like broke that down into how can this be attainable for me and my business? Like what did that look like?

So I asked her that question and it's been on a whole bunch of information. I was like, oh, we need to break this down and break it down to the tools that I'm already using. So I use Asana for my project management. So I told it that I was like, break this down into the various folders or subcategories and then what tasks need to go under each one. And then I had to go back and tell me how often should I be doing these? Okay.

or be adding a new freebie or a paid offer or whatever. How often do I need to be doing this stuff? When is the best time to complete these tasks? So then from there, another one was like the marketing aspect. So growing my email list, I was like, where's the best way to do that? And I was like, I mainly use Instagram, obviously use Pinterest. And

And it helped me with personalizing DMs to wedding professionals, but also to other social media managers and agencies because most of them only use Instagram or Facebook. They don't use Pinterest and they don't offer it as a service. So I want to build that relationship with them

So that either they can a la carte it or they can just refer business to me if someone is wanting to diversify their marketing, but it's not something that they offer. So I wanted to fill in that gap too. Because wedding pros, I mean, they spend one to two years designing these amazing events.

events and for it to disappear on social media in 24 hours is almost an insult to their work. It needs to be there, but it also should be on Pinterest because that's where their ideal clients are. So that helped me hone in my messaging to those to boost my visibility on other platforms. Yeah.

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Yes. This is the whole concept, right? Of make Chad GPT work for you, not the other way around, right? Often we will ask Chad GPT for a social media strategy and it's like, okay, you need to show up on all the places doing all the things. And you're like, oh, this feels too overwhelming. I'm just going to go over here and do it myself. Well, what if instead you tell it your tech stack?

What if you tell it your platform preferences? What if you tell it even your own strategy, right? When we were doing the content planning workshop with ChatGPT, I shared an example where I told ChatGPT I have two accounts right now for Feel Good Social and Authentic AI. I kind of told it a little bit about my strategy with that, but like not enough because it came back with a strategy that was telling me to get rid of one of the accounts or

use them for two completely separate topics, right? And I had to come back and be like, no, actually, I kind of want to leverage my field of social audience to my authentic AI audience. And then it totally switched the strategy around and made it something that was actually helpful for me, you know? So I feel like where the big hesitation is, people think...

not just chat to BT, but like computers, AI and everything are going to take over. But you still have to have a human to run it and to go back and forth with it. So it's just enhancing or providing the clarity that you need because we're

You're too close to, oh, I need to do all the things. Well, it helps you step back and get that bigger picture. If your people aren't on Facebook, don't show up on Facebook. Only ask it to do an Instagram. Or if you are only on LinkedIn, you can hone it in on this. You can even find...

articles or publications from LinkedIn on how to best optimize it and teach chat to PT to here's what LinkedIn is saying specifically is working this year, this quarter, this whatever. Please revise my current content strategy or connection strategy based off of this and give me a better blueprint so I'm not just wasting my time.

Yeah. Oh, I love that little tidbit too. Right. Because exactly. Like I usually remind people, you know, chat GPT is not always up to date guys. Like, and like, you know, and so I will say, you know, it's important to kind of pay attention and still be listening to those human experts who like are telling you like what's good right now, you know, but I also love that. Like you're like, okay, teach chat GPT the current strategies. And I also like to be proactive with things where I'm like,

Maybe ChatGPT is updated or not, but like I'm going to be proactive and like share the current article with it so I don't have to waste time going back and forth or trying to tweak things after. You know what I'm trying to say? Exactly.

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Okay. Okay. So I love where this conversation is going as far as like, we've kind of talked a little bit about some brainstorming techniques and stuff. And before we hit record, you were sharing about kind of a fun brainstorming reflection technique you're using, like leading up to the new year where you were getting chat GPT to ask you questions and you're answering them while you're on the treadmill and stuff. Can you share with us about that? Yes. So my...

intention, what have you for the year is invest. And I'm investing in a variety of ways. I want to learn how to invest my money. Obviously, that's the no brainer, but investing my time in more

more quality aspects with my kids and the sports that they're doing. I want my day to actually end at 4 p.m. and not me feel like I have to pick up my laptop after I put them to bed. Like I actually want to invest in like my well-being and my health. And so...

One of... I had... I found this 12 questions on Instagram that someone was like, you need to answer these before. And I was like, I don't want to do all this at one time. And I don't want to write it down because I'm lazy and I want to type it and be done. So I...

Ask Chachapiti. I made sure that it knew not to change its memory on who I was as a business because I didn't want that to just cause mass chaos. I was like, but help me answer these questions. Here they are and go in this order that is recommended.

And through those questions of figuring out what exactly I want to invest in, how I want to invest and show up for myself, it helped me map out a better block timing schedule for not just my business, but for my personal life of when I drop my kids off, I'm going to go... Because we just joined the Y. I'm going to go to the Y. And here's my goals of...

like where I want to get with my body. I actually have a, we bought a smart digital scale and it goes to an app and it gives you like this report. So I actually then uploaded the report and I was like, analyze this and help me fix myself. It was, and it was, I felt safer. This is going to sound silly. I didn't necessarily feel safe, but I felt more comfortable asking a, you know, neutral robot than telling, Hey friend, here's my BMI. And I don't want to talk about it, but how do we fix it? Yeah.

So it, you know, it's mapped out a workout routine for me with like cardio as well as strength training. But I also wanted to include the steam room and the sauna and all the other things that the YMCA has. And so it's built that into my schedule too. And then it falls into how do my professional work day get started when I need to have hyper-focused client work, when I need to do

you know, Dana's desk things and what to do in the evening of here's when I can run errands. Don't try to fit it in during the workday. Do it closer to this time, but include your kids. Then you get quality time while I'm driving around, blah, blah, blah. Like some of it seems like a no brainer, but sometimes it's just like you need that light bulb moment of, Oh, okay, I can do that. Yeah.

Sorry, my dogs were barking. I had to yell at them real quick. But oh, I love that so much. And just thinking about like how it can create a personalized plan for you. I love that like it. I do love that too, right? It's like this like little friend thing.

that you know will be supportive of you, that you don't have to worry about having an opinion. You can truly kind of detach your emotions from ChatGPT in a way where it can then be supportive of you in that, right? And so I always love...

having when people share things like, oh, I had to analyze this for me or like I had it help me with this. That might be a little personal or something. I was literally just thinking like this is a little personal for us, but we are currently like on a trying to get pregnant journey ish. It's not anything crazy right now or anything, but I've been starting to learn about things like tracking all the things and whatnot. And when you just said that, I was like, oh,

Oh, that could be interesting for like tracking like body temperatures and stuff like that. Having chat to you helped me analyze because sometimes it can be just so confusing. So man, just thinking about all the different ways that like you can truly have these tools help you not just in your business, but also in your personal life and how they can like intermix. I was also thinking too, you know, like going to the gym and like doing things while you're at the gym.

Like, you know, I like to sometimes talk into like my phone if I'm going on a walk or run. Okay, I go on runs, but then probably 70% of it is power walking. Let's be honest, guys, or just strolling if we're being truly honest. But like, you know...

Because you have your best ideas when you're on the move. And talking into ChatGPT would be a really great practice to start this year too, instead of talking to myself in Boxer or just creating a voice-to-note app or something. That could be interesting. I have not used the voice feature just yet. So that might be on my to-do list. Because when I'm messaging someone back, most of the time I'm driving or something. So I send voice messages all the time.

So that would be interesting to see how I...

fit that in. Totally. And I will say, okay, you guys know that like the tools are always updating and stuff. I'm a chat GPT person right now, you know, that could evolve. We will see, but like, okay. So chat GPT is voice feature. It could improve, I guess is what I'm like starting to say this with, but right now you can do like a voice to text sort of situation if you want to, but then there's also this like Omni voice feature feature.

where you literally are like, it's not voice to text. You're just like talking back and forth with it, having a conversation in real time. But I will say it's super cool. But when I tried it last, which was probably a month ago now, at least, I talked to this thing for like 12 minutes back and forth.

It wasn't all me talking, but it was probably mostly me talking because I'm a talker. But like I was talking back and forth with it for like 12 minutes and then it had this like error or something where it actually didn't like save the conversation. So it was super nice to like go back and forth with it. But my recommendation is to like kind of exit out of the Omni voice feature after every five minutes or so just to make sure that it's like saving the conversation along the way. That's just like a little technical thing that I wanted to share. Fair enough.

Yeah. Okay. So I also wanted to chat with you about like, what are some other ways that you've been using chat GPT to like help you both personally and then also like in your business and stuff like that? What have you been like finding?

I have it. One, usually I let it lead sometimes after I like that map. So when I did the 100K map, it'll ask you a question. Do you want help adjusting this? Or do you want to dive deeper into a certain topic? Most of the time I'm like, yes, let's just dive in and see where this goes. And I'm usually happy by the end of it. But mostly I hate building landing pages. Yeah.

A lot, a lot, a lot. So I have it helped me. I use Thrivecart. And so I told it that I was like, I use Thrivecart for this. I took the plunge and I signed up for the lifetime thing. And I'm like, help me.

Build out my landing page for the style pin collection so that it looks really nice. It's engaging, but it's also going to get the point across that people need to be in here. And then mapped out like my upsells and my downsells and, you know, meet people everywhere that they are. That's probably been the biggest help creatively speaking is I...

I hate building a landing page. Yeah. No, I love that though too because exactly like the things that you hate doing, like Chachi PD can help you along in the process, help you get it done and stuff. And like, is it going to get everything perfectly right? No. But like, can it help you troubleshoot the stuff that it doesn't get right? Yes. You know, what was I using it for? I was using it to help me like add the formulas to a spreadsheet for like inventory thing the other day. It's like, I have no...

I don't like, I know I learned how to do spreadsheet formulas back in like seventh grade and like probably forgot. I'll be with that, you know, and you can tell it, it was like, are you using Microsoft Excel or using Google sheets? I was like, Google sheets. It's like, okay, here we go. Like, this is what you need, you know? So like remembering to tell it just all those tech things. And yeah, I actually, you just reminded me that I have been meaning, I used to write a card as well, and I've been meaning to, um,

map and upsell and you know bonus funnel like all the different the whole funnel features that can do I'm like yeah I love it can do that but like I don't really know it's too much for me to do so like I'm gonna use it for that for sure

That is my baby steps. Right now I have the landing page for the Stylepin collection and one upsell. And then I have all of the how-to tutorials in a Google Drive folder. So that's the next thing on my list is to put it in the school platform, I guess, the education modules and have it

Go there. And that's where I'm... That's my goal in the next week or two is to get that done. And then I'll go back to funnels. But I just wanted the foundation done first.

And then we'll move on. Yes. Okay, lady, if you have any questions, reach out to me because I have definitely gone down the deep hole of Thrivecart Learn for my stuff too. And I feel like we're the same. I'm like, but I want this to be pretty. And it can, you can customize it. It's just like a little hard sometimes. And some of the things are annoying. It can be a little clunky, but I like constantly am holding onto that.

you are not paying a monthly subscription for this. So it is so freaking awesome in my soul. I'm like, thank you. But anyway, man, I cannot believe it's been half an hour already. Like these conversations always go way too fast. But I have loved everything that you've shared today, all the little tidbits. Is there any like last little tidbit that you want to share when it comes to ChatGPT or AI tools or anything like that?

I think at the end of the day, just remember that AI is just a piece of the puzzle. Like it's an important piece, especially for solopreneurs who are trying to do 5 million things in one day, but it helps bring, you know, helps your business shine with your creativity, your story. Cause what Chachapiti creates for me versus you, it's going to be completely different because it's our unique things. And, um,

It's use it to lighten your load. If you feel like you have too many things to do, have your brain dump your vision and then let it work itself out. And if you don't align with it, we'll tell it.

I don't like that. Let's try again and give it some more information. And then, you know, hopefully you have more ideas and you'll be able to dive deeper into your business to work on it and not necessarily always in it. Yes. Thank you so much, Dana. Okay. Now I know people are going to want to connect with you and find all your fun things. So please share with us like where they can find you and all of your fun resources and stuff. Yeah.

So I'm on Instagram and that's probably where I spend most of my marketing, like active marketing minutes is on Instagram. So danas.desk.nc and all of the information for the Stop Pin Collective, my website is going to be there. Awesome. Thank you. And the Styled Pin Collective, tell us just a little bit about that, what that looks like. Yeah.

So the Stalled Pin Collection is a monthly subscription service for professionally designed pin graphics for the creative entrepreneur. It's just a way to...

easily DIY your pin content. So you add your own branding, your own fonts, your own images. I give you guidance on how to make a pin title and description, and then you put it out there and it will...

It's designed to organically funnel business to your landing page, to your services page, to your contact page. Honestly, you can funnel it to your Instagram. If you already have amazing funnels built in from your Instagram account, you can use post links from Instagram on Pinterest and that way you have more control. But this takes the guesswork out of

turning that Instagram graphic into a Pinterest graphic. Yes. Okay. I love that so much. And okay. As you were talking, I was like, Ooh, I see a custom GPT styled pin custom GPT in your future, potentially. I would love to get that started. Oh yeah, girl. Okay. Well, I will let you go, but thank you so much for coming on. This conversation was so awesome. Yeah. Thank you. It was fun.

How great was Dana? You guys, I love chatting with her about all things and especially nerding out about AI tools with her and how she's using it to not only be more streamlined in her own business, but also how she can use it to really improve her relationships and collaborations with those in her community, right? So good. So if you love this conversation as much as I did,

Make sure that you share it with another business friend who could also use to listen to it. And why not leave us five stars or give us a follow on your favorite podcasting platform, because that really does help us to continue expanding our authentic AI audience. Thank you so much for tuning in, my friend, and I will 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.