[00:00:00.000] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Ai is saving us time and it's even saving us money. But what are we giving up in the pursuit to cut corners and to use artificial intelligence in our business? I have some major concerns about AI, and I'm going to talk to you about them in this episode. You're here to grow a business, but not just any business. You want to grow a profitable business with purpose, a business where you wake up every single day driven to serve your customers and make a difference in your own life. I'm Candice Coppola, published author, business coach, and your guide to building a profitable business with purpose. Join me here every single week as we explore how to build and grow your business with purpose. Get ready to dig in and have meaningful conversations about the strategies and techniques that will help you build your dream business. This is The Power in Purpose.

[00:01:05.720] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Hey there, friend. Welcome back to The Power in Purpose Podcast. It's me, your host, Candice. And in this episode, we're going to have a conversation about how AI is changing the wedding industry. And what I think the biggest issue is right now, using AI in our businesses, how it's changing our industry and not for the better. Now, I'm a big proponent of AI. I go live every single Tuesday inside WeddingPro Insiders, my mastermind for women in the wedding industry, and I give an AI report. Every Tuesday, I'm there talking about the latest tools, the things that I've found, the things that I think women can use in their business. I use AI in my business. I've taught on AI. I've had podcast episodes here on AI, and I think it can do wonders to help grow your business, to help you save time and to even enhance the services that you offer. But there is one big concern I have, and no, it's not that robots are going to take over. However, however, there. That is something that I think about sometimes. Will the computers outsmart us? Are we going to live in Westworld?

[00:02:24.170] - Candice Coppola (Host)

What's happening? With that said, though, I do have a major concern because everywhere I look, I'm seeing AI-generated content and it's not good. I'm seeing AI used in businesses and it's not great. It's not good. I'm going to sound an alarm today. I hope that it's going to challenge you on how you're using these tools and to what lengths you intend to use these tools and the opportunity, because yes, while there are downsides and consequences, there are always opportunities. There are always, always opportunities. This opportunity for you to do things a bit differently than the way the rest of the industry is headed. That's what today's episode is all about. As always, I want this to be a conversation. I would love to hear your thoughts on AI, the tools you're using, how you're seeing it affect the industry. Do you love it? Is it positive? Is it negative? Are you indifferent by it? I would just love to hear your thoughts and your take on this topic. Now, it has been about, I would say, six or seven months since I was really introduced to ChatGPT and since it launched. It's been a little over half a year.

[00:03:36.550] - Candice Coppola (Host)

In that time, it feels like every tool we use in our businesses now has an AI component that can think for us, that can write for us, that can do all these things. It's amazing because you can just open up ChatGPT, you can just open up even NG, which is a marketing platform I absolutely love. You can, in minutes, have something made for you that you can just use in your business. Something that would take you hours or maybe even years to lament over can take seconds to create using artificial intelligence. It's exciting. I'll have to admit, in the beginning, I was just bubbling with excitement over the capabilities of AI. But now that I've seen it get in the hands of the average user, I'm starting to notice a trend, and it's got me concerned. And my concern about AI in the wedding industry, I feel like it has the power to alter our industry in not a good way. My biggest concern with AI in the wedding industry and what we're really going to be talking about today is the sea of sameness that I see across Instagram, that I see across all marketing channels.

[00:04:55.200] - Candice Coppola (Host)

This templated speak and people doing the same thing as everybody else using AI has created this interesting dynamic where everybody's businesses are blending together. And the idea of creating a remarkable brand that people recognize that is different from its competition, it's starting to fade away.

[00:05:26.010] - Candice Coppola (Host)

And I know that that probably sounds a bit dramatic. I live for drama. Maybe I intend it to be dramatic. But I can see in a year or two's time, all those who relied on AI to really bolster and buttress their marketing and their communication, I can see it having a negative impact on your sales, on your brand growth, and on the experience that you deliver your customers. Whereas the people who may use AI in different ways to support what they're already doing will see additional growth in their business. And allow me to explain. So I scroll on Instagram and listen, girl, you're not fooling me with your AI, Instagram caption. You're not fooling me and you're not fooling a customer. You sound fucking nuts. I'm just going to tell you right now. It sounds nuts. That's not how you talk, okay? And I know you asked it to put it in a fun tone, and it's over-fun. The tone is psychotic. It's like how a person trying to be cool. You remember that movie with Drew Barry Moore, where Josie Grozy? What the hell was that movie? I can't remember the name of it.

[00:06:40.880] - Candice Coppola (Host)

I have to Google it live while I'm doing this. I have to Google it. Never been kissed. Hello, thank you. A 90s classic. It's like a 30-year-old woman going into a high school and trying to use slang and how all the cool kids talk and sounding like a 30-year-old woman using slang. That's what some of your Instagram captions and your blog post and the things that you're using AI for sound like. They sound awful. And it has actually no personality. It doesn't show you. It doesn't show how you bring value. It's a dead message. I scroll Instagram and I see it over and over and over again. I've even reviewed some communication that AI has created for women I might coach. And they're like, Hey, what do you think about this email that I'm writing? And it's so obvious that it was written by a computer and not by a human being. And it sounds so disingenuous. And it lacks personality. It lacks flavor. It lacks all the things that create connection between a business and a customer or a business and another business in a networking environment. So my biggest concern about AI in the wedding industry is the sea of sameness that is already creating, where everybody's captions sound the same, everybody's blog posts sound the same, your packages, your pricing, your website copy, your emails introducing yourself to a venue, your emails pitching a styled shoot to a magazine.

[00:08:13.750] - Candice Coppola (Host)

All of a sudden, now everybody's using the same tool and the same prompts and getting the same result, and you all look the same. In an industry where personalization really matters, connection really matters, this sea of sameness with AI has the power to depersonalize our products, our services, our marketing, the way that we connect with one another. And when you take that personalization out, what do you have left? A wedding is personal. A wedding is deeply personal. And if you listen to my episode on Gen Z, the previous episode, episode 118, I talked about how Gen Z values personalization. In fact, they pay for personalization. If we use AI copywriting tools and AI tools to make decisions for us, to make communication decisions for us, and we all start sounding the same and start offering the same shit and doing everything the same, we lose that depersonalization. I also think that it brings a lack of authenticity. I shared that just now when I talked about those Instagram captions like, You're not fooling anybody. We know ChatGPT, we wrote that shit. It even put in the smiley faces and the emojis. It looks psychotic. There's a lack of authenticity in that.

[00:09:38.470] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Those aren't your ideas. That isn't how you would speak. That's not how you would create a connection with the person that you were just meeting, how you would introduce yourself, or how you might describe whatever it is you're trying to teach or promote. People pick up on that instantly and they're like, Oh, that's fake. That's not real. They clearly used a robot to write that. They clearly used a robot to edit that. They clearly used a robot to do that. And that lacks a sense of authenticity. And again, Gen Z and millennials, everybody wants authenticity. We all want personalization. We all want authenticity. We want authenticity in our relationships and in the businesses that we hire. So if you're using AI to make all these decisions for you, you're giving people this lack of authenticity, which goes again, very much hurt your business. I'm also preparing for there to be a gradual shift away from your brand voice. And you dabble in AI a little bit, and then you write some things on your own, then you dabble again. And before you know it, your brand voice is changing to sound like the robot rather than to sound like you.

[00:10:47.510] - Candice Coppola (Host)

And if you use AI copywriting tools too much, you risk the depersonalization of your brand voice, the personality of it. And this gradual shift, before you know it, everything on your website, all your marketing, you've relied so heavily on AI to make communication choices from you that you no longer have a brand voice. You have a chat GPT business. And I don't know about you, but that's not a business I want to hire. I want to hire somebody who is knowledgeable enough to know how to market their business, how to communicate about what they offer that can actually do the job within the business. I don't want to hire somebody who sounds like a robot. It's giving Red Ocean vibes. And if you've ever read the book Blue Ocean Strategy, then you'll know what I'm talking about. Ps, great book. One of the first business books I ever read that in the E-Myth. I don't know if I would have had an understanding of business without those books. They really set the foundation for how I grew my business and how I think about business to this day.

[00:11:56.730] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Hey there, friend. Real quick, I want to share with you how you can sign up for a free trial with Honeybook. Honeybook is everything you need to get business done, and it's trusted by over 100,000 independent businesses just like yours to manage projects, book clients, send invoices, and most importantly, get paid. If you've been looking for an all-in-one solution to manage your customers, I want to invite you to sign up for a free trial with Honeybook. Go to Candacecoppola. Com/honeybook to learn more. And when you sign up for a free trial using the code purpose, you'll save 50 % off of your first year's subscription. Honeybook is what I used in my business as a wedding planner, and it helped me land every single sale. It's what helped me build a six-figure wedding planning business. It's also what helps me today in my business. Go to Candacecoppola. Com/honeybook to learn more. And with the code purpose, save 50 % on your first year's subscription. Now Blue.

[00:13:12.340] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Ocean Strategy is a marketing book, and it talks about how to create a business that swims in a blue ocean rather than a red. A red ocean is filled with sharks, and think of red like blood. It's filled with sharks. And all the sharks in that ocean are businesses, and they're all competing on price and service. And the more you compete on price, the more you drive the price down, right? Best price wins. The more you compete on service, the more you drive the service up because the best service wins. And this means that the best business that wins is the cheapest and offers the most. Now, a Blue Ocean business is a business that doesn't compete on pricing and it doesn't compete on services. It actually swims in an ocean with no sharks. It's an ocean unto itself. It's been able to establish a business that doesn't compete. It's unique. And it uses the example of the Barnum and Bailey Circus to show this. Barnum and Bailey Circus and those three ring-tented circuses, traveling circuses, there's only so much you could do with that. And they're all competing for tickets. They're all competing when they go to different cities.

[00:14:27.390] - Candice Coppola (Host)

And the circus had been the circus for years. I mean, for a hundred years, it had been the same. Barnum, it remained almost untouched. The format of the circus, how they promoted it, the acts on the circus, it all was the same. You knew what to expect. So naturally, other circuses popped up to compete, and it was like, Who offers the best show at the best price? And then here comes Cirque du Soleil. And Cirque du Soleil is essentially a circus, but it completely changed the business model of what it meant to have a circus and to go to the circus. Interesting, right? So when you think about Red Oceans versus Blue Oceans, you want to be the Cirque du Soleil of business. Can you see how AI and that sea of sameness begins to generate a Red Ocean where everybody is using the same techniques, the same shit, the same prompts, the same copy, the same strategies, the same tools. There's no differentiation. There's no nuance. There's no personalization. There's no, What makes you different? What makes Candace different? What makes Cindy different? What makes Dana different? What makes Kelly different? Whats what makes Alyssa different?

[00:15:46.400] - Candice Coppola (Host)

What makes these people different? And my fear is that all of those who are swimming in this Red Ocean, this sea of sameness, you're going to find yourself competing on price and service, and that's not a place where you want to be, because you'll always drive down the price and you'll always up the service and it's going to leave you burnt out and broke. Now that's dramatic for a reason, because I truly think it has the power to do that. It's already doing that. So I'm sensing a lot of Red Ocean vibes, with AI. Because if everybody looks the same, then what's the choice? The choice is to choose the cheaper option. The choice is to choose the vendor that is where I'm not going to spend the most money, because if I'm going to get the same experience and the same product, the same personality and the same process, then I might as well just choose the one that's the cheapest, right? Finally, I'm really concerned about the misinformation that AI presents. Now, this goes beyond weddings, but we're going to keep it here in the wedding world. You listen for wedding business advice, not for anything else.

[00:16:48.720] - Candice Coppola (Host)

And I fully respect that. So I'm not going to go into all the rabbit holes I could. But when it comes to weddings, I worry about the misinformation that AI generates. And how, again, just like that gradual shift from brand voice, there's going to be a gradual shift from reality, from real, true experience information and the reliance that what AI says is the truth, and then we put it out there, and then that truth becomes the reader's truth, and then they repeat that truth, and then the truth is not the truth. Or is it the truth? I don't fucking know. But I'm concerned. This is maybe silly in the wedding world, misinformation about what it costs to have a wedding with 100 guests, those things like that, which we're constantly combating because certain people, the not, don't make it easy. But I am concerned about the misinformation and how the misinformation is going to disinform you, and then you become a carrier of that misinformation to the clientele and to the industry. And of course, misinformation in general is a huge concern these days because people are doing things for clicks, they're doing things for likes, they're doing things for money, for the virality.

[00:18:07.490] - Candice Coppola (Host)

And you see this on TikTok, especially where people are just doing crazy shit. It's like Jake Paul stuff. They're just doing crazy stuff to get eyes. And that crazy stuff includes misinformation. And I just worry about how misinformation is going to damage our industry and our businesses. Long story short, everybody's sounding the same, and everybody will continue to sound the same who relies on AI to do what only you can do. Only you can speak about your business in your tone of voice and communicate the way in which you communicate. And if you rely too heavily on a computer, on a robot, on a software to do that communicating for you, you are going to put yourself at risk, at risk of fading into the sea of sameness, of losing clients, of not having a competitive edge. And the opposite to this is the folks that use AI in a way that helps them to get started. This is what Dawn said in our episode, use it from going from stuck to started. I feel like she should trademark that, by the way. It's such a good saying. People who use it to go from stuck to started, people who use it in a way that helps to get things going, or they use it smartly and as a way to framework out something, but not to take over their voice.

[00:19:34.850] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Those people are going to have huge opportunity because they're going to be swimming in Blue Oceans where they really stand out because that human element is layered. They're speaking for their business, their brand. They're coming from a place where a computer can't come from, and they're offering information and insights and connection that everybody else is missing out on. And believe me when I tell you that the majority of the wedding industry will be using AI to do a lot of its work in the next six months. And it's going to really start to show even more because people will do whatever it takes to do the least. And rightfully so, a lot goes into running a business. But people will take whatever shortcut they can. It's human nature. So this episode isn't going to hit everybody. It's hitting you. And you have a unique opportunity to use AI not just ethically, but to use it minimally to go from stuff to started, as Dawn would tell you, and to harness and to hone in on the special talent of communication and to being able to communicate and create original content for your marketing and also original, personalized experiences for your customers.

[00:20:53.260] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Those who do that, mark my words, will know success, much more so than those who use AI to do all the thinking for them. And trust me, it's already happening. It's definitely going to be overtaking the industry. And then we're going to have a big conversation about why you're not booking clients and why your business isn't attracting people and why they're not finding you or why they're bouncing off your website or why your clients are not satisfied with your services. I'll help you work through those problems. I'd rather you avoid them by using AI as a seasoned to your recipes and not a heavy conditioning. It's the salt in the dish. It's important. It needs to be there, and we're going to use it. But it's not what makes the dish. It's not the fabric of the food that we're creating. Use it as a little seasoned, a little cherry on top, a little sprinkle on your ice cream cone, but not the ice cream cone itself and the ice cream. So yeah, I have genuine concerns, and I'm seeing it. I'm sure you're seeing it too, as you look out in the Instagram atmosphere of the wedding industry.

[00:22:02.680] - Candice Coppola (Host)

I would love to hear what your concerns are with AI if you feel like it might even replace some of the things that you do in your business, how you're using AI? Because AI isn't just about writing copy or communication. It also is being able to automatically do things, automations and workflows, which are great. I'm not talking about that. Although too much of it does depersonalize the experience, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the communication version of AI. I'd love to hear what tools you're using, how you're using it. If you agree, if you disagree, please share your thoughts with me. Let's make this a conversation. I'm definitely going to be creating more episodes about AI here on how to use it in a way that will help you keep swimming in that Blue Ocean. But here's what I want you to do. I want you to use AI in this way. I want you to use it to get from stuck to started. I want you to realize that AI is more than just ChatGPT, and that you can use these tools. But don't for a second think that you can copy and paste.

[00:23:06.020] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Don't for a second think that you can just copy and paste things, and that it's going to give you the same results as if you had done it yourself. It's not. Maybe in the short term, but in the long run, it's going to hurt your business rather than help. And see this as a situation where you can seize opportunities. If everybody is going to be jumping on the AI bandwagons and you have this interesting, fantastic voice, start using it to break through that sea of sameness. Start harnessing it. Start leveraging your superpowers in communication, in your brand, and how you show up for your clients. Maybe even talk about the personalization and how you're using AI and how you're not using it to grow your business or to support your clients. There's a lot we're going to talk about in the future. It's only just started, but those are my thoughts for now. I want to thank you so much for listening to today's episode, and I'm here to remind you, as always, there's so much power in your purpose. Until next time. Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of The Power in Purpose Podcast.

[00:24:12.930] - Candice Coppola (Host)

If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode and consider leaving a review. Head over to powerinpurposepodcast. Com to access all of the resources and links mentioned in today's episode. That's powerinpurposepodcast. Com. I'll see you next time.