296 | 3 Tips for Social Entrepreneurs Regarding AI with Paul Zelizer
This week on the pod is our monthly solo episode with Paul Zelizer. Paul is one of the first business coaches to specialize in working with social entrepreneurs and the host of the popular Awarepreneurs podcast. He's also has a busy coaching/consulting practice where he works with impact organizations and does executive coaching with leaders.
This episode is sponsored by the coaching company of our host, Zelizer Consulting Services.
Resources mentioned in this episode include:
What Social Entrepreneurs Need to Know About AI: Episode with Paul Zelizer
NOTE: While it’s not perfect, we offer this transcription by Castmagic.io for those who are hearing impaired or who don’t find listening to a podcast enjoyable or possible.
Paul Zelizer [00:01]:
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs Podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have 1 request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have positive impact through a values-based business. Thank you so much. Today it's time for our monthly solo episode with me, Paul Zelizer, the host of the Awarepreneurs podcast. And our topic is 3 tips for social entrepreneurs regarding AI.
Paul Zelizer [00:40]:
And as I said, I'm the founder of Awarepreneurs and I've been a consultant for values-based business and social entrepreneurs for 16 years now. So I want to tell you a story. I've been a little bit ahead of the curve with AI and using platforms like I'll tell you about 1 called Auphonic. It's a great tool for podcasters. After you record an episode where in the past and still many of my colleagues will use a human engineer to do things like let's say it's an interview podcast and there's a guest and a host usually 1 person's gonna be louder than the other it's never exactly equal Maybe somebody has a lot of bass in their voice that needs to be, you know, fine-tuned or somebody has a lot of trouble, but not much bass. Allphonic does all that. $11 a month I pay for 9 hours a month. I only do an episode every week.
Paul Zelizer [01:32]:
They're never quite an hour, at least not usually, so I have plenty of time for $11 a month. I've been using those kinds of services for quite some time, telling my peers about it. But of late, if you haven't been paying attention with things like chat gbt and other tools like it it's called generative ai and there's been a lot of talk about ai and it's getting better and I'll give you an example again from the podcasting space There's a new app called Cast Magic or a new platform called Cast Magic, like podcast and magic. It's just for podcasters. It uses this new generative AI technology. And in addition to giving you the best transcription services, I've been using another AI service called otter.ai for years now. And you take your audio and you upload it and it gives you a transcription. Well, Cast Magic's Transcription is better than anything I've seen before, but it also does a host of other things.
Paul Zelizer [02:35]:
Let me give you an example. Number 1, it can give you 10 title suggestions. After you upload your interview, it'll go through and create the transcription, but in a whole other window, it gives you things like title suggestions and timestamps. So it'll go through and say, you know, at minute 5 minutes and 43 seconds, they start talking about this topic. And then at 10 minutes and 15 seconds, they start talking about topic C, etc. Etc. It gives you key topics and bullet points like you get an outline from your audio and it just submits it in this panel. It'll give you some of the top quotes that you can use for social media or other things.
Paul Zelizer [03:19]:
It'll give you a LinkedIn post. 3 different versions of something that you can take to LinkedIn and post and it's written in a style that's optimized for LinkedIn. It'll give you a tweet thread. So 3 different versions of a number of tweets in a tweet thread that you can use to publicize your episode on Twitter. It'll give you a Reel Script if you do Instagram Reels or TikTok videos, so short video script. It'll give you 3 different newsletter articles all written out for you and they're pretty darn good. That's the other thing. All of this, in addition to it being the best transcription I've ever seen of this kind using an AI service.
Paul Zelizer [04:03]:
All of these other things are quite good. I'd say they're about 80% of the way there. Would I use them just cut and paste and put that into my newsletter? No, but 80% draft that I can then refine for a LinkedIn post that's 80% of the way there, that's pretty valuable. So you can see this is, I've never seen anything like it before in the podcast space and this is just 1 example. I wanted to give you real world from somebody who's been trying to pay attention to this for quite some time. And this is happening in many spaces, not just in the podcast space. So what does this latest wave of AI have to do for you as a social entrepreneur? Well, let's think about it. And I have 3 tips in specific.
Paul Zelizer [04:47]:
First of all, just I think it's really important to acknowledge that we're in a new era with AI and what I would encourage you to do tip number 1 is to do your homework to educate yourself and like the ostrich phenomena like sticking your head in the sand is, I don't think a good way to approach it. This technology is very powerful. There's a lot of people talking about it. There's some very significant concerns, including yourself truly. There's some really powerful ways this can be used that I see those in the social entrepreneur space, but the 1 thing I recommend that you don't do is bury your head in the sand and pretend it's going to go away. Probably not. And to do some, you know, investigation of what's happening with AI and how is it interacting and interfacing with issues and communities and products that you care a lot about is something that I would recommend to any social entrepreneur. There's gonna be some pretty significant changes of how AI interfaces in the marketplace and I encourage you not to get flat-footed.
Paul Zelizer [06:00]:
Again, I've been trying to use it for a while now, but when I saw Cast Magic and what it means for the podcasting space, kind of hit another gear. I was like, oh, yeah, this is different. So even somebody who's been Incorporating as it made sense into my workflows and into my business and now see it's coming in a more it's here it's not coming it's here in a much more robust way and it's likely to continue to show up with significant impact so the first is just do some homework and get ahead of the conversation. Don't be the person who's like, oh yeah, I wish I had, you know, learned about this down the road. Be 1 of the people who gets ahead of this and do some homework. What does this mean for things you care about, whether it's a marketing strategy for me, like podcasting. This Cast Magic also works quite well for YouTube. So what does it mean for technologies and communities that you're passionate about? So let's do this.
Paul Zelizer [07:02]:
Let's take a quick break. And when we come back, I want to share with you 2 other ideas, tips for how I think you can really get ahead of the AI game and what's happening in this space. But before we do that, just a quick word from our sponsor. It's no secret that I'm a big fan of LinkedIn. In fact, I've recently been sharing some of the experiences I've had of getting business consulting contracts from my LinkedIn connections. But let me give you data points that will help you understand why I'm so excited. LinkedIn has users in over 200 countries and 53% of LinkedIn users have a high monthly income. Only about 1% of LinkedIn users actually post on the platform regularly.
Paul Zelizer [07:48]:
Compare that to Instagram, where it's over 69%, so it's much harder to get your content seen. And lastly, marketers see 2x higher conversion on LinkedIn than any other social media platform. Maybe you've heard about LinkedIn and you've thought about using it, but you're not really sure what to do. How do you attract higher level opportunities through LinkedIn? I've been doing a lot of sessions with people on this exact topic, LinkedIn for social entrepreneurs. If you wanted to, we could use my strategy session format to do a LinkedIn profile review where we'll do things like look at your headshot, your timeline photo, your bio, your about section and your experience and tailor them all to your ideal client. And in addition, we'll do a simple LinkedIn marketing plan for your business based on your goals to help you leverage this powerful platform. If you'd like to find out more, you can click on the link below. And just let me know, you'd really like to up-level your game on LinkedIn and get more results.
Paul Zelizer [08:55]:
So welcome back, everybody. So let's get into tip number 2 and 3. The second suggestion I have is to find other people in your space who are learning about and are in conversation about a I can think of an example he happens to be my brother in the impact space craig zealots or Craig is an innovator in the impact space. My sister-in-law and my brother have a podcast called the Social Change Career Podcast. Obviously, they're focused on people who want to work for organizations and institutions and companies that are working towards social change. So Craig is more like the career coach, and I'm more the entrepreneur coach, both of us in the impact space. We joke the family business is impact. But regardless of Craig being my brother, here's somebody with a significant platform and audience in the impact space, and here's another person in the impact space that's talking about AI, talking about AI platforms, talking about how does this relate to at least the impact areas that he's knowledgeable about? Does that mean Craig or I or anybody, even if your name isn't Zelizer, knows it all? Of course not.
Paul Zelizer [10:14]:
But find people in your space who are at least sharing about it and start a dialogue. What does this mean and how are the changes over time going to show up? What is somebody who wants to continue to be an innovator and not get caught flatfooted? What do they need to know? It's changing so quickly that sometimes it's hard for isolated individuals to keep up with all the ripple effects. So this is a place where the network effect, we're having a strong network and other impact leaders who have their fingers on the pulse of things this is a really good time to lean into that but who are those leaders who are paying attention who are a seeing the changes that are coming and are being proactive about that as opposed to reactive, this is a really good time to build that muscle. So find other people in your space who are talking about, learning about, and in conversation about AI and what it means. And lastly, I really encourage you to start to educate and share with your audience, with your clients, with your colleagues, with people who follow you on social media. This doesn't mean you need to be an expert or kind of position yourself as somebody who knows more than what you know or than anybody else. But just find simple ways to start to kind of spark conversations. Again, for me, a simple 1 was Cast Magic.
Paul Zelizer [11:45]:
I forgot to say this earlier, but Cast Magic, in addition to really impressing me with what it does as a platform there's a great deal on app sumu which is this way to get certain platforms pretty early on in their development and Cast Magic is 1 of them. So they have it normally Cast Magic is something like at least it's between $40 and $100 a month, but they have a deal with AppSumo where you can get a license, which is up to 200 minutes for $39 forever. Not for a month, not every year, but forever. It's an incredible deal. And so, you know, 1 of the things I did is just let clients took to social media and said, hey, not only is Cast Magic a really powerful AI-powered platform for podcasters, but here's a great deal on it through AppSumo, and here's the link. I'll put a link in the show notes. I don't know how long that AppSumo deal is going to go through, but that was just 1 example. And Looking for ways to help people, clients, colleagues, people who follow me on social media, just give them a sense that I'm tracking what's happening with AI and not just in this big-picture, vague, what does this mean for society? Although I am interested in that question I'm really trying to help people understand that this is showing up in the impact space it's going to matter to social entrepreneurs I've been doing that for a while with the folks who I coach in our podcast success team pro-entrepreneurs and with other clients and people who are trying to figure out how to get their message out there that there are platforms like Auphonic, now like Cast Magic I've been trying to learn about these and be ahead of the curve.
Paul Zelizer [13:39]:
As you're learning it can be a question, it can be a technology, it can be a case study, How is AI showing up in your space? And to just give people a heads up that you're somebody who's being proactive about this and you're trying to help the other folks in your space who are maybe newer than you are to say, hey AI is here, it's having an impact, and here are some things you might be thinking about both on the cautionary side like I'm worried about as well as here's how it can really help us as social entrepreneurs to do things in a more time effective more results oriented kind of way. I very much saw that with Cast Magic and started sharing about it immediately. So how can you do that with what you're learning? Again, don't wait until you have a PhD in this, but be willing to share in an emergent way. Here's some examples. Here's some concerns had a conversation with read an article, tried out a platform. Doesn't have to be an all encompassing. Have your answer. Here's where I've landed, but share the emerging journey to establish that you're somebody who's learning and paying attention rather than somebody who's ignoring or gonna get caught.
Paul Zelizer [14:58]:
So that's the general idea here. Idea here. Find your way to be proactive. This is not going away. AI is here. It's powerful, and it is disrupting things. And the people who are being most disrupted, I feel like, are the ones who are flat-footed and trying to pretend that it's not here, that it's not going to have an impact. And I try to be in that category of human who's like, hey, this is here.
Paul Zelizer [15:29]:
I don't know whether I would have personally voted for us to turn on this powerful a technology with as little overall conversation as I feel like we've had about the ethics and the impact but here it is so I'm trying my best to again be proactive I want to encourage you to do the same. So what are your thoughts about AI? Where are you feeling like, wow, this is an incredible opportunity? Where are your concerns? I'd love to hear from you, either if this is on social media and you can comment there, or feel free to use the Awarepreneurs website and send in an email. I feel like this conversation is just getting started this is by no means the end of a conversation but very much the beginning what are your thoughts about a as it relates to social entrepreneurs what are your questions what technologies are you excited about which ones are you worried about I'd love to hear your thoughts please send them on. Speaking of sending on and we love listener supported topics and guests if you have an idea for something for a show, please go to the Awarepreneurs website, take a look at our contact page, and on there you'll see our 3 simple guidelines. If you say yeah, this really fits that please send your ideas on it So for now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening Please take really good care in these intense times And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.