Welcome back to CMO school. Today's guest is one of my favorite people to learn from when it comes to AI. Kalen Bulner is an AI coach and founder of the uncommon business. After building a $4 million company in just 18 months with four AI trained employees while working less than 40 hours a week, she's a living example of what AI can do for us within our businesses. And I met Kellen this past spring when she spoke at an event I was at in person. And not only did she make me laugh out loud the entire time, but as someone who has been using AI in my business in what I felt was a pretty advanced way, I actually learned a lot from her that really helped me, which I feel is rare. So, she wasn't just teaching the basics like everyone's sharing online. Ken and her team have have helped thousands of business leaders reclaim their time, energy, and creative focus by architecting smarter AI systems that actually work. They're really focused not on like replacing people per se, but really amplifying you and how do you, you know, use AI in your business and inside your role. So today we're going to break down the shift from AI offloader to AI architect and why that's the next evolution of marketing leadership. We're going to talk about AI systems and tools that every functional CMO should be using in their business and in their life and how to use AI authentically to really blow up your creativity and not be able not leaning on AI to like lose your voice. So, if you've been curious about AI but don't know where to start or you're experimenting and feeling like you're missing the picture or you know that it can be better, this episode is for you. So, let's get into it. Kellen, it's so great to have you here. >> I'm so happy to be here, Jess. I met you and Ashley at Pink Spirit this summer and I was like, "Yeah, I can be friends with those girls right away. We can hang out all night. This was so fun." Oh, that's full. >> We got to be friends. It's happening. >> 100% 100%. I'm happy to finally get here and be on the podcast. >> I love it. And I have to say before we jump in, I have I I meant that in my intro. I've been deep diving into AI the last year, maybe a little bit longer, and I was just getting so frustrated with downloading guides and getting these little offers from people and seeing just this really basic level of okay, here's my prompt to do XYZ and really no better than what I was getting as far as output or even, you know, sometimes worse in some cases. So when I met you and we started talking about how you're using AI, how you train people to use AI, I think one of the things I was asking was like, okay, is it really actually advanced though, really going to learn things? And and I love that you're not just, you know, scratching the surface and teaching the basics. You do that, but you also take it so deep to the point that I'm like, "Holy crap, I'm struggling to keep up." But I love it. I wanted to bring this up because you really inspired me because when you were deciding whether or not to come into the 12week program, you were like, you know, is this just going to be projects and custom GBTs? And I hadn't thought of my answer to that, but my new response is, "Most people have had a cheeseburger, but have you had one that is made by Bobby Fle where he made a fig compost from his grandmother's garden and he slow roasted smoked bacon over a homemade maple syrup from a small town in Canada?" Like all this love and precision and thought and uniqueness that goes into the burger is completely different experience. And I think even just the first couple weeks of our course, which we're into right now, really is yes, we are doing projects and GPTs, but it's a whole another level of creativity. And then I'm, you know, obviously all the things that are coming after this with automation and connectors and agent mode and deep research and, you know, all the all the fun sexy things that will come later. But I even if you just ended with learning how to build a really incredible AI project. Even just that, you know, that's top 01% of the world stuff, which is crazy that most people >> have no idea. >> It's so cool. And I love that analogy cuz I think that's so true. And I see that too in my clients businesses. I just had a sales call the other day and and they were talking about, oh, I've been training my AI for the past year. I'm like, okay, well tell me what that looks like. What have you been doing to train your AI? And it's just really funny because I think the general population, especially in marketing, is literally just scratching the surface and they're like, "Oh, I just use it every day." And it's learning and getting better, which it kind of does, I guess, but >> marginally. And what I've realized working with your team and just seeing these things that, you know, you guys have spent hours and hours and hours refining and learning how to learn the tools and and how best to use them. And there's small things that you'll share or they they feel small and you know you make this tweak and it's like your content goes from like 10 revisions to either none or one and there's yeah there's things like that that I think it's these nuances that you've learned from deep expertise and so much time in the space. So >> I love it. >> Thank you. It's just been really fun. >> Yeah. I'd love to get kind of a little bit of background for our listeners who maybe are new to you. So, you've built and scaled multiple businesses and I want to know what was happening when you heard about AI and kind of decided to go allin and double down on this space cuz you were one of the earlier people in this space and I I just am so curious to know where that happened. >> Yeah, it it's a crazy story. I saw my first demo of Chad GPT in July of 2023, which in AI world is forever, you know, it really wasn't that long ago. It was like 2 and a half years ago. Uh, at the time I was running a real estate investing business and you guys will probably hear me talk about this later maybe, but I started that business and I was also running a consulting business to I was automating real estate investors businesses. That was the whole thing. I was known as the tech girl in the land investing world. Very very specific niche. And uh, I I started that business to make money. I I literally was like, "Okay, well, everyone that I know that's rich has real estate investment, so I should do that." Well, as most of us know, most, you know, especially a lot of your clients that have their own business, it's like when you go after money, it's actually the opposite happens. Either you make it and you're not happy, or you don't make it at all. And I was making it, but I was just not fulfilled. I was so burned out. I was doing so many calls, so much BS, so many I was like, "This actually sucks. I hate this." And so in the while I was in that I was so burned out and I saw JGBT for the first time and it was this huge pressure release valve and I I just saw the first demo I saw was this guy. He recorded himself talking about a process and then he took the transcript and he turned it into a process document. I was like my god one of the worst things in the world to do is document a process. So the moment I saw it, it was my whole body was like, "Holy crap, what other areas could I automate? What other areas in my life am I spending time and energy on where this tool, if trained properly or set up properly, could collapse time?" And I ultimately am just obsessed with collapsing time. I love efficiency. I love all of the hacks. I love I want to I have no problem saying this. make a lot of money, spend a lot of time with my friends and family, find all of the areas of joy in my life that I possibly can all the time, and just do something I love. So, that turned into >> Same >> saved same. And we can have it all. I think we can have it all. I was in that I'm like, why did I leave this job, my other job, where I was making 150K to grind myself into the ground? I mean, that's what happens to most entrepreneurs. So, I saw JBT. I was like, hell yeah, this thing rocks. I need to figure out how to use it. So, I went on YouTube and I found they were all all men. I was trying to find the women. Where are my girls at? But it was all these guys. I hired this guy, Bruce. He showed me the basics of prompting and how to navigate. You know, two and a half years ago, chat was so stupid. So, I'm like, "Oh my god." Trying to navigate, you know, all the things. And I started to figure it out. So, I started to automate my land business. And I was like, "Holy crap, I'm obsessed with this." Long story short, all my girlfriends were like, "You have to teach this. you are doing all these incredible things in your land business. I'd been in technology my entire career. That was what I what I've been doing. I've been doing systems build, automation builds. So, I knew I loved it. Uh, and then I just literally shut everything down. And last April of 2024, I shut everything else down. I wrote in my journal, I would be so excited if 10 people came to my free AI master class. And last week, we just hosted one for 5,000 people. >> Yeah, that's wild. Just also knowing you guys, time is an illusion. You think something's going to take 10 years, it could take one. Yeah. If you make the right moves, you get in the right rooms, you invest the money on the right things, and we can talk about that, too. But yeah, went all in and here we are, the founder of the Uncommon Business, and we're one of the really are the fastest growing AI education business in the world, which is crazy. >> I love that. And just for perspective here too, if you can share, what were you walking away from from an income level? And the reason I ask is because a lot of our listeners are marketers who want to transition into fractional CMO work or they're CMOs who are trying to figure out the model because when it's done wrong, it can be a disaster. And often one of the things I hear is just this fear around leaving what they know and what they're comfortable with to something else, right? And so I'm curious to know what did that look like and how did that feel to make that transition for you? >> 2023 I profited about 300,000 net income. So, I was feeling at the time like this is I feel safe. This is my identity. But more than anything, I I even remember the moment that I knew I needed to shut it down. I was crying because I my identity was wrapped up in serving these land investors. A lot of them were some of my best friends and were traveling the world and going to all these conferences and I'm the tech girl in the land space and they got my start and I'm like, who am I to leave them? But what I realized is so many of them are coming into our program now and so many of them have said, "Thank you so much for doing this because I would have never known about any of this if you had not taken the the chance." And this year, you know, my our net will be 2 million. I'm like, >> it's amazing >> how I don't know how. You know, creator does crazy stuff and we don't know the how. I'm not going to ask the how. All I know is that when you think you're leaving something and you just have to trust your gut. And in human design, I'm a generator. And so my human design coach all the time is like, you know, in your gut, >> you know. So you don't need to go ask anyone else. And if you don't call your gut, it's just going to keep following you around until you make the right call. >> Yeah. I love that so much. And I had a similar experience as well, shifting away from corporate, really comfortable role, you know, paid time off, benefits, all of this into this space. And it just it really was like leaping off a cliff and being like, I don't know, but I have to do this. I cannot. So, I love that. I love that. >> And you have to take a dip those first few months. It doesn't happen at one time. So, just just trusting yourself and knowing and having a supportive partner and having supportive friends, getting around other women and other people that are wanting to make these moves. And I have a little group of friends. We call ourselves the 10X girls. And essentially, it started because I had all the these girls in my life text me for business advice. I'm like, we need to get all y'all in one group chat. And with one of our friends, I think we kind of bullied her into leaving her job, but she's very grateful. She's very grateful we did. Um, but you just need to be if you don't feel like you have those expanders around you, pay to be in rooms. Do you host any events, Jess, for your people? >> Have you not in person? No. No. >> Okay. Well, >> I go to them. I don't know. My previous corporate I think I'm a little bit scarred from in person events. >> Me running them? Probably not. But I love to go to them. If other people want to plan them, >> I will be there. >> Exactly. Well, maybe so you guys can come to my events. >> Yeah, >> I love in person events, but just, you know, paying to be in the room. That's how I met Kinsey. That's how I met my other best friend, Steph staff. We're both just powerhouses. I'm just getting in these masterminds and things. So, >> I love that. >> Can't do it without those quantum friendships. >> No, not at all. Okay, shifting gears over to what you see. You work with so many different clients across so many different industries. I would love to hear what are some of the biggest mistakes that you're seeing marketers make when it comes to AI. >> Uh first and foremost is opening up a chat and creating content. Absolutely not. Abs. That is the cardinal sin. That is a spiritual infraction. So just we are pinky promising right now. We're never going to do that. Using free chat GPT. What the hell are we talking about? $20 a month, you guys. $20 a month. You can't even go, you can't even get a meal for $20 a month. You can barely get a nice coffee these days. I mean, the local shops are here. So, no more free, get the paid. And then the thing that I think most marketers are not doing is they're not documenting their genius. >> They are not documenting their frameworks. They're not sitting back. They may not even know that they have intellectual property. And so what I tell a lot of my marketing friends is you guys, all of these coaching calls that you've done, all these transcripts have massive gold inside of them. They have the way that you think about sales pages. They have the way that you think about email newsletters. They have the way that you think about generating an ideal client persona. Those are your those that's your IP. That's your frameworks. And in this day and age, I I really encourage people, I mean, not even encourage, I think it's a non-negotiable to be documenting those frameworks. If you don't have those documented, you will never be able to get AI to write like you, think like you, or make decisions like you. So, stepping back, and you actually did a really nice job with this, Jess, in the beginning of the program, you're like, I don't want to just start building these things. I actually want to back up and start building this database of like this is how I think about Instagram captions for this industry. This is how I think about LinkedIn. This is what I think about sales pages. This is what I think. So really starting to capture one-on-one conversations, voice memos, team meetings, and recording yourself constantly. Then that's when we can start to figure out how do you think? How do you make decisions? What are offlimits? What is your worldview? What is sacred to you? Because ultimately you are you're a leader. You're like trying to lead people into this next version of their company or their personal brand. So we don't have any of those things documented in in text. AI will never be able to execute the level that we needed to. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I find too without that that's where you get the very vanilla sounding everything you know whether you're using especially when I think marketing if you're using it for social posts you know um landing page content emails anything like that it's even if you prompt it well and you're saying high converting blah blah it's going to pull from just generic frameworks and I think particularly as a marketer you need to have your own perspective and your own style your content needs to be that next level of amazing. My husband's in development and construction, which I feel from a marketing perspective is like eons ago. And you know, they could probably take some generic here's the ingredients of a great Instagram post and be fine. But I just feel like in marketing particularly, we have to be like, you know, five steps ahead. And >> you teaching that has really helped me be able to kind of infuse what I'm doing with AI so that it actually sounds and feels like me. And that's the thing that no one's going to ever be able to take away from you. That's, you know, a I think a lot of people, especially copyriters, especially people in marketing, are very scared about, well, AI is just going to write a newsletter like me. No, it won't. Do you? Every day I get a newsletter that I'm like, this is trash. Absolute trash. I've even had my own team create trash with AI and I'm like, this is cringey. This is absolute C minus. And then back to that office. Yeah, we actually just uploaded our values to say you are damn proud of your work. And I don't care if it came from AI or came from you. I don't care where it came from, but if you are not damn proud of it, you cannot ship it. You cannot. And I think that's what most marketers, sorry, most marketers, let's just say 90% are using AI in some way. And they're like, well, that was really fast, so I'm just going to use this. >> They're like, done. Sure. >> But there's no there the energetics aren't there. the >> Kinsey our um you know she's integrator but also director of growth has spent years in marketing. She ran a marketing company before this. So she's had 15 years of developing her beliefs on a sales page and she has so much data about conversion on what's converted and what hasn't converted. And we're we're also studying the hell out of Horos's sales page and what converted on his page. And so having all this data and this history and this experience, bringing that in now when we go to generate a sales page, our sales pages are badass and they hit, you know, they're still 70% there. And then I come in and I throw my energetics on it. I'm like, I don't really like that. I want to write a letter to them. This is, you know, let me voice note. Let me process a little bit. But just having the ability to even start at 70%. I think people miss the back and forth, too. We're not at a place where it just spits out perfect content. Absolutely not. >> Yeah. That's that's rare. >> Yeah. And even as a marketer too, I think of my marketing team internally, their job is to interview me, extract brilliance and downloads and creativity out of me, take that transcript, and then turn it into the newsletter. It's not write a newsletter and have me edit it. And obviously I'm on podcast a lot and I tell a ton of stories and I have, you know, I have so much content from our um our sessions. So they're really lucky they have significant content. But if your team, if you're if CMO, if you're working with a business that doesn't have content, force it out of them. Like send them questions and have them text you back a voice note. We can get scrappy with it. That's the other thing too is like yes, you've built your way of doing it, your frameworks, your way of attacking LinkedIn, but then you have to extract the emotion and the frequency and the intuition and the downloads out of your client and now we have to merge them together and help do that. >> Yeah, I love that. Okay, you have a concept of AI offloader and AI architect. Can you talk about that a little bit because I've heard you speak about it and I I love that notion. >> Yes. So, I kind of just mentioned that offloader. So, >> yeah. offloader is the classic. Let's just call it the marketer. We're going to call him George. Sorry for any Georgees. George is went on and he said, "You write us a weekly email newsletter for our chiropractic office. We're doing Halloween party. We're going to have candy for the kids." Okay. So, it writes some, you know, BS thing like, "Oh, it's Spooka. Come on in. You know, crack your back for and there'll be black cats and you know, it's some cheesy thing." Oh, cute. Love it. Spack. Put it on there. Send it out. ship it out. It's probably a B minus. It probably has hashtags and bolds and weird fonts or weird, you know, formatting and there's no rhyme or reason to it and we don't have called to actions and there's no actual stories. It's just it just is. So, that's the offloader. Yes, they're using AI, but they're usually just using a single prompt and having a conversation. It's either a bad result or they took so long to get to the end result that it's like we should have just written the damn thing. But >> totally I'm sure a lot of marketers can get to the offloader is taking a step back and I I talk about this a lot that I'm teaching AI but once you come into our the program you're like I'm basically teaching personal development honestly because what I'm doing is we're stepping back and the first thing I want to do is I need I need to think critically. So, the AI architect thinks critically about, okay, I need to write an email newsletter. What do I want this person to feel? What do I want them to do? Okay, I'm starting to document these things down. Then, how do I build an engine that collapses time around building this newsletter? What would this AI need to know? Do they, you know, obviously it needs to know our newsletter framework and how do we create a, you know, what what what do we want this to do and how do we want someone to feel? And then they just continue to iterate and iterate and iterate until we get to the place and before we started recording you're building your we call it the brand guardian or your marketing project and it's painful. It takes three times as long to train AI than it does a human being. Three times as long to train AI than it does a human being. And already people don't want to train other humans. So when we're getting into this, this architect knows well if I am able to just sit and continue to refine and refine and refine and not settle for B minus and continue like I only ship world class work that's what that architect is continuing to work with AI and usually this is either a custom GPT start or a cloud project and then eventually they start thinking about automation and they think well okay well I know that you know the CEO of the company you know does a you know they do podcasts you know, every three every every week or so. Could I have an automation so that every time there's a podcast transcript, it runs it through the marketing project and creates three draft social posts? Maybe. Yes. So, that's the AI architect thought is we are we're out of this oneoff task and we're we're thinking in systems and engines and uh really thinking critically about almost we're really thinking of AI like a person. What does this person need to know >> to do this job? >> Yeah, I love that. And I think that was one of the big shifts for me when I started working with you is really I was using it like an offloader. And I I think my go-to because it was like quote unquote fast was just popping it open and even if I had projects or a thread that was I don't know quote unquote loosely trained. I would pop it open and throw something in there because for me that was fast. >> And I've learned it's almost this slow down to speed up thing. And you know, yeah, we were just talking about that before we hit record about how frustrated I was. I was like, "Oh, this is I could just do this faster." But it's one of those things where if we pull back and really look at what we're doing in our business as CMOs or with our clients and those things that we do repeatedly that take time, if we can pull those apart and look at them piece by piece and figure out how to properly set up AI to support us in that, it's going to fasttrack us times a million. So, something that I did probably right right away, I think it was the first week in the program, I was doing a bunch of podcasts and I do solo episodes and guest episodes. And usually for me to prep would take anywhere between one or two hours depending on how solid my idea was. When I sat down and really just I don't know how how it would flow. I would usually use AI, but I'd be iterating, iterating, iterating. And it got to the point that I was like, "Okay, that I'm taking so much time to do this. This has to be faster." So, I think I spent probably a day training or setting up a custom GPT with custom instructions, how you've showed us to do it, and separate prompts for solo episode, individual episodes, and all the things I have to do outside of this. Create a social caption, help me with an SEO optimized title, a description, blah blah blah. And for me to do, so I created that. And then for me to do all of the prep, for example, for this episode, it was 10 minutes. And because the output initially, it was almost there. All I did was go through and kind of tweak it. And I was really happy with it. >> I think it's Yeah, such a good example. It took me quite a while of playing and testing and iterating to get it to a really good point, but now it just saves me time every single week. So that's what I'm kind of working through. >> Do you do a year? >> Yeah, one a week. But I at this point I was literally just thinking yesterday I'm like I could actually do more because it's so quick for me now. >> So that's a really let's just say it's one a week. Let's say let's just say you're going to do one and a half a week. We'll say an average of one and a half. Some weeks one some weeks two. So that would be 78 a year. You now have capacity for if you were doing it manually. 78 hours >> at least. Yeah. probably twice that because of all the output after >> let's call it 156 hours of work and you spent 8 hours would you say to get it where it needs to be with kind of prompt development >> that's generous but probably yeah >> okay we'll say it's even six hours so there's a uh I always forget the word in economics what they call this but people devalue their future time significantly over their current time it's one of the biggest issues with entrepreneurs and founders is that we don't invest time even doing a debrief after a project. You know, it's always it always goes to the end, but if you actually spent the two hours doing this full debrief of what went right, what went wrong, how could we improve for next time, that could save so much time in the future. And this is the this is the moment of your that's what this whole program is about, too. And you you you've seen it. We're forcing you to build every week, even when people are like, "Oh my god, this is so much." I get it. But also, a lot of people won't do it. They won't sit down and do it if I don't force them to do it on the call or make it homework. >> And I'm so glad that you did that because you just, you know, now you have capacity for more. Maybe even your assistant could eventually do the prep. You have a system there. She can just feed it to you in notion or whatever. And so good. >> Yeah, I love it. And it's funny now that I've shifted my thinking and been thinking in, you know, the AI architect mode, it's honestly almost overwhelming how many ideas I have. I have this board of what I'm working on now. This is all for later. Cuz now that I see it, I can't unsee it. There's so many places in my business for both me and for clients where I'm looking at it and thinking I can save so much time and the quality of work can be amazing. And yeah, it's something interesting that I see too as a CMO. I also bring in a lot of subcontractors to my clients businesses. >> So anything honestly anything from copywriting to design to many chat setup to marketing tech, setting up email funnels and things like that. And it's so interesting to me being in this space and kind of connecting with my subcontractors over the last year and almost nobody is really leveraging AI to this extent and it literally blows my mind. I have been actually even this last year I've been looking at copyriters for example. Obviously, that's one of the the places that's been hit the hardest. But what's been and this was preu before I knew about sort of how we can set ourselves up. But what was happening was I was coming up against this conflict with clients, not externally, but myself, where I was thinking, you know, I have such a hard time recommending to clients, hey, let's go spend 12 grand on your website copy when I wouldn't do that now with the tools available to me. I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't spend that money because I don't need to I don't need to spend like 6 to 8 weeks and back and forth with a copywriter and 10 grand when I just can prompt it properly and get pretty good copy back in like a day, right? So, I came against came up against that. But the thing with me as a CMO is I will support my clients across all areas of marketing, but I'm a marketing generalist. So, I'm not a deep copy expert. I'm not a deep Facebook ads expert. I know enough about everything to help them shape their strategy and give feedback and and work with an expert and get things to, you know, a really good place. But what I was craving, I was looking around and being like, "Okay, I'm my my team and I were kind of muddling our way through creating this copy for clients." And it's okay, but I know if a copywriter would download their brain into Chat GBT and say, "This is how I rate a homepage. This is my this is what I look for. these are my unique like isms, the things that make my stuff the best. Then if we could just feed it what it needs and it spits out the amazing version that would have been their output and they just paint it and it takes like 10 minutes. Why is no copyriter out there with an offer saying you used to pay 10 grand and it would take me 6 weeks. You pay me $1,000 and we'll be done in 4 hours. >> I would be paying all day long. >> I think there's fear around it. >> It's all fear. It's all fear. It's all scarcity. It's all I It's gonna take over the world. It's gonna take over the world. And that is the biggest thing I want to shop from the rooftops is. This actually is one of the greatest moments of of impact. I think people say like, I want to impact. I want to write and change people's lives. Okay. Well, you're doing it for two people right now, and you could be doing it for 200 or 2,000. If we had the right systems in place, and we slowed down. This is not, and that's the thing I think people think, you know, AI is going to take my genius. those especially creatives. I like >> know I mean I I don't know about you, I've never felt more creative than I am. >> Oh my gosh. Totally. Cuz I'm constantly thinking of ideas and constantly being like, "How do we how do we leverage this?" And and it's funny because a lot of the marketing subcontractors that I talk to or even, you know, marketing managers, fractional CMOs, there's a common thread of we want to make more money, we want to work less. Obviously, we want the work to be amazing. We're also a lot of us are perfectionists and we want the you know the caliber of our work to be great. A lot of those are very conflicting. So how do we make more money and work like literally hi AI is the answer? >> You that's how you do it. You have even if you had the same amount of clients and you threw them through your frameworks you're done in a tenth of the time probably less and then you can be doing whatever surfing or you can be whatever with your kids or you know all of the things. And yeah, it's so so interesting to me and I it's just a conversation I've been having with my subcontractors and being like, how do we how do we do this? How do we get your stuff in here >> and back to yes, this is an AI program, but so much of this is an identity shift for people and even even me being the CEO, the visionary of this company, my next level is not doing more. My next level is stepping up into vision and dreaming and going out in the world and meeting people and getting downloads from creator and sharing that back with the team. And I I think even copywriters, they get their value out of what they've always done, which is sit down, blank sheet, go. They have not. It's going from we need to shift it from I'm being replaced to you're actually just graduating into the next step of the process which is totally architecting it, orchestrating it, designing it. You're a strategic partner with your AI. You're essentially just hiring a ghost writer, you know, that operates for you. And so many people, most of the best authors in the world have ghostriters. >> Yeah. >> That write for them that they've trained on their voice and they've worked with them and over and over and over and over and over. And yeah, I mean it's again it's back to this is all in their head and in their heart. It's not they're not making a business decision. It's a >> it's a scarcity fear-based decision. And I think we're on a mission to help people. So if you're copyright listening, don't be scared. Don't be scared. Your genius isn't going anywhere. >> That's your idea. >> You know what? You know what just occurred to me too? One of the things I've noticed with working with your team is that being really good at creating these AI systems actually requires you to become a better communicator. And I think that I'm generally pretty decent. And it's been really interesting to see. I'll build something or I'll, you know, create a prompt for something and then I get this weird output and I'm like, wait a second. And I read and I'm like, it's because I said it this way or that way. And it's interesting because there's these skill sets in marketing, particularly copy, probably social strategists, certain people who like words like language selection is their expertise. They'd probably be the best ever at this, right? And it >> the best. >> Yeah. I love that. >> The best AI writing you have to know what do you want? Who exact know this. Who are you talking to? Why do you want it to be like this? What does good look like? What emotions do you want out of your out of your audience, out of that reader? What is the story arc? What are the constraints? These are all the things that normal, regular, degular people have no effing idea. You don't know what an ideal client persona is. Like I a part of our program is I have to teach people. They have there most businesses don't have one. That's the thing you guys all know when you have this genius. And again, I'm the thing I want to say too is if you guys are building these for your clients, you own these. Your clients do not own these. Now, if they want to pay you, >> again, these are worth 20. How much is it? How much would be worth to have infinite copy, infinite content? >> Yeah. >> $50,000, 70, you know, $60,000. This is your unique magic because when you give them your marketing tool, you're also giving away your frameworks and your IP and the way that you think and the way you make decisions. So again, when you take the time to step back and build this, this is a this is an asset to your business that no one can take from you. I would say it's not purchasable personally because I don't want anyone to have my IP. Now again, there's always a price, but I would really be in that camp of no, you still need me cuz you need my brain and my brain is built inside of this >> tool. I know we talked about that at the start when I was trying to figure out not only me and my business that's, you know, over here, but for clients, what does this really look like? And I'd love to talk about so for fractional CMOs particularly with the business side. Let's focus on us and our own businesses. What do you think are the most important tools or things we should be building? >> Yes, there's three. So I also want to back out to people that maybe have not operated inside of Chad GBT just well most of you guys probably have but inside of Chad GBPT over on the left hand side if you have a paid you're going to see two different sections that you probably haven't seen before. One section is called GPTs. The other section is called projects. They're kind of interchangeable. There's a little differences, but they're basically the same thing. You have a set of instructions and you have a knowledge base. So, inside of these projects, you can load in files. You can load in your IP. You can load in transcripts. You can load in notes. You can load in tone. And it will always remember those things inside of the brain. So, when I when we say projects that each CMO needs, I'm talking about these. Okay. First one, internally we call it a brand guardian. That's kind of the name that we've come up with. We have a very particular way of building out the brand guardian, but it protects your brand. So, you need to be able to build out AI project that sounds like a brand. That can be a personal brand, that can be a company brand. And we actually have a little bit of a different buildout depending on what you're building, but that's the place that you go when you're building email newsletters, LinkedIn, Instagram captions, and always breaking it out. Like my personal brand for Ken Faulner is a completely different tone and voice than my company, the uncommon business. So I have two totally separate projects for both of those. And that's where for the company we can build sales pages, we do lead magnets or ebooks and all of that, all of those frameworks, even my lead magnet prompt. I spent three hours just on my lead magnet prompt because most lead magnets absolutely suck. They are not valuable. They're not sexy. No one's saving it and it's a bunch of BS. So again, it's training the system on how do you build your lead magnet? How do you build a sales page? How do you build your, you know, website designers? My god, imagine having a me right now. >> Oh my gosh. I know. And okay, so I have to jump in and say something that I It's really funny because I remember and I feel like I have to apologize. I remember talking to you in the DMs while you were launching Automate to Accelerate and I was like, "Okay, this is what I'm doing." And I'm feel like, you know, honestly, I don't know if it's just custom GPTs, like I'm already doing those. And it's the exactly the thing you said about the the hamburger versus the designer hamburger, whatever. And I I laugh now because I'm was just like everyone else I'm talking to. They're like, I'm training my AI. I was not. And I I think there's such a big difference between going in the back end of chat GPT and following the prompted flow of let's create you a GPT and they're They're absolute garbage and then creating one in the way that you have done it and and taught us to do. And I think there's like my custom instructions are insane. They're so good. And then what I upload, I never would have thought to include the things I include. And then there's been these nuances, small things like, okay, if I'm I've got all these, you know, prompts that, you know, a prompt for creating this kind of thing, a prompt for creating that kind of thing. And I even just the small tip of like, hey, you got to tell it what prompt to use. It's not smart enough to just cruise its own knowledge. And so little things like that that you might go and build that and then without someone who's been there done that a thousand times over you're like this is garbage and it's not working when you're probably like a couple small tweaks away. So there's been so many tips like that that I think have probably saved me hours and hours of time. >> Totally. Don't blame yourself. No one's taught you how to use this thing. Everyone just slammed tragic.com in your face and it's like go use it. Like but even me people are like where did you learn? I learned from effing up for thousands of hours and finally getting to the place where every time I build a lead magnet, I want to build it the same way. So, I had to document that set of instructions and then put it in the project. And even that, even at first though, it's, you know, remember the first day where we built the think like Edleta, people were like, why do you put the prompt in the project? And it was so confusing. Didn't make sense. And a lot of times it doesn't make sense until you need it >> and then you're like, "Oh." And so a lot of it is just forcing yourself to use it and build with it and try it. And people again, if you guys are like just getting started with AI, this might feel like a little bit of a pie in the sky conversation and I'm sorry about that. Um, but just knowing even if you're taking anything from this is like most people are driving the Lamborghini to the grocery store and back. They are not getting it on the open road. They're not seeing the potential. They're not getting it to max. Not even close. You know, they're driving at 25 miles an hour and like Yeah, that I have a Lamborghini. No, you don't. Let me show you the power if you allow me to go to the next level, which is the most fun thing. >> I love it. Okay, so we've got our brand guardian that will help us with all of our content creation. It's going to be >> in our voice, our tone. >> It's going to be we're talking to our framework, so unique to us, not just basic best practices from the internet. Okay, so that's number one. the skill of knowing how to reverse engineer your client's voice with your frameworks and then you have an individual one for each client. Fun, fun, fun. Then um the next thing is I call it the sales wizard or the sales assistant. So this project's a little bit different. This one is trained on how to be your sales assistant. So we had one for our launch. So we did a launch of our 12week AI program. We had 3,000 emails come in in 10 days and we had three humans. and all the numbers and you can just tell if we didn't have AI helping us with these responses. First of all, we have people email like, I run a metal fabrication company and I don't think AI is for us. I'm like, oh my god, I don't even know what I don't even know what a medical fabrication company does. So, that would take, you know, 20 minutes to get a good email back to some of these people. So, the sales wizard is trained on, first of all, your favorite sales principles. For me, it's Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss and The Challenger Sale and Daniel Pink. And then, so all these amazing sales leaders. Then it's trained on my best client story. So I put hundred different client stories in there. We've spent a lot of time refining our client stories and the ROI and the transformation. Then I put in all of our offers, the sales pages for everything that we do. Then I bring in the transcripts of me doing pitches. So I do a lot of one to many coaching. So me pitching, me selling, and tons of past emails that I personally have sent in the way that I like to write. All we have to do is put in, you know, for for us, we don't do sales calls, but if you did sales calls, and I think most fractional CMOs are doing sales calls and they're not evaluating themselves, and there's ton of lowhanging fruit there. So, first of all, any sales, you know, generating sales proposals, generating follow-up emails, a lot of you guys have not gone through sales training and you're just people pleasing and you're not asking tough questions and you're not allowing for silence and you're not asking open-ended questions. This is stuff that you need to learn or you need to hire someone that knows how to do it. So the sales wizard a is able to write emails in the best way create sales proposals that actually well our next project will really help with pricing what you need to be charging but it will help it will push you um to charge what you need to charge write your sales essentially writing your sales messages and then the best thing is if you do a sales call take the transcript of that call bring it into the sales wizard and say I want you to be so brutally honest with me right now I want you to evaluate me in every area as if you were my sales coach what did I do well what can I work on? What phrases should I have said and when should I have said them? And what do you think would have happened if I had implemented these changes and how can I improve in the future? Then when you have your next sales call, bring in all of the details and you can roleplay with this sales wizard. So you can even practice like, I'm pitching this 20K a month retainer. I've never done anything over 5K a month. I'm absolutely crapping myself. Can you please roleplay this conversation with me? give me the 10 most the 10 objections you believe they will give me and how exactly I handle them. I also want you to prayer me emotionally. You know all the things before I go into the into the call so you have a script ready to go. So I think sales most CMO fractional CMOs are one or two clients away from 50k a month. I just don't think they understand. Totally. I'm about to hire a marketer just for my brand, my personal brand, because I'm going to top, you know, top 01% with my personal brand for 12K a month just for my personal brand strategy. Not even doing the social, just the strategy. So, just knowing your right clients will pay you money. Pay the money. >> Totally. >> Yeah. I love that because I think that's such a big thing. So, a lot of my students for fractional CMO school will come in and they are either marketing executors. They've been doing marketing for a long time. They're generalists and they're trying to transition into this model or they're fractional CMOs who are drowning because they're they haven't quite figured it out. They don't have boundaries around what they do. They're pricing themselves too low and they're kind of drowning. They're like just how do we do this? How are we making good money and not killing ourselves? And so I think that this is such a good example of there's so many pieces that go into that and in how you're pricing yourself, how you're packaging yourself, and how you're selling, how you're showing up on the sales calls, cuz it really starts at the very beginning in terms of building that authority and having that client see you as someone who's sitting beside them as a marketing leader and a partner, like a thought partner and strategist, not someone who's like, "Okay, tell me what to do. I'm your, you know, here to do all the marketing. It's such a positioning thing. And so I find often when I talk to people and I coach them, I will often hear recordings of sales calls or I will talk to them and be like, "Okay, walk me through this conversation you had with this client." And I can stop them and be like, "That right there, how you said that or how you approached this." And I think having that in AI format like this always on sales coach. Brilliant. >> Do we have a Jess sales coach for your clients yet? >> On the list. It's on the list. >> On the list, >> Kellen, I have such an insane list of GPTs I need to build. I feel like I'd be offline for a quarter building them out if I did it. >> In the Automate Accelerate group, is anyone out there willing to work with me and be my GPT building assistant? >> Oh my god, I'm going to do that. I love that. >> I mean, seriously, because a lot of it now you need to elevate into the architect, you know, give your because you know what you you need at this point. >> I absolutely do. I have this big list of Yeah. >> of the leaders. Most of the leaders that I'm talking to are like, "Well, I don't actually want to know it. I'm just going to have my team know it." You cannot >> not at least be able to speak the language because now you could speak with a, you know, a GPT developer, builder, and I need you to do this, this, this, this is exactly the output that I'm looking for, and be able to design it. >> Yeah. And I I'm such a big believer, and I'm always like this. I think that there's so much value in going through the motions and doing something yourself. So you know and understand it deeply if you're going to be hiring that out. It's that's such a non-negotiable for me. >> 100% love. >> Yeah. >> So we have sales wizard which is a non-negotiable and it sounds like you have that at least internally for you but now we need to build it for your clients >> and then we should pay you monthly to be able to do it. Just saying. >> Uhhuh. Our last one is called the money coach. So this one we're actually building in our program tomorrow. You haven't built this one yet but this is where we have it's a combination of two of my favorite authors are kind of the back end of it. The first is the author of Happy Pocket Full of Money. I honestly I think it's Michael. >> It's a cute name. >> Jacondi. Phenomenal book. If you guys have not read Happy Pocket Full of Money, it's all about money is energy. It is not supposed to be forced. It is all it's attracted to us and it's how you use the laws of the universe to attract abundance. And creator wants limitless abundance for us. We're the ones that continue to block it. So it's like woo woo which trust me I made the most money I ever have in my life following these principles and I've brought in f found a the frameworks of this another offer author blanking on his name but he wrote a book called profit first so that's kind of more tactical okay how do you run finances in a small to mediumsiz business some people bring in the frameworks from simple numbers 2.0 know which is another amazing finance book. So we have the money coach's responsibility is to coach you like a spiritually attuned CFO. So we're not so number one we can come to it. So I am in the process and you'll hear more about this story tomorrow of I'm in my home right now and I want to get into my next house and my next house has to be the 10X version of me. And so I just got off the phone this morning with a builder. I'm like, I want to build my dream house. And that house is probably going to be at least two and a half million. And I want this barnaminium next door with the gym and the sauna and the cold plunge and the conference rooms, all the space to bring everybody together, not only for my team to work there, but host all the retreats. So, I don't know what it's going to be all in. Probably, you know, 700 800 for the business and then maybe 2.5 personal. So, I went into my money coach and I'm like, I need you to coach me through this because in my mind, I'm like, this is insane. This, you know, >> it just happened so fast. Your neurons, your literal neural pathways have not caught up to the reality >> of we are. So, it coached me through it from an energetics perspective, and it's going through all these motions. First of all, you know, running through the mortgage of, okay, yeah, 16K a month seems insane, but you just told me that you could host a retreat for 10 people and charge $6,000 a person or whatever the cost is. So, why not do three of those and just pay for the entire house? Yeah. So, I'm so stuck in this smallminded and then back to every time we've set pricing, even the keynotes that I'm looking at, I'm like, what am I worth? I don't even know. Woody Sanchez charges $150,000 for a keynote. Okay, for one of like literally top three AI coaches in the world, 50K. And in my mind is like what? $100,000. That seems insane. But to have this reflection back to you of like our money story dictates so much of our >> Oh my god. So much. >> So much. >> So much. And I love this because I I literally just wrote an email. Um, I haven't sent it out yet, but wrote an email on this the other day because >> I often am coaching my students on pricing. And it is probably the biggest hurdle that I have to help them overcome >> is like, okay, what you're doing, you should be charging 10K, 15K a month, whatever the pricing is. And they're like, what? like they just can't wrap their head around it because they're charging two, three, 4,000 and they're working 25, 30 hours a week for somebody and they're just killing themselves for that. And >> it's so interesting because I think that there's there's something to be said about your nervous system and your subconscious kind of catching up. >> And something that has well probably the biggest thing that has helped me with that has been my coach, my mindset coach. So again, if you can have this in AI format, like such a no-brainer because I remember the email that I wrote was, you know, when I first started as a CMO, I had just had my second daughter and I was about to go on maternity leave and I had kind of been on this slow unwinding of this hustle culture from being in corporate and over the, you know, previous year and a half or so, it was this realization of what the hell have I been doing and I can't be working like this and I don't want to work like this and this is not who I am and who am I now? And you know, I I had my second daughter and had this, okay, I'm going to start my own business. This is crazy. I've got, you know, a toddler and a newborn at home, but I'm going to do it. And I remember thinking at the time I was working at a nonprofit and I was making, I think, Canadian per year, which is nothing. Um, and I remember thinking, if I can just replace my income, maybe I can hit 100K or 120K, that would be so amazing. And I remember pitching my first client and I came out the gate hot with all this confidence. I'm going to charge 15k a month. That's what my rate's going to be. And I remember just thinking about how freaking lifechanging that would be. And at that time though, I had so much emotion and and stuff tied up around it. There just was all these stories. And so >> they could feel it probably when >> they could feel it. Yeah. And I ended up losing that initial person who' said yes. And I was devastated thinking, I'm never going to find that again. That's it. There goes my one client in the entire world that I would have ever gotten at that price point. It's never going to happen. And fast forward, I hit a million dollars in my agency last year, in a year, not cumulatively, in one year with myself and one other CMO. And I wrote this email saying, I never could have in a million years imagined making the kind of money that I make doing work that I love and not working insane hours. I have two little girls. I sometimes drive them to school. I often pick them up and take them to their 400 activities after school. And you know, I I also take care of myself. I went on a big health journey this year and we'll go for walks and I'll stop for a lunch break and just to be able to have built this business with space and capacity and also still impact my clients and have, you know, the work feel amazing and make great money. But it was for me the stepping stone. I had to slowly peel away the beliefs that were blocking me. And it was really just this inch by inch thing of like okay this is my goal now this is my goal now this is my goal and it was really the coaching that got me there. So I imagine having that at your fingertips of AI like amazing 100%. Most of us don't even know where these things come from. And AI can recognize patterns and it can recognize when you're starting to feel guilty for being paid for thinking rather than doing. Totally. Probably one of the biggest things with your clients is they don't understand that they're valuable just doing thinking and strategy and having other people >> do the doing. Same thing with anyone that's so, oh my god, I could never have someone else do my laundry. That's one of my roles at the house or not >> or your worth is actually more first of all you're worthy regardless of anything you're doing doing ever. I mean that's again our society has trained us to think that but I I think I'm I'm again I'm in this day in and day out of needing to prove my value with labor. It's a we learned it in school. We learned it in second grade. You got to do your homework. You got to get an A on the test. So it's do do. And then this again the money commensite coaches, money coaches, you're never going to hit seven figures with this. Keep doing this. You're just you're hamster wheel. >> Yeah. And I love that you mentioned spotting patterns cuz everyone's going to have something different. And I know for me at the beginning I was really struggling with how do I go cuz all of my previous roles I had did been in marketing for over 10 years and all my roles were strategy and execution. So I had such a hard time honestly being like where's where do I start and end? I just don't understand this role. And I really had to meddle through and figure it out. And I remember totally it up with a a awesome client that I had because I ended up just losing my confidence and doubting myself and slipping into this space where I was like shooting out a bunch of stuff and it ended up in this conversation of like this doesn't feel like 15k a month work. And I'm like, "Yeah, you're right. It doesn't. I shouldn't be doing this for 15k. I devalued myself in the pursuit of trying to be valuable." It's such a mind. It really is. And then when you're attracting the right client, they don't care what you caught. If you are solving that pain point, that pro the right problem, that's where the sales wizard can help is taking the transcript of that discovery call and extracting out what really is the pain and problem that they would pay 15 to 20k a month for >> in helping AI figure out what are we actually solving. Then using the money coach and if you if you guys don't have a money coach you can literally go in there and say you are the author of simple numbers 2.0 combined with the magnetic the magnetic identity of the author of happy pocket full of money. Your job is to help me understand the beliefs, the patterns, the fears, the identity blocks that are limiting my income capacity and confidence especially in my role as a fractional CMO. Ask me 10 powerful questions that uncover my money story, what I where I undercharge, where I'm hiding behind busy, where I'm still charging like an employee, where I'm afraid to be seen in my full value, and then analyze my answers to show me the patterns, the wounds, the contradictions, the limitations, the identity I'm still operating from. Step three, give me an identity reframe. Tell me who my future self is financially and how they think, charge, lead, decide, hold money, set boundaries, and then build me a money expansion plan. So, I need a road map, my new beliefs, my new habits, my new boundaries, my new embodied actions, a new pricing model. Start. Let's start. So, if you take the transcript from this podcast, you can just put the transcript into AI and say, "Ken read off a uh money mindset prompt at the very end. Please extract it out of the transcript. Jess is probably going to do a carousel on it, too. But just in case you hear something on a podcast in the future, again, everything's available to you. This is the type of thinking that I'm talking about. If you kind of said it, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie National Treasure, but Nicholas Cage knows that there's a map on the back of the Declaration of Independence, but you have to have these special glasses. And I I feel like this course is like putting on this experience learning AI, whatever it's my course or someone else's is putting the glasses on and you're like, "Yes, I really won't see the world the same way again." >> Yeah, I agree completely. I feel like that. That's why my list is insane of tasks >> I want to build you out of the doing. This is the next level for Jets is she's going to be managing her GBT builds, having an AI person internally that gets managed. It's going to be >> Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Okay. Well, I feel like I could talk to you all day, but I know we're we're getting pretty long here and we're a little over time. So, if people are looking to learn more or they want to connect with you, where is the best place for them to do that? >> I would go to my Instagram. That's the easiest. It's Callen Falner. C A L L A N. and then Falner uh should pop right up. And my link in bio always has the next free master class that we are doing. We do them every two weeks. They are live with me. Well, at least for the next six months. It's November of 2025. I will never commit to anything for the future. >> Um >> forever and ever. >> Yes. But come to those. I give away. I mean, Jess, you've been through my free stuff. You've been through the low ticket boot camp. I give away 10 times more. I will even if Tony Robbins ever listens to this, we have a lot of people that have gone to like the Tony Robbins 3-day events and they're like, I got more out of this hour than I did in the nine hours spending with them. I just pack so much value in. So, come one of those. It's totally free. Bring your team, bring your mom, bring your grandma, >> and that will be link in bio or you can go to our website. >> I feel like I always learn from you every time I talk with you or pop on any training. So, find the time. She's doing them all the time. you are going to learn something. Even if you think that you know AI, you're training AI, I guarantee you you will learn something. She's best in the business. >> We actually um we did a free master class last week. We had a couple people in our 12-week program that like paid us thousands of dollars came to the free master class. They're in the chat. They're like, "Oh my god, I'm getting golden nuggets even in this freaking free thing." Like, what the hell? Like >> it just happens. There's so much fun stuff. >> It's amazing and there's so much to learn and it it Yeah, your team just does such a great job. I love it. I love it. I love it. Well, thank you so much, Kellen. There was so many good takeaways from the not fearing AI aspect to how do we lean into this as a CMO to our mindset and business systems and all of the pieces. So, I really appreciate your time and thank you so much for being on the show. >> Thanks for having me. So, if you're building a fractional CMO business and you don't want to waste years figuring it out the hard way, fractional CMO school is open for enrollment and we'll give you the step-by-step road map that I used to build my business to six figures in 6 months and then $1 million per year with a small team of two. There's expert coaching, one-on-one support, and whether you are an aspiring fractional CMO or you're growing, you're trying to figure out how to scale your team or do the role in a way that doesn't lead to burnout, it is a great fit for you. And you can learn more at the cmooff office.com. If you love this episode today, here is what I would love from you. Take 30 seconds to rate and review the show. It helps more marketers and CMOs find this content. Hit follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you're going to implement any of this or you have questions, please don't hesitate to reach out in my DMs on Instagram. I would love to support you. And thank you for listening. I will see you next week.