The AI Shift That Changes How You Lead

It's not really about using more tools or spending more time with AI, but it's about fundamentally changing how you think, how you create and how you solve problems.

Welcome to the next evolution of the podcast, entrepreneur school in the AI era. We are here to figure out how to integrate AI into the business you've worked so hard to build in a way that still feels like you. I'm your host. Kelly Sinclair, award winning marketer turned AI platform co founder, AI has fundamentally changed how I thought about work systems and what's actually possible. This show is about navigating that new reality together. It's going to be a wild ride, my friend, but I truly believe there's a way to leverage AI in a way that's intentional, human, centered and aligned. It's an ongoing evolution. So let's explore, because AI may just be the unlock you need to achieve the life first business you truly desire.

There's this moment in your AI journey when you stop thinking, I should run this through AI, and you start thinking, how can I co create with AI? And that shift from AI as an assistant to AI as a collaborator is your competitive advantage, it changes how you work, how you lead, and how you help your clients get better results. And in today's episode, I'm going to talk about that recognition when you have made that shift, understanding what it gives you and helping your clients make the same leap so that they can truly leverage the tools that you might be building for them. So I've been trying to unpack how things have really changed since I started using AI as much as I do. And I was doing a task this week, and I thought I'd use it as an example to show like the old me and the new me doing the same kind of thing. And for me that was writing the launch marketing plan for our new platform, which is coming in the next few weeks. So excited, I had all these ideas, and old me would have been like, okay, opens, clean, Google Doc, starts writing goals, objectives, milestones, strategies, tactics, timelines, all the things. Instead, I open my AI tool, and I start verbally dumping all of the ideas that I have around having a launch party, having prizes at that launch party, keeping the name of our platform a secret to create mystery, but maybe we could do some kind of like clue drops in emails that we're writing along the way. So I wanted to build that in. I wanted to actually outline and give myself like a roadmap for the podcasts that I'm doing up until that point, the emails that I'm sending my lists, the collaborations that I'm already secured and signed up to be part of over the next several weeks, all these things need to layer in and be considered as part of the strategy. So that's kind of what I was doing is like giving it the context of all these ideas, and within an hour, I had a fully fleshed out marketing plan that didn't just say what to do. It had

started to write the emails. It had started to outline the podcast episodes. It had started to give me an event structure for that launch event and what it might look like and like just way more detailed, right? So obviously, this is an example of like, how to be more efficient doing the thing that you're really good at doing already. But it was the actual process of how I approached it that I think is the thing to highlight, and that what has changed for me, and I wanted to share that so that you could recognize for yourself if that's also shifted in your brain, and if you're building AI tools to support your clients in whatever way and doing like, trying to take your expertise and turn it into a bot and give it to Somebody to try to use to help them get better results, then you probably have made this shift as well. And recognizing this matters, because once you understand what you've unlocked, you can use it to lead differently, create differently, and help your clients to get exponentially better results.

So these are the two phases, the distinct phases of AI use, and most people don't really realize when they cross from one to the other. It's like, how you know, how they say, once your brain knows something, it can't go back to it can't go back. It can't unknow that. It can't change the way that it works. So the first phase with. Adding AI into your work is using AI as an assistant. So I wanted to define this for the sake of, like, maybe you're here, or you remember when you were here, or your clients are here, and we can recognize that. So it's the idea of creating something first and then handing it to AI for some editing, polishing, maybe a gap analysis. Say you have a strategy, and you want to say, how do I see any holes in this? Is there anything I'm missing? Am I missing a perspective, that kind of thing? And that's really reactive. Ai, right? AI, can respond to what you already decided, and it's helpful, but it's definitely operating there inside of the boundaries of your own expertise and thinking.

But when you go into phase two, which is AI as a collaborator, you're bringing your ideas to AI before they're fully formed, and that gives AI the opportunity not just to refine but to expand and connect and suggest and build on what you are thinking about. So it really adds to your own ability. It allows you to operate beyond your own skill set and knowledge base and experience and pull in the entire rest of the internet, the learning language, or the large language model that has been trained on best practices in a lot of areas and things that you may not be an expert in yourself. So here you're co creating. It's not outsourcing. It's developing with your guidance, right?

So here is how to recognize that you've made this shift, or that people around you have made this shift. And I, again, I feel like the important reason for me having this conversation with you is that we tend to socialize and circulate in our own little echo chambers where everyone is doing kind of the same things. And I constantly need to be pulled back to the fact that not everybody is doing this like this. So if you are already collaborating with AI and using it in this way, you're ahead of the game, right? You're a leader in this space, and you get to own that. So recognizing this shift looks like you start conversations with AI instead of handing it finished work or significantly complete drafts, you're asking AI to help you think through problems, not just execute tasks. So I love this. For me, I'm very interactive with it. I like to just brain dump. Sometimes I don't even have a specific question or prompt. I'm just like, here's what I'm thinking. And then AI will be like, Hmm, what would I do with that information? And you could go, Hmm, that sounds good. Let's follow that train of thought. Or no, that's not what I was thinking. And then you give it a redirect, right? And that allows you to be surprised by the ideas that AI brings the table. And I feel like this is a good thing, right? You're it's like you have your own little team of other people with different perspectives, and that's just what you're using AI for. And do you find yourself building on what AI is suggesting for you, instead of just accepting or rejecting it like know that you still have the role of being the human to choose to integrate those things or to not and ultimately, what this means is that you've stopped thinking, Can ai do this for me? And you've started thinking, What can we create together? So this isn't something that you have to force or figure out. It just happens as you start working with AI more intentionally, but once you recognize that it happens, then you can

start leveraging it in ways that can completely change your business and your leadership.

So there are three key advantages that I want to point out to being an AI first thinker, so there may be some resistance, and maybe you faced it and overcome it yourself at some point. But this may be something that you're seeing with the people that you lead and like your clients and your students and whatnot, and that is the if I start, you know, giving too much TI or relying on AI too much, then it's taking away from my expertise as an individual. It devalues what I do if I'm leaning on it like this. And that's, I think, such an important hurdle to overcome that we have to recognize that once we've made this shift, it's actually a strategic advantage, and that first advantage is that you're expanding beyond your own expertise. Ai, isn't just doing things for you, it's teaching you, and it's helping you access knowledge, insights, perspectives that you don't have right now. Right You're no longer limited by what you already know how to do, because AI brings in those perspectives and frame. Works and approaches from outside of your area of expertise. So when I was doing my marketing plan, it doesn't just reflect marketing knowledge. It can pull in event planning, email strategy, content planning. I could have asked it to map out things that I really am familiar with, like ads and whatnot. I didn't go there because I'm still just like, not comfortable with that personally, but ultimately it allows you to create more comprehensive and strategic solutions for yourself, for your clients, etc. So it's really important to recognize that you're not replacing your expertise. Neither are the people who you are leading, it's that you're multiplying it, and you get to bring in those layers of insight and strategy that could have taken you years to develop on your own, would have required a whole team, maybe just didn't ever happen for you. And that is the true leverage power that we have access to here, which is so amazing.

So the second advantage of becoming an AI first thinker is that you lead with more confidence and strategic depth. When you're co creating with AI, you're not just executing. You're thinking at a higher level. You can see patterns, connections and opportunities faster. You can stress test ideas, explore alternatives, refine strategies in real time, and this makes you a better leader for your team, a better guide for your clients. I think this is such an important advancement, especially if you are working as a solopreneur, and you don't necessarily get the opportunity to get feedback on things that you're doing regularly. Now, you have a constant feedback loop that you can access, that you can ask to be the devil's advocate, that you can ask to poke holes in your thoughts and see what that leads you to, creating not just a better outcome, but being more confident in what you've created from the outset.

The third advantage that I want to talk about is how you can help your clients get better results. So when you understand how to think AI first, then you can teach your clients to do the same. This is really critical if you're building AI tools or you're integrating AI into your offers, because your clients now will get exponentially better results if they know how to collaborate with AI, not just use it. So if you're building a tool, and your clients are still thinking of AI as an assistant, like something that just responds to their commands, they're really only going to get a fraction of the value right. But if you can help them to make that shift into AI first thinking, they're going to start co creating with your tools in ways that blow their minds and their results are going to reflect that, and that's going to just lead to bettering everything that you're doing, moving your mission forward, creating more impact, Adding more value to the people that you support, and it's a shift that they have to make as well. So I think this is important to recognize, is to kind of observe and check in and learn where your people are at on this AI thinking journey, and know that helping them get across this particular barrier is going to result in better use and better outputs and better outcomes from the tools that you're creating for them. So really think about how to leverage that when you're building things for your clients.

Truly, if you're building AI tools or integrating AI into your offers, or you're helping your clients leverage AI in any way, then this shift to AI first thinking is one of the most important advantages that you can develop and one of the most valuable things that you can teach your clients. It's not really about using more tools or spending more time with AI, but it's about fundamentally changing how you think, how you create and how you solve problems, and once you make that shift, you're going to lead with more confidence, create with more depth, and help your clients get better results than they ever thought would be possible.

So just a short and sweet episode for you today, thinking through this shift that's happening in the world and where we all sit individually on the spectrum. I would love to hear from you what your thoughts are, and if you resonated with this and you realize that you want some support, thinking through how AI fits into your business or how you help your clients leverage it more effectively. I would love to support you. Feel free to book a free AI strategy chat using the link in the show notes. I'm going to tell you right now these calls will not be free forever, so you better get yourself on my calendar while I'm still kindly gifting my time before this turns into a paid. Solution which is coming soon. And if this episode helped you to see something differently, please share it with another entrepreneur who is navigating the shift too. I will talk to you next week.

Thank you for listening. If this episode got you thinking about how AI is impacting your business and what it might look like to integrate it in a way that actually fits. I'd love to help you think that through you can book an AI strategy chat using the link in the show notes. It's a space to talk about where you are, what's shifting, and how to move forward with intention. And if this episode was helpful, please share it with another business owner who's navigating this evolution too, and make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss what's coming next.