Episode 77: Revolutionize Your Digital Products with AI Insights from Gemma Bonham-Carter

Monica Froese [00:00:00]:

I am so excited for today because I get to officially welcome you back to the Empowered Business Podcast. And our first episode does not disappoint. I brought on one of my favorite business buddies ever. Her name is Gemma, and she runs an amazing online course business, and she has grown it into a sustainable 7 figure business. She truly has pioneered in this space AI and what that means for us. And our conversation is so insightful, and I promise it does not disappoint. So let’s tune in and hear all of Gemma’s best tips for growing a sustainable course business, digital product business, all with the help of AI. Welcome to the Empowered Business Podcast where strategy meets action.

Monica Froese [00:00:47]:

I’m Monica Froese, and I’m here to help you create, sell, and scale digital products the smart way using AI and proven strategies to build a sustainable profitable business. If you’re ready to turn your expertise into digital products that sell and eventually grow into a thriving digital shop, you’re in the right place. Each week, I break down real world tactics, unfiltered insights, and bold business moves because building a digital product business should be sustainable, scalable, and designed for long term success. Let’s ditch the fluff, leverage AI to work smarter, and turn your expertise into a thriving digital empire on your terms. Let’s get started. Gemma, welcome to the Empowered Business Podcast. I am so excited to be chatting with you today all about AI because this is you’re really the one that got me into this. And so what a great way to bring back the podcast with you.

Monica Froese [00:01:43]:

So welcome.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:01:45]:

So excited to be here. I am this is a topic that I feel like you and I can probably chat for hours about, so I’m excited to jam out on it with all your listeners. And, yeah, thanks for having me.

Monica Froese [00:01:55]:

Yeah. I always like to ask everyone when we kick off a show with a new guest to tell us about yourself, your business, and how you got started online.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:02:01]:

Sure. How much time you got? It was a journey. So, yeah, I run my business at it’s a personal brand business, so it’s gemmabombcarter.com. And I got online in 2010, so it’s been a hot minute, with similarly to Monica, I got started as a blogger in the kind of DIY projects and home decor space, and totally not with a business case. This was just a project. I was in public health working a nine to five job, and this was very much like, how can Gemma do the crafty creative stuff and do it on the side? But, you know, as it happened for a lot of people, I think, in that space at that time, suddenly a few years later, it had really turned into something and it was a side hustle for me. And I was speaking at a conference, a blogging conference, teaching about kind of like the monetization of blogging and how to make money as a blogger. And in that moment of giving that presentation, it was the first time I’d really taught something like that.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:02:58]:

Even though my blog was full of how to tutorials, this was like teaching business strategy. And a light bulb totally went off for me of, like, oh my gosh. This is so fun. This is what I love talking about. And so over then the course of many years, I left kind of the world of blogging, started selling online courses, became like a business mentor initially for bloggers and then later more for, like, course creators and coaches. And still doing that to this day. And so really, at this point, teach a lot about marketing, like digital marketing around courses and sort of digital products, that kind of thing, and coaching program. And then now have moved quite heavily into teaching about AI and all the fun things you can do with it.

Monica Froese [00:03:43]:

Your journey is very similar to mine. Yeah. Very, very similar. Okay. So the thing that really kicked this off with me wanting to have you on the podcast was when you were launching it was Passive Project, right, this past January? Mhmm. Okay. And that’s, like, your main program, basically, where your course creators are in there and you have a big AI spin now for Well,

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:04:02]:

so interestingly, Passive Project has always been about marketing know how for course creators. So I actually now we’ll see how this shakes out kind of by the end of the year, but I kind of now have two main programs. Pass a Project’s about marketing and I have AI dream team, which is more around using AI for your back end business operations.

Monica Froese [00:04:21]:

That’s the one I need. I actually probably will get that because that’s what I need. But aside from that, what kicked this off was when you were doing that launch, I was reading all your launch emails, which are always very inspirational and I love following your launches because you should learn from the best out there and you’re one of them. One of the emails that struck me was about, basically, information courses are going to be dead. And if you don’t get on board with how AI can help you, you’re gonna get left in the dust. And that email was like, we had a whole team call around it. I think I told you that. It sparked so much because what I have been saying, we are teaching people how to create lower ticket digital products, which is what our Empowered Business Lab is.

Monica Froese [00:05:01]:

And what I’ve been telling my students is, listen, AI will shoot you out a bunch of information. You can ask it anything, and it can systematize it, and it can shoot out information just like a course. Right? But what I’m telling people is that that information, though, you have to make it usable.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:05:18]:

Mhmm.

Monica Froese [00:05:18]:

You know? So, like, you can go to chat gbt and ask you anything, but how do you actually help people then go implement that thing? And that’s where our human uniqueness comes in. So that’s what I’ve been telling my students. And you had a little bit of a different spin for course creators on how they could keep themselves relevant that I want to talk about. So the email specifically really focused on the different ways to integrate AI into their courses, and I’m really, really interested in those different things that you’re teaching your students how to do.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:05:45]:

Yes. Yes. Okay. So yeah. AI, great. I mean, for things like efficiencies in business and operations and all that stuff. Great. But when it comes to selling courses, I do think that, as you mentioned, info only courses are going to zero.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:06:02]:

And so how can we make sure that our offers really stay relevant? And one of the ways if you think about the evolution of the online course world, which Monica and I have both been in this world long enough that we’ve seen this happen, is, like, initially, a course just with videos was all it had to be. And then came the era of spreadsheets and templates and tools and really usable things that we paired with those videos to make it like a really good course. And now we’re entering this arena of, like, okay, now the next iteration of that is can we integrate AI based tools, little micro tools that help whatever it is that we’re teaching about? Is there a tool that you can build to go along with that, to help your student implement? Because this is what we see. Right? The students come into our stuff and it can be challenging to get them to actually use the course that we built. And we’ve probably all done this too, buying courses and then they sit on the shelf and we don’t implement them. So again, putting this lens on of, like, okay, could I build an AI tool to help them actually implement this stuff? What’s the next step here? And so that was where I started just with my own program of, like, it took the first program I decided to do this for, and I really went through the entire curriculum and was like, where are the opportunities here where I could build some little usable tools? And I did it first with ChatGPT, and for everybody listening, you can build this might be new language for you, but you can build custom GPTs is what they’re called, and you can share those publicly with your audience. Once you’ve shared it, you’ve shared it. You have to be aware of that.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:07:38]:

If it’s something very proprietary that you would want to continue charging access for, you might want to build it on a different platform, like where they have to log in, if that makes sense, like some sort of subscription. But you can share these tools publicly with a link and embed them, you know, a link to it right inside of your program, and that’s what I did. And the feedback was really incredible. I even did one for my low ticket product called Black Friday in a box and used it as the lead magnet for getting people into that program. Really interesting avenues we can do there. And then the other piece of this is a lot of the students I work with offer coaching, right, inside of their programs. And so not that we’re getting rid of coaching, however, I think there’s a cool opportunity here to build I’ve been calling it like your AI coach clone, and you can train AI on your entire curriculum and then it would come to that program, and Monica, say you’ve done it for an entire program that you have. Give me the name of one of your programs.

Monica Froese [00:08:37]:

The Digital Shop Experience?

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:08:38]:

Okay. So you have an AI coach for the Digital Shop Experience that knows every lesson, every video transcript, every coaching call you’ve ever done for that program is trained to make this little Monica clone. And then people can log into the program and ask the Monica clone questions based on the curriculum so that they can get real time twenty four seven, three 60 five answers. And then what happens is your coaching calls that you may still have as part of your program suddenly become a lot higher level because the AI version of you can answer the kind of basic stuff. Right? The stuff that’s so repetitive in Facebook groups. And then your calls become so much more interesting because it’s the next level question. So it’s not that we’re getting rid of the human coaching, but I think it’s a really cool opportunity to enhance the coaching experience for our students.

Monica Froese [00:09:33]:

I have so many questions. Okay. This sounds amazing. I get this question all the time. So I’m sure people are thinking, okay, Gemma, but how do you train? And when we talk about ChatGPT, you’re gonna train them to be your clone? Is it a custom GPT you’re training to be your clone?

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:09:48]:

I don’t do my clone on ChatGPT GPT, and here’s why. When I talked about how, like, the once you’ve shared it, you’ve shared it kind of idea.

Monica Froese [00:09:56]:

Yes.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:09:56]:

If I’m building a very smart, essentially, mini coach, that is something that I wanna have behind some sort of paywall. And so I built mine actually on Zapier because I already had Zapier and it has this new functionality. Monica, you probably, if you are a Zapier user, you probably have it already. You just need to use it. It’s their chatbot feature. And I think it’s in beta at the moment. But honestly, there’s a thousand different pieces of software now that are doing this because it’s becoming easier and easier. So there’s so many different platforms now where you can do this.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:10:27]:

But the nice thing with Zapier is for me, it’s embedded in my program where they’re having to pay for continual access. It’s embedded in there. So the minute that they leave the program, they are removed from accessing it.

Monica Froese [00:10:41]:

I see what you’re saying. Because if you built it on chat g p t, that’s okay. Now you just connected the dots for me. Because if I built it there, then they you have to pay to be in your course every year. Right? Exactly. It’s a year long program. So then they could keep access to basically all of your content if Yes. You okay.

Monica Froese [00:10:56]:

So I had no idea about this with Zapier. This is brand new information for me. So it’s basically a chatbot that you’re training on your program.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:11:04]:

Yep. So it’s like the same idea of I’m gonna back up for a second and kind of explain AI assistance to everybody who’s listening. So you can call these a bunch of different things. If you’re a chat g p t user, they’re called custom g p t’s. If you’re a clode user, they’re called clode projects. If you’re a Gemini user, they’re called gems. It’s essentially a little AI assistant, and they all kinda work the same. When you wanna build one, sure, you give it, like, a name and a description, but there are two big pieces of this.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:11:32]:

One are the instructions, and this is where you’re, like, telling it how to act. So it would be like, if you were training a new customer service rep, it’s like, here are all of the things that you’re gonna do as a customer service rep for me. Those are the instructions. And then the knowledge files are all of the things that customer service rep would need to know about your business in order to represent you publicly for customer service. So that might be like, here are all of the programs we sell or the products we sell and everything about your business. You’re giving that new customer service rep, that’s in the knowledge files. So when we’re building these AI assistants, this is what we’re doing. We’re giving it the job description, and then we have to give it everything it needs to know.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:12:19]:

Sometimes those are examples, things that it can mimic, whatever. And when we build these AI coaching clones, it’s the same thing. It’s like, here are the instructions, here’s how I want you to interact with students, and how I want you to answer questions, etcetera. And then here is, essentially, all of my curriculum. So I’ve done a big exercise of, like, literally copying. I had not been organized with having this in one giant Google Doc. Right? So it was this big exercise of taking all of my stuff, getting all the transcripts from all the videos in my courses, getting transcripts from coaching calls, and putting it into a really usable format to essentially give it a library of in the knowledge files.

Monica Froese [00:13:00]:

So in the knowledge files that you literally took, like, a gigantic Google doc and

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:13:05]:

Gigantic. Yeah.

Monica Froese [00:13:06]:

Okay. So that reminds me when I get my courses copyrighted, that’s what I have to do. I have to make the everything has to be in a gigantic. So actually, we have that for our program because we copyright all of our courses. So I just okay. This makes plenty of sense to me. Wow. That is so smart.

Monica Froese [00:13:21]:

So have your students been using this in your

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:13:23]:

Yes. So it’s really fun, actually. Actually. The first one we built was embedded into my Course Creator School program. That was an interesting one in general because I was kinda moving away from offering ongoing coaching in that program. So for that particular program, it really was a, like, I’m turning this just into a sort of self study thing on its own. How can I make sure that there are somewhere that people can get questions answered and this was the solution for us? And it’s so fun because I can go into the back end of Zapier and see what they’ve been asking and see how it’s been answering it and just make sure that the answers are aligned with what I would want it to say. And it’s really fun to see what people are asking.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:14:00]:

Because that can also give you clues of, like, okay, people are really stuck on this. Yep. Or just give you a sense of, like, how people are working through your program.

Monica Froese [00:14:08]:

And how are the answers? Are they Yeah. They’re good.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:14:12]:

Yeah. No. They sound like me. So here’s my other hot tip. And this is for building out your coach clone, but then also for building literally any AI assistant that you’re building. I have something called a brand book. And if anybody is interested in I have little products that teach you how to do these things. So I have the two hour brand book, and actually the bump offer on there is the AI coach clone.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:14:35]:

So people can go and Yeah.

Monica Froese [00:14:37]:

I heard that your brand book is phenomenal.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:14:39]:

You know what? I’ve gotten really good feedback about it. So it used to be called Brand Book in a Day. We’re just actually renaming it the two hour brand book, but you could it’s gemmabottomkirk.com/brand. And essentially what this brand book is is your holy grail document about your business. So it’s not just about you and the offers you sell, but it is the deepest dive on your target audience you have ever developed. It is your writing styles, samples of your writing. It is really everything that you could ever need for your business in one Google Doc. And then the beauty of that is when it’s all in one place, in one document, you put that in the knowledge files for every AI assistant you build, and you don’t have to retell it about you or your people or your writing style ever again.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:15:27]:

It’s all in one spot.

Monica Froese [00:15:28]:

So this is interesting. So what we did to get something similar was Haley had been using ChatGPT for a while to assist our emails. So she had trained it decent amount on the brand, and I was coming in late to the game with getting on board with this. And so I was like, I feel like we need so that we’re on the same page with what we’re getting from our respective chat GPTs. We need, like, the similar brand voice, essentially. And she asked it to create it for us. And she came back and she it was, like, three pages it gave us, basically writing in my voice. And she was, like, so excited.

Monica Froese [00:16:04]:

She’s like, oh my gosh. It understands us. It was so spot on. So I guess if you’ve been using it for a while, you can also ask it to do that for you

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:16:12]:

too. Totally. Yeah. That’s an amazing example of that. And then you’re right. Over time, when you use one platform, AI platform, over and over, it does get better and better. I have definitely found that. The one piece I would say about the brand book that is especially helpful to use really thoughtful prompts, and we’ve laid it out inside of our little mini program here, is around the audience and better defining exactly if this is not your basic, oh, I target, you know, women aged 25 to 55 who shop at Target.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:16:43]:

It’s not that at all. It’s what are the trigger events for those people that are gonna make them purchase a product from you? What is the dream scenario that they’re going for versus the dreaded scenario? So you can really speak to those things in your content, and it brings your ideal person into it’s probably the part of the two hour brand book that I’ve gotten the most feedback on is people saying, I never understood or articulated my audience as well as I have now because we do the same thing with our brand book. Like, we’re using ChatGPT or Clode or whatever to help us write it. Like, we’re not starting from scratch and writing a brand book from scratch. That ain’t what this is. It’s like high level prompts to get it to write it for us. And actually, it was really funny. I got a message from Kelly Ruda, who was someone who purchased it a little while ago.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:17:32]:

She wrote back and she’s like, Gemma, my brand book is a 35 pages. She’s like, oh, I went real deep with those prompts. And so that just kinda gives you a sense of the thoroughness that we’re going with this brand new.

Monica Froese [00:17:45]:

Now I have not done it, but I’ve heard so many good things about it that I would tell everyone because that’s one of the biggest questions that we get is, how do you train it on your voice and stuff?

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:17:54]:

And the best thing too is, like, it does a really good job, I find, of mimicking examples. Another hot tip is, let’s say you create one one thing I like to do is have, like, a custom GPT per product that I have, and rather than it having very specific tasks, it’s more that that product is trained on the sales page, the testimonials, everything about this product. And then I can come to it and say, okay, I just saw an ad Monica was running, and I was so inspired by the way that she did her copy in her ad. So I’m gonna put it in here and say, I want you to mimic this style, structure, the way she’s written her copy, but apply it to my product and write me ad copy that mimics hers. I find AI does this so well. When you give it an exact example and again, this is gonna be a really good moment not for you to pull from people in your own industry industry. It would be perfect for you to find this is where it’s really helpful to be watching other industries and niches and what they’re doing.

Monica Froese [00:19:04]:

Yes.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:19:04]:

And then be able to be like, ah, that hotel ran such a cool ad. I wanna be doing something like that and get AI to help you with it.

Monica Froese [00:19:12]:

I love that. I put in the digital shop experience sales page, and then I put in all like, we have so many good testimonials for that program, detailed ones. And I just kept hitting it with all these testimonials and it came back and it was pretty much, you should rewrite your sales page like this. And it wasn’t wrong. It was basically like, you do not highlight well enough Right. On your sales page the awesome result and just, like, the way it worded it. I was compelled. I was like, I buy the program now.

Monica Froese [00:19:41]:

Or you know And

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:19:42]:

you know what’s so smart about that is you probably the vast majority of your audience, Monica, relate to the words that your testimonials come in versus your words. Right? So to get the sales page from that lens will probably convert even better.

Monica Froese [00:19:58]:

Yeah. And one of the things we picked up on your sales page, Haley had said, because we were following your launch. She’s like, yeah. Gemma sales page is basically a big long testimonial, which is smart. That was where, like, your main focus was. And we recognized, we’re like, we don’t highlight our testimonials enough, and that’s what gets people to buy.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:20:16]:

Yes. It does. That social proof, I feel like especially today. Yeah. Right? Like, when there’s more competition in every industry online than ever before, if you can lean into your social proof more and just demonstrate, hey, this really works. Yeah. I think that goes a long way in helping make the purchasing decision.

Monica Froese [00:20:35]:

One of the things that I recently did is I also wanted to train it on my timeline, because I’m going to be doing an episode that will be coming out in a couple weeks about the twelve years I’ve been in online business and all the lessons learned. And I’ve recorded so many things over the years of year end reviews and there’s just so much content that I have out there. So I’m currently loading it into the knowledge base, so it knows and then it’s I’m gonna have it help me draft the episode. But I was like, I want it to understand my timeline. So I went through, like, a series of prompts of, okay, I’m gonna start telling you all about my different brands and how they integrate together. Mhmm. And I just start my daughter was next to me. She’s like, mom, you are very focused.

Monica Froese [00:21:11]:

Because I typed the entire redefining mom story from scratch, starting with her birth. And I was like, well, I’m talking about your birth right now, kid. And so I typed it all out. I’m sure you know this, but for the audience, it asked such thoughtful questions. I typed out my whole story and it’s like, tell me more about this, or maybe you could expand here. And it was just like, woah. Those are things I never thought to include in my own story. Yes.

Monica Froese [00:21:33]:

And it got so much more out of me. It gets in your head. It’s so funny. It gets to know you so well that it’s like, wait, you know things about me that I almost forgot about or something, you know? It it was wild. So then I had to come back and I say, okay. Give me my twelve year online business timeline. And, honestly, it was 95% correct. There was just a few date things I had to change, but it was like, wow.

Monica Froese [00:21:55]:

That made me sound cool.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:21:57]:

Totally. I know. Sometimes I’m like, wow. It really it honestly feels like it often is a better job than what I would have done on my own. And I will say for people listening who are like, I don’t know, Gemma, what you’re talking about because when I first started with it, it definitely sounded robotic, terrible, and the copy was so generic. Can we talk about how often it uses the rocket emoji? I’m like, come on, rocket emoji. Like, we’ve gotta dial that down. But it is exactly what you’re talking about.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:22:24]:

It’s in the training. And the more that you can put the work in to do that, the more you’ll get to the point where you can hit enter and get Yes. A 99% there solution.

Monica Froese [00:22:37]:

Do you do anything to make it fun? Because I trained mine on my love for Buffalo Bills, And so it makes jokes about our wide rights and all the bad things. It said something about Josh Allen the one day, and I was like, excuse me, we never make fun of Josh Allen. I came back and apologized to me. I have a student who is in the faith niche, and she was like, the other day it prayed for me. And I was like, well, I’m not in the faith niche, and it’s never prayed for me. That’s But it’s just so interesting.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:23:03]:

So that’s one of the things that we talk about a little bit in the brand book is it’s really important in your brand book to put some of those things. So it could be as simple as what are the words or phrases that you do say versus the ones that you would never say, and we need to put that in the brand book so that’s very clear. And then to your point, what are the analogies or the pop culture references that you like to make and put those in there? So for me, it would be something, you know, it’s usually like Real Housewives related or, you know, it’s like bad reality television. And I often also will tell it, like, use analogies that would appeal to millennials because That’s so smart. Yeah. Because then it’ll often do ones. It’ll think of, okay, what are analogies to do with millennials. Right? It doesn’t need me to come up with them, but then it’ll say them and, like, I’ll laugh.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:23:51]:

I’m like, oh, yeah. That’s perfect.

Monica Froese [00:23:53]:

You know? Yes. And it’s so funny because with our shop, we spent so much brainpower coming up with unique different sales campaigns. So we’ve done sales campaigns around Mean Girls and Taylor Swift, because I’m also a Swifty, and the Black Hills. Every time we kick off, we do something for the home opener and stuff. And now, it knows me so well that it comes up with so much more unique spins that would have taken me like, I just maybe never would have thought about it or, like, the amount of mental energy that it took me to come up with it. Yeah. When we just mapped out the rest of our shop promotions, I literally just dumped into it all of the products currently in our shop. And I’m like, we want to redo these products with an AI spin.

Monica Froese [00:24:34]:

We want to theme the months and it came up with this entire plan for us. And Yeah. Very little modification I had to do. I had to modify it a little bit based on, like, moving around months. But like I’ve said, having a $20 employee in that pocket is incredible. The thing now that I’m curious about, when you rewind to one of the first things you said, which was integrating, like, little AI bots along the way to help your students essentially make it through your program. Because Yeah. Course creators have struggled with this forever, getting people to actually complete their courses and take action.

Monica Froese [00:25:06]:

So what kind of AI, like, bots are you doing? And how are you def program too that you’re using for?

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:25:13]:

Well, so these ones, I’ve only just built on ChatGPT as custom GPTs because I was okay with they’re so small, like, they’re these little tools that I was okay with, you know, if it’s shared, it’s shared type idea. And they have paid me, like, they’re in my program, so I’m happy to give them access to these. So as an example, for inside of my email fix program, which is about, like, how to have a great email newsletter strategy, there’s one that will spit out subject lines for you that are trained on high open rate subject lines, like proven subject lines, best practices, my own subject lines that have done really well. And I trained it on all of those, and so they can just come in, they drop their email copy, and it produces, I think it’s like 10 subject lines and 10 preview text that go along with those subject lines.

Monica Froese [00:26:00]:

So that’s in the knowledge base. You essentially upload it. Here’s an example. Here are tons of examples of high converting emails. Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:26:09]:

Yeah. So that’s one. And then another one is in that same program is I have these kind of, like, four categories of email types that I really recommend people send at least one per month. So if they’re on a weekly schedule, they can hit all four. And if they do more than that, great. But I trained the AI assistant on those four and examples from those four. And so people can come into that and plan what their emails are going to be for the month using this tool. So those are like examples where it was already in my curriculum.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:26:41]:

Right? I’m not creating anything new. It’s me going through the curriculum with the lens of, okay, where can I create a little usable tool for this? And this is, like, for every niche. Right? If you are in health and wellness and you do something around food or nutrition, I’m sure that there’s a little thing that you could do for I hey. I built one for meal planning for my own self, like, for my personal use. Right? If you may yeah. Like, maybe you have a meal planner that’s based on your recommendations in your program. Things like that, you can build on ChatGPT. Now back to I don’t wanna go too deep into this and confuse anybody, but back to the idea of what if we wanna build one where people have to log in to use it.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:27:25]:

Because maybe we’re actually thinking, oh, maybe the tool is the product. What if I wanna do that? That’s when you can build these days on no code builders that are just like, you guys, it’s gotten so easy that if you have a really good idea, you can build something quite quickly. So there’s a platform called Picaxe, pickaxeproject.com. So pickaxeproject.com. And then the other one that comes to mind is Bubble. It’s another one that’s often used. I would say pickaxe is easier. You have to be a little more techy for Bubble.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:28:02]:

So those are two options and there are others, but those are options where you can build out these tools that would be like a piece of software, essentially, in your business and you can move from being someone who sells only digital products to actually being like a software founder.

Monica Froese [00:28:18]:

So sort of like micro tools.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:28:20]:

Yeah. Totally.

Monica Froese [00:28:20]:

Have you built any of these?

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:28:22]:

So okay. This I haven’t built any that I’ve gone public with. I have built some in the background that we’ve been playing with. I will tell you, I am super in my head about which one do I decide to kind of turn into a thing. The first one I built was around helping people do email marketing better, and it would basically just be like an email copywriter based on my own sort of style and best practices that I know to be true about email copywriting. And there are so many out there now. And then I had another idea. One of the first AI assistants, like custom GPTs that I built, was to help me produce my podcast.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:29:03]:

And essentially it was I hated the generic ones. So with podcast players, they’ve all integrated AI now, but the show notes, the titles that their integrated one would give me were really generic and did not sound like me. So I was like, you know, I just want to have one that’s in my exact style with my kind of like blunt or slightly edgy, like, podcast titles. And I also need, like, an SEO blurb and I need all of these other things, right, for producing a podcast. So I built a custom GPT for it, and literally all I have to do is dump the transcript from my podcast, click enter, and it gives me show notes, titles, SEO blurb, an email, like, everything I need in one click of a button. And I trained it so well that it’s like they’re bang on from the first jump. So that one, I was like, oh, maybe this should be my piece of software. Like, I’ll sell this and people can customize it and it’ll be like a little podcast production tool.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:29:59]:

And, Monica, I’m just in my head about it. I I haven’t pulled the trigger on which one I actually wanna kind of turn into a little paid tool.

Monica Froese [00:30:06]:

This is such a good conversation. Okay. Have you ever used Cast Magic?

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:30:11]:

Yeah.

Monica Froese [00:30:12]:

Okay. We use Cast Magic quite heavily for Okay. Uploading our trans like, when we have a coffee chat, we upload it and then it’s really helpful because then it helps us pick out the key things. Sometimes on my coffee chats, I say very smart things that will go into the abyss if, you know, and it pulls it out to what now that the podcast is coming back, we’re actually taking in house the exact stuff you’re talking about. So we used to outsource our show notes and all of that. And I’m like, you know what? No. I mean, I have a team. We are capable of especially with AI.

Monica Froese [00:30:40]:

We should be able to accomplish this rather fast. Totally. We were gonna use Cast Magic and it made me think listening to you. And I don’t know the answer to this, to be honest with you. Over time, we’ve uploaded so many transcripts and stuff into or, you know, videos and audios into Cast Magic. Is it trained similarly to ChatGPT where it gets to know us better the more we upload?

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:31:01]:

Maybe. I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t use it currently. So, yeah, I’m not sure. Part of my other the hang up for me about releasing a piece of software and even all of the like CastMagic or all of the other ones that are out there now is that a part of me is like, well, if I can just build all of these though on ChatGPT or Clode, why have a piece of software for it? Right? For example, if me thinking about selling one. Yeah. The podcast one is a great example. Why sell this as a piece of software when I can just teach people how to make the AI assistant that can do it for them custom for them? Right? That’s when I sort of came up with my AI dream team offer that I beta sold in Black Friday week, and it was, oh my gosh, been such a huge hit with, I think we had almost a hundred k of sales in the one day of AI dream team, and we’ve been rolling it out in this early part of 2025 to such, like, good testimonials and feedback.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:32:01]:

And essentially, that is what that program is doing. Instead of needing 10 different pieces of software, let’s just get really good at building out these AI assistants on chat g p t and cloud.

Monica Froese [00:32:12]:

See, to me, that makes more sense because I feel like there’s so much different AI tools out there. And I’ve told my students, I’m like, listen, don’t overwhelm yourself because there’s so many different so that’s why we’ve really honed in on just ChatGPT right now with our students because, like, if you’re new to AI too, the number like, do I really want to go somewhere different from my podcast? Exactly.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:32:32]:

You know, it’d be great actually

Monica Froese [00:32:34]:

if it was all. And plus, the more you put into ChatGPT, the more it understands about you. So it feels like that would be the best way to go. I do have another question though for you. When you say Claude, is it what other people call Claude?

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:32:45]:

Sorry. Yeah. It’s probably like my Canadian accent.

Monica Froese [00:32:47]:

Well, because I just wanted to make sure because I thought that’s what it was. And I found people were it’s kinda like niche or niche. Right?

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:32:53]:

It’s probably what how did you

Monica Froese [00:32:54]:

say it? Claude? Claude. I said Claude. I say Claude.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:32:58]:

Yeah. Yeah. I’m sure it’s Claude. And then you guys, I’m Canadian and there’s, like, a lot of French speaking in Canada. Right? And so au would be like an o sound.

Monica Froese [00:33:08]:

Okay.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:33:09]:

That’s why I say Claude.

Monica Froese [00:33:10]:

Because I live on the Canadian border pretty much. And we in Buffalo, we have weird accents as well. Don’t get me. Well, no. Actually, we say our a’s different. I say a all the time for can because Yes. You know. Okay.

Monica Froese [00:33:21]:

I just wanna make sure we’re on the same page because my next question is, what do you use ChatGPT for versus I’m gonna say Claude. Yeah. Yeah.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:33:29]:

Great question. And I get this one a lot. So I honestly think for people who are listening, if you are someone who’s already used Claude a lot or you’ve used Chatopizzy a lot, just stick with the one you like. You don’t need both. That’s my first thing is, like, I don’t feel any way there’s a better or worse one. I will say I do pay for both because I’m so deep into this that I really wanted to, like, understand them. And I’ve now kind of seen that there’s certain things that Claude does better for me. It sometimes can do better writing, especially when we’re talking about long form writing.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:34:06]:

It can be a more powerful thought, like, a powerful thinker in a way than Chat GPT. But I will say ChatGPT crushes it on my, like, short and snappy stuff, and it crushes it on repetitive tasks, like, that I’ve built custom GPTs for. So I still go to both. And sometimes if it’s something really important, let’s say I’m getting it to write a sales page or something, I’ll do the prompt, like, in both to see what the results are like. And then the one I like better, I’ll keep going with it on that, if that makes sense. Yeah.

Monica Froese [00:34:43]:

Okay.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:34:43]:

But I will just say for anybody listening that Quad doesn’t allow you to publicly share the AI assistants like you can with custom GPTs. So if that part of our conversation today is of interest, like if you’re wanting to build custom GPTs that you might share with your audience, you have to do that on ChatGPT. Claws are internal only.

Monica Froese [00:35:05]:

Okay. This leads me to my next question, which is, ChatGPT, which level do you have? I have to go back and look. The one I’m on is the $20 1.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:35:13]:

I think I’m just on the $20 1. Yeah.

Monica Froese [00:35:16]:

Yeah. So people ask me about that all the time, and I’m always like, well, I mean, you can just ask chatGPT to tell you why you should be on the paid level. I always Totally. Just ask it. But I believe the reason to pay for it, the main reason, is because you can’t do custom GPTs without it without the paid.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:35:33]:

You have to have the paid to I think you can do custom GPTs for internal, but maybe you can’t share them. Okay. If you don’t have the $20 a month plan yet. Or but maybe you can’t use them at all. I always tell everybody they have to get the $20

Monica Froese [00:35:48]:

month plan. Using free chat g p t versus

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:35:49]:

the $20 month to me is such a no brainer.

Monica Froese [00:35:51]:

Yeah. The same. I that get that’s what we tell people too. Okay. I’m curious on your thoughts on this. So one of the things that I get a lot is that I don’t know where to start. AI seems very overwhelming and I get it because, honestly, it seemed overwhelming to me too until I dove in and I’m like, holy cow, this has changed my life. Right.

Monica Froese [00:36:09]:

It’s they don’t know where to start. And one of the things I’ve been telling people is, instead of going to Google, go to ChatGPT.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:36:15]:

Totally. That’s a great tip because you’re just inherently gonna start to pick up how it works the more questions you ask it. And it doesn’t even have to be about business stuff. Go to ChatGPT and ask it to plan the one week holiday you’re taking to Mexico or something and get it to tell you biggest sites to see in Cabo or wherever you’re going. Right? Like, get use it as a partner like that. Use it to help you plan some meals, whatever it looks like. Because then, like you said, you’ll get in the swing of how it works and just become accustomed to it. And then what I would say is once you wanna do something for business, rather than thinking about it as this giant thing where we wanna automate all the tasks and use it for everything, let’s start with one.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:36:57]:

Let’s start with one task that we wanted to help with. So maybe we want it to help with our inbox. Maybe we wanna help it, like, customer service emails. And so let’s just start there and start with, okay, what should I be doing here? How can I build something? What would I say to train it on our voice? Can I put in an email that we’ve received and ask it to draft an example? Have some back and forth with prompting, because that was a big part of understanding is, like, when AI first kinda came out, the people who excelled with using AI were the people who dove deeply into prompt engineering. That was kind of like the term that’s used for someone who really understands how to prompt the model. And I feel like the people who understand prompt engineering, then the next iteration, which are these, like, AI agents or custom GPTs or whatever, it’s an easier jump because we kind of already understand the prompting idea, and now it’s, like, just prompting two point o when we build these assistants. Right? So you kind of need to get that baseline. And then just once you’ve done one thing and then you’ve kind of figured it out, you’re then gonna get encouraged to, like, just wanna keep going.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:38:09]:

Oh, yeah.

Monica Froese [00:38:10]:

Well, so I went to it. One of the early things I did was I had to make a return to Old Navy, but the return was I got it at the factory store. So I wanted to know if I could return it at the regular store because at the factory stores further away. And also, I was outside my thirty day return window. So I asked it. I went and said, hey, I have this return. First, can I return it at the normal store? It’s a factory store and I am outside the thirty day policy. And what it did, this is what it really connected for me.

Monica Froese [00:38:38]:

Because if I had put that into Google, I would have had to go with multiple places to get answers. It gave me the answer at one. First, it told me, yes, you can return it at the store. And then it gave me all these examples of people who are successful at returning past the thirty day mark. And this is how they did it. And, oh, just so you know, there’s also a five day grace period. I’m like, that would have taken me how long and how many Google clicks because they pulled in some Reddit threads for me. And I was like, wait a minute.

Monica Froese [00:39:06]:

So then I went one of the other things I did that fill the amount of time and waste that it saved me. So I don’t have my kids half the time. And what I was finding was ordering groceries was we were wasting a lot because sometimes I’m on a two two and sometimes I’m on a five five. So if you only have the kids for two days, like, you order groceries, then they’re gone and it’s just me. And I had weight loss surgery. I don’t eat a lot. Yeah. So I prompted it with all this, like, this is what I like to eat.

Monica Froese [00:39:31]:

And I was like, on my five day stretches without the girls, I don’t wanna spend any more than $75. I had the gastric sleeve surgery. Here is how I eat. Here’s the things I like, and here’s the store I shop at. What? I was just like, this is the amount of time that that would have taken me, and I have wasted so much less food, and it now it knows, like, my preferences, now it knows my kids’ preferences. So I’ll go to it and be like, hey, I’m gonna actually have the kids for a seven day stretch. What should I order pretty much? And it, like, knows me and the kids so well.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:40:06]:

I think one of the very cool things about that is because I’ve used it for something similar to and other personal life things. The mental load that it can help you alleviate is huge. Yeah. And often, those are the things that I mean, not always, but, like, fall on women. Yeah. And the more women can be using AI to, a, do that, to lighten the mental load, and b, to get on board with this and, like, be big voices in where AI is going and how it’s shaping in new and existing industries, I think is really important because this is here. It is here to stay. It is only going to keep improving and keep infiltrating into all of these different areas of our lives, and I would like to see women be a part of that.

Monica Froese [00:40:56]:

I completely agree. And, honestly, it fits so well into relaunching Redefining Mom for us because, I mean, the whole brand was started because of really the load on mothers. Not like when you enter motherhood, the things that you don’t know until you’re thrust into it. And then that’s how that whole brand started. And so, actually, we just launched I’m gonna give a little plug for this because I’m excited. They’re in presale right now, but a series of four workshops on the redefining mom brand and they’re called AI mom hacks because Love that. I now run this house by myself. Like, the amount of stuff that like, maintenance, I’m so thankful I have a new build because I can’t imagine if things were breaking on me left and right as a single mom.

Monica Froese [00:41:34]:

But there’s just so much mental load to run the house by myself and all the little things that go into it. And so I’ve trained Chi Chi BT to help me. It came up with a schedule for, like, our home maintenance for fall, spring, and I’m like, this is perfect because these are things that my ex did. And I didn’t know I had to turn off the sprinkler thing so that didn’t freeze in the winter. Like, what? And I I went to it and I was like, hey, I’m a new single mom and I have to winterize my house for the first time. What do I need to do? Yeah. And it told me.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:42:02]:

It’s like a coach. Right? For all areas of our lives, you can treat it like your personal coach.

Monica Froese [00:42:08]:

Yes. And I know some people that go in and tell it in the morning, like, this is how I’m feeling and this and it coaches you to, like, start getting organized to get your day. You know, like, I have too many thoughts in my head, too many things going on, and I don’t know where to start and it, like, helps people both kinds.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:42:23]:

I’ve heard that too, actually. And people who are neurodiverse in different ways,

Monica Froese [00:42:27]:

and they’ve been able

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:42:28]:

to use the tool to really complement how their brain works and how they need support.

Monica Froese [00:42:33]:

Which is just so amazing. And that’s Yeah. I know, me and you are definitely not, the sky is falling because AI is here. And I feel like I’m one of the that I’d like to leave people with that I told my students the other day because I get all the time, like, AI is gonna destroy this or take away all these jobs. And I said, you know, when I moved into my last house, we had a milk door. And I remember my daughter, when she was like three, was like, what’s the door on the side of the house? I was like, that’s what a milk man used to put the milk. And she was she just giggled. I go, yeah.

Monica Froese [00:43:01]:

There used to be daily milk deliveries because there wasn’t a way to keep the milk fresh because there weren’t refrigerators. And she was blown away. And I said to my students, I said, the milkman doesn’t exist anymore. Technology created a need, filled that gap where we don’t need milkman. Does that mean that the milkman didn’t have any other opportunity to work in the world? New jobs are formed because of this too.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:43:21]:

Exactly. A % agree. And I think there are even beyond what we’re talking about today of, like, business application, there are so many incredible problems that may be solved thanks to AI. Like, when I think about it in terms of applying it into medical research and all of these different areas that it could really be transformative, there will be new jobs created from this tech, as you said, and there will be, I think, a lot of incredible advances made thanks to it too.

Monica Froese [00:43:52]:

I agree. And I always tell people to keep in mind, one of the first products I’ve used ChatGPT for is to develop our divorce planner. And I tell people all the time, I’m like, ChatGPT is very helpful organizing the content for me, but it didn’t go through divorce. Exactly. It doesn’t give me a hug when I’m down, or it doesn’t understand the emotions of breaking up, like, your family breaking up. And so it cannot replace us as humans. It just can’t. It can help us improve our lives, though, if you use it the right way.

Monica Froese [00:44:20]:

Properly. Yeah. Properly.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:44:21]:

And this isn’t to, like, downgrade real concerns that people have about certain areas of AI. Like, absolutely. I think it’s important to be nuanced and educated on the topic, but use it where we can use it.

Monica Froese [00:44:34]:

Right? Yes. And a

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:44:35]:

lot of people were really nervous when the Internet came to be. Right? There was, like, a lot of nervousness around that and look at where we are today. Yeah. I think embracing it in positive ways is definitely the way forward.

Monica Froese [00:44:47]:

Yes. Agreed. Well, this is such a good chat. Thank you so much for joining us, sharing all of your course knowledge and how we’re gonna make sure as course creators, because I’m a course creator as well, and a lot of people in my audience are, how to not become obsolete, really. Yeah. Because we don’t want that. Okay. So what is the best way that people can connect with you?

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:45:05]:

Well, I have my own podcast as well. It’s called the Course Creator Show. So come on over and take a listen if you’re a podcast listener. I would love that. And I will make sure that Monica has all the links to some of the things that we talked about today. So if you’re interested in making your two hour brand book, it’s gemmabonhamcarter.com/brand. And on there, you can also add on the AI coach clone. I may put that as, like, a separate little product eventually, but for now, you have to buy them in tandem.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:45:30]:

And if you’re keen on learning about anything else we talked about today, just either hit me up on Instagram at gemma dot bonhamcarter or come find me. My website is gemmabonhamcarter.com.

Monica Froese [00:45:41]:

Awesome. Well, we’ll make sure to put all the links in the show notes, of course. And thank you so much again for this awesome conversation. I really enjoyed it.

Gemma Bonham-Carter [00:45:48]:

So fun. Thank you for having me.

Monica Froese [00:45:52]:

That’s a wrap on today’s episode, but your next step starts right now. If you’re serious about selling digital products and want the AI powered tools expert strategy and real human support to make it happen, then you need to check out the Empowered Business Society. Inside, you’ll get AI driven trainings to create and sell digital products faster, a private community for expert feedback and real time support, exclusive access to the Monica Memo podcast. And if you go pro, you’ll get monthly marketing shortcuts, live q and a’s, and 20% off of the empowered shop perpetually. Because smart business owners sell smarter, they don’t work harder. And the best part, you can get started for as little as $9. The best business growth happens when AI and real humans work together. Ready to make your next move? Join us inside of the Empowered Business Society.

Monica Froese [00:46:41]:

You can check us out at empoweredbusiness.co/society. See you in the next episode.