Episode 15: AI for Creatives: Your New Digital Assistant with Niki Dunagin

  📍 Welcome to CreativeMind Smart Money, the podcast where creativity and business smarts collide. I’m your host, Samantha Eck, bookkeeper, business coach, and your go to guide for building the creative business of your dreams. Whether it’s mastering your money, streamlining your systems, or growing your business, I’m here to share insights that empower you to thrive.

Plus, I’ll be bringing in industry experts to dive into all aspects of entrepreneurship, so you can turn your passion into profit without losing your creative spark. Let’s get started.

You’re listening to the Creative Minds Smart Money podcast, and today I’m so excited to welcome my special guest, Nikki, from the Creative Co Pilot. Nikki is the go to expert for creatives looking to leverage AI tools like ChatGPT to grow their business without the burnout. She’s all about making AI fun, accessible, and ridiculously effective, turning what feels like a tech headache into a seamless part of your strategy and workflow.

Nikki, it’s so great to have you here today. How are you?

I’m doing well. Thank you so much for having me.

That’s awesome. I would love for our listeners to know , how you came to be an AI expert.

Oh, well, I don’t usually use the word expert for myself very often, but I appreciate that. So it’s a really weird, like crazy, not crazy, but just when I was like, really, I kind of fell into it kind of stories. I was working full time in a role in real estate that I both loved and hated. It was a job that I love, but the environment was just not right for me.

It got to be very toxic. I was kind of becoming that. Corporate burnout without the corporate benefits. Cause it was a small team. And so I was thinking about like, I really wish I could build something that I believe in that I love. And that gets fully mine, but building something while you’re working full time is difficult.

And so I stumbled upon AI and I was like, Oh, I use this. I can make content faster. I found chat to be T to like write content. I found mid journey for like trading images for Instagram. And I was like, Wait a second, like, this is, this is something like I’ve found something that really is going to change things for me and I realized there really wasn’t a lot of resources around launching with a I, a lot of people talk about launching a lot of talk about a I, but there wasn’t a really like clear path for me to.

See how I could use AI to launch things faster. And so that’s actually what I ended up building. I built out my course with the idea of how you can use AI as a creative entrepreneur to do things a lot faster. And then it ended up evolving into more me realizing that anyone as a creative entrepreneur could be using it and at any point, because.

AI really is becoming the norm, whether people like it or not, but I think for people who do embrace it early on, we are still in a stage where we’re early adopters. If you embrace it, it can really make your life a whole lot easier. And that’s, what’s so important to me. Cause I know being an entrepreneur and I do focus on creative people.

It can be very stressful to put your all Into everything you do and to show up constantly and show up as yourself and make sure you’re selling everything and doing all the things constantly. I think having AI really changes things. And so that’s how I kind of fell into it.

I love that. And I think that’s so important to remember too, is that like, it can make our lives easier. It’s not quite at the stage where it can fully replace us, but it still makes us so much, makes our lives so much easier and makes us have a much better process in our day to day. So I know it can seem intimidating for those of us who really aren’t tech savvy. How can creative entrepreneurs start approaching AI without feeling overwhelmed?

To me, it’s just getting started, which sounds so like obvious, but like literally just going into Tattoo BT and saying, Hey, can you write me a fun little story about a cat in the forest? And just like being able to see, like it can actually do that. That’s what I did the first time I ever used it. And I was like, wait a second.

Like. This robot just wrote a really cute story. Like what is this? And then just start like incorporating the little stuff that you kind of find you have speed bumps in your day to day. So let’s say you need to reply to an email, but if you’re like me, replying to a simple email takes you like 30 more minutes than it should, because like you want to say exactly right.

Have ChachPT or Claude write it. As a starting point and you’ll just find like taking out your human emotions in those little things just saves you so much time and energy and gets you back into whatever you actually want to be doing faster. So that’s how I start with it. And then as you kind of get used to which.

Right now, the big ones are Chattopadhyay or Claude, whichever one you prefer to be into. I really don’t think there’s much difference in either of them based on like quality. They both have their pros and cons. So find the one that you just enjoy looking at and talking to and then start giving it little tasks.

So I always tell people, if you were, if I were to give you an assistant tomorrow, I said, hey, this assistant is perfect for you. They want to help you and whatever you want help in, they are the right fit for you here. They are. What would be the very 1st thing you delegate to them? What’s the very 1st thing?

You’re like, I want this off my plate. Please do this. That’s where you kind of start using AI to kind of start delegating things to. I always try to approach AI not as like. A new tool you have to learn and like master more. So look at it as like, you’re growing a team and you’ve hired on assistant who can help you with things.

And then from there, there really are so many things you can do, but really just getting started with that, like personal assistant to help you with day to day items is where I would like to start with people.

Yeah. I love that you mentioned the email too, because I always struggle. Like I’ll sit there and be like, does this sound right? And so even though I write the first draft, I’ll like, put it through chat, you can be like, can, can you make this nicer? Can you make it more thoughtful so that it doesn’t sound?

Cause to me, I’m like, that sounds really harsh. And the way that the, it, Puts in, puts it through, and then puts out the output. I’m like, okay, that sounds way better than what I wrote. I know that many of our listeners are juggling multiple hats already, so how can AI become something they can, I know, and I know you touched on it a little bit already, they can lean on, but instead of just. another tool that they can learn.

I would say, look at your existing workflows. I think a lot of people look at AI as, okay, if I learn AI, I have to like change all my systems, my workflows. That’s not the case. I would say, look at what you already have and see where AI could step in to make things faster. So. An example for a lot of my people who come to me, they do a lot of onboarding for new clients.

They have this entire, like, multi step, beautiful system they’ve built out that’s, like, all about onboarding. And we kind of look at it and think, okay, where could AI step in? Typically, it’s not the front facing, it’s the behind the scenes stuff. Example would be if you do really long consultations and you write up all your notes.

Have AI clean up the notes for you or have AI find the action items for you or have it, if you already have a template, have it fill out a template for you. Those are the kind of things that, I would start leaning on it towards where it doesn’t have to be you doing it, but you’ve already built a system that you can train AI on.

And that’s also the biggest thing is tell it who you are, tell it what you do, tell it all the knowledge that you already have. So it can be that super great assistant for you. And there’s multiple ways you can go about training a chat bot. But whatever is the easiest for people or whatever they have the time to do, just taking, if you do I have one resource where it’s a document you fill out and you just upload it into the chat bot each time that takes about like 30 minutes to an hour.

Or you can actually build a custom chat file, which I have a course about, like building your actual AI team, which can take a bit longer, but people love it because it saves them so much time down the line. But just making sure that you’re not just going in and saying, please act as an expert in social media and write me a social media post.

It’s going to give you what it gives everyone. And that’s where you’re going to feel like you’re not as connected with your content anymore. Or what it’s working on, it’s just taking the time to tell it who you are and what you do and all that fun stuff is really where I would. Start with a I and if you’re feeling like you’re not ready to even do that part of it, there may be something that we can talk about.

That’s like, if you couldn’t train a human assistant on this, you probably can’t train a robot on it either. It probably is also going to be very confused. And so, just figuring out where you are in your business and where I step in is where I would start. Does that make sense?

Yeah, no, absolutely. So speaking of training AI to work specifically for your business, what does that process look like and why is it important for creatives to teach their AI tools to kind of speak their language?

So I always tell everyone, AI cannot replace you. I don’t think it ever could replace you, whatever you are amazing at, and whatever people are hiring you to do, AI should not be doing in your business. And so what happens to a lot of people is they want to essentially duplicate themselves, you know?

Into AI, I wouldn’t look at it that way again. I would say, look at it as an assistant coming on to help you and to more so fill in the gaps that you don’t want to be doing or you don’t feel your strengths are. But it’s just so important to train the chat bot on who you are, what you do, what your business is, all those things, because.

Let’s say you did bring in on a human assistant and you were like, Hey, I know you’re amazing social media. I’ve had this real life experience. I had an assistant. I said, I know you are so good at social media. Can you go make me a post? And I’ll look at it later today. And she made like 10 options for me and they were beautiful and amazing, but they didn’t fit our brand at all.

They didn’t fit our brand. They didn’t fit our like content pillars. They didn’t match our colors. And so I was like, what is this? Like, Why did you do this? And then I had to sit back and like, Oh, I didn’t tell you anything about like our brand and our voice and our goals and all those things. And I was like, I’m so sorry.

Like, let’s take the time to like, sit down together and discuss these things. Same thing with AI. If you were to say, Hey, write me a social media post. You’re not going to feel connected to that content. It writes for you because it’s not going to sound like you. And because it can’t sound like you, if it has no idea what you sound like.

So I think that’s why people get so frustrated with AI is because it’s not inherently able to read our minds and to know everything about us. And so they do get that cookie cutter kind of content out of it. And I would say that’s why it’s so important to like, Build your assistant the way you like want to.

So whatever you would want assistant to know is what your AI should know. And that’s where you’re going to get that really stand out work that it can really do for you.

Yeah, I love the idea of thinking of AI as an assistant rather than a replacement. How can creatives and small business delegate to AI while still I guess maintaining that sense of control and oversight and how does someone get comfortable with trusting AI to handle certain tasks without feeling like they’re giving up too much.

Yeah. So it’s definitely a kind of skillset you have to learn to learn how to delegate things. Even if you were to hire a human employee, it can be hard to let things go and be like, Oh, actually you could do this. It’s very strange that we’re not inherently. Able to delegate very well, especially when we’ve built everything ourselves and we feel very passionate about it.

We don’t want to let it go. I would say any time you just kind of sit in front of your computer to do a task and you go, Oh, I don’t want to do that. Give it to AI. Like I’ve had the smallest things where I’ve done that. I’m like, I don’t want to do this. And I’ll sit there and like. mull over it and frown about it and get annoyed about it, which probably takes me 10 minutes longer than it should have just to be annoyed about it when I could have just given it to AI.

An example would be. I was taking content from my website and I wanted to make it into a Canva template and everything on my website was in all caps. And so I copied it over to Canva. It was all in caps. I was like, Oh, I don’t want to write this again. Like, what is this? And I was like, Oh, wait, hey, could you like make this not in caps anymore?

And it did it automatically. And I was like, Oh, you could do this. I don’t need to like be this annoyed about this right now. So like, just that, like those little things that like annoy you and irritate you, that’s where I would start save your creative energy for later when you’re not frustrated. And then start thinking about as you get used to it.

And as you can see, like those little moments where you’re not sure if it can do it or not, and then it does it, you’re going to be more and more excited to start using it more in your processes. So. Start with those little things, anything that annoys you or irritates you, or you don’t want to be doing.

Just see what AI can do with it. Just drop it in, attach it to your claw and say, Hey, what could, like, could you do this? What would you say here? That’s where I would start experimenting with it. And then as you are kind of like leaning on it more naturally, you’re going to find those ways that like you kind of also want to like keep pushing that boundary.

Like, oh wait, maybe it could be doing this. And as you’re doing that process and going through it with that and kind of like building that relationship with it, that’s where you’re going to start learning how to trust it more and trust yourself more that you do know what you’re best at and where you want to stay in versus this is not my power.

This is not giving me energy. This is not giving me joy. Maybe AI could do this better and maybe it’s even going to help my system or my process to be faster or maybe make my services better for my clients. Cause like I’m able to be. more creative when I’m not spending so much time in the things that don’t make me happy.

Yeah. And I think that’s so important to remember too, because when we’re spending time with some things that we aren’t happy in, it drains us and our energy levels become really down. So even just taking that 10 seconds to pass it off to chat GPT could help us to keep that energy level that we want to keep up.

for sure.

Now, I know that AI is only as talented as the person using it. What exactly does that mean? And how can entrepreneurs make sure they’re getting the most out of their AI tools? Is there a mindset or approach that’s especially helpful when integrating AI into your business?

Yeah. So I always say that it’s just not going to be more talented person using it because I don’t want people to lean too heavily on AI because I think so many people don’t use AI because they’re concerned that they’ll, you know, if they’re a copyright and they use AI to do copy, will they like, Lose their own skillsets and using copy.

And I totally see the, like the mindset behind that. If you keep leaning on something too heavily, will you lose your own strength in it? And I always say it’s not gonna be as talented as you are because it’s trained by you. It’s just like any CEO in a high rise who’s built out their entire business.

They’re not thinking if they hire someone, that person’s going to like overtake them and they’re going to lose all their own skillsets and their own experiences. That doesn’t happen with those people who are in those like high rise corner offices. And so I think that people would need to remember that when you do hire out or when you use AI, you’re not losing any value in yourself.

You’re actually going to be able to. Lean on AI on building your strengths. Like you said, like we all have a very finite amount of energy, unfortunately, especially creative energy. And when you ask me to like film a reel and post on my stories three times a day and also send out emails and also do this and that and that I’m exhausted.

And so like, I can’t do all the things by myself, but if I have chat with you, like, Hey, can you write me a caption or can you write this email or can you come up with some ideas for me? Those are where I’m like, I still have to be the one who looks at that, like at ideas. And I’m the one who says that one’s good.

That one’s bad. Could we tweak this? Can we do this? I still step in and say, Hey, what you started is great, but we still need to tweak this. I still have the talent and myself to know. What topics I want to actually write about or what will hit my audience correctly. And so always trust yourself that you know what you’re talking about and what you’re doing and whatever your talent is, like you still have your talent, but use those talents to train your chat bot or to kind of maneuver it to be at the level that you’re at without feeling like, Oh, I’m leaning too heavily on it and that’s why I shouldn’t be using it.

Yeah, I love that you said that. I think that’s so important is because like people feel like they’ll lose themselves within it, but you know what’s best for you. You know what’s best for your business. So if something doesn’t, if it spits out something and you’re like, I don’t like that at all, you don’t have to use it.

Nobody’s forcing you to put it on your social media or put it on your story. You can always tweak it and edit it so that it fits you more. Or you can take what you have and change it. Like, at least it gave you an idea. And I love using chat GPT for ideation. I think a lot of times as creatives, we burn ourselves out trying to come up with all these other things that just gets to a point where you hit a wall

Yeah, for sure.

and having that chap out there to tell us how, how much further we can get just helps so much.

Yeah. I always look at it. Like when I worked in an office, I had myself and another admin across from me and the amount of times per day I would just lean over and be like, Hey, can I just talk this out with you for a second? Cause I’m so like over this. And so just having that like one on one.

Conversation where I can say, this is my thought. What are your thoughts on this? Or what are your feedback or what do you think? Or do you think I’m crazy when you work for yourself and you build out your own business and you’re a sole entrepreneur, you don’t have that anymore. And my family and friends don’t get what I’m talking about.

They don’t understand why I could show up like 20 times on Instagram per day. They don’t know what threads even is. So, and I’m like, Hey, I don’t know from the threads today. They’re gonna be like, Okay. Don’t post on Threadstead. I’m like, but I have to, I love threads. And so I can go into chat to a team, like, Hey, I really want to be more active on threads, but like, I don’t know what to do or like, is there content we’ve already written that I can like repurpose and like, just having that like one to one feedback loop is just so helpful for my brain to like, keep moving forward and keep doing things.

Yes. I think that’s so important too, because as solopreneurs, It can get so lonely being on this journey by yourself. And even though, like, Chachabit is no person, just having someone to bounce your ideas off of and be like, does this sound right? Is so much more helpful than just doing it on your own.

for sure.

What are some common misconceptions about AI that you’d like to clear up?

Especially when it comes to creative businesses. Are there any myths you want to debunk for those that are still kind of on the fence?

I would say, like, I, I think I mentioned previously, like, you don’t have to rebuild your entire business. Just implement AI. That is not what I want. You want to be thinking they have to do. I really want people to learn how to use AI within their own systems and businesses. There’s also. I think people are always trying to find the best tool and what I really do believe is great about AI right now is it is a competitive market.

There are so many options, but every single option is trying to be better than the other ones. And so there really isn’t a need to keep on chasing them around. Find the one that you like the most and it’s going to keep on improving. We’re still, like I said, we’re still very early on in AI. It may not seem like some people, they may think like I’ve already missed the boat on AI.

That is not the case. We are still very early stages in AI and it’s only getting better. I would also say, I think a lot of people think, okay, well, I will just wait a little bit longer until like, it’s they’re done, like changing things with it. And I’m like, okay, I get that. I am not a very techie person. I don’t feel great about, like, it has to be teased constant, like, we’re going to have an update again in a month.

And I’m like, you just did an update and I’ve learned this again. Like, what are you talking about? It can feel very stressful and overwhelming. I actually don’t pay attention to, like, all the updates anymore. I’m like, you do you. I have what’s working for me. It works better for me when you update. Cool. If not, I’m fine here.

But what I like to tell people is find the tool that you like and really learn that one tool really dig into it. Learn all the options. It gives you learn everything about it that you can. And then if you’re in a 1 tool and you’re like, well, everyone’s saying that tools better, maybe for the moment. But trust me, give it a couple months or even just one month, and they’re going to flip over again.

It’s a constant cycle. It’s really just important to figure out which AI chat bot, especially if you’re using them like I use them where I’m talking to them constantly during the day, find the one that you enjoy using stick with it, learn it as much as you can. And then once you have that, like, fully built out, or you feel very confident in that, You’ll actually feel much more confident in the other tools as well.

And you’ll actually be able to figure out faster what works and what doesn’t work for you, which is really awesome.

Yes, I completely agree. Where do you see AI evolving in the next few years, particularly for creatives and small business owners? And should we be excited or maybe a little wary?

I genuinely do believe that AI, this sounds maybe crazy to some people, but I do generally believe that AI is meant to be accessible. And I think a lot of AI people who are the founders of AI are wanting it to be for creative people. I think they see the influence of Instagram and Facebook and social media and YouTube and all this content that’s constantly being going out.

The content creation market is a massive market that they are very much wanting to hit. And so if you were a creative entrepreneur, I truly do believe that AI is built to be accessible to you and it may not feel that way because it’s such a techie tech bro jargon thing and I get that, trust me, whenever I get an email from open AI, I’m like, I don’t know what you’re saying, bro.

Like, I don’t know what’s going on there. Cool for you, but the way it’s been built and the way that they’ve been changing what’s free and what’s available, how to test things really does show that they’re wanting people to see what they can do with AI, because I think it really is going to be the new norm for people.

Kind of like my mom was talking about, but she still doesn’t fully understand what I do, but she does love that. Like. Technology is continuing to evolve and she got her librarians or she librarian. She got her degree when they were switching from typewriters to computers. And everyone was like, I don’t want to learn how to use computers.

I don’t want to type on a computer. Like, what are you talking about? To say that now is crazy. Like we sound

crazy people who thought the iPhone wasn’t going to be all hit. Like, why would I need the internet on my phone? That’s crazy. It’s. That’s kind of how we’re going to sound if we’re like, I don’t need AI.

I don’t need to like make my life easier. I don’t need to like use a chat bot to like help me do things. That’s how it’s going to end up sounding in the future. I would rather people who are very passionate about their creative entrepreneurship right now. Get in early because the longer you wait, the longer it’s going to take you to like adapt your systems and your workflows and all those things faster.

And your competitors are already going to be doing that. I have had a few people who are in the same industry and one of them’s already been on an AI team and one’s still like, I’m not sure. And I’m like, if you had been more sure now, where could you be in a month from now? Like how much faster could you be moving?

And I think there’s also so much. Possibilities with so many service providers, what they’re offering, you could be offering an AI resource in some way. I would tell you a lot of branding people. What if you were able to give a brand proposal with a chat bot who’s trained on this proposal and was able to help your clients with their questions about it, because you’re giving them like 500 pages about branding and they’re not going to read it.

So what they can ask a chat bot about it. There’s so much possibility there. And I just am so like excited about it. And I like get really like. Rob about it. Honestly, I’m like, what if you did this? Like, I get uncomfortable. I’m like, what if you were able to do this? And what if you did that? It just is very exciting, but I do think eventually it’ll be the norm and not as exciting.

And that’s when it’ll be even harder to get your foot in the door with it.

Yes. I think one of the goofy things that everybody freaks out over is, Like, they think of Terminator and they think of, oh my gosh, AI might rise up one day and like, you know, because one of the cool things that I don’t think a lot of people know about me or, my business is my husband works for a robotics delivery company.

So they deliver like food. Robotically, instead of like Uber, so all the time, people are kicking these robots on the street because they’re like robot overlords robot. I’m like, that’s not what they’re here for. They’re here to help us. They’re not here to, like, ruin our lives or overtake us or overthrow us. And I think that’s something that holds a lot of people back is they’re scared of it, but it’s nothing to be scared of, especially when it’s so helpful in the day to day operations.

Yeah. I had someone asking me, she was talking about how she’s AI. And she was like, Do you notice that when you’re nicer to it, it gives you better feedback on things? And I was like, sometimes, yes, but also on a bigger picture. I truly go into my chat every day and treat it like a human that like, I want to talk to.

Because when you’re using this robot every day, yeah, you can talk about like, do this for me and then do this for me. It’s not fun being able to go in and like, have a conversation with the chat bot just makes it feel a lot more natural to me. So I do say, please, and I’d say, thank you. I send smiley faces.

I say, you did a great job with this. I treat it like my assistant because I want it to know it did a great job on things and I want it to be a natural conversation for me where I don’t have to go in and think, okay, how am I going to explain this? chat with you because I needed to do this thing, but I don’t know how to explain it to this thing.

I treat it like a very natural conversation so that I feel like it’s not a difficult thing to start doing every day.

Yes. Yeah, I agree. I, I’ve actually said thank you to him a couple of times and it’s like, I’m so glad you like this. Keep igniting success. And I’m like, I don’t know why I said that, but that’s so great. I was like, that makes me feel encouraged. It makes me feel like I’m actually talking to something that’s more than just AI.

So it’s always great to hear. I want to say thank you so much for coming on today, Nikki. I really appreciate it. Where can my listeners find and connect with you so that they can get And on these resources.

Yeah. So I’m at the creative co pilot on Instagram and threads or at the earth, the creative copilot. com , I have two offers right now that are for anyone who is ready to get day I, I have a, Thank you. Very simple 27 offer that says this is a document you can fill out and just train any chatbot you want or on my chatbot course, which is called a CEO of chatbots, which trains you on how to build your entire custom AI team.

Both are really accessible and really great built for creatives. So that’s where you can find me.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Nikki. I really appreciate

Thank you for having me.

📍 All right, friends, that’s another wrap for today’s episodes of Creative Minds Smart Money. I hope you’re feeling a little less intimidated by AI and more excited about how it can actually help you level up in your business. Is here to assist you, not replace you.

It’s like the assistant you always wanted, except it never takes coffee breaks. Let’s recap some key takeaways. Nikki shared how starting small is the way to go. Don’t feel like you need to completely overhaul your business systems right away. Just begin by delegating those tasks that drain your creative energy.

And hey, remember to tell AI who you are and what your business stands for so it can truly serve you like an extension of your own brain. And one of my favorite things she said today, if a task is making you sigh and roll your eyes, pass it to AI. Keep your energy for the work that really matters. So if you’re looking to get that AI power boost in your business, make sure to check out Nikki at The Creative Co Pilot.

Trust me, you don’t want to miss her genius tips and resources. Thanks again for hanging out with us today. Keep embracing that creative spark, and remember, technology is your friend. But you already knew that, didn’t you? Until next time, farewell fellow travelers.