Expert-Backed AI Is the New Online Course

Online courses are teaching others how to think they're trying to like get people to think like you versus AI tools. Expert backed AI tools are allowing other people to use your thinking.

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.

Welcome back to another episode of entrepreneur school in the AI era. I'm really excited about the conversation I want to have with you today, because it's a bit of a like trend observation, a view and a vision that I have as to how online education is moving as a result of AI. So this has been conversations I've had with course creators, membership hosts, high level coaches, people who have started building out AI tools to support their clients with actually executing on and delivering the skills that they are sharing as part of whatever kind of membership or program that they have. And I'm calling this expert backed AI. So it's really important to note first of all, that AI that has been trained by somebody who has years of experience and specific point of view and a specific framework is very different than just accessing a large language model through an AI platform. So there's a lens on there, right, and so that means that what you're getting is something that's been built based on somebody else's training. So what's interesting about this is to think about what it means for you as a monetization channel. So if you currently run a program, or you're a high ticket coach, or you do one on one coaching, or you provide services like, how are we able to monetize elements of that and then also pair it with the access to you, the human touch piece? Because I think this is where, like, there's real magic that comes along in conversations that I've been having with people who are exploring being part of our beta for our new platform.

coaching promises.

So we are at this market shift moment again, and if I were to place some bets like this is going to replace courses, to a certain extent, I can see how expert backed AI actually changes the way that we learn. So I feel like a lot of people are, in fact, building expert backed AI, but perhaps we just don't have the language for it yet. And the other thing that's obviously a big question mark is, what is the market for this? So people who are building and selling custom gpts? Are they amazing? Some of them, yes, are they crap? Some of them, yes. The same with digital courses, right? Once somebody knows how to create them, they might just start like, creating tons and tons of them and selling them for low cost. So it's kind of like we're in the phase of understanding how the market is going to respond to specifically those tools, because we need to understand, then, how that affects the way that we price them, the way we position them, the value that's perceived and the value that's actual about all of these things. So this is like the gray area of the category that we're creating, and that's, I think about this like all the time, because this is really one of the the primary purpose of the platform that we're building is to support experts with monetizing their expertise in via AI tools, so bots, squads, things that you have trained with your brain And who represent you, who represent you, that represent you with your clients, that your clients can interact with.

The other observation that I have, that I think is really smart in the way that a lot of people are, you know, delivering this is that these tools are intentionally supplementary and not a replacement, like you could probably, for example, have an entire email sequence built out by a bot without learning anything or having an email expert have their eyes on your email sequence. But the result will be so much better when those two things are paired together. So if you train email marketing and you teach that, and you have built bots that help with certain phases of it, like you know, that have your framework for your certain sequences that you might teach or build for people, or even one that helps with just subject lines or just a specific element that your client needs to understand, it's one piece, right? And you're still giving more value by having a space for them to come to, to ask questions and whatnot, which is so that's what I'm seeing happening, is a lot of the time we're just as experts as well, right? We treasure our own expertise, we know that we worked very hard to have the lived experience and the education and the knowledge that we have around what we do, and it's a hard thing to swallow that a bot could be trained to do what we do better than we do. So this is a shift that we need to make as a society, as people who are in knowledge work, who are service providers or expertise related industries, that we need to understand how to pair the two things, a tool that can support with what you do. And then what does that allow you to do as a creator? It allows for deeper conversations, for more nuanced detail that you can be refining in your group coaching environment, or in your membership space or wherever that is right. So you're actually providing a tool that's helping your client get along faster, just as a side tangent that's related. I really see like anything that you've ever done as a worksheet. This is where worksheets

were a thing, like at first, right? Anything that was a worksheet that's designed to help your client implement and think through in a strategic way how to do the thing that you're trying to teach them how to do any worksheet can be turned into a bot, like it might be an interactive experience that helps guide someone through a series of questions and prompt them into providing more context and getting better results. Then a worksheet may do. Because I think I've talked about this before, and if not, go to my website, I have an interactive AI starter kit tool there that actually walks you through how to turn anything like a form or a worksheet into an interactive experience, and what that means for your client experience, and how they might get better results from from going through a process like that.

For example, I would have absolutely loved to have had a lawyer, have some kind of AI tool that supports you through the universal shareholder agreement partnership planning process, that would be really helpful to be able to be guided and feel really confident that you're being guided through a process that's based. Based on somebody's training and expertise. And then obviously, like, especially in that situation, I wouldn't just take that and call that my shareholder agreement. I would then take that to the actual lawyer, have them do a final review of it, have them understand like, and look at the nuances and talk to us about that before, you know, signing and completing something. So again, that just kind of comes back to the idea of pairing your expert back to AI tools with access to you in that's the way that I see our online education industry shifting now that AI has become so prevalent. So there was some studies done by platforms such as Thinkific, and this one looked at online course completion rate. So traditional online course completion rate was 10 to 20% versus a course with AI guided tools increased from a 45 to 70% of completion rate, which is three to five times higher. They also measured time to first result. So I think this is so important, right? Because we all know as people who have thought about how to guide people through our courses, it's, can we get them a quick win. Like, what does that look like? That time to first result in a traditional online course is four to six weeks, right? Like, we that would be a really good time frame. Perceivably short timeframe for getting a result, versus now with AI tools, it's two to five days, and that's 80% faster, and that's insane. And also like not to mention that that's the expectation that people have. Now, as far as how long does it take me to get a result? I need to be able to do this like in a 24 hour period, not in 30 days. Like 30 days is a lifetime right now.

in a completely new way, and so we really do need to acknowledge that this is a new type of product. What we're building is the infrastructure for you to be able to monetize your expert back to AI in a way that protects your IP, allows you to use a variety of different llms, and connects everything together into a cohesive system that we call bot squads. So it's an exciting time to this is why my entire business has changed into an AI company over the past year. It's really exciting to look at the shift that's happening and how we can do it responsibly and the role like really, this is where the idea of human first AI adoption really solidifies together, because it's not just about the tools that you're building, but it's about how you're adding your human touch on top of those, and inside of those, we're moving into a space that's not about replacing expertise, but actually allowing creators to deepen the the use of their own expertise with the clients that they have. So I think that's a really interesting way of looking at it.

So if you are already building AI tools inside of your paid offer, if you've been thinking about it, please, please, please join the waitlist for what we are building on our platform as part of project vault, because this infrastructure layer that I've been talking about, we're building this for you. So the link is in the show notes. Please reach out to me directly. If you have questions. I still am looking for a couple more people for our beta. So if you're hearing this and this sparking interest for you. Please reach out. I'd love to talk to you and stay tuned, because we are launching very soon, I will be able to start talking about the name of the platform. I know so many people have been bugging me to spill the beans on it, and I just keeping it tight lipped over here, because that's part of the fun. There are going to be some Easter eggs hidden in our landing page for the wait list, as well as the emails that you'll get when you sign up for the waitlist. So definitely do that if you want to learn more about this. It's really, this is just the beginning of this conversation, because there's so much changing so quickly all of the time. And it's just, I think we just need to keep having these again, real time conversations about what's happening, how this is impacting us as experts, service providers, course creators, coaches, all of the things I'm here for you. Can't wait to hear from you, and I'll 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.