EP # 229 - AI for Small Business: Strategic Prompting and Productivity

How to use AI strategically to save time, increase productivity, and grow your business faster—without losing your unique voice.

After over a year of using AI in my business (and teaching my clients to do the same), I'm sharing what I've learned about leveraging AI strategically to increase productivity, save time, and work smarter—not harder.

In this episode, I break down:

• Why AI matters now – A Chief Economist at a Canadian business conference highlighted AI as a low-cost investment that increases business effectiveness, especially in a slower economy
• Types of AI platforms – Generalist tools (ChatGPT, Sintra) vs. specialized tools (Descript for video/podcast editing, Perplexity for research, and more)
• The power of prompting – Why "garbage in, garbage out" applies to AI, and how giving proper context and clear instructions changes everything
• Teaching your AI about your business – How paid subscriptions let you train AI agents on your frameworks, sales philosophy, and brand voice so you don't repeat yourself
• Using AI to amplify (not replace) your uniqueness – I never ask AI for content ideas; instead, I use it as my executive assistant and typewriter to process my ideas faster
• Real examples from my business – How I use AI to turn one podcast episode into show notes, social captions, and email newsletters in under an hour (instead of days)
• AI for research – How I used ChatGPT to do months' worth of market research in one hour for a 2026 project
• What to be careful about – Automations, integrations, confidentiality, intellectual property, and data limits

If you've been curious about AI but not sure where to start—or if you're already using it but want to get better results—this episode will give you a clear, practical roadmap.

Resources & Links

• ChatGPT – Generalist AI platform (great for beginners)
• Sintra – European AI platform designed for business owners (Maggie's choice) - check it out HERE
• Descript – AI tool for podcast and video editing - check it here 
• Perplexity – AI research tool with sources and citations
• Gemini – Google's generalist AI platform
• Free Training: AI for Sales & Marketing
  Learn how to use AI for social media content that's unique to your brand and saves you time.  GET IT HERE

Connect with Maggie:

• Website: https://www.stairwaytoleadership.com/
• Instagram: @maggieperotin.s2l
• LinkedIn: Maggie Perotin

Transcript

EP 229 - AI for Small Business: Strategic Prompting and Productivity

[00:00:00] It's been over a year. I'm using AI in my business and ultimately I love it. So I decided that today's episode of Diamond Effect Podcast will me sharing with you the observations that I've had, things I've learned over the years. Not only because I use AI in my business, but I also encourage my clients and teach them what I learn.

And as I learn on how they can use AI in their business to increase their productivity, save time, and just be more effective as CEOs back in October, I attended a business conference where the Chief Economist of Canadian Bank of Development focused on entrepreneurship.

Talked about how AI truly increases productivity of the businesses, [00:01:00] and that's a good thing that businesses are implementing because of the slower economy. AI is that low cost investment that every business can do to bring up their effectiveness, to streamline how they do things and get. More value out of their limited resources.

Now, using AI should be strategic.

Don't use AI blindly. Be strategic about it. But before we go into how I use it, I wanted to give you. An overview of different AI platforms quickly. So there is general type of platforms that can do a lot of different tasks. Chad, GBT is definitely one of them. I also use for my business ra, which is a European platform.

That acts as like your employees in the business. [00:02:00] So it's really targeted towards business owners, but still in general sense where you can use it for many different activities. And there is AI that are more. Specialized in what they do. For example, I use the script to edit my podcast, edit my videos, cut longer videos into shorter videos.

They will quickly and effectively utilize, repurpose the content that I create. There are also ais who specialize in. Creating slides and visuals and graphics. There are AI that specialize in creating processes and workflows, especially for companies that have larger companies that have a lot of IT, or manufacturing companies.

So when you're looking what type of AI to implement in your business, look at what is it that you needed to do if you've never done it before and you're still on the fence. I recommend [00:03:00] start with generalist. So something like Chad, GBT, or Gemini or some other versions. There is many, and if you wanna know Chad, GBT is a great place to start and ask.

Or actually, if you wanna know more about them and what are your options? There is another AI called Perplexity that's really good for research because it can do the research and also, give you. Sources or where it found the informations and link. Now I am gonna link the ais that I use in the show notes, so it's easier for you to find them, but other ones that you might be needing for your business, feel free to Google Perplexity or chat GBT.

Okay, so then how you use AI or. The [00:04:00] effectiveness of how you use AI really depends on prompting. Everything lies in prompting. Prompting is the instructions you give to your AI agent or ah, system to get you. What you want, and I think that this is a great practice, especially for those of you who are solopreneurs before you start hiring people.

Because sometimes I see business owners thinking that when they hire a person, whether it's a bookkeeper or a VA, or a person who delivered their service, the mere act of hiring will take away. A lot of time of their hands and the employee will know everything and will just do the work. And that's not true.

The employee might be skilled in certain aspects of what we want them to do, but they still need training on. The business, how we [00:05:00] work, certain processes, things that are important for you. So they need context in order to be effective and they also need clear instructions or what are the responsibilities

that you are looking for them to fill. And it's the same with the ai. If you don't give AI proper context and clear instructions, it's gonna create separate results in a way. Garbage in, garbage out. So what is context? Let me give you an example. Let's say you wanna use. Try GBT for your personal purposes to plan you a trip, and you just say, Hey, try GBT.

I'm planning to go to Europe in next year for 10 days. Create a itinerary for me, and then it spits something based on that one sentence and you don't like it, and then you think you get frustrated because you're like, oh, tragedy, GBT doesn't work, but you failed to tell [00:06:00] tragedy. GBT, what do you really want?

Maybe you're going with a group of friends. They're older and you don't wanna do a lot of walking, or maybe you're doing with, you are going with kids and families, so you need a little bit of playtime and not just sightseeing. Or maybe you wanna avoid certain countries. If it's a 10 days, in Europe you wanna stay dressed in one area, maybe you wanna go just Italy from Spain or maybe Austria Poll and

czech Republic in Slovakia and maybe Germany. And if you don't tell that to Chad GBT, you are just leaving it with making decisions that you might not like. So the context is very important. Now when you're using it in your business. I highly recommend working with. A paid subscription. So whether it's JGBT or like me, Sintra, where you can teach your AI agents certain things about your business.

So you give it some [00:07:00] basic context about it and they keep learning about your business, so then you don't have to repeat yourself over and over whenever you're putting. The prompts, right? Whenever you're putting the instructions. So that's like the basic thing now to get it working for you even better.

What I found, giving it additional foundation and knowledge in certain areas is even more powerful. So for example. In my sales, I use a process for my sales goal and certain philosophy that I also teach my clients, because that's make my sales goals really focused on the clients. It feels very natural to me because it's really focused on helping the clients and me understanding.

Where, what they're going through, what are their challenges, where they, where I wanna be, I identify the gap, and then I tell them how I can help [00:08:00] them. So I taught that framework to my AI employee. So then when I use it for a sales purposes, it already knows where I'm coming from. If I didn't teach it that framework, it would have just basic information and.

The outcomes of whatever prompts I have for it for sales would be very shallow and not in depth. Okay, so the more you are knowledgeable in the area you need AI help with, or at least know what are the resources out there that you can point AI to? The better the outcomes, the more in depth answers you get.

Another thing that I wanna tell you is that you wanna use AI in a way that is. Brings out your uniqueness, especially when you're using it for your [00:09:00] business. Let's say for marketing and sales, which I do a lot, so I don't ask AI to give me ideas, let's say, on what to talk about. In my marketing, I have those ideas on my own because I know my clients, I know their challenges.

I really take. Time to obsess about them on how they're struggling, how they can help them, and so on. So I never really ask AI for any ideas, but what I do is utilize it as my. Personal executive assistant and typewriter and things to save me a lot of time. So here's one example. At the end of this recording of this podcast, I'll take a transcript of the podcast and I'll feed it to my AI employee to help me develop show notes for the podcast to help me develop.

To help me develop captions for the post where I will be promoting the podcast [00:10:00] to help me draft an email to my list where I will provide value based on the podcast content, but also entice the list to listen to the podcast. So as you can see, I'm taking my ideas, my intellectual property, my unique way of thinking as a coach, and I'm just getting AI to help me process that much faster in a much more effective way,

this podcast and what I'm seeing here is coming out of my brain, I just took, I thought about it. I took certain notes to make sure that I don't forget to tell you about the things I wanna tell you. And then I'm just using AI to then process that faster. Where, so what used to take me hours and hours in after, let's say podcast production.

Or days even right now, it takes me an hour maybe because of that. So you can [00:11:00] see how my productivity has skyrocketed just on this one example. Another example I will give you. I use AI to help me. Organize my thoughts or organize my ideas or organize certain things.

I take time to think about it. I know exactly what I wanna do, but then as I feed my idea into ai, I help it. I ask it for me to write it out for me so I don't have to type it, right? So then when it does it for me and organize it a little bit from my like just jam thoughts in my brain.

I don't have to spend that time and energy to do it. And instead what I do, I spend time and energy to improve on my ideas, right? To edit it, edit them, think about them and think, how can I make it even better? And I've noticed [00:12:00] also a big difference, right? Because let's be real, our time and energy are limited.

And when we have to spend, let's say, a couple of days developing an idea of the training and creating an outline and so on, then either we're much slower and we produce less of the output for that training, or it takes us way longer as opposed to with ai, if I don't have to spend half of the time.

Typing it in, organizing in the brain, I can spend that time improving it. And instead of two days of preparation, initial preparation of planning, it takes me two or three hours.

The last thing I wanna tell you about is use AI for research. So whether you're researching your market or whether you're researching ideas [00:13:00] for a project or whatever that is. It can be a cold mind of information. So I'm thinking about a project for 2026 that I'm not gonna share yet what that is, and. I don't know much about the industry in which that project falls, and I'm sure that without ai, it would take me probably months to do market research, find people that I can talk to and so on.

I don't have many contacts in that industry and swan, but with Chad, GBTI literally spent an hour and. It helped me find out so much valuable information in that beginning stages of researching the project and planning that it just blew my mind, the what I learned about it. [00:14:00] Makes me feel even more confident that this project has high chances of success.

It doesn't guarantee the success, but what I've learned, I don't know if I would've learned any other way, just because again, it's a new industry. I don't know many contacts. Even if I did, if I pursued that, it would take me months to get there. So think about AI as being this. Omni knowledgeable employee of yours who knows a lot about all the industries, and if you only give it the right context, the right prompt, the right instructions, it can save you time.

It could save you days and weeks and even months of trying to learn something.

Another example of research that I can share with you that I done lately [00:15:00] was simple, legal structure of companies as a business coach, of course I have general idea of what are the legal structures of companies in Canada, but I'm not a lawyer, right? And I'm not a lawyer in US or in Europe.

So I was researching something more specific. And I asked the AI to create a comparison for me and create a table where I can see that. Now, of course, this information, you wanna be very careful because sometimes the AI can get it wrong.

So having a general idea or the basic foundation helps you to identify if there's any problems. But it's always a great start when you're looking to do research.

Now what you wanna be careful about is, couple of things. One automations. And integrations. So the one that I use for my business that offer certain [00:16:00] automations and integrations, and I have been really careful and really haven't really integrated anything yet because.

From my experience, whatever AI produces, I still need to edit. I still will change it. I'll read it over and so on. So I don't trust it yet to the point where I would let it just come up with something and let's say send an email to my clients or post on social media without me looking over it and changing it up to make it even sound better or more.

Or even removing certain inconsistencies that I found. So I would say in terms of automations and integrations, be very careful. Unless you are working with, the developers of the ai, you're in a larger company, you have time to test

and really understand every in and [00:17:00] out of that integration and automation. Another thing you wanna be careful of, especially if you are using free versions of ai, where the confidentiality of the information you are putting in might not be guaranteed, is maybe not share any intellectual property or any ideas that you don't want to be.

Randomly discovered. It doesn't mean that there's a high risk of that, but nobody really knows, especially in like free versions where you're not paying and you can ensure that whatever you have is not, confidential. So not only intellectual property, but certain personal confidential data, financial data, things like that.

Which now reminds me that other thing that I use AI for is analytics, and not financial per se, but analytics of other data, whether it's [00:18:00] very. Quantifiable or more qualitative data to help me draw some conclusion or again, organize it in a way that allows me to draw conclusions. That's a very powerful way.

What I did find with it is just. If you feed too much data, it's there is limits to what current AI can do. They get overwhelmed and they don't, they can't handle too much data. So you need to chunk it up in a way, and you need to be very careful and strategic in how you approach, the analysis because you might not get anything because your AI will get overwhelmed.

Okay, so I think that's all I wanted to share, and I would definitely occasionally do the podcast episodes about AI as I learn more and use it in my business. Now. I did do the training for my clients [00:19:00] earlier this year. That is going more specific into how to get AI to help you with some sales and marketing, especially social media content.

That it's reflective of your brand, it's unique to you, and at the same time saves you a ton of time. So I am happy to share that with you. I'll leave a link for you to sign up for that training if you're interested. I think it's very valuable and it will help you be even more consistent with your social media marketing.

And if you do have any questions or if you do have ideas on what, have ideas on podcast episodes that you would love to see in 2026. Please contact me on social media, whether it's Instagram or LinkedIn. I'll leave the links how [00:20:00] to connect with me in the show notes.

Thank you very much and see you next week.