103: How I Actually Use AI to Run My Business: 10 Real Ways with ChatGPT and Claude

Let's say a potential client sits down with an AI image generator and creates a beautiful living room. They love it. They're so excited. They've got the perfect color palette. They got the perfect combination of what they want their home to look like in one image. Wonderful. But the question is, now what?

Who's going to figure out whether that room actually works in their home? Who's going to determine the correct dimensions?

Because a beautiful photo is not a completed interior design project. Hear me out. An AI-generated rendering is an idea. It's a concept. It is not a construction document. It is not a specification package or an FF&E or, God forbid, it's not an installation plan.

Hey, y'all. You're listening to the McClain Method Podcast, episode number 103. Welcome to The McClain Method, the podcast for interior designers who are ready to stop hiding and start shining. I'm your host, John McClain, designer, business mentor, author, and your branding bestie. This is not about paint colors or pendant lighting. It's about building a business that's both visible and profitable, inside and out.

From marketing and messaging to mindset, systems, and visibility, we cover the front stage and the back stage of your design business because your brilliance deserves the spotlight and your business deserves to run like a dream behind the scenes. So if you're ready to be seen, get recognized, and get booked, it's time to let it shine.

Welcome to The McClain Method.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the McClain Method Podcast. How are you today? Today, I wanna talk about something that's completely changed the way that I run my business, and you've heard me talk about it before. And no, I'm not talking about asking ChatGPT to write an Instagram caption.

Yes, that's possible, but we have moved way beyond that, everybody, way beyond that. I'm talking about the way that I work every single day, how I organize my business, how I make decisions, how I handle tasks that used to take hours of manual labor, and how I'm doing things today that I honestly would not have even imagined doing myself a couple of years ago. It is so fun. So here's something that might surprise you.

I don't have a virtual assistant. There was a time that I had two of those, and it's not because I have less work to do. It's because AI has completely changed what I need help with and how I get that help and what I can accomplish without having to hire someone to do it.

Now, I'm not talking about my design firm. That is a totally separate topic. I'm talking about what I run inside of my McClain Method, which is my courses and coaching and all the outreach that I do for designers out there. So that is what I'm talking about.

I'm not telling you that your designer that helps you choose things for your projects is not useful any longer. That is not what I'm saying. I'm talking about the business behind the scenes, the things that you hate doing, and I know you have a list as long as your arm because I do as well. So I sometimes joke that the AI has become equivalent to about ten virtual assistants.

And I loved my virtual assistants. They were wonderful, but I just didn't need them anymore. And depending upon the task, one really good AI assistant can sometimes accomplish more than three traditional assistants. Now, that is not criticism of people, as I said. I've worked with wonderful assistants over the years, some not so wonderful as well.

And it simply means that certain kinds of work, especially like research and organization and drafting and information processing, can be handled incredibly, incredibly efficient with AI. But before we get into all of this, there is something that I need to make very, very clear to you. AI is my assistant.

It is not my brain. Listen to that again, okay? Everything that I'm going to share with you today started with an idea, a process, a business lesson, and I have had so many business lessons or some sort of knowledge that came from me right here between my ears. AI did not build my interior design business.

Nope. It didn't teach me how to manage multimillion-dollar projects, and it didn't give me the experience that I've gained from years of working with clients, managing employees, pricing projects, and making mistakes along the way. You know where that came from? That knowledge came from me, and it comes from you too, and it's already there.

What AI has done is to help me take that knowledge and put it to work in ways that are faster, more organized, and sometimes much easier to manage. And that is the distinction that I really want you to remember throughout this entire conversation, because I don't want you handing over your creativity, never, never, never, or your expertise or your intellectual property, God forbid, to a computer and hoping it comes back with something brilliant.

It will not. I want you to use AI to help bring your own brilliant ideas to life. So today, I'm sharing 10 ways I'm actually using AI in my business right now, okay? So whether you're an interior designer, a creative entrepreneur, a consultant, a coach like me, or someone running a completely different kind of company, I think you're going to find something useful inside of this convo today.

And don't worry, you do not need to have to code anything to benefit from most of this conversation. Now, if you want to, you could, but you don't have to. So let's get into this. Number one, let's start with something that I think is really important. I don't just use one AI platform anymore. They're always changing.

But my two favorites right now are Claude and ChatGPT, and I use them differently, okay? So for a while, I think a lot of us approached AI like we needed to pick a team. Are you team ChatGPT? Are you team Claude? Are you team Gemini? Which one is better?

And goodness gracious, if you spent any time online, you're going to find plenty of people who are absolutely convinced that their favorite is the only one worth using. But here is what I have learned: You don't have to choose. My God, they're changing all the time, by the way. So changing is just tiresome in itself.

So I use ChatGPT quite a bit for thinking through business strategy, reviewing information, organizing my ideas, researching topics, and working through decisions. And I'll tell you this, ChatGPT is much less expensive to use than Claude. It really, really is. ChatGPT's tokens run much more efficiently than the ones on Claude.

Now, there are ways, and we're going to talk about that in a moment, of how to get the most usage out of Claude without charging a lot more. But at the moment, I'm on the one hundred dollar-a-month plan for Claude, which is the Max plan, okay? Even that, even with that Max plan, I still run out of tokens, and I run out of time, and I have to, like, make up, the difference in paying additional fees throughout that.

So ChatGPT, to me, is much more efficient. Now, I know there are lots of other reasons that you may or may not want to use a certain platform, a certain model. That's totally up to you whether socially those things don't jive with you. That is not something that I'm going to bring up today. I'm just talking about the mechanics of it and how it all works.

So with ChatGPT, for instance, I'll have this long conversation with it where I'm essentially talking through something. So I might otherwise discuss it with a business consultant or a colleague. It's that kind of stuff. And Claude has now become a part of how I actually get certain types of work completed.

So particularly with Claude Code, which I'll talk more about in a minute. And sometimes I use both on the same project. I have lots of tabs open everywhere, and there's the desktop version, there's the Chrome version. So I might work through the strategy, for instance, in ChatGPT, and figure out what I want to accomplish, how I want something organized, and what the final result should look like.

But then I take that plan into Claude, and I have Claude help me with the execution. And I just go back and forth, like one is the leader and one executes. And sometimes I bring the results back, mostly I do, to ChatGPT for another review. Now, that's not because either platform is incapable of doing the entire job.

They absolutely are. It's because I've learned that having different perspectives and different capabilities available can be very, very useful to both sides of the equation. So think about it like this. If you have a team of people working in your business, you probably don't ask every person to do every job.

What do you do? You figure out who is most equipped, who is best suited for what type of job you're going to ask them to do. I approach AI in the same way. I want to emphasize something here, however. I'm still directing the work. I'm still waving the wand. I'm still pointing. I'm still the one deciding what we're trying to accomplish.

AI can suggest an approach, it can identify a problem, or help me see something differently. But the final, final, final decision before it goes out into the world is mine. And I think that is a very important mindset to develop early. You're not gonna ever hand your business over to AI. Please, God, don't.

You're building a team of AI tools that work alongside of you. So what is my advice for all of that? If you've ever only used ChatGPT, spend some time exploring Claude and just try it out. And if you've ever only used Claude, give ChatGPT a serious look. I find they are both useful. So don't get so loyal to one platform that you miss something very, very useful that's happening somewhere else.

Why? Because this technology is changing far too quickly for you to settle on one thing Number two, I regularly check which AI model I should be using. Now, this one might sound a little nerdy, and it is, but I promise it's very useful. I regularly check whether I am using the best AI model for the type of work that I'm doing.

I get all kinds of newsletters, and I research all of these things. And if you're thinking, "John, what in the world is an AI model?" Let me explain. So when you open ChatGPT or Claude, the app itself is only part of the picture. It's kind of the bigger umbrella of it all. But behind the scenes, as you probably have seen, there are different models that can have different capabilities.

Some are designed to respond very quickly, others can spend more effort reasoning through a very complicated problem, and some are very useful for coding, research, or working through really involved tasks. I've used every single one of those, and those options change a lot, honestly. They change very frequently, which is why I try to stay up on all of that and which one is the best.

So what made sense three months ago might not make sense today for that task that you are trying to do. So about once a week, I like to check what's new. Have there been model updates? Is there a better option for the work that I'm doing at that time? Am I using something unnecessarily complicated for a task that could be handled much more easily?

You know, back to wasting those tokens that we talked about. Or am I simply using a simple model to do something that would benefit from more complicated advanced reasoning? For example, if I need help polishing a quick email, I probably don't need the most intensive reasoning option available. I just don't.

If I'm just trying to recap something and redo an email just to make sure I got it right. But if I'm analyzing a very complicated business problem, evaluating several possible decisions from that, or working through a technical issue, I may want something with more capability, and I probably do. And here's something that I think a lot of you might overlook Just because a model is newer or more powerful doesn't automatically mean it's the best choice for everything.

Sometimes the fastest model is exactly what you need, and the important thing to understand is that you have options, and there are options. But one of the easiest things that you can do to find out is just ask the AI platform that you're using what the current model choices are. Ha. Then verify that information against the platform's official updates.

It will research its own model, and it will tell you which model you should be using for what that task is. I wouldn't rely on the AI answers alone for what's currently available, however, because AI can give you a little outdated information about itself. So I check and I adjust, and I even tell the model, "Give me information relevant to today's date."

And I put today's date in there just to reiterate that, because anytime I want something fresh and to make sure that it's current, I actually put that date in. It's a small habit that I do, but it does help me get better results. And if you try it, I think it will help you too. Number three, I organize my AI conversations into projects, and this one is a biggie.

If there's one thing I wish more business owners would start doing immediately is organizing your AI conversations. Just, just works out better. It's easier to look at, honestly, not to mention functionality. But here's what I see happening, okay? Someone opens Claude or ChatGPT, asks it to help with an Instagram post, and then you just close it.

The next day, they open it again, and a new conversation about pricing, and then another conversation about a difficult client, and then another conversation about marketing, and another conversation about how to handle this with your personal life. So after a few weeks, there are a hundred conversations scattered everywhere with absolutely no organization, and you wonder why AI never really seems to understand you or your business. It's as scattered as what you put into it. Now, it's pretty good about pulling different things from different areas, but the projects are the key to keeping it really, really organized, and we've got to give it something to work with so that it does work better for us.

So both ChatGPT and Claude offer ways to organize ongoing work into projects, and I use them extensively. I even pin my favorite ones to the top so I can grab them quickly. I have dedicated spaces for different areas of my businesses, and I have multiple businesses, and that means I can keep relevant conversations together with reference materials and instructions organized around a particular subject.

I never have to go into a project and wonder what I'm going to discuss there because the title of that project tells me exactly what those conversations are. And these projects can range anything from marketing to specific marketing, such as Instagram marketing.

And then you can even go further into that and have a project for every single client that you worked with. That's what I do. So every design project that you have, every client that you have in any sort of way that you're working with people deserves its own project.

And all of those conversations that you have go into that project so that whenever you're searching something from the past or let's say you're working with a client and you want to pull together a weekly update, you go back to that project, and you create that information from what is inside of there.

It will spoon-feed that to you. It's going to love you because you are giving it the exact location to pull from rather than saying, "Oh, just go and find me this," and then it's going to search, and it may or may not find what you're looking for. If you put all of the context into one neat little project, it is going to have everything at its fingertips, and then you never have to wonder if what it gave back to you is actually what you needed because it's only pulling from what's inside of that project.

And for me, mentally, it's much easier to think about something being in a project, and I tend to call it project folder, but it always corrects me, and it's like, "You mean project?" And I'm like, "Yes, I mean project." But it is a project, and it has a little folder emblem when you create it, which is why I think folder.

And I guess, you know, I'm old, so I think folders like Microsoft and Google and all the drives that we use. But anyway, whatever way you think of it, that project is in a wonderful, way to organize all that collective information that kind of follows the same mindset and the same topic. Projects are not magic, however.

You still need to make sure that the right information is available, and you cannot assume that every detail from every past conversation will always be remembered perfectly. I had to put that little caveat in there. But having that structure makes an enormous difference.

So let's say you're an interior designer, like a lot of you right now listening to this. You might have a project dedicated to a particular client, as I said. So here's what that project could look like. That would include relevant project information, communication guidelines, meeting notes, and other materials that you're authorized to use.

I even put my agreement inside of there, and I just give it instructions never to reveal the privacy of that client. But then you might have a separate project for marketing, as I said, and another one for business operations, and another one for creating your standard operating procedures. You're giving AI a more organized environment to work within.

And here is another thing that I want to mention. You do not have to give every single piece of information that you own. Be thoughtful about what you upload. Think about everything that you put inside of there. Client information, financial records, confidential documents, and proprietary business materials really deserve particular care, as I said.

You need to understand the privacy settings and data policies of the tools that you're using and only share what is necessary and appropriate, okay? And you can go into your settings and adjust any of those things in the main settings of Claude or ChatGPT. Because organization does not mean that you're going to be careless.

Please don't do that And another thing that I've learned is that organization requires some maintenance. Yes, sometimes projects need to be cleaned up. I learned this the hard way. Sometimes instructions inside of that project need updating, and sometimes an old conversation is just no longer relevant anymore.

So I treat it like organizing my business files. As I said, I think about it like a project, because really that's kind of what it is. You're creating an organized workspace rather than a giant pile of disconnected conversations. It's almost like you look at your desk, and if you have a pile of papers everywhere, and this pile's here and that pile's there, and they're all talking about different things and different parts of your day and different clients.

If you just take those papers, it's just a mental way to think about this, and you just pull all the things together that are related. You know, you stack them up and you put a little paperclip on it. That's exactly what you're doing with this. And then when you go back to review that, everything is inside of that paperclip, that project, and you don't have to go looking into random places.

Now, of course, like me, when I first started using ChatGPT way back when in twenty twenty-three, I did do that. It was just a chat, chat, another chat, another chat, another chat. And I really realized that soon when those projects started being available, like how wonderful they are to just to keep me organized mentally and to keep my businesses organized as well.

Now, if you're using AI and you haven't started organizing it in this way, this project concept would be one of the first things that I would recommend that you do. Please start it now. Go back through old conversations, and you can take those, and then you just simply create the project, and you click that little button on the right-hand side, and you can actually move that conversation over to a project.

So if you have a conversation inside of whatever, ChatGPT or Claude, and you want to start organizing that into a project, use your search bar at the top, find the topic that you're looking for, the conversation, the business relationship, the client information, whatever, and then just go to that chat, click the button, and then move that to a project.

And then watch suddenly how that project is just armed with so much more information. And even that conversation that you moved over there will start acting better and will give you more information if you were to go back to that same chat, because it's going to now pull from all of the other conversations and all of the files that you have uploaded into that project.

I hope that makes Number four, I use AI skills so I don't have to keep explaining myself. Now we're getting into one of my favorite subjects, AI skills. Oh, they're so good. And I know that word might sound a little technical, but the concept is actually pretty simple. Think about it like a new employee and the way that you train a new employee.

You don't want to explain your entire business to them, your preferences, your processes, and your expectations every single morning. That would be exhausting. At least I hope you don't. You want to train them, once, and you want to document the important things and give them the information that they can keep referring back to over and over and over.

That's essentially how I think about AI skills. A skill can contain instructions, guidance, reference materials, and processes that help it perform a particular type of work in a consistent way. So the skill helps the AI platform perform a particular work in a consistent manner, okay? Instead of starting from scratch every time, I can use a skill that's designed for a specific responsibility.

And I have been building and using skills across both Claude and ChatGPT. If I make one for Claude, ChatGPT has the ability to add skills I will put the same skill over in ChatGPT. So depending upon where I'm working, on what task, I know that my skills in both are exactly the same.

Now, each platform does handle these capabilities a little differently, so they're not necessarily completely interchangeable in every situation, but the principle of each is the same. So you might have to adapt them depending upon what platform you're in, okay? So the moral of the story is stop making AI guess how you want things done.

That is what a skill does. So you give it the standards, you give it the process, you give it the context, and you let it help you follow that process that you've given it. But here is something really important I want you to know. Those standards and processes need to come from somewhere, and ideally, they come from your own experience and your own expertise.

For example, let's talk about client communication. You probably have a particular tone that you want your business to use. We all do, whether we realize it or not. You may have policies and response times and ways that you handle difficult situations and what information should be included in certain types of messages.

Those are business decisions that you've made. AI didn't invent them. You're simply teaching AI how to help you follow your own business decisions. Or consider your marketing. Let's talk about that. You have a brand voice, and you have an audience, and you have certain services and products.

You probably have certain phrases that you love and others that you would never, ever use in a million years. How many of you have cringed when AI has given you something back and you're like, "That doesn't sound like me"? But all of that can become part of a more consistent AI workflow. And this is actually something that I've become so passionate about that I created an entire system around it for you called the AI Studio. It is specifically for interior designers because here's what I realized.

Most interior designers do not need AI to tell them how to select a gorgeous fabric or put together a beautiful room. You're already pretty good at that. I've seen you. But what you do need help with is the business side of it all, the marketing, the client communications.

Processes, project management, organization, all of those behind-the-scenes responsibilities that take time away from the creative work that you actually love doing. So I built my AI studio for myself around those same needs with ready-to-use AI skills and resources designed specifically for running an interior design business.

And one of the things I'm loving is seeing designers discover how that they use AI now for so much more than just writing an email or writing content for an Instagram post.

They can start building real support into the way that their business operates, okay? And that's exciting to me because I know firsthand, I know it, how overwhelming the business side of interior design can be. I've been there, trust me. But whether you're a designer or you own an entirely different kind of business, the bigger lesson here that I'm trying to tell you, it's all the same.

Which is this: the more you teach AI about how you work, the more useful it will and can become, okay? And please remember, you're teaching it based on your knowledge. I told you that before, but don't forget it. It's your experience. It's your decisions. It's your intellectual property. AI is just helping you apply all that information much more efficiently, okay?

It is not replacing the thinking that created it, 'cause you know why? The thinking that created it is you. Number five: I no longer have a virtual assistant. Okay, let's talk about this one because this might be the biggest change of all for me. I no longer have a virtual assistant. I had two at one time, and now I have none.

And again, that's not because I've suddenly become less busy. No, I've become busier, and I'm still creating content. I'm developing products all the time. I'm managing business operations. I'm making marketing decisions. I'm working through ideas. I'm handling administrative responsibilities. But AI is helping me do it.

So there's plenty going on, okay? But what I change is the way that I accomplish those things. So for years, for years, I had too much on my plate. Sound familiar? The obvious question was always, who can I hire to help me? And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that at all.

Please don't let that be the message, because I have worked with some wonderful people over the years, and I still believe that hiring the right person for the right job can be a great investment. But now what I do is this. I ask a different question first. Can AI help me do this? That's the first question I ask, and really the answer is frequently yes.

It's usually yes. So think about all the different things you might ask a virtual assistant to do. Research something, organize information, prepare a document, reply to emails, draft a message, compare options, create a checklist, review a process, or help coordinate a project.

Those are all areas where AI can potentially provide really, really helpful support for you. And I don't need to find one person who's great at every single one of those responsibilities. Why? Because I can use AI tools for different types of work. That's why I sometimes say it's like having ten virtual assistants kind of rolled into one And depending upon whatever assignment I give them, one AI assistant can sometimes accomplish more than three traditional assistants working together, which is kind of scary.

Now that certainly does not apply to everything, of course. AI is not going to show up at your client's house and manage an install. It is not going to build that deep, connected, personal relationship with a difficult client the way a great team member can, and it should not, it should not be allowed to make major decisions in your business without your involvement.

However, for certain tasks, it is quite fabulous and really, really effective. And here is what I want you to do, okay? First, ask yourself, "What do I actually dread doing in my business?" Like, what do you hate? I know you have something. Seriously, tell me. Think about it. What are those tasks that you always put off and dread doing, and what makes you sigh when you see it on your calendar that it's time to do this particular task?

What do you always push to the bottom of your to-do list because you just don't enjoy it? Maybe it's organizing meeting notes. Maybe it's creating reports. Maybe it's documenting procedures. Maybe it's going into QuickBooks. Maybe it's drafting follow-up emails. Maybe it's trying to make sense of financial information.

God help us all there. Or maybe it's sitting down to create your marketing content when you'd much rather be doing literally anything else. Whatever it is, I want you to ask yourself one simple question: How could AI help me get through this? How could AI help me with this? Because I promise you, there's a very good chance AI can help with at least part of that task.

Now, it may not do the entire job, and it may not do it perfectly the first time. Even a person doesn't do that. And you may still need to provide direction and review the result, but it can probably take some of the work off of your plate, which is, to me, a lot of help.

And that's what I think people should be focusing on, not how they can use AI to create fifty more things to do. Asking how AI can help remove the things that they don't enjoy doing in the first place, because that is where the power and the real value of AI truly begins.

Number six, I use Claude Cowork to help me actually complete work. Mm, this is where things get really, really interesting because there's a big difference between asking AI how to do something and having AI help you actually do it. And that fact has changed my workflow tremendously.

For example, you can ask an AI chatbot, "How do I organize a group of files?" And it might give you a wonderful step-by-step explanation. So you're going in and you're doing all of that, but you still have to go do all the work. Or the flip side, you just ask an AI tool that's designed to help carry out tasks in an actual working environment within the permissions that you give it and the access that you give it.

That is where Claude Cowork comes into the picture for me, and there's other versions of it, but this is my favorite. I've been using Cowork for different types of business and administrative work, and what I love is that I can describe the outcome.

It's really important, by the way, to give it a goal, to give it a reason for why you're doing that, to give it what you're expecting to happen at the end. That's the key. You're not really chatting, by the way, with AI anymore, "Do this task for me." You're really giving a goal. You want it to become invested, if you will, in the outcome, and it will give you a better outcome when it understands why you're wanting to do that.

So I describe the outcome that I want, I provide the relevant context with everything, you know, give it a few more details. And also, by the way, I just turn on my microphone and speak into it like it's another person listening to me because AI wants to hear the ups and downs. It wants to hear your ums.

It wants to hear your actual context, the way that you speak. And all of this is going to continue to train it to really just become more ingrained in the way that you operate and in the way that you speak as well. But I have it help me through all of the steps after I give it the context of it all.

Now, I don't mean that I give it unlimited access to my business and just, like, leave and walk away. Absolutely not. I would never do that. I set boundaries. There's lots of guardrails. You know I love a guardrail. And I review what it's doing throughout the process, and I make sure that important changes are checked before they're finalized.

In fact, this brings me to something that I want to stress throughout this entire conversation that we are having today. Listen up. Never assume that something AI creates is ready to publish simply because it looks finished and it sounds really, really good, okay? You always, always have to review the final output.

I don't care what it is. I don't care if you're asking it to write one sentence. Review that sentence because you really have to review it yourself, and I mean really review it. If AI drafts an email that's going to your customers, read it If it creates a document you're going to share with your clients, check it out.

If it writes something that you're going to publish on your website or on your blog, verify the facts in that, my friend. Or if it prepares, mm, I've seen this happen before, a social media post, make sure it actually reflects what you believe and what you want to say. And if it makes changes on a system that you're using in your business, please, guys, check those changes before allowing them to affect real customers or the way that you run your business operations because AI can, and it does, make mistakes.

And it will make those mistakes so confidently, and it will tell you that it is right 100%, and I'm like, "No, you're not. This literally is not true." So sometimes you have to come back and readjust it and just remind it like, "No, you said this, but this is not actually true, and here's why." And it will come back and tell you, "Yes, upon further investigation, I have clarified that you are correct," you know, blah, blah, blah.

So I always check the work, and I always check what it gives me back because it can misunderstand sometimes the instructions even that you give it. You may think that you're giving clear instructions, but you're not. And it can also leave something out. It can also, as I said, invent information that sounds completely believable, and the fact that something looks polished also does not make it accurate.

We've said this before. So I've learned that lesson myself the hard way a couple of times. So what do I do? I treat AI like an incredibly capable assistant, a really good assistant who still needs to be reviewed, however, after it does what I asked it to do, just like I would do with an employee or a contractor.

And here is why that matters, the real reason. Your name, your name, and your reputation is still on the final product. Your customers don't care whether an AI tool created a mistake. They're going to associate that mistake with your business. So do not hand over that responsibility without any checkups on it.

Use AI to do the heavy lifting, but keep your judgment involved in the final result. That is how you get the benefits without giving up control. And I think that's especially important as AI tools become really more capable of actually taking action rather than simply providing information.

Number seven, I have started using an AI chief of staff. Okay, this sounds a little fancy. It's really not, but it kinda is too. I have an AI chief of staff for my companies, and doesn't that sound like I should be sitting in some enormous corner office with people bringing me coffee? But I can promise you that is not what happens.

I still make my own coffee every morning. My husband doesn't even make my coffee after all these years. But I do love the concept of having this chief of staff, because one of the biggest challenges of being a business owner is that you are constantly shifting between responsibilities. You're putting on a different hat all the time.

One minute you're dealing with marketing, yes, and that takes a minute. The next minute it could be your finances. The next minute you're in front of a client, and then you have customer support in whatever ways that means. And then maybe you're working on a new product or a new service, and then you remember something else that you were supposed to do three days ago.

And before you know it, the day that you're in right now is half over, and you've spent most of it reacting to what you didn't get done. So I've started experimenting with what I call my AI chief of staff. And right now, the main thing it does for me is prepare what I call a daily morning brief.

So it's the starting point for every day. It brings to me, without me having to ask, relevant information together, all grouped together so I get oriented rather than immediately diving into 100 different directions and getting lost. Now, I want to be clear that this is something I'm continuing to develop, and I haven't magically created an autonomous executive assistant that runs my entire company yet.

But what I have built so far is very, very useful with these daily briefing processes, and I love the idea where this could go because right now it will bring me, emails that are unanswered. It will bring me financial reports that I ask for. If I'm running ads on, Instagram, it will give me the updates on how much I've spent and how they are working.

So you've asked it to complete what it needs to have done, but I love that I can keep layering things under this chief of staff, and that every day it is the one coming to me rather than me having to go to it Because I think there's a big difference between AI responding to whatever happens to pop into your head and having a much more structured system that helps you stay focused.

Imagine this. You're starting your morning with a clearer picture of what deserves your attention, of what needs a decision. So asking, "What are the priorities of the day? What did I forget? What might I be overlooking?" Even if the AI isn't making those decisions for you, having the right information organized can make it much, much easier to decide what to do next.

And I think there's something really valuable for business owners who wear a lot of different hats, which is all of us.

We don't necessarily need more information. AI is full of information. Goodness knows we get plenty of that everywhere already. We need help making sense of that information, and that is what I'm beginning to explore with my chief of staff. It's another example of supporting the way I think and work rather than taking those responsibilities away from me entirely, okay?

Number eight, I use AI to analyze my business and challenge my decisions. Now, this one is extremely important to me because I don't want AI to simply agree with everything I say. God knows it could be a yes person, and sometimes that's exactly what these systems seem determined to do, make you very, very happy.

You come up with an idea and AI says, "That's brilliant. Oh my God, You're amazing. You're gonna write a book. You're gonna be on TV. You're gonna get popular. You're gonna be making a million dollars." Well, thank you very much, but is it actually brilliant, or are you just being nice? So I don't need this cheerleader telling me every idea I have is wonderful.

Some are, some aren't. But I do need something that is going to help me think through it critically. That is the part that I use AI for. I use it to analyze my business decisions. So as an example, I've used it to help me review marketing performances across different ways that I market. So if I'm spending money advertising and I'm getting leads but not sales, I don't want someone to simply tell me to spend more money.

I want someone to tell me, what are the numbers meaning to me? What are they telling me? And what are the potential and possible problems that could come from this? What should I investigate before making another decision?

And I want those recommendations grounded in actual data. Data is the key here, so not just somebody making assumptions or making me happy or just being a yes person or a yes computer. I've also spent time thinking through the financial side of interior design projects, and.

If you've been following me for any amount of time, you know that I love helping designers understand how they're actually making profit on their project. So not just what you're billing, but are you making profit from that? So what you are making out of that project is really the important to me, and that's the data.

Because sometimes those are not always the same thing, as we know. And AI can be helpful when you're reviewing information, seeing patterns that keep repeating, comparing scenarios, and asking better questions.

But here's what I want to be really careful about. AI does not magically make bad information accurate, and it does not replace a qualified accountant or a bookkeeper, an attorney, God no, or a professional when you need one. If the information going in is wrong or incomplete, the analysis can be wrong too.

So I use AI as part of my decision-making process, there's a big difference there, never ever, ever as the final authority. And I often ask it to challenge my assumptions, to challenge what I'm saying, to tell me if I might be overlooking something, to show me the downside of this idea.

What would have to be true for this decision to make sense? That kind of conversation is something that I can get behind because it's incredibly valuable, especially when you're a solo business owner and you don't necessarily have a leadership team sitting beside you around a conference table talking about every decision.

And it gets lonely being a business operator when you're a solopreneur. I know this. So you need a different perspective, and that's what it is. It's another perspective, and sometimes that's exactly what you do need in those moments.

But ultimately, I'm responsible and you're responsible for still deciding what to do with that information, and that's exactly the way I want it. Number nine, I use AI to create content without losing my personality or my intellectual property. Now, this is something I feel extremely strong about because I think we're seeing a lot of people use AI to produce things without actually putting much of themselves into the process.

And I, for one, I don't want that for my business.

And I don't want that for yours either. Here is the distinction that I want you to understand. AI should help you communicate your knowledge. It should not replace the knowledge itself. Let's use my own business as an example. I created what I call my Design Success Academy.

It's my signature education program for interior designers. Long before AI became something we could all open up on our computers and use every day. So the lessons inside of my program came from my own experience, came from my own knowledge, came from my own client work, years of running an interior design firm, years of working with clients on the goods and the bads and the negatives and the positives, years of managing complicated projects, building teams, of making pricing decisions, of learning what's worked with my company and what didn't, and what worked with clients and what didn't, and figuring out how to build a profitable interior design business.

AI did not create any of that knowledge. You know who did? I did, and that distinction matters. That's why I want you to hear this. So now I've taken some of that information and used AI to help me present it in different ways. Yes, that is a fantastic use of AI. Maybe I have a lesson that I've taught for years, and I wanna turn part of that into a more digestible checklist, let's say.

Or perhaps I want to organize that information into a different format that makes it easier for someone to understand, because I know we all learn in different ways. AI can help me with that in a jiffy, but it's not using its own information, it's using mine. And I think that's wonderful because the underlying expertise behind all of that is still mine.

The concepts are mine, the experience is still mine, but what is AI doing? It's helping me package and communicate my intellectual property, but it's not replacing it. And I really want you to think about that in your own business. So what do you know? Ask yourself this:.

What do you know that come from your years, only yours, of experience? What have you learned that someone who's just starting out doesn't know yet? I guarantee you it's a lot. What processes have you created? What mistakes have you made that taught you something valuable?

What do your clients rely on you to understand? That's the important stuff, and that is what makes you different. And I don't want you to ever lose that by becoming overly dependent on AI to do all of your thinking for you.

Because here's something I believe. If all you're doing is asking AI to generate ideas and content and business advice without bringing your own perspective into the conversation, you are missing an enormous part about what makes the technology very, very valuable. I want AI to help me expand my thinking.

I want it to help me organize my thinking.

I want it to challenge, as I said, my thinking, and I want it to communicate my thinking, but I never want it to replace my thinking. Do you see the difference there? And that applies to content creation, too. Even with this podcast, for example, I might begin with a collection of ideas, things that I've been doing, things that I've been thinking, experiences that I've had, this recent situation that I want to discuss with you, opinions that I want to share, stories that I think would be useful.

Then what do I do? I can use AI to help me organize those thoughts into a structure that makes sense and organizes the outline for me. So what is the strongest opening? What order should all of this, like, discombobulated information go in? Am I repeating myself? Is there something important that I've left out or something that I've talked about before?

That's useful. But you know what? The experiences and the thoughts are mine. The opinions are mine. The lessons are mine, and I still have to review everything that it produces because the last thing that I wanna do is publish something under my name that does not reflect what I actually believe. Oh my God, does that sound horrible or what?

And let me repeat something that I mentioned earlier. Always review AI-generated content before you publish it publicly, okay? Always review AI-generated content before you publish it publicly, not just for grammar, not just for all the things that a machine could do. Check it for accuracy, okay?

Check it for tone, check it for meaning, for whether it truly reflects your perspective, and for whether it includes information that should have remained private. How many times have I used AI and I've just spilled my guts to it, and then I go to look at what it came up with, and I was like, "Oh my God, I just said way too much," and it took that information and thought that would be helpful to share with the world when I did not mean for it to be shared with the world.

So that is why I want you to always, always, always review what the output is from AI. You cannot simply assume that because AI gave you something, it is ready for the world to see. Your reputation is far too important to give something over to a machine and not review that. You cannot ever do that because when you use AI thoughtfully, it can be a remarkable tool for sharing your expertise in different formats.

So a podcast, for instance, I do this, can become a newsletter. Hmm. A lesson in my program or in something that you do can become a checklist. A conversation can become an outline. This idea that you've had in your head for years can suddenly become something tangible and useful. And that's where I think AI really shines, not in replacing your intellectual property, in helping you make better use of it Ah, but what about the creative side of interior design?

Now I know some of my interior designers are probably wondering something, "John, you're talking about all the ways you're using AI to run your business, but what about the actual design work? Are you using it creatively?" And the answer is yes, I have explored that side of AI as well, but here's the thing.

Right now, I'm not actively working on new interior design projects. My focus has shifted much more towards coaching and education and marketing and helping other interior designers build their stronger businesses. So I don't have the same day-to-day needs for things like AI-generated renderings or design visualizations that I might have had a few years ago when I was actively managing multiple design projects across the country.

I have absolutely experimented with those capabilities, and honestly, they're kind of mind-blowing, and I have used AI creatively even in design work. But I have not formalized that process, and I'm not ready to teach or discuss that in details just yet 'cause I want to share things with you kinda not the messy middle.

I wanna give you the outcome of what I've been working on, and that's okay. I don't wanna give you something that is not finalized yet. But I do want to address something because I know there's a lot of concern among interior designers about AI replacing what we do, and I want you to think about this.

Let's say a potential client sits down with an AI image generator and creates a beautiful living room. They love it. They're so excited. They've got the perfect color palette. They got the perfect combination of what they want their home to look like in one image. Wonderful. But the question is, now what?

Who's going to figure out whether that room actually works in their home? Who's going to determine the correct dimensions? Who's going to specify the furnishings and the finishes and the lighting and the casework and the details and the materials? Who's going to figure out what products actually exist, what's available, does it fit their budget, and what can realistically be installed?

And if construction is involved, who's going to coordinate that with the architect, the engineer, the contractor, and all the trades to make sure that design that looks so pretty on that piece of paper can actually be executed? Because a beautiful picture, a beautiful photo is not a completed interior design project.

Hear me out. An AI-generated rendering is an idea. It's a concept. It is not a construction document. It is not a specification package or an FF&E or, God forbid, it's not an installation plan. And that is where professional interior designers bring our value. That is where we shine. Your client, you know, might walk into a meeting with an AI-generated image and say something like, "I want my living room to look exactly like this."

Great. I love that you came prepared. That gives you a wonderful starting point for a conversation.

But taking that inspiration and turning it into something that's real and functional and a beautiful space requires knowledge and expertise and technical understanding and CAD and coordination. And frankly, you know this, even the best contractor is going to need accurate information to execute a design properly.

A contractor should never have to guess at dimensions, or material selections or design intent based on a pretty photo or a pretty picture. That is where the appropriate design professionals come in, and that is why we are going to shine in this AI era. So instead of being terrified that your clients can generate their own inspo images, I would encourage you to look at those images as another way for clients to communicate what they want.

In some cases, they may even make that initial conversation easier, because you know why? They're actually showing you something that they're drawn to. They're showing you what they like. And there's a world of difference between knowing what you like and knowing how to create it, and that is the value that you bring to the table as a design professional AI can help visualize an idea, but a professional interior designer knows how to develop that idea into a real project that can actually be executed.

And I think we need to become more confident in explaining that distinction to our clients. Be brazen about it. Tell them what you're feeling because your value is never just the ability to create a pretty picture. It is knowing what to do with that picture.

So don't be afraid to tell your clients and to thank them for pulling this image, but also thank your client for bringing you that image. It's great to have that inspiration, but let them know the truth behind that. Be bold. Tell them that is a lovely image, but we are not going to be able to execute that just from that image.

There's a lot of work that goes in behind the scenes to get that built in, to get that cabinetry, to get that fireplace done, to create this room that you are so in love with, and that is where we come into play. So put it on your website, talk about it in your meetings with your clients, talk about it on social media.

They're going to hear this information subliminally from you, and then suddenly when you meet with them in person, they're going to say, "Oh yeah, I know you liked an image, but I know that you're going to be the expert to make this come to life for me."

And that brings me to the bigger reason that I'm so interested in all of this. Number 10, I'm using AI to build a business that gives me more freedom. Now, this last one is probably the most important to me personally, maybe not to you yet, but to me it is. Because if I look at everything that we've talked about today, there's a bigger reason behind all of it.

It is not just productivity, although that's important. It is not just saving money, although that is really important. It is certainly not about being able to say that I'm using the latest technology, because most of us could care less about that. What's it about? It's about freedom. I've been an entrepreneur for a long, long time, like years.

Like, I started my entrepreneurship when I was selling cupcakes at my mom's yard sales as a kid, and I moved into buying various businesses and starting businesses. So entrepreneurship has been in my blood and part of me for as long as I can remember.

Most of you do own your own business, so you probably understand this feeling. You started a business because you wanted independence. You want to do the work that you love. You love building something that is yours, it is yours alone, it came from all of your hard work. And you want to create a life that looks a little different than the traditional nine-to-five.

And then something kinda funny happens. You build this business that you've dreamt about and thought about, and then it gets busy. Hmm. Then it gets busier with clients, and you add more clients to it, and you add more responsibilities, and you start to hire people, and you bring in systems hopefully.

And you take on more overhead. And suddenly, this business that you created to help you get freedom, starts demanding more and more of your time. I've experienced that firsthand, and I know that many interior designers have as well. You start a design business because you love creating beautiful spaces, and then you find yourself drowning in invoices, and schedules, and emails, and proposals, and vendor follow-ups, and employee questions, and a thousand other things that have very little to do with being creative.

And you start to wonder when can you actually get to enjoy the business that you wanted to have in the first place, the one that you've built? That's something I've been thinking about a lot lately, a whole Because my priorities have changed over the years. I've built a large design business. I've managed teams. I've handled complicated projects. I've done all of those things, and I'm very, very proud of what I've accomplished. But I'm not interested in building a bigger operation simply for the sake of being bigger, if that makes sense.

I want a business that supports the life that I want to have. And what is that? I want more flexibility, more freedom to travel, more time to explore ideas, more opportunity to spend time doing things I enjoy without constantly feeling like there's something at the office that needs my attention. And AI is becoming a very big part of how I move toward that. Because if I can reduce repetitive work, make better decisions, simplify certain processes, and operate with less overhead, that gives me possibilities.

It does not eliminate responsibility, of course, but it certainly doesn't mean that I never have to work again. God, I would not know what to do with that. But it does give me choices. And I think that's what a lot of business owners are really looking for, not necessarily a bigger company, but a better life.

And I wanna go back to something that we talked about earlier. All those tasks that you dread doing, those things that have been sitting on your to-do list forever, those responsibilities that drain your energy, start there. Because I think one of the biggest mistakes people make with AI is using it to add more work to their lives.

I've done that too. They discover that they can create things faster, so they immediately start creating twenty more things. Believe me, I'm so guilty of this. AI will finish one project, and I've suddenly got six more ideas that I want to pursue, and it has to rein me back in with my chief of staff. But just because we can do more doesn't mean we always should, okay?

The goal, the goal isn't to fill every available minute with more work. The goal is to make room for the parts of our lives and our businesses that we actually enjoy. And the wonderful thing about AI is that it can help us do some of the unnecessary work without requiring us to personally perform every single step.

That's what I meant earlier when I said AI should work alongside of you, okay? You bring the ideas, you bring the expertise, you bring the judgment, you bring your massive amounts of creativity, but AI will help you facilitate the work. And I think that's an incredibly powerful combination.

So what would I recommend you do first? Now that I've shared ten different ways that I'm using AI, and I know that sounds like a lot, especially if you're still at the stage when you're mostly opening ChatGPT and asking it the occasional question. That's perfectly fine.

I'm not trying to make you feel bad. You don't need to do all ten of these tomorrow. In fact, please don't, okay? I would rather you pick one thing and really start using it, and here is where I would begin. Get out a piece of paper, open a note on your phone, or start a conversation with ChatGPT or Claude, and then ask yourself three questions.

First, what do I dread doing in my business? Not what do I think AI is supposed to be good at, what do I personally dread or dislike to do? Next, what do I procrastinate on? What consistently takes longer than it should? Okay. Second, which parts of that work actually require my expertise? Because there may be important decisions or creative parts of that really do need to come from you.

You need to identify those, and you need to keep those as only you. That is your value. That is your intellectual property. And third, what can AI help me accomplish without taking away my expertise? Could it organize information? Could it create a first draft based upon your instructions? Could it turn your existing process into a checklist?

Could it help you compare information or prepare something for your review? Start there, And when you get a result, don't just accept it because it looks good. Read that result, question it, correct it if it needs that, and make sure it reflects what you actually intended because you are still the business owner. You are the expert, and AI is your very, very, very capable assistant, a very good assistant even, but an assistant nonetheless.

Now, before we wrap up, I just wanna speak directly to every interior designer just for a minute because I know many of you are hearing this and thinking, "Okay, John, that sounds wonderful, but I don't even know where to begin." That's exactly why I created the AI Studio inside of my McClain Method.

I have taken lots of what I've talked about today, and a lot about what I've learned using AI in business and developed tools and skills specifically for interior designers, not to teach you how to design. You already know how to do that very well. I see your websites.

Your work is gorgeous. But to help you with the business of design. So it's going to help you with the marketing, with the client communications, with the processes. And it is not just prompts. It is a lot of behind-the-scenes that you need, things that can take up so much of your time.

And let me tell you, the designers who are using it are discovering that AI can be so much more than a tool for writing social media captions. It can genuinely support the way that they operate their businesses. But the important thing is that design knowledge, the business experience, and the decisions still come from you.

That is the whole point. I don't want to create a generation of designers who let AI tell them how to run their businesses without understanding why they're doing something. I wanna help designers use their existing knowledge more effectively because why?

That is how we build stronger businesses. So if you wanna learn more about my AI Studio, go to my website, mcclainmethod.com, and you will find all the information there. And for anyone else listening, if you're not a designer, I hope today's conversation has given you a few ideas that you can adapt into your own business because the principles we talked about are not just limited to one industry.

They're about working smarter. They're about making better decisions and creating a business that operates more Having said all of that, here is what I want to leave you with, my friend. I think we're at a really interesting moment in business. For years, we've been told that growth means more employees and more systems and more complexity and more responsibility, and I'm beginning to question whether that has to be true.

What if, what if growth could also mean becoming more efficient? What if success could mean having more control over your time? What if running a business didn't have to involve constantly adding more people and more processes just to keep everything moving? I don't have all the answers to that. And believe me, I'm still learning about AI every single day, every single week.

Some things I try work beautifully. Other things, honestly, are a complete disaster. And sometimes I spend more time figuring out something than I would've spent doing it myself. But I can tell you this, I'm not going back to the way I used to work. The possibilities are just too valuable to ignore.

But I'm also not going to stop thinking for myself, and I don't want you to either, because your knowledge, your expertise, your creativity, your intellectual property are what make your business valuable. Do not ever hand those things over and assume that technology can and will replace them.

Use AI to help bring all of that to life. Use it to take the things that you dread and you don't wanna do off of your plate. Use it to organize your thoughts and support your decisions. Use it to help you accomplish things that you might have otherwise have to put off because you don't have the time.

But always remember, you're the one leading the business. What is AI? It is there to support you. Hmm. So I'd love to hear from you. Are you using ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini? Are you using all of those things? Have you started using projects or AI skills? And what is one thing that AI has generally helped you accomplish in your business?

If you're listening on the podcast, I'd love for you to share this episode with another business owner who might benefit from it, because I really do believe that the business owners who learn how to use these tools thoughtfully are going to be leaps and bounds above everyone else, and you're going to have some exciting opportunities ahead of you.

Not because AI is going to do everything for us, but because it might finally give us more freedom to focus on the things that only we can do. And that, my friend, is something worth getting excited about.

Until next time, keep building a business that actually supports the life that you want to live. And I will see you very soon.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of The McClain Method Podcast. I'm so grateful you made it all the way to the end because that tells me that you're ready to do the work that truly transforms your brand, your business, and your life. If you want more tools, trainings, and behind-the-scenes looks at what I'm building next, head over to mcclainmethod.com, and don't forget to follow along on Instagram @themcclainmethod for even more drops of brilliance.

And remember, my friend, your brilliance is your brand. Don't dim it, design it. I'll see you next time.