I had the whole thing mapped out.
The AI Clone Team was in development, the frameworks were solid, and I wanted more time to pressure test and polish before putting it in anyone's hands.
Then a friend called me on it: “Amber, you are taking too long. Get this into people's hands, and they're gonna tell you what they need.”
So I did.
Five weeks later, we're in Round Two of our beta, and the behind-the-scenes of what's working (and what I'm intentionally not automating) is what I'm sharing in this week's episode.
A Quick Peek Behind the Curtain
Here's what I'll tell you now: we have 16 named AI team members inside our business. Not a generic chatbot. Not a list of prompts. These are specialist personas, each trained on my voice, my brand, and my frameworks. Callie builds my content briefs. Marlo helps me run financial analysis. Ania organizes my newsletter. Susie supports social. And my team uses a handful of others I rarely touch, like Repurposing Riley and Carousel Crystal.
Each one has a name, a role, and a set of instructions and skills that make them a specialist in one specific area.
But here's the thing I keep coming back to, and it's worth knowing before you build anything: not everything should be automated.
One Tip I'll Give You Right Here
If you're wondering where AI could even begin to fit in your business, start by tracking where you repeat yourself. Same task, same thinking, same emails, same formatting. Over and over.
Those repetitions? That's your clone yourself opportunity. That's where an AI team member can carry some of the weight so you can focus on the work that needs your brain, your creativity, your connection.
I walk through two more starting points in the episode, including the sneaky one most people don't think about (hint: it's about where you play translator between two steps in your workflow, and it's where time quietly stacks up without you noticing).
WHY I'M NOT AUTOMATING EVERYTHING (YET)
I could build a pipeline where my content brief rolls straight into a podcast script, straight into social posts, straight into a newsletter. Fully automated.
I don't.
I go back and forth with the brief. I tweak the outline. I make sure it sounds like how I would talk to you, not like how a system would summarize me. One of my core themes this year is connecting, and that means staying close to the creation process. I want to think about you when I'm building these episodes. I want it to feel like the conversation we'd have if we were sitting together.
There's a whole lot more I share in the episode about why “automate everything” is the fastest way to scale something that doesn't sound like you, and what to do instead.
Curious About the AI Clone Team?
If what you read here sparked something, the episode goes way deeper into the behind-the-scenes of how we built this, how the beta is evolving, and what our members are experiencing.
And if you want to explore the AI Clone Team for your own business, Round Two of our beta is open. Take a look when you're ready.
And if you're not ready yet? That is perfectly okay. You are right on time. Keep listening, keep building. We're here for you when you're ready.
Big Love, Amber
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
AI is so often either wildly overhyped or completely underutilized, and the difference has almost nothing to do with the various tools that are available and at our fingertips because there are many, but it more often has to do with how we are using those tools. And I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I am right.
I am collaborating with business owners on setting up their AI clone teams. I am working through an update on the How to Clone Yourself book and methodology, which is about getting more efficient and multiplying our effort, getting more of you in the world without you doing more. So this is a concept that was created well over a decade ago now, but.
It is worth an update with the AI landscape. So that's what I wanna dive into today with you. A bit of a behind the scenes conversation, what I'm actually doing, actually working on what I'm gonna keep doing, what I'm keeping manual versus what we are automating and where we are taking things from here.
So we haven't been using a version of AI since before it was called AI, and maybe you have too. Automations and tools like Zapier have been in our toolbox for, again, over a decade and even more in the last five years. We've used tools like Jasper ai and then of course. Chat and Claude and NHN and Whisper came onto the scene in addition to a number of other tools and resources, and it is changing the way we do business and it is moving so.
Quickly. So about a year ago, we started integrating more and more AI strategically into our business processes to help us be more efficient, to help us serve better and to help us get more done without adding more to our plates. And it was working, and about six weeks ago now, maybe eight, I was.
Conceiving of an invitation that I would give to my clients and people in my community to join us in what I'm calling the AI Clone Team, which aligns with our branding around how to clone yourself. And I was. Sharing with a friend that you know, this is coming, this is in development. I'm first, I'm gonna beta this because it's a true beta.
I want feedback. I wanna know how this works for you, even though we've been testing it in our business for a while, and the friend said. You gotta just go. I wanted to perfect it more pressure, test it more, make sure it was all working and set up well for you. And she said, no, you are taking too long.
You've gotta get this into the hands of people that can use it and they're gonna tell you what they need or what needs to be updated. And that is when about. Five weeks ago, we kicked off the first round of our AI clone team. So after being in it and using all these tools and resources for a while, my friend said, yes.
Great idea to get these into people's hands. Go now. Now, so often I will speak with my clients or I'll look at my methodology and my work and say. We don't actually need a beta. The work is solid, the concepts are there, the framework is there, we've just gotta go. But then there are times when it is a, like there are things that you know, need to be worked out, but you need the feedback of the people who will be using these things to update it and polish it and truly finish it.
Because sometimes we are so in to what we are doing. You know, the forest from the trees, analogy, we can't. See the forest from the trees and we need to get that elevation and that external perspective for someone to say, Hey, can you slow down a second? Which actually happened. I was like, oh, three clicks.
But there was more going on user screens than just these three clicks. Other things were popping up. I'm like, oh, that's really good for me to know. What's coming up for you over there? What are you seeing? Where did you open this browser? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, because it was looking different. So that is an example of when a beta is really valuable.
You may have something that's working, you may have something you know people need, but you're taking time to perfect it and polish it when you could just move ahead and share it as a beta. And get the feedback immediately. Now, further behind the scenes on this, what we did with this first round of the AI clone Team Beta is we invited people to participate in this and what we expect will be an 85% discount from the final price.
So they are original. Participants, thank you so much for being on this journey with us. We so deeply value the time and the feedback that our beta members provided to us, that they received 80% off, but we'll get updates as we improve the delivery of this experience going forward. So. We just recently invited a second round of beta participants 'cause we did one round.
We made improvements, we received feedback, we implemented things that we heard and made upgrades, and we have now invited a second group of beta members to participate in this at a 75. Percent discount and that beta is kicking off with live calls next week. I am not sure at the time that you're listening to this if we still have space in that or not, but if you are curious, go to ai clone team.com to check it out.
And while you are there, know that that page that you are on was created entirely with prompts that we share and not prompts, but role instructions that we share inside of AI. Clone team for you to create your own. Fully designed sales page, including copy updates using Claude. So let me tell you a little bit more about that and what the AI Clone team is, because this is gonna get into some of the AI use and a unique perspective I have on how to use AI well.
So inside of the AI Clone team, we are sharing with business owners and leaders a set of personas. Who each have a specific job in my business and available for you to onboard into your business, who will be trained on your voice, your brand, your offers, your business right now as it is today, and where you want it to be going, your way of think.
And they're not running things on their own. So that's how I think more of an agent. An agent will go execute something and we share use cases for agents inside of the AI clone team as well, but they're also specialist team members who are. Invited by you to do some work. For example, there's Ania who handles organizing my newsletter for me after I share everything I want to put in it.
There's Callie who does core content strategy for every episode I record. I work with Callie who helps me. Put a structure to this outline, all of my ideas, all of my thoughts, and she creates a content brief for me that is well organized into, okay, here's everything you told me. Here's a recommended outline and here's the recommended go forward plan based on everything that you want to get into this episode.
And you asked for some research. So I did this research, I got these data points for you that you requested, Callie. The content strategist will do that. Then that brief is prepared and ready for Polly who works through podcast production and Susie who helps with social and Marlo is available my CFO, and she helps me think through the financial stuff without me having to run all of those numbers and do all of that thinking on my own.
It is an area where I love to play, but having. Someone like Marlo, my AI CFO, helped me do some of that analysis makes things a whole lot easier. So inside of the Clone team, as we are speaking and connecting today, there are 16 AI clone team members who support us. In our business, my team members use some of them more than I do.
I shared some that I use pretty frequently, but Lily uses repurposing Riley and Landing page, Linda and Carousel Crystal a bit more, and Joanna, et cetera. Everybody uses a different members of our team more. Each AI clone team member has a name, a role, and again, they're trained to sound like our business.
It's not just a prompt, it's a set of instructions and skills, and it's a specialist who is trained to do a specific. Thing. So we have built this, and again, it is not finished. We are taking feedback from those people who are in our round two of this beta experience, and this is so intentional. It is a small group of owners because we want that feedback and we're learning and we're iterating and we are.
Upgrading based on that feedback, four, whatever our round three of the AI clone team becomes. So I am watching this. I am learning, we're expanding, we're growing, and I watch for more opportunities to expand the AI team within our business as well. Now, we didn't build the AI clone team because AI is currently trending or it's hot and everywhere it kind of is.
So I may be seeing more of it in my social media feeds and in my news than. You are, I'd be so curious. Let me know. But I reprogrammed my algorithm from house decor to being seen AI because we are going through a house build. It is almost done and I cannot take in any more ideas right now. So I shifted my algorithms on social, so I was getting more ai and I have shifted.
I get some news briefs, I've shifted those, so I'm getting more ai. But again, I didn't build this because I was seeing a lot of it in my feed. I built it because the AI finally became good enough and I was pressure testing it, pressure testing it, pressure testing it. When a friend said, Amber, you gotta go.
This is where it needs to be. To get feedback. And there's a big difference there in the tools being good enough and not ready for us. And I think right now there are many, many, many valuable tools and resources out there. And again, we've gotta be selective, you know, so often when we're looking at tools and resources, like, I need a project management tool, I need ai.
But it's so much more specific than that because we wanna customize this to your. Business, what is it that you specifically need? What are your systems, your processes? And then we look at tools and resources that will plug into support you better. Now, do I also think it is fun and important to look at use cases?
Yes, absolutely. Because that may open up your mindset to something that you weren't expecting or you weren't necessarily thinking of. But when we realized, okay, we can now train. AI platforms to operate like us, to speak like us, to know our methodology, to give feedback consistently on things that we share, our business, our operations.
That's what made this more than just a fancy. Idea that we would be sharing, but it made it actually something real that we could confidently help you install in your business. Because there was a time when people were handing a lot over to ai. Maybe you've heard the term. I've seen this term so much. AI slop.
It was like, we know that was ai. It looks like ai, it reads like ai. It feels like ai, but we can train better. And so I think that the important thing to know and note, and where there is a differentiator here is that I'm staying in the driver's seat. I'm not just handing things over and it runs the entire business.
I think things are gonna get better and there will be more and more and more automations in the next. Six months, year ahead. But these are team members. They're augmenting our team. They're helping us all go faster, do better work, focus on those things that matter. And it's a thought partner. We're brainstorming and strategizing.
It is not replaced any of our team members. Yet it has replaced some of our work individually and it has allowed us to shift that work to other things, but it hasn't replaced any team members. In fact, in the last six months, I've actually hired an AI consultant because I just wanna a thinking partner that is seeing exactly what I'm seeing and double checking some of what I and believe is this.
Right. Do you see a different way of doing this? Is this the most efficient way based on what you see? So I'm working with an AI consultant and we're also working with a social. Media manager. So I shared with you all sorts of tools and resources and AI clone teams, members that we've added that support content and still we layered in a human to help us do this as well as we want because I think that is still.
Needed. So this is a window for you to figure out, okay, how could this work in my business early and before it's all over like you are right now, right on time, and a little bit of ahead of the curve because you are listening to this and you're paying attention. To this too. So I wanted to bring you into this conversation.
Certainly while we are still building it, but also while the tools and the technology is still building and advancing, because we have an opportunity to shape how it is used, you have an opportunity to explore ethical ways of using it and ways that are environmentally friendly and value add. And the more we under.
Stand and know about it, the more we can leverage it in a values aligned way and encourage others to use it in a values aligned way as well. So I wanna share a couple more examples of how I'm using AI in my business, because that's very broad and very generic and doesn't really mean anything without the details.
So I've shared on a prior episode that I use this as a thought partner. I have a folder set up called the Reality Check folder, and it's a leadership folder where I am just compiling information about how I lead, what I am leading, how I operate, my personality assessments, daily reflections. We actually have a team member set up to help with our weekly modern CEO Monday and Friday reflections that we encourage all business owners to do.
So I have this space where I'm kind of collecting ideas. For how I work as a leader, and it's picking up on themes and trends and things that I don't necessarily see or remember happened, so. This has been huge for helping me sort of brainstorm and strategize on things. The other way that we are using it that I kind of love is the content pipeline.
So we have set up a workflow where I can just be walking and dropping in fresh ideas and they will be parsed out into a collection of resources and spaces based on. What they can be used for. Is it a reel? Is that a good hook? Is that a story that you should include in a speech that you're giving or in a book that you're writing?
So it takes my voice notes, it takes transcripts from meetings, and it layers them in to places where we can use them, and that gets organized. In a spreadsheet and my social media team, anyone on the team myself, can all go back and grab those ideas. So you know those ideas that you have when you're walking around town or you're driving somewhere, you're picking up the kids.
You can collect all of them and organize them and what we're calling the content machine. So this is something that the AI clone team members have access to, to set up and leverage. They have all of our instructions for this, and we built this in Claude Cowork as well. And while we have these team members and these use cases in place, I want to share with you something that is unique and something that I recommend we all keep top of mind.
And while I love AI and AI use and automations and streamlining things, manual is sometimes better and you staying involved in the process. Is sometimes better. So take that content engine, for example, or take the content brief. I mentioned that content brief could be finished and then it could roll into a podcast script and it could roll into all the social media and it could roll right into a number of different actions through agents.
That you could build using the AI clone team resources. However, I don't have that all automated yet. I review the content brief. I go back and forth. This is what I said, and this is how it's organized. But I don't quite like that. Can we tweak this in the outline? Can we tweak that so it's not like hit a button and it is all done?
I go back and forth to make sure it aligns with what I wanna communicate. It aligns with the flow that I would naturally see. Speak and connect with you here in so very, very specifically for this episode. I. Talked into Claude using our content, Callie Creation, who creates briefs, and I shared Callie.
We're gonna create a content brief and here's what I wanna cover. And I walked through at a high level, all of the things we're talking through right now, and I said I'd like some research. I would like a long version and a shorter bulleted version. What can I pull out? That would be a shorter episode for YouTube.
Then we went back and forth. So a initial brief was created, I think we should talk about this first. Oh, we should drop in this story. Then Callie made further updates so it wasn't one and done. Then it can be moved into some of those other resources. And right now I think that makes that a little bit better.
It keeps it me. It keeps me close to it, and one of my. Core themes for this year is connecting. So I really feel like I'm connecting in the creation process. I'm thinking about you who may be listening, and I'm thinking about how I will connect with you when I am sharing this so it feels natural and it feels me, and it feels aligned to the conversation we may actually be having.
So. In addition, if you simply go straight to automation, you may be automating something that isn't great, that isn't you, that doesn't align with your operations. And you also need to make sure you understand. And because we have this phrase that we have used as a guiding principle inside of the AI clone team, when we put garbage into the ai, we will get garbage out.
So you wanna make sure you're putting information that aligns with how you wanna be represented, your voice. Your brand, because otherwise you'll end up with output that's slightly off brand, off message, slightly not you. And sometimes you can't even put your finger exactly on what is wrong with it, but you're just gonna feel it.
So I'm checking it out before it goes to publish. I'm working it and we are doing this manually to some extent, but it is still. A huge reduction in time we may have spent previously because there is an iteration and there's a thought partner that is there on demand. So automating too early means you may be scaling.
Garbage, and that's not what we want. So we wanna be thoughtful to this. Some work will stay human, not because AI can't do it, but because you bring something unique to this. And we're continuing to train up our AI clone team members and train up the system so that it will get better and better. And when the technology catches up.
There'll be less friction and those automations will be in place based on training you've already done. 'cause the goal isn't necessarily to hand off everything it is to hand off the right things and then keep those things that matter to you that have high impact and that will help you generate results in your business.
So if you wanna know to where to start with ai, here's where I recommend you start. Track your time. Watch those things that come up again and again. Where are you? Repeating yourself? The same task, the same thinking, the same hitting the buttons on the keyboard, same output over and over. That is a clone yourself opportunity.
Next. Where are decisions bottlenecked through you? Where do things stop and wait because it needs your brain. That's where a thought partner can take some of the load. That's where when you have this idea and it is getting lost, I mean, it's less of a bottleneck and it's more like a bottle break because it is just lost forever.
When I would walk home, I'm like, oh, good idea. And I get home. What was that idea? Right now, I will just capture it and it's going right into the system. Always there. Always accessible. Three. Where are you? The translator between two steps. You take something from one format, reframe it, hand it off. This is something being translated or moved through a process, and that doesn't necessarily need to be you handing it off.
We can hand those things off to AI or we can share that work with other team members. And this is where time goes. This is where time stacks up and adds up, and this is where you can get leverage. And without doing a regular time audit, we recommend doing these about quarterly. If you have a team, you may also invite your team to do this as well.
It's a great exercise for team members to do with you, and if we don't do that, we might not catch it. And so I definitely recommend that you do that time audit. Just generally track or bring awareness. To Wait a second. I did this last week. Or wait a second, I think I'll do this again. Let me build an AI clone team member to help me out with this.
So with that, this is where I am. We are building in connection. We're building in real time. We're learning where AI is helping us best and where we still wanna stay involved, where we can automate more, where things need to stay more human. And we're getting. Smarter and smarter and smarter about opportunities for us as we train and we're getting more comfortable in the tools and resources.
So this is not the end. This is a continuation of a story and an update, and it is real time what is happening. So if you are still thinking, okay, I wanna do. I don't know where to start if this resonated, if you've got an inkling that you need to be dipping a toe further into this and you'd like more support in your business, this is exactly the thing we are doing inside the AI Clone team beta.
So check it out. You can go to ai clone team.com. We'll link it up. Take a look when you're ready, and if you're not ready yet, that's okay. You are right on time. Keep listening, keep building, and we're here for you when you're ready.
