S2. Ep12 - You Don't Need Tech Skills to Use AI (Here's What You Actually Need)

Think you need to be techy to use AI? Think again.

In this episode, Katie and Noel break down why AI is really a communication skill, not a tech skill and why most business owners already have everything they need to get started. They walk through what good AI communication actually looks like, where people go wrong (being too vague, giving up after the first response, not giving enough context), and share real examples of what you can create using nothing but a clear brief and a bit of back and forth

They also cover a bunch of new Claude updates including Dispatch (Cowork from your phone), scheduled tasks, Channels for Telegram and Discord, and a new visualisation feature that Noel tested by mapping the night sky. Plus there's a specific action step for anyone who's never used AI before involving your website URL and a framework every business owner should know.

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• Episode Transcript

  Katie (00:26)

  Hello and welcome back to another episode. Hi, hello, I'm Katie and as always I've got Noel here with me today. How are you doing?

  Noel (00:35)

  Doing great this week. How are you doing?

  Katie (00:38)

  Yeah, lots better. Got my voice back along there.

  Noel (00:40)

  Good to hear.

  Katie (00:42)

  Makes recording a podcast very difficult when you haven't got a voice.

  Noel (00:48)

  Exactly, yeah. It does, but we got through it last week.

  Katie (00:51)

  Yeah, we did. Just about.

  Claude have gone a bit crazy, haven't they, with releasing lots of updates.

  Noel (00:59)

  Loads of updates, yeah.

  Katie (01:04)

  Can you just give us the ones that we actually need to know about? Because some are just random updates that we don't really necessarily need to know about.

  Noel (01:13)

  Yeah. I guess one of the big ones is you can now interact with Cowork from your mobile phone. So they've added in a feature they've called Dispatch, which has got a nice little walkie talkie icon. So when you've got Claude installed on your computer, you can talk to it using your phone. So you could be out walking the dogs, whatever, you could be out and about, just pick up your phone and think, actually I should have started this, or I could get Cowork to do this while I've thought of it. And yeah, you can just send it a message and it will have access to your computer like it normally does. And yeah, just get to work on those tasks. It's pretty awesome how that works.

  Katie (02:07)

  I think that's quite helpful. Like sometimes when you go to events and you're kind of inspired and you just think, actually that would be really good to look into that. You'd be able to just grab your phone. So as long as your laptop or computer is on and you've got Claude installed. Okay.

  Noel (02:20)

  Yeah, you're able to just kick off all that research.

  There are some options as well. So you can turn on and off whether or not your computer goes to sleep. So that would keep it going 24/7. But if you don't want that, there is a little tick box for that to turn it off. But also linked into Cowork as well, they've also released schedules so you can schedule tasks to happen whenever you wish, which is a really awesome feature because obviously Cowork is there to really dig into long, complicated tasks or whatever. So if you're doing the same thing every week, you can now give it a schedule. And yeah, it would just go off and do that, providing your laptop's on and up and running. So yeah, that's pretty awesome.

  And I guess there's another one. It's not Cowork related, but we've got one which is now called Channels. So this allows you to connect to things like Telegram or Discord, so they're the only two currently. So if you don't have the Anthropic Claude app, you could then use Telegram and things like that to connect into things like Claude Code, as well as a chat interface and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, a lot of people online are calling that the OpenClaw killer. That's started again.

  Katie (03:56)

  Right.

  Noel (03:57)

  Because it's like, well, now you could just talk to Claude Code and do those things instead of having OpenClaw having access to everything and doing it all. Yeah, I think that's only in a research release at the moment. So I don't think everyone has access to that. So that'll be coming soon.

  And there was also one other update, which is within the normal Claude chat. And that's to do with visualisations. Basically now you can get Claude to create any kind of visualisation so you could give it a spreadsheet and then go right, turn that into an interactive chart or a diagram and it will go off and do all of that for you. So yeah, really awesome feature. And it can also create graphics as well. So I did a quick test just to see how accurate that was. So I said, right, map out the night sky above me right now and create the diagram. And I referenced it versus one of the apps I've got on my iPhone and it got the stars in the right place. It was like, which bit are you looking at kind of thing, it's all 360. And it was like, oh no, straight up. I was like, right, straight up. Yeah. All the stars were in roughly the right sort of place. Yeah, it was where it should be. I can't get all my sextants out and that sort of stuff to make sure it's the right angle and degrees. I don't know. But yeah, it was pretty accurate.

  Katie (05:30)

  Right, okay. So we don't know how good the precision is, but it's fairly okay. All right.

  Noel (05:39)

  Yeah, had a good go. So it's not just business. It could do anything.

  Katie (05:45)

  If anyone needs a side quest.

  Noel (05:51)

  Exactly, yeah. If you get bored.

  Katie (05:53)

  Okay, so this week we're talking about why most people think AI is about tech and why they're wrong.

  Noel (06:01)

  Yeah, I guess it can be quite techy, can't it, if you're looking at it from the outside. So yeah, hopefully in this episode we'll demystify that for you.

  Katie (06:16)

  Yeah, I hope so. And we want to say this episode is going to be suitable for anyone who is just starting out with AI or even automations. But as always, if anyone's got any questions about anything we talk about on the podcast, you can either email us and we'll leave our email below. Or you can come over to our free LinkedIn group, which is AI Automations for Business and ask away in there.

  Okay, so yeah, a lot of people think it is techy and you need a lot of tech skills. And I think personally that's what might be putting a lot of people off. But actually, really, you just need to have really good communication skills.

  Noel (07:10)

  Yeah, exactly. I think where we're at today with LLMs and AI, I think now we've hit the point where you could easily use it using your communication skills. I think in the last few years, I would say you still needed to be a little bit techy to get the best out of it. But I think now we're just like, if you can chat to anybody, you can do it, which is pretty awesome.

  Katie (07:30)

  Yeah, I agree. And most people who are business owners already have those communication skills. Most people will talk to people, talk to clients, be able to write messages, explain things. And obviously that transfers directly into using AI.

  Noel (07:55)

  Exactly. I guess with AI you just kind of need to look at it as if it was somebody working with you alongside you, isn't it? So it's how would the two of us communicate to get a job done kind of thing. You've just got to have that sort of mentality these days.

  Katie (08:19)

  Yeah, and those clear instructions. I think that's really important, isn't it? It's being able to communicate, but it's also just having those clear instructions, like you would explain it to a member of staff who has no previous knowledge about the task that you're about to ask them to undertake.

  Noel (08:23)

  Exactly. Or it could be like somebody on Fiverr that you're getting to do a job or whatever, you need to be super specific in what you ask for. Because yeah, although it is getting cleverer and more intelligent, it does go on tangents quite often still, I would say. So being specific is really important.

  Katie (09:03)

  Yeah. So what does good communication actually look like then when you're talking to AI?

  Noel (09:15)

  So I guess not having open-ended questions unless that's what you want to do and have an open conversation. But if you're looking for things that are specific, it's kind of like really narrowing it down. So I would say before you even start a conversation with AI, maybe start to have a think before you prompt just to get down everything that you want to get out of it.

  Because if it starts going on a tangent, it can be quite hard to steer back sometimes to get it back on the right path and get you what you need. But if you give it what you need first off, then yeah, you'll find your outputs will be a lot better. So yeah, don't just go blindly typing in chatting away. Just have a little think first before you jump in.

  Katie (10:08)

  Yeah, it's having that clarity, isn't it? We always say, if you give a vague instruction, then you'll get a vague output. But if you give it something more structured, then it will give you something that you're actually going to be able to use within your business.

  Noel (10:27)

  Yeah, definitely. It's also if you take a step back and start thinking about it as well, you'll probably think, oh, actually, there's context I could add into this. There's either a website URL or a file that you have access to. You'd think actually, if I put that in, that could make it even better. I know we talked about that a couple of weeks ago on the podcast with the context engineering. So that is really important as well to make sure it has a complete picture of what you're trying to achieve.

  Katie (10:58)

  Yeah, it is basically like you're trying to onboard a new member of staff. You just wouldn't expect them to know everything within your business straight away.

  Noel (11:07)

  No. I always expect it to not get it right 100% first time. It will get close, but then like with a person you'd be like, actually, I wanted that table to have this information. And they go, yeah, sure. Okay, we can go off and do that.

  Katie (11:21)

  Yeah, or maybe your tone or maybe you haven't quite given it enough information about who your customer is.

  Noel (11:38)

  Yeah, it's really important to give all that upfront, isn't it?

  Katie (11:47)

  Yeah. So as well, like for an example here, I would say you're going to ask it to write me a marketing email. That's really vague. We haven't given it any information. Whereas if you say, like for me, I might say write me a marketing email for a membership community aimed at service based business owners. It's warm and in a friendly tone with a focus on the feeling of belonging. That would actually probably give me something that I could use or I could go back and refine it a little bit more and then make it really specific for my business. Because as well, the first response I find is not usually the final output. Sometimes you do have to tweak it, because sometimes you don't know what you don't want until it starts giving you those outputs.

  Noel (12:49)

  Yeah. I can't think of a time, even though I use AI daily, I can't think of a time where I've just gone, hey, do this for me, then not followed up. It's not got it completely wrong. But yeah, there's always things that you want to have a little tweak, or maybe explore a different angle or whatever. Maybe it's come up with something that you didn't think about and things like that. So yeah, they're really important. But I guess if you're creating that sort of thing as well, you could also embed that, especially in Claude, when you've got all those instructions and things you're going to do on a regular basis, you could put that then into a skill. So let's say you've had that conversation, you could at the end of it say, could you create me a skill that would create that for me next time. And it will go off and do it and add it to your account. So you're not having to rehash every single week. With a skill, it will get it 99% there every time, which is pretty awesome.

  Katie (14:05)

  Yeah. So let's give some examples of things that business owners are actually creating with AI that are a communication skill and not a tech skill. And anyone who's listening now who's new to AI could go and do straight after listening to this podcast episode.

  Noel (14:36)

  Yeah, I guess kind of like the easier stuff to start off with, it would be probably down the marketing route. So you could be creating emails. It could be creating any sort of social media content. You could even give it access to your email so you can connect your email accounts into Claude or ChatGPT, whichever one you wish to use. And then have it going through and having that back and forth conversation about what's going on and then going off and actually creating stuff or responding to emails. So yeah, that saves business owners a lot of time. I think quite a lot of people do that. I know I do.

  Katie (15:16)

  Yeah, also like maybe client proposals. It could be summarising long documents. It could be writing your sales page for your website. It could be completely rewriting your website if you wanted to.

  Yeah, it could create lead magnets for you. It could even take previous trainings or programmes, masterclasses, webinars that you have executed. So you're the one that has provided those webinars or programmes and it could turn it into a mini offer for you. Or even a lead magnet if you wanted it to.

  Noel (16:14)

  Exactly. And there's also the web search and research side as well. So you could be going off and doing any sort of analysis on competitors or whatever. You can just have a chat with your AI, it will go off and do that for you. Yeah, that's pretty cool as well to get all that information. Saves you a hell of a lot of Googling.

  Katie (16:32)

  For sure. Where do you think people go wrong when it comes to using AI for the first time and then maybe they've given it a try, it's not giving them the answers or the result that they are looking for straight away. What do you think are those avenues that people can go wrong with?

  Noel (17:03)

  Yeah, I think the big thing is being too vague, too open-ended and things like that.

  Katie (17:21)

  So what does that look like? Can you give us some real examples? Because people might not realise that they're actually being too vague. It's really hard to know. If you know, you know. And if you don't, you don't. So it'd be really good to have some examples.

  Noel (17:33)

  Yeah. So being too vague would be, go off and create me my website and create the landing page for my website. This is my business name. And this is the sector I work in. That's clearly not going to be enough. I mean, AI is always going to give it a go. That's kind of a problem with AI, it's always going to have a go regardless of what you've asked.

  Some will come back and ask you questions and go, hold on a minute, that was way too vague. I need more information. And it will prompt you to give that information. But what I would say to ensure that your prompts aren't too vague is to maybe think about it in the sense of requirements or steps that you're expecting the AI to do. So it could be like, well, here's my website, this is what I do, these are all my services, this is the normal flow, this is the structure I would like it in and all that sort of stuff. It's all about giving it as much information as you can or have available. And if you can give it some requirements, the outputs would be 10 times better.

  Katie (19:04)

  I think as well a lot of people treat AI like the first result is the only result and that first result has to be perfect. And then they kind of give up because they're like, well that's the result it's given me and actually that's not the result I want. So actually AI doesn't work for me or AI doesn't know my business.

  Noel (19:39)

  Yeah, I do see this a lot on social media with people that have given it a go and then they'll see something that I've posted or someone else in the AI space has posted and then go, well, it just doesn't work, does it? They've kind of given up at that point. They've given it a go and then it's like, this isn't for me. But it's important to have that back and forth. You've got to expect to give it more information and have that conversation with the AI in order to get you where you need to be. It's just like chatting to anybody in the street or anyone you work with, making sure that they understand everything that you want them to do.

  Katie (20:28)

  Yeah, I think it's a bit of a mindset shift, isn't it? It's almost like stop feeling like you're using a tool and actually start feeling like you're working with someone. I think it's easier when you use Claude because Claude's a human name rather than ChatGPT. So when you're talking to Claude, you can pretend you are talking to someone called Claude. So you're actually talking with them and it doesn't feel quite so much like a machine or a tool. Do you feel like there's a bit of a mindset shift with that?

  Noel (21:05)

  Yeah, that's true. And I would say even for me, there's been that mindset switch in the last year or so where things like ChatGPT was a tool and it was quite, I guess it wasn't that great. You had to put a lot of work in to get where you wanted out. So I think now we've gone more conversational recently, it's been a switch for me as well in how I do my prompting and how I get to work with AI.

  So yeah, it's just like chatting to someone, isn't it? You don't need to know how it works from a technological perspective. You just need to understand how to ask it questions and how to probe it.

  Katie (21:44)

  Yeah, I think that's definitely the case. So it's not giving up when your first result isn't quite what you want. Have a conversation with it instead of just treating it like a tool. Don't be too vague. And make sure you give enough context.

  Because although the LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude are really clever, they're not mind readers. So they do need to have context around your audience, your tone of voice, or actually just what you're looking for. The outcome that you're actually looking for. What is it that you want it to do?

  Noel (22:48)

  Yeah. And I guess also if you get something that isn't quite what you want, you could always have that conversation like you would do with a person and say, why did you do it that way? What else could I give you to make this better? You can have that with them. I've had those conversations all the time. I have them every day with customers and they ask me, why does it look like this? Well, this is why I've done it. And they go, right, okay, fair enough, that makes sense. Or, we were expecting this. You can have that interaction these days with AI and it will understand it really clearly.

  Katie (23:22)

  So hopefully we've given you enough information and some courage to really get started using LLMs like OpenAI, so that's ChatGPT, or Claude, or even Google Gemini.

  So for anyone who's listening to this podcast, Noel, what is something that they can do today or even this week? A little action step. So someone's listening, never properly used AI before. What's the one thing you'd ask them to try either today or this week?

  Noel (23:48)

  So it's hard to narrow it down. There's so many things, isn't there? But I guess what's really important as a business owner, and this is one of the first things I ever asked ChatGPT.

  Katie (24:14)

  How do you remember that? That was so long ago. I don't even remember what I had for dinner yesterday.

  Noel (24:29)

  I know it was a long time. No, I can't remember either.

  Katie (24:39)

  Yeah, but you can remember something so random. The first ever thing I asked ChatGPT three years ago was this.

  Noel (24:42)

  Yeah, I mean, it probably wasn't the first thing, but it was one of the things where I was like, oh, wow, okay, that's really cool. Everyone's business, you kind of need to understand all of your strengths and weaknesses and things like that. So what I would do is give AI access to your website. Say this is the URL.

  Katie (25:11)

  Okay, so how do people do that?

  Noel (25:15)

  So what I would say, let's go right back to the prompt and build it from scratch. So you would say, look, I want to do a SWOT analysis for my business. Grab your URL for your website and then say, this is my website, my business name, copy in your URL. And then basically get it to go through each page. Just say, go and do as much research as you can about this business. And then I want you to come back with a detailed SWOT analysis of my business. And then that's really all you've got to do. If there are any areas specifically that you're worried about, then add those in. And then just hit enter, see what you get back. You should get back a nice detailed report of your business.

  And that's also really cool because you could then add that into a project within Claude or ChatGPT. So that's giving it an overview of what your business does and things like that. So you could then use that going forward. But yeah, when I first did that for my business with ChatGPT when it first had web search, I was like, wow, okay, this is really awesome. I couldn't get over it, how clever it was. I mean these days Claude could put that into a proper diagram and flow charts and all sorts for you and a nice formatted document. But yeah, I would say that's probably a good place to start. It's things as a business owner we should always know. Where we're doing well, where we're not doing well, what kind of opportunities are out there.

  You can also ask it to do all the research of competitors and things like that. So if you do know them, you can put those URLs in there as well for their website so it can go off and have a look and see what they're up to as well.

  Katie (27:16)

  Awesome. Okay. So that is the one thing that you'd ask someone who's never properly used AI before to try this week. Okay.

  Noel (27:29)

  Yeah, definitely as a business owner. Definitely.

  Katie (27:38)

  Okay, another question for you, Noel. What would be the simplest conversation that someone could have with an AI that would actually show them straight away that this is a communication skill that I need and actually doesn't really have anything to do with tech?

  Noel (27:53)

  Yeah, I guess you could get it to start creating written content and things like that, then having that ideation chat with it. So you could say, can you go off and look this up? Can you then create a social media post for that, either for LinkedIn or whatever, and then have that conversation back and forth with it to then create that post that you really need. You're not really going off and searching anything. You're not digging into the weeds. You're just having that playing back and forth with the AI just to get you that output.

  Katie (28:32)

  Yeah, I would actually go even further with that conversation. So I would tell it exactly what I want the social media post to do. Do I want people to buy one of my services? Do I want someone to come and work with me? Do I want it to be a leadership piece? Do I want it to show my expertise? Get really clear on that and go, I want to increase my leadership within my niche. And then I would have a conversation with it about what your business is about, who you help, your tone of voice. And actually where you're posting this piece of content. So if you're going, I post on LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok and Facebook. I would really advise you to do each platform one at a time with this prompt. So just stick with one. So say this is a prompt for Instagram. I'm going to do a carousel post or I'm going to do a B-roll reel or I'm going to do a talking to camera reel, whatever it is. A graphic.

  So it's actually having that proper conversation with it. It's again remembering you're having this conversation with a member of staff who knows nothing about what you want. And it's having that conversation. Then it should, so you've given it all the information, then like if it was a person, they can go off and go, right, okay, I'm going to go ahead and create this in Canva now.

  I mean, you can even connect your AI into Canva nowadays, which is amazing. But we'll leave that for another episode because we don't want to overwhelm people. So it's just making sure it has all of that information. So then it's not going to spew out a carousel post for Instagram that's three tips to whatever, insert your industry, which is really basic. It's not going to move anyone.

  Yeah, people might read it and go, that's helpful, but they're not going to see you as a leader. They're not going to think, I need to go and work with them straight away. They're not going to go and binge the rest of your content or go and look at what offers you have. It's very much like, that was a nice piece of content. Let's move on.

  Noel (31:17)

  Yeah, we don't want that. One engagement.

  Katie (31:19)

  No. So that's kind of like how far I would go with the communication.

  Noel (31:31)

  Yeah, exactly. It's just getting into that chatty mindset, isn't it?

  Katie (31:38)

  Yeah. And I always say as well, you can't ever over-communicate.

  Noel (31:44)

  True. Yeah, the more the better, isn't it? If you have that mindset as well, you're just like, I'm not sure if it's going to need it, I'll throw it in. It might find something useful, it might not, but at least you've given it.

  Katie (31:46)

  Yeah. Think of it as an assistant on day one and not day 601. By day 601, you could probably say to your assistant, oh, we need to do some Instagram posts this week. Are you okay to go ahead and create them? And they would go, yeah, sure. Is this still the focus? Yeah, great. Okay, off I go.

  Noel (32:03)

  Yeah, it won't come back with posts that are green instead of blue, which is your brand colour. And you're like, come on, we've been through this.

  Katie (32:29)

  Yeah, for sure. Well, we really hope we've inspired you to give AI a try and have that mindset shift that actually it's all about communication and not a lot about tech. I think if it was a lot about tech, then I wouldn't be using it anywhere near as much as I do.

  Noel (32:48)

  Yeah, you're the good marker for this, aren't you, I suppose.

  Katie (33:00)

  Yeah. I think actually most of the things that we do and the things that we also include in our membership AI Business Club, I think is a good marker for, because if I don't understand it, then we either need to explain it better or put in more steps. Because I would say I'm someone who isn't particularly techy.

  But there are things that I can now do. Like I can use any LLM. So OpenAI, Claude, Gemini. And there are actually automations that I can do, which I never thought would be possible. And again, we'll probably do another episode all about AI automations at a real beginner level.

  But I just feel like those have come on leaps and bounds as well. You can actually just talk to those agents and things like that. And the amazing things that you can create by just talking at it rather than being techy is just mind blowing.

  Noel (34:11)

  Yeah, because even on the automation front, even they're moving down the conversation route, aren't they? So we've got Make with their Maia, and they've got their own chat thing going on. So although you might not know the platform and how it works, you could still just have that back and forth conversation to build what you need. I think this year is all about chatting.

  Katie (34:19)

  Yeah. Okay, love it.

  Noel (34:40)

  Exactly.

  Katie (34:43)

  Okay, so if you are giving AI a proper try this week, we would absolutely love to hear how you get on, what you managed to create. Come and let us know, either send us an email, hello@makeautomations.ai or over on our free LinkedIn group, AI Automations for Business. Everyone is welcome to join that. It's a completely free group. Or you can come and check us out on Skool, our membership is called AI Business Club if you want a little bit more help and support and someone to answer all your questions that you might possibly have. But for now, thank you so much for listening and we will catch you for another episode very soon.