S2. Ep19 - How to Make AI Actually Know Your Business

What if AI could actually understand your business the way you do?

In this episode, Katie and Noel walk through how to train AI to know your business from the inside out. They cover Claude's memory feature, setting up projects with your company documents and processes, and connecting your business apps for live data, plus why downloading someone else's "100 viral hooks" will never beat teaching AI your own voice.

They also discuss OpenAI's new text-to-speech and real-time voice agent models, the growing problem of AI-generated content that doesn't sound human, and the free Claude webinar they're planning for listeners.

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• Episode Transcript

  Katie (00:26)

  Hello, welcome back to another episode. Hi, I'm Katie and as always I have Noel here with me. Hi, Noel, how are you doing?

  Noel (00:35)

  I'm doing great this week, yeah. A lot going on this week, haven't we?

  Katie (00:39)

  Yes, and a big happy birthday to you as well.

  Noel (00:43)

  Thank you. Not fallen apart just yet. Getting older.

  Katie (00:49)

  Getting older, getting wiser. It's all a good thing.

  Noel (00:56)

  Definitely wiser. Yeah, absolutely.

  Katie (01:03)

  Are there any AI or automation updates for us this week? Because we always start the podcast with AI and automation news.

  Noel (01:16)

  Yeah, so this week OpenAI released a few more voice models or updates to their voice models. You can connect these, and I think these are mainly towards the developer side, so APIs. But you could use them in no-code automations in Make and things like that, or AI agents and things. So yeah, they've got a lot more text-to-speech models that have just come out.

  There's also a real-time voice agent kind of thing, so you can talk to it and have a conversation. So it would be really good for telephone voice agents and things like that if anyone's got those. So yeah, there's some really cool updates there and I don't think they cost the earth either. They're pretty reasonable from what I remember. I can't remember the exact prices off the top of my head right now, but I remember having a look and thinking, yeah, that's pretty good.

  Katie (01:57)

  Sounds good.

  Noel (02:15)

  Yeah, that's the biggest update.

  Katie (02:20)

  Yeah, any other updates or news that you feel is worthwhile sharing with our lovely listeners?

  Noel (02:29)

  I don't think there was much going on last week to be honest, other than that. Quiet week.

  Katie (02:33)

  Okay, that means probably towards the end of the month it'll go really busy again.

  Noel (02:41)

  Probably, yeah. Or as soon as we hit stop on this recording, something will come out. That's always the way.

  Katie (02:47)

  Yeah, it is. True. Okay. So this week we are talking about how to make AI know your business better. So why would we want to do that?

  Noel (03:06)

  So it kind of helps you out. I find it's helped me out so much having this sort of thing within my own business. Whenever I ask questions, it's kind of relating things back to me or the business and things like that. It can kind of push you down different routes that you hadn't already thought of. So it's getting to know me and my business better and then going, actually, if you did this, or you've been working on these two things, maybe they could join together. There's things I've never thought of as well. It's really become so helpful for me in my business.

  Katie (03:43)

  Yeah, and I think as well, if AI knows your previous experience from your business, because for a lot of business owners, we've never had just one business. We've had maybe a previous business or several businesses. We have experience in other fields or have other knowledge. And actually, if we tell AI this, sometimes it can then bring it together and go, well, actually, based on your previous experience, you would be able to do this. Or sometimes AI says, no, you've got too much going on already.

  Noel (04:35)

  It does, yeah. It keeps telling me off. I love little coding app ideas or little projects. And it goes, well, actually, you've got X, Y, and Z going on right now. You don't really have time for this. I'm like, well, I'm not coding it. You are. It's whether you've got time for it, Mr AI, not me. I was going to tap away for two minutes and let you carry on.

  Katie (05:09)

  Yeah. And I think as well, when AI knows you and your business, I find you are then less likely to need these prompts and hooks that I see all over the internet. Like, download my 100 best-selling hooks. And it's like, well, actually, that's great that someone is going to give you these hooks, but they've probably already been written by AI, which means they're not original. They're not tailored to you or your business. And just because, I always say this, just because it's worked for someone else doesn't mean that it's going to work for you.

  Noel (05:49)

  Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you could probably, if you train or tell the AI more about you and then you give it that sort of output, it could probably repurpose it for you, I guess. But yeah, you do need to teach it first.

  Katie (06:00)

  Yeah. And I think that's the huge step that people are actually missing. They're so relying on other business owners going, I set up this AI automation for my business and now it's like running seven employees. Which is great, because they're like, oh, I'll just steal their process. But it's actually a process set up for their business and not your business.

  And what I have learned from being in business for over 14 years is that everyone runs their business completely differently. Even if you have the exact same business, you still run it differently. When I set up my dog walking and home boarding business, there were people who I was friends with who were also dog walkers and home boarders in my local area, and they ran their business completely differently to how I ran mine. Because of course we set up our businesses, we become the boss, we want to start our own business for a reason. And therefore we run it in a way that actually works for us.

  Noel (07:25)

  Yeah, absolutely. It kind of gives you that edge as well, doesn't it? Some businesses or people you want to have as clients will probably prefer you with the way you do things compared to somebody else.

  Katie (07:38)

  Yeah. And just because someone else has had success with it doesn't mean that you're going to have the same success. Because if that was true, then we would all be successful. We would all be multi-millionaires, billionaires. And we're not. Not everyone in business is successful.

  Noel (07:48)

  Yeah. I mean, my YouTube's absolutely full of stuff where they go, you could do this with AI and make X amount of money, which is a silly amount of money. And it's like, yeah, I'd like to see your receipts. Obviously, if it was true, then everyone would do it. And we'd all be sitting on the beach, wouldn't we?

  Katie (08:12)

  Yeah, our businesses just running by themselves. And yeah, so I think sometimes we can really get caught up in the hype of things. And actually, sometimes we just need to step back and go, actually, is this the way I want to run my business? Is this the way I want to show up in my business? Or maybe you download those 100 viral hooks and actually none of them can be replicated to your business or even your tone of voice, because that's important as well.

  Noel (09:01)

  Yes, yeah, definitely. Because with AI, if you give it that information, it will start replicating it and kind of forget who you are. So it'll be like, well, you've given me this, so this must be you. That kind of trains it in a bad way, which isn't great.

  Katie (09:11)

  Yeah, for sure. So I think it's really easy to get caught up in the hype of download this to have this success or download my prompt that brought me in 100K worth of work.

  But actually, what if you started training your AI so it actually sounded like you and worked the way that you work? It sounds exactly like you, but also remembers how much experience and knowledge that you have on all of these different things. So actually, it is going to be more beneficial to you.

  Noel (10:05)

  Yeah, absolutely. And it is quite easy to get started as well with this sort of thing. It's very beginner-friendly to get AI to start learning about you. And yeah, should we jump into that now and talk through it?

  Katie (10:15)

  Yeah. Let's.

  Noel (10:35)

  Okay. So the easiest way of doing it, and I'm just going to use Claude as the example, but ChatGPT has very similar concepts and things in the background. Within Claude, you can go to your settings and under capabilities you'll find there's an option for "generate memory from your chat history" and it's a little toggle switch. Sometimes I don't actually know by default if it's on or off, but if it is off, turn that on if you're happy with it.

  Basically what it's going to do is, it's not going to be some sort of miracle where it's going to know you within the next five minutes, but over time it's going to get to know you as you chat with it. Things you're working on and it essentially updates its internal memory.

  So if I very quickly have a look at mine at the moment, I've got personal context, I've got things that are kind of top of mind, things I've been working on currently. It knows all of those. And then it's even going into a brief history of all the things I've been working on. So I've given it information about my electrical company and then from there it's picked up my military and defence backgrounds. And I always find every now and then it would push that in and say, actually, with your background doing this sort of stuff, that will help you do this.

  So yeah, that kind of all gets updated automatically. You don't have to go off and type anything in. This will just do its own thing as you use Claude day to day. You can edit it as well. There is a little pencil icon.

  You can't directly edit it though, you've kind of got to chat with Claude to change it, which is a bit strange. But anyway, it is what it is. Because I remember there was a few things that it added in on my memory and it was like something just popped up on the chat and I was like, why are you telling me about this? And yeah, I looked in and it had picked up a random dog name. It says, well, your dog is whatever. I was like, I don't know where you've got this from.

  Katie (13:04)

  Have I got a dog that I don't know about?

  Noel (13:23)

  Yeah, it's not that hard to keep track of them. But it somehow randomly picked it up. It was like, well, you have dogs, and it picked it from a website and I was like, okay, yeah, remove that. That's not relevant.

  So yeah, you can do that. But that's the automatic way of doing it. And I find my chats with Claude after having that enabled and having it for a while are so much better than what they used to be.

  Katie (13:29)

  Okay. So that would be step number one.

  Noel (13:52)

  There is a more manual step, I guess, if you want to do that. So you could set up a project within Claude or ChatGPT and fill it full of all of your company documents, your website copy, and processes. You could have your inventory or whatever. All of those documents and information can be stored within that project. And then Claude would then know more about you and your business. And that's kind of the quick way of getting Claude to know you very quickly if you've never used it. So yeah, I find that's really awesome.

  Katie (14:25)

  And Claude projects are really easy to set up. You're just telling it exactly what you want, but also exactly what you don't want. So it's making sure, like, never do this, this, this, and this unless I specifically ask. Always do this, this, this, this, and this. And then yeah, just upload whatever documentation you want. And that's it. That is your Claude project done and ready to go. And then just chat with it within that project.

  Noel (15:03)

  Yeah, and I think if you have the memory turned on in your settings and you're using that project, that should then update those memories as well. So that will help speed that bit of the process up. Before you know it, you'll be chatting to your AI and be like, wow, okay, this actually knows me and knows what I'm up to. And it could actually help you out so much more than what it can do if you just don't bother or don't give it the context and information.

  Katie (15:33)

  Yeah. And as well, you can even set up a project where, you know like I was talking before about downloading someone's 100 viral hooks? Actually, if you upload your most successful hooks and tell Claude, these are my Instagram post hooks that performed the best, replicate this formula for me every time we create an Instagram post together. And again, it will come up with your own hook formula that is suitable for your business, also your tone of voice as well. Which is going to be better than downloading some random person's 100 viral hooks that have been created by AI very generically.

  Noel (16:45)

  Yeah, no, I don't want those. I think people these days can probably spot them as well if you're reading them.

  Katie (16:48)

  No, I don't want those either. Thank you very much.

  I don't think they can. I think, Noel, because you're so far into the AI and automations world and you have been for so many years, I think for you it's really easy to spot them. But I think for a lot of people who are just starting to use AI and things like Claude and getting a bit more involved in using AI for their business, I think not everyone can spot them like you can.

  But for me, it just seems like at the moment Instagram in particular is a very noisy place right now for business owners. And to the point where actually I feel like people aren't trusting a lot of people with what they're coming out with and saying.

  So actually, if you want to use AI for your social media, I would say, and we were having this chat when Ash from Champagne Collective came on, use it for ideas but actually write it with your own voice. Or make sure that your AI knows exactly your tone of voice, your brand voice. So that people aren't reading it and going, that's AI. Because like you were saying, I think people can pick up whether it's AI or not.

  Noel (18:43)

  Definitely. Very true.

  Katie (18:52)

  Yeah, I've had so many emails and captions and even membership content that has all now been written by AI and they just haven't got AI to sound like them. So for me, it's very obvious. And no, I'm not talking about dashes or the double emojis or anything like that. It goes way, way, way beyond that.

  Noel (19:25)

  Yeah, definitely. Especially if you know that person or you've heard them speak, then it becomes really quite obvious, doesn't it? You're like, I'm not sure you would have said it like that.

  Katie (19:30)

  Yeah. And I think as well, we're all trying to be so polished. But actually, we're humans. And we like humans to sound like humans. We haven't got to be this professional, polished person online if we're not that in real life. I'm probably anything other than professional in the sense of corporate professional. I'm professional towards my clients in the service that I offer. But am I stuffy and corporate in my copy and captions? Absolutely 100% no.

  Noel (20:06)

  Yeah, definitely. And as you're chatting with AI, it's picking up on that as well, isn't it? It'll start to learn that and then create stuff fairly similar. I wouldn't say exactly the same. We're not quite there yet.

  Katie (20:18)

  Yeah. And I think sometimes, if you do need help with AI to write your caption, let it write the caption and then rewrite it so it actually sounds like you. So in response go, actually, I would write this like this, and then write it out. So maybe a lot of the sentences are similar but maybe you're changing words or you're taking things out. And then it will remember that as well with the memory, so the next time you ask it, it should sound more and more like you.

  Noel (21:01)

  Should do, yeah. It's really important, isn't it, to get that right? Going forward, I think it's going to be very hard to distinguish. We are getting to that point now where AI is getting so good, especially even with video and image generation as well. And voice. The lines are starting to blur, aren't they?

  Katie (21:18)

  Yeah. I've actually now seen whole Facebook groups, like I think it was an illustrators group. I don't know why that popped up on my suggested Facebook groups. And it was like, book illustrators, no AI. And fair play. Absolutely 100%. I mean, I think even copywriting is a skill. And I think if you're just relying on AI to write your copy, then you will never have that skill. And it is a skill that you develop over the years for your business. And I think it is a necessary skill to use alongside AI.

  Noel (22:21)

  Yeah, 100%. It's getting there, isn't it? I think next year we'll have a similar episode and it'll be like, you don't need to give AI that much and it can start replicating you pretty easily. There'll be interesting times.

  Katie (22:44)

  Yeah. I think so. So Noel, is there anything else that we can do to help AI get to know our businesses better?

  Noel (23:19)

  So there is probably one other way, and I think it's probably not going to be for everybody because some people won't want their data or client information getting into any sort of chat platform. But the options are available. What you could do is start to connect applications that you use for your business into AI. So it's gathering that data and that would then start to help build your context within this memory over time.

  Like I say, I know it's not going to be for everybody. There's going to be all kinds of GDPR and security and HIPAA and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, not everyone will want to do it, but that is another way of getting it in there. So you could have your Notion databases in there and things like that.

  At the moment, you can build interactive artifacts within Claude. So it's basically linking all of your data into, basically creating your own company dashboard. And Claude can update that live and things like that. So something changes in your database, you might get somebody come into your CRM that's new, all of that will update live and then Claude can learn from that over time as well.

  Katie (24:28)

  Okay.

  Noel (24:45)

  Yeah, I think that could be pretty awesome. But I'm not sure for me personally if I would let it loose with that sort of information, especially in some of the areas I work in. But if that's something that you would want to do or can do, you could definitely look into that. And that would definitely speed up the process.

  Katie (24:57)

  Right. Interesting.

  Noel (25:11)

  Yeah, it's great times, isn't it? To be able to connect everything. You don't really have to do any coding. You just tick a button, give it your API key, log in somewhere, and then that's it. Ten years ago, we'd have to have coded that from scratch. I'd have to use my HTML and PHP coding skills. Not anymore.

  Katie (25:27)

  Would have kept you busy for a while.

  Noel (25:40)

  Months! It would look terrible as well when it was finished.

  Katie (25:48)

  Good to know. And on last week's podcast episode, we also mentioned that if we had enough people get in touch with us, Noel would do a free Claude webinar or something like that. So if you didn't listen to last week's podcast episode and you would like to join in the free Claude webinar where Noel will walk you through really how to get to grips with Claude, not just basic stuff, but how to set it up so it really understands you and your business, then either drop us an email, hello@makeautomations.ai. You can come and let us know over on Instagram, @makeautomations.ai. Or you can come over to our free LinkedIn group, which is AI Automations for Business. Just come and let us know, just say, I would be interested in the free Claude webinar. And yeah, like I said, if we get enough people, then we will put that on for everyone, completely free.

  Thank you so much for listening. We hope you have enjoyed this episode and we'll catch you next time for another one very soon. Take care.