S2. Ep6 - 5 Ways to Improve Your Business Using AI in 2026
Wondering why your ChatGPT content just doesn't sound right? You're not alone. In this episode, Katie and Noel share the practical ways you can start using AI to genuinely improve your business in 2026, starting with one simple switch that will make a night and day difference to your content.
They break down why Claude outperforms ChatGPT for business writing, how AI can generate reports and proposals in minutes instead of days (including a real-world solar panel company doing exactly that), and why getting your AI SEO right could be the most important thing you do this year. Plus, they cover using AI agents to chat to your CRM, automate follow-ups, and uncover data insights you'd never spot manually.
Whether you're a complete beginner or already building automations, this episode gives you actionable steps to work smarter and win more clients, without the tech overwhelm.
Perfect for service-based business owners, solopreneurs, and small teams who want to actually move the needle with AI, not just talk about it.
Here is the link to the AI SEO episode with Milana: S1. Ep20 - How To Get Your Business To Rank In ChatGPT Search
How to find us:
Join our membership over on Skool, where we support you on your AI and automation journey. We share exclusive content in the membership that shows you the automations we talks about in action how to build them. Find out more about the AI Business Club here.
We have a free LinkedIn group (AI Automations For Business), the group is open to all.
New for 2026, you can also find us on Substack, click here to subscribe and get all the latest news and updates from us.
If you would like dedicated help with your automations or would like us to build them for you then you can find our agency at makeautomations.ai
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Katie (00:26)
Hi, hello, I'm Katie and welcome to this week's podcast episode. As always, I've got Noel here with me. How you doing Noel?
Noel (00:37)
Hello, yeah, doing great as always. Yeah, lots to talk about this week.
Katie (00:41)
Good to hear, good to hear. So before we dive in to this week's topic, just going back to last week's episode with OpenClaw, Maltbook, you know, all these other things it was called, any new updates since last week? I feel like it's gone a little bit quiet, but maybe because I haven't been online that much. I don't know, you tell me.
Noel (01:13)
Yeah, I would say it's calmed down a little bit. Yeah, the hype train has left the station thankfully and yeah, it's calming down. I'm sure there are some other absolutely bonkers websites out there for agents that have been created, yeah. All quiet for now. Obviously there was other drama as well last week.
Katie (01:28)
Okay. Golly gosh, tell us the drama, spill the tea.
Noel (01:39)
It didn't go without drama, did it? So Anthropic decided to up their advertising and marketing game, didn't they, last week. Yeah, they created some adverts poking fun at OpenAI and their adverts that are going to be coming to ChatGPT, which were pretty hilarious to be fair. Yeah, I did enjoy those.
Katie (01:52)
Yeah. If you haven't seen those ads, do go and check them out. They are very entertaining. And was it reported that Sam Altman didn't really get it because his defence was something like, that's not how they're going to work?
Noel (02:15)
Yes, so he initially said that he found them funny. He did laugh at them. Yeah, they were hilarious. But he did say it was like, well, it's a bit disingenuous how Anthropic are showing how these ads are going to be done when we've clearly said that they're not going to impact the user response, which for me is the entire point of satire. It wouldn't be funny if it was a true representation. But one thing that I think we both found quite funny is the responses that were simulated from ChatGPT. That was the funniest part. And Sam Altman completely missed that in his response.
Katie (03:03)
Exactly. Yeah, so for anyone who hasn't seen this ad, it's of a, would you say university professor and a student?
Noel (03:29)
Yeah, they've got four. But yeah, that is one of them.
Katie (03:32)
Okay, I've only seen one. So the one that I've seen is a student in a lecture hall and the university lecturer comes to help her because she's got questions. So the student is obviously the user and the university lecturer is the AI, is ChatGPT. And so she asks a question and the lecturer basically responds exactly how ChatGPT would respond to you. So like, oh, that's a great idea, and stuff like that.
Noel (04:11)
Yeah, absolutely. You've got this bang on.
Katie (04:29)
And then, so the student is asking another question and the university lecturer, AKA the AI ChatGPT, then starts going into adverts as it's talking, as he's giving a response to the student. It's very funny, very entertaining. But yeah, Sam Altman's comeback to that was like, well, it's not going to work like that. And it's like, we know, but it's just funny. It's entertaining.
Noel (04:46)
Yeah, exactly. Don't take it too seriously. Yeah, my favourite was how to communicate with your mum better. So it was like almost like a therapy session. So this guy was asking how he could communicate better with his mum and stuff like that. And then it kicked into an advert about a mature dating site where he could chat with mature ladies all the time.
Katie (05:16)
Wow, I like it. Yeah, I must go and find the others because like I said, I've only seen one and that was the university lecturer and student and that was so entertaining. So yeah, I must go and have a look at the others.
Noel (05:17)
Yeah, that was very cheeky. I did enjoy that one. Yeah, they're on Anthropic's YouTube channel if you want to check them out.
Katie (05:37)
Okay, I will. And if you're listening to this and you've seen the adverts or you're going to go and watch those adverts, come and let us know which one is your favourite as well.
Noel (05:47)
Yeah, definitely.
Katie (05:51)
Yeah, let us know in our LinkedIn group, our free LinkedIn group. We'll put the link and the name of it below so you can come and join. It's free to join and everyone's welcome.
Noel (06:05)
Definitely, yeah.
Katie (06:08)
Okay. So Noel, this week we are talking all about how to improve your business using AI in 2026.
Noel (06:10)
Yeah, there's a lot we can do these days, isn't there?
Katie (06:21)
Yes. So we're going to start with a basic, but a basic that's going to have a huge impact, I personally believe. And then we're going to go into some more advanced things that people can do, but all things that you can do to help improve your business using AI in 2026. Because who doesn't want that?
Noel (06:33)
I certainly do. Definitely.
Katie (06:48)
Yeah, I think as well, like we all want to not only improve our businesses, but also improve ourselves so we're better business owners for our clients. That's something that's really important to me. And obviously being a community manager and a community strategist, that just comes into play so much for me because it's kind of like, how can I keep making this a better experience? How can I, you know, want the person to stay? How can I make them feel safe or make them understand that I'm a safe person to be around and things like that. So all of these things to me are really important. And yeah, I'm really excited that we're going to be talking about these today.
Noel (07:53)
Yeah, definitely. Okay.
Katie (07:55)
Okay, so let's start with the first one. Can I say what it is and then you can tell people? Because I'm excited about this one. Because it's such a small tweak, but will make a massive difference. And yeah, so the first thing you can do to improve your business in 2026 using AI is to stop using ChatGPT for your content, for your emails, for writing blogs, social media content, or even if you're not using it to write the whole post, just the ideation. And it's to start using Claude instead.
Noel (08:52)
Yeah, very controversial first point topic.
Katie (09:03)
I know. And I should say as well, we haven't been paid. We're not sponsored. We don't have any affiliation with anything that we are going to say on this podcast. We are very clear on all of this. This is our personal opinions. Obviously Noel and I use AI on a regular basis, not just for our businesses, but for client businesses as well. And obviously we help our clients within our membership as well, the AI Business Club. So we just have a lot of knowledge and insights.
Noel (09:43)
Yeah, we've been around a bit.
Katie (09:50)
Yeah. So Noel, tell us why we should stop using ChatGPT and start using Claude for our businesses.
Noel (10:00)
So I think the first thing is the type of responses which you're going to get back from Claude versus ChatGPT. I think once you've given it a go, it's completely different. You'll feel that it's a lot more professional. You're not just going to get the same generic sort of stuff out, you know. Everybody that creates posts on ChatGPT, you can kind of spot it these days. You know, if they haven't interjected anything original into their prompts, you can easily spot it.
Katie (10:37)
Yeah, and we're not just talking about how you can spot ChatGPT content because of the dashes and stuff like that. We're not worried if you're using AI to write your content. That is not what we're talking about.
Noel (10:46)
Exactly. And when it comes to this sort of content as well, this is something you mentioned to me the other week, wasn't it? Where you're not arguing with the AI to get what you want. You're not saying, can you produce me this? And then you look at it and go, well, that's not what I asked for. And it goes, oh yeah, you're right. It's like, just get it right the first time. And I think when you switch to Claude, you do get that right first time, don't you?
Katie (11:15)
Yeah, so for me, I think ChatGPT is great for certain things, but writing business content, I don't think it's good at all. I think I would use it for other things. Definitely, 100%. I'm not saying personally don't ever use ChatGPT again. But I think for me, Claude is so much better for business content. Because I was a few weeks ago just like, what is going on with ChatGPT? And I think I've even said it on the podcast. I was getting really frustrated because I was like, you're not listening to me. It's almost like talking to you at times, Noel. When you're like, oh, what you doing? I was like, I've told you. Clearly not listening.
Noel (11:53)
I'll give you that, yeah.
Katie (12:18)
Clearly not listening.
Noel (12:22)
Not even a super intelligent AI is listening either.
Katie (12:25)
Yeah, ChatGPT clearly isn't. So I find switching to Claude one of the best things that I've done to help my business because I'm not asking it to write all of my content. Sometimes I'm like, I've got this idea or I've got these first few sentences, you know, and I need some ideas to finish this content or this email. You know, this is what I want to achieve from it. And I just find I don't have to keep going, no, try again. It just saves so much time.
Noel (13:14)
Yeah, because you were asking for specific structure within the post and it just wasn't following it. But yeah, Claude just nails it every single time, doesn't he?
Katie (13:32)
Yeah, because as well ChatGPT has a very set format on how it writes your piece of content and it was just like, I don't speak like that or I don't write like that. And I was telling it not to do that and it was doing it. And I was like, no, I said don't do that. And then it would be like, okay, yes, I'll rewrite it or something. And then it would do exactly the same mistakes. And I was like, no.
Noel (14:13)
It's a nightmare, isn't it?
Katie (14:33)
I don't get that with Claude at all.
Noel (14:35)
No. And there's a couple of other cool features as well as its writing ability. There are some other really handy bits in there that they've added in quite recently, which I think for businesses would be really helpful. And I guess the first one is, you can integrate directly into Excel. So if you've got, I don't know, most businesses, if not every business has got a spreadsheet somewhere. So no longer do you need to figure out really complicated financial formulas or anything like that. Claude can just go off and build them directly using Excel and export them so they're all ready to go, which is going to save so many people so much time if you deal with spreadsheets.
Katie (15:14)
Yeah. And as well, the learning curve from using ChatGPT to Claude is zero. If you think, I've got to learn how to use Claude. No, you've literally just got to open up a different browser or a different app. That's it.
Noel (15:32)
Yes, definitely. There's actually no difference in cost either really. If you're on a paid subscription and you want to switch, the subscription plans are very, very similar. If not a little bit cheaper on the higher plans.
Katie (15:50)
Yeah, but I would say actually the free version of Claude is better than the free version of ChatGPT.
Noel (16:02)
Oh, miles better. Yeah, definitely. But I think another really cool feature they brought out recently is Claude Cowork. So if you have a MacBook and it's got the new Mac chips in there, so you don't have an Intel processor, you've got a brand new laptop, then you can use Cowork. So that would control your browser, and it would have access to files that you give it access to, not like OpenClaw last week where it has everything. You know, we can say, no, only work in this folder. I don't want you looking anywhere else. And you can put in some complex instructions and it will go off and then break all of that down and say, right, well, to do this long task, I need to do these 10 tasks in a row. And you can just swipe off of that and just let it go off and do its thing.
Katie (16:59)
Wow, that's really cool.
Noel (16:59)
I think it just goes through step by step. Yeah, I mean, it will open your files. It'll read them. It will edit them. It can go on your browser. So it could be searching for competitors or doing any sort of online analysis. While you're busy chatting to clients and making sure they're happy, your coworker is off doing something completely different, which you just don't have time for.
Katie (17:14)
Brilliant. Love it. Okay. So the next thing that we're going to talk about, about improving your business using AI in 2026, is all around reports, quotes and proposals.
Noel (17:29)
Yeah, so this is kind of what I've usually come across with customers. They've got a pipeline. They've got leads coming in, but they've got that bottleneck of creating all of these documents. They're usually in a similar format and it just takes forever sometimes to get them out. Just for a human being to sit there, type it away. It can get quite frustrating, a bit mundane. AI doesn't need a cup of tea or a glass of water. It just carries on. It doesn't need a break. It doesn't need lunch. So we could use AI to speed up that entire process and give your customers a better experience.
Katie (18:34)
Yes. And you've got a really cool example as well from someone that you met at an AI event. Obviously not naming names or businesses. Let's just mention the industry and stuff and what they're actually doing. Because I feel like it's really, really cool what they're doing.
Noel (18:40)
Yeah. So they go around looking for large industrial buildings. So it could be a data centre. It could be a factory and they go off and then pitch them for solar panels. So they go around Google Maps, which I think is crazy. They go on Google Maps and they go around and they measure the roof sizes of these big buildings and then go, right, that one's too small, that's not worth bothering with. This one's massive, yes, we'll go with that one. But what they do is basically they've got an automation where they can have a conversation with that particular owner of the building. And that then kicks off the proposal generation. Within that, it's creating some incredible content. So it creates a 24 page brochure.
They do tweak it a bit at the end where they add in images of the actual building. They've got some placeholders to get you started. But there's some really complicated formulas this automation and AI are up to. So they get the full return on investment, the square footage, how many panels is it going to need, how much of this is it going to need. And yeah, it was just mind boggling the amount of data that was being put out in this report. And they were saying that to create that manually would take hours. This guy who was talking about it said, I don't have time to sit around and do that. He said, I need to be on the road, on the phone, talking to other businesses and getting them in instead of creating all of the same thing every time. So yeah, these reports are being created and they just run it live. And I think it took about two minutes.
Katie (20:44)
Two minutes instead of like two days.
Noel (20:51)
Exactly. And all he's got to do is go in and just triple check everything, make sure everything's in the right place. It's a very quick review basically, and then just go, yep, that's fine, send, done. And they were getting in front of customers, winning customers, just by getting there first. So one client they were talking about said they didn't get back to them straight away because they were waiting for somebody else to give them a comparable quote, but they'd waited two months and it just wasn't going to happen. So they just had to go with them because they produced it in two days. It obviously took a bit of time for him to get through his to-do list, but that was still far quicker than what anyone else could do.
Katie (21:42)
Yeah, I can imagine. Amazing.
Noel (21:47)
It's really helpful doing that sort of thing. It gets you in the door really quick, doesn't it?
Katie (21:54)
Yeah, and what would that be, so you would create an agent for that?
Noel (22:00)
No, that was just a plain automation. You didn't need an agent for that.
Katie (22:03)
Good old fashioned AI automation.
Noel (22:07)
Yep. And if I remember rightly, they didn't have that many modules in there either. They had their own API set up somewhere, a server that did all the complicated calculations, but within Make it was like eight modules. A Google Sheet, Google Slides. That was it. It was really straightforward, but incredibly powerful.
Katie (22:28)
I love that. Okay. Amazing.
Okay. So the next one we are going to talk about is data insights for clients. So you know who to target and maybe even what to say in your marketing to attract more clients.
Noel (22:43)
Exactly. There's all kinds of things we can do with that, where we can connect in automations, just plain linear automations, or we could even have an agent in there that will go off and do this for you. So you could sit there and chat to your CRM in plain language. I think that's quite powerful in a way, because that agent can see things that you don't necessarily see on the big spreadsheet view that you would have in your CRM. It can spot those patterns and things like that and then relay that back to you and go, well, maybe you should be going down this path because these four customers really like this. Maybe that's an avenue to explore. So yeah, it can be incredibly powerful to have that.
Obviously, I would say you need to be a little careful with an agent in your CRM. Make sure you're not giving it access to edit or delete stuff that you don't want deleted and things like that. So that's all configurable. You don't want it to go rogue.
Katie (23:55)
No. But I just feel like that's great for looking at those patterns. So if it is someone's business where you are doing outreach, then you're really clear on actually who it is that you are trying to target. Or if you even want to then use those patterns to create marketing, so social media posts, emails, blogs, Substack, whatever it is, then it's going to really help you attract your clients quicker and faster because you'll know exactly what keeps coming up in exactly how you help them as well. I love that so much.
Noel (24:31)
Absolutely. It's kind of like if you want to sit there and do that manually, you've just got to think how long would it take you to go row by row, especially if you've got a really big business, and then not only ingest all of that, but then find those patterns and things in the data. There's people that get paid a lot of money to do that.
Katie (25:01)
Yeah, but now we can use AI instead.
Noel (25:15)
Exactly. You don't need some crazy contractor to bring in to do all that for you. Yeah, that's cool.
Katie (25:22)
Brilliant. Okay. So the next one that we're going to be talking about is using AI to automate your follow-ups because everyone always says it's all about following up with people, but sometimes we forget, we don't have time. Things happen.
Noel (25:35)
Exactly. You could have back to back calls all week. So you just haven't got into your inbox and found stuff. But we can easily use AI in order to help. It doesn't have to be an agent, just a standard automation that could go through your inbox and find those customer emails and basically start looking back and then going, right, have they responded yet? Yes or no. It could also be looking in your CRM, not just your inbox. So we could say, well, it's been five days, we haven't heard anything. And then we can also use AI to tailor the response back. So it could be talking to them and say, well, this is what we quoted you for, include information about the business or whatever job you're wanting to do for them. So it comes across as if the human being sent it. But really your AI has gone off and done that for you.
But obviously you probably won't want it to send straight away. So I always say with emails, just put it in your drafts. It's a lot quicker just to read a draft and click send than it is to sit down and think how to respond to an email and then send it.
Katie (26:55)
Yeah, for sure.
Noel (27:09)
It's a pain for me that is.
Katie (27:13)
I don't think you're alone either. I think a lot of people really struggle with emails and sitting down and thinking, okay, right, I need to follow up this one. Even if you do have a template, sometimes it is just really hard to sit down and go, right, I've got to write all of these emails and things like that. Yeah, it really does get tiring, doesn't it, after a while? Although necessary.
Katie (27:40)
Yes, very necessary.
Okay, so our very last recommendation for how to improve your business using AI in 2026 is AI SEO. Now we have spoken about this on the podcast in season one where we had the lovely Milana join us. And she told us all about how to do your own AI SEO.
Noel (27:48)
Yeah.
Katie (28:10)
But yeah, tell us more, Noel. For those who haven't listened to that episode, which by the way we will link below, because if you haven't listened to it, it will blow your mind, the amount of information that Milana gives away.
Noel (28:25)
So with AI, as we're going through these days, a lot of people are starting to use this more as a search engine than they would Google or they're using it like it is Google. So every large language model platform right now has the ability to do research or just a generic search. Getting your AI SEO right means that your business will start showing up more and more within those results. So if you've got customers that are going to be using AI platforms to find out answers and things like that for specific products and services, then maybe start to look to tailor your AI SEO strategy and making sure that you're showing up in those results because it's only going to get bigger and better as we go through.
One thing that we found when we did it on our website was not only did we get more citations within Perplexity, ChatGPT and Claude, we're also getting more generic traffic from Google as well. So it's not a trade-off between traditional SEO and AI SEO. They kind of go hand in hand. If you're boosting one, it kind of helps the other.
Our impressions went up like 1300% in a couple of days. I was like, wow, okay, this is pretty impressive, but it's only got better since. So I'd say it's probably one of the most important things to get right as we go forward with our businesses. You're going to be finding more customers that will find you via these AI tools as they start to use them. Really important.
Katie (30:16)
Yeah, I agree. Amazing. So that was all of our recommendations on how to use AI to improve your business in 2026. We hope you found it helpful. If you would like more things to help you improve your business in 2026 using AI and automations and agents and chatbots, then we would love for you to come and check out our membership over on the Skool platform called AI Business Club, where Noel teaches you step by step how to do all of this. It's suitable for the very beginners. And also if you're already creating automations, then you are very welcome to join in. And we've got people in there from all sorts of backgrounds and abilities as well. So again, we'll leave the link for you below.
Thank you so very much for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode and we will catch you next time for another episode very soon. Take care.
