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Episode 9 - Embracing AI: Your Salon's Game-Changer
54 Plays1 year ago
Feeling swamped by endless admin tasks and paperwork, wishing you could get back to what you love? It's time to meet your new powerhouse assistant: artificial intelligence (AI). I'm Greg Robins, and in this episode of the Business of Style podcast, brought to you by the Beauty Council, we dive into how AI can revolutionize your salon, spa, or barbershop.
**What's AI, Anyway?**
AI is tech's buzzword, but beyond the jargon, it's a tool poised to transform routine tasks. From drafting social media posts to revamping your website or handling complex calculations, AI's capabilities are expanding. Imagine AI managing appointments or analyzing market trends for you—this is not the future; it's here.
**Three Ways AI Can Boost Your Business This Week**
1. **Social Media Savvy**: AI can craft engaging posts, complete with perfect grammar and tailored to your brand's voice, freeing up your time for creativity.
2. **Website Wizardry**: Let AI suggest enhancements for your site, ensuring it stands out and ranks higher on search engines.
3. **Math Magician**: Why struggle with figures when AI can adjust your pricing strategy accurately and efficiently?
**Accessing AI: No Cost, No Fuss**
Curious? Start exploring AI possibilities with tools like CHAT GPT. Signing up is free, and you'll soon find yourself leveraging AI's full potential to streamline operations, engage customers, and stay competitive.
Dive in and discover how AI can be your salon's best asset, making administrative chores a thing of the past and letting you focus on your passion. Tune in to the Business of Style for more insights on leveraging technology in the beauty industry.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Are
Introduction to AI in Business
00:00:01
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you sick and tired of being bogged down with a bunch of administration and paperwork instead of doing the things you love? Could you use a helping hand when it comes to things like writing great social media posts or having your next email campaign written for you? Maybe what you need is to fall in love with an artificial intelligence tool, your new high-powered on-demand assistant.
AI in Business Automation - Salon Focus
00:00:34
Speaker
Hey there, my name is Greg Robbins and welcome to another episode of the Business of Style podcast brought to you by the beauty council. This is another solo episode where I talk about a very exciting development in the world of automation and business of course. I'm sure you've already heard about artificial intelligence or AI as it's known for short, but you may not know all the ways in which it can help you day in and day out in your salon spa or barbershop.
AI Handling Admin Tasks
00:01:00
Speaker
Let's dive in right now and explore the ways AI can be your new best business friend. So in this episode, I wanna cover three main aspects of AI and how it can help your career and reduce your administrative workload. We'll cover what AI is and what it can do. Then we'll cover three ways you can use AI this week and finally, how you can access AI tools for no cost at all. That's always the best, free is good. So first off, what is AI?
00:01:27
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AI is short for artificial intelligence and people mostly call it AI because it's easy and short and many in the tech world just say AI. There's some other terms like large language models or agents but they almost all stem from the technologies known as AI. AI has been around for many years and you've probably interacted with it before. The simplest example is spell check or when the phone guesses the next word, you probably know it.
00:01:54
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Basically AI, essentially all kinds of AI that we're seeing now, is way more powerful than ever before and it can do a bunch of things that we've never seen.
AI's Expanding Capabilities
00:02:03
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Just a few examples of what AI can do include write a letter for you, it can proofread something you wrote and correct it, fix all your mistakes, it can reply to an email, you can cut your email inbound, ask it to make a reply and send it out.
00:02:17
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It can search the internet and make a list of results for you for just about anything you're looking for. And it can do math or find trends in spreadsheets. It can recognize images, draw graphs, even create illustrations. But this is just the beginning. AI is about to leap to the next level and it's going to start taking care of all kinds of things you never even thought possible. It's really quite incredible.
00:02:40
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I'm just going to blue sky this for a minute and I'm going to tell you more about what I have read about the next set of AI tools expected to be released. So what we're talking about here is AI being able to do things like answer the phone and having a real conversation with your client to book an appointment or to answer almost any question. It can read and reply your texts to change an appointment.
00:03:04
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It can read deal sheets that you get from a distributor and suggest what you should stock up on based on your sales. It can even survey your local competition weekly and give you a list of suggested business ideas to stay ahead. And there's just so much more. It's hard to imagine what's next in AI because it surpassed the expectations of nearly all of us. We know this. It's only gonna get more powerful and capable as the years go by.
AI in SEO and Content Enhancement
00:03:30
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So let's get to the next idea, how you can use AI in your business this week. Here are three ways.
00:03:40
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Okay, so the first way is to let AI help you write social media posts. I mean, why spend time writing out a post, checking it for typos and adding in emojis when you can just have AI take it for you in under five to 10 seconds? All you need to do is tell the AI tool what you want to say and use your brand and tone and let it do the rest. The best part is that the AI tool lets you adjust or make changes to the post as many times as you like.
00:04:08
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So once you give AI instructions on like how you like your post written, it will use that same format every time. So for example, you may want to include a call to action at the end of every post like call us or book today, or maybe you want to remind people of your new address if you just moved. Either way, AI can remember this for you and include it without you having to worry about it each and every time.
00:04:33
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And here's a little secret that'll help you get more views and engagement. AI can look at the image you include and create what's called ALT text or ALT text. It's the text that is hidden but is used by anyone who is visually impaired and needs an image described to them. ALT text improves your search engine optimization score and social platforms bump it out to more people as a result. Plus, it's the right thing to do, wouldn't you say?
00:04:58
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The second way for AI to help out is to let it revamp your website. I'm not kidding here. AI can read your website and give you suggestions on how to improve it, ways to make it score better on Google and so much more. Like, so for example, maybe you have an about us page on your site. You can ask AI to read it and make it more professional or perhaps put a focus on your technical skills or high client satisfaction rates.
00:05:22
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Or maybe you could have it take your price list and convert it to an updated price list online all in under 10 seconds. You can also ask AI to do something that is a bit of a black magic thing, it's really crazy. It is to reword your website for it to stand out from your top three competitors. So it literally goes out, looks at the top three competitors that you have identified or it can figure out, and then it can make recommendations to you on how to stand out.
00:05:48
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With all this, you can have your newly worded website score higher on Google search and appear before any other salons in your area. That's pretty cool. Above all, AI will fix any typos or mistakes you have online for a more polished and professional appearance. This isn't just great for business, it brings your salon, spa, barber shop up a notch in the eyes of your clients.
00:06:08
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Okay,
AI in Pricing and Math for Operations
00:06:08
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the third way is when you're gonna love. AI is really, it's like really good at math. So why do math when AI can do it for you? So let's say you have a price list and you wanna increase the cost of every service by 3%. Well, AI can do that. All you have to do is give it your price list in a document like a Word, PDF, or a spreadsheet, and it'll hand it back with an automatic 3% to everything.
00:06:33
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But let's say it turns out that some prices are kind of clumsy. Like an $82 service goes to $84.46. That's kind of awkward. So here's the cool thing. You can ask AI to round the numbers to always finish with 95 cents or just round up to the nearest dollar. And if you feel that that's too high on all of your services, you could even ask it to alternate rounding up or down to even out the overall pricing.
00:06:58
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you can even ask it to add your new costs to certain services. So for example, let's say the cost of foils goes up by 25%, it's a big increase. If you charge a flat rate per service, you could have AI estimate the increased cost of foils and nudge your color services up by just that amount. That way you recover your cost of goods without giving sticker shock to your clients.
00:07:26
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So that's just one example. It can also calculate staff salary increases. Look at your accounting reports and tell you in plain language what's changed. Or it can even look at your credit card statements and help you identify where you are spending more money compared to a previous year.
00:07:41
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So why do math when you don't have to? You have better things to do with your time for sure. Those are just three of the many things you can have AI do for you. Write
Using ChatGPT - Free vs Subscription
00:07:51
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your social media posts, improve your website, and finally do the math for you. Now, how do you get AI and where can you access it at no cost? The easiest way is to go to Google and type in chat GPT.
00:08:07
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Once there, you can make a free account and play around. Get the hang of it, see how it works, and just a start. There's nothing to lose, and it's a simple and easy thing to understand. If you really want to take full advantage of the power of AI on chat GPT, then you can get the plus version for about 20 bucks a month, no commitment, just pay monthly, and do a lot, lot more with it.
Recap of AI's Role and Access Options
00:08:28
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So there you have it. We've covered what AI is and what it can do for you, the three ways you can use AI this week, and finally, how you can access these amazing AI tools for no cost at all. Hope you enjoyed this episode and see you next time here on the Business of Style.