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00:00:01
245: The Politics of AI Coaching - Katharine Loucaidou
41 Plays19 hours ago
AI is the hot topic of the past two years in all kinds of businesses from insurance to fashion to finance. What about the world of coaching? My guest today is on board. With over three decades of entrepreneurial success and the remarkable ability to overcome life-threatening health challenge, Katharine Loucaidou is a powerhouse of resilience and innovation. From founding successful businesses to revolutionizing the coaching industry with her groundbreaking AI platform, Katharine AI, she empowers entrepreneurs and leaders to reach unprecedented heights. Her book, AI Secrets for Unstoppable Business & Life Hacks, offers transformative strategies, blending her vast expertise with cutting-edge technology. She is also the host of the widely streamed Mindset Medicine Podcast, where her insights on mindset, performance, and business inspire a global audience. Katharine’s journey is a testament to the power of an unyielding spirit, making her sought-after speakers and coach who inspires relentless success – and in this show we discuss:
1. How does AI work as a business coach? Share your experience and story on how you use it and why.
2. What can’t it do well yet?
3. Do clients feel like their needs for coaching has to be more personalised than factual or technical to be worthwhile? What has your feedback been?
4. Do leaders need to refresh their AI skills and how best to do that?
Connect further:
(6) Katharine Loucaidou, M.Ed | LinkedIn
WWW.KATHARINELOUCAIDOUCOACHING.COM
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Transcript
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the politics of everything. I'm Amber Danes, your host and podcast producer. This is a half hour of power podcast dropping every week where I unpack the politics of everything from money to motherhood, nutrition to narcissism, startups to secularism, the environment, quality and much, much more.
00:00:22
Speaker
Our guests are seasoned in the field of topic of their choice, even if you've not heard of them yet. This is a nonpartisan show. So while I love exploring varied views and get a buzz from a healthy debate of ideas, this is not a purely blue, white, green program. Please subscribe, tune in and enjoy the politics of everything.
00:00:46
Speaker
AI is the hot topic of the past two years and all kinds of businesses from an insurance to fashion to finance. And what about the world of coaching? My guest today is on board with over three decades of entrepreneurial success and the remarkable ability to overcome life-threatening health challenges Catherine Luckdu is a powerhouse of resilience and innovation. From founding successful businesses to revolutionizing the coaching industry with her groundbreaking AI platform called Catherine AI, she empowers entrepreneurs and leaders to reach unprecedented heights.
00:01:19
Speaker
Her book, AI Secrets for Unstoppable Business and Life Hacks, offers transformative strategies blending her vast experience with cutting edge technology. She's also the host of the widely esteemed Mindset Medicine Podcast, where her insights on mindset, performance and business inspire a global audience. Catherine's journey is a testament to the power of unyielding spirit, making her a sought after speaker and coach who inspires relentless success. And this is such a huge topic, so I warmly welcome you, Catherine, to the politics of everything.
00:01:49
Speaker
Thank you so much i really appreciate being here it's exciting that i get to speak to the other side of the world as well.
00:01:58
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:02:44
Speaker
I have a special offer for you and I hopefully you can experience what I have with zencastr go a Zencaster. Go to zencaster.com forward slash pricing and use my VIP code, the politics of everything, all lowercase in one word, to get 30% off your first three months of Zencaster Professional. How good is that? I want you to have the same easy experiences I do for all my podcasting and content needs. It's time to share your story.
00:03:11
Speaker
We have a huge audience in the US as well. So you'll probably be speaking to people that, you know, we might have an overlap in our podcast audience. You never know. I love it. I love it. That wonderful. Well, thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to be a guest of yours. Excellent. Look, I want to start off by asking you the question, to ask all my guests, what did young Catherine think she wanted to do as a career? And I guess early on in your, you know,
00:03:34
Speaker
career journey Can you join the dots for us? I know I didn't exist when you were growing up, so you can't say you want to do exactly what you're doing now. But did you have an idea of what you thought you might do? So I did. So it was sort of a mix of three things. And funny enough, they're almost interconnected. So um I know when I was younger,
00:03:51
Speaker
my Both my parents are from Europe. So we used to travel back and forth. My mother's from Ireland and my father's from Cyprus. So we would travel back and forth. And I always thought that it would be wonderful to be an air hostess on British Airways. ah It was pretty prestigious back in the day. I remember that. It was glamorous. Oh, very much. So I loved it. And and you know they had the two so the two level bowings. And so I thought that that was just amazing as a child. And then when I got into high school, I started getting really fascinated by law. And I wanted to become a lawyer. So interestingly enough,
00:04:28
Speaker
ah but Sort of toward the end of high school. I realized I was excelling in English so I went on to study English and I then I got a master's degree a bit later on but I went on to become a teacher for many years and then a university professor Wow. Interesting. So although it's not exactly what I had hoped, the beautiful thing is coming back now as a coach, I get to travel and I get to speak to audiences. I get to coach and educate and help guide people. So it almost came sort of like a full circle is how I see it.
00:05:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. I do love knowing where people have come from because I think it either goes two ways, right? It it makes sense or people have a complete pivot and they do something you know wildly different. But it's all it's all part of your story and it's really good for the audience to understand that. So getting into our topic today about AI and coaching, how does AI work as a business coach? Because you know your experience is obviously you've come to this you know place in your in your business where you've decided to integrate AI, you've got your own tool,
00:05:34
Speaker
How did you get here? So it's actually quite interesting. I'm actually going to go back a little bit. In 2004, I decided to to get my master's degree in educational technology. So this is before Facebook. It was sort of the very early years of the internet. And what was interesting is my thesis was trying to prove whether a student would learn better online then they would on a hard copy you know reading from a textbook and so on and because i was in my teaching realm at that time i took two hundred students i actually built my first online course that was part of the thesis that i was going to do i had to learn to code it myself back in two thousand and four and i had no you know i was not a computer scientist i wasn't anything but i was fascinated to figure out
00:06:29
Speaker
you know, how the computer could enhance the way students ah think and learn. So, created this course, 200 students took the test and the average for that online test or course that I did was between a 90 and 95 average. I waited two weeks and then I gave all of the students the same course to do on paper as we did in the classrooms and the average grade on paper was between 60 and 70 for the same test.
00:07:04
Speaker
Wow, that's interesting. You've got the metrics to back that up. That's that's fascinating. It was. And so, you know, I have this huge dissertation, which I then had to bound and it's it's an actual, it's, you know, I don't, I've got 150 pages long. So I had to give all of the theory to prove all of this. So The reason the internet was created ah was to mimic the way that our neurons hit each other in our brains, to make this the most simplified way I can. And so this is what happens when students learn online. the Their brain is, you know, it's this search, so you you hit one subject, that then makes you think of the next idea, which then promotes the next idea and so on, which is how our neural pathways work in our brain.
00:07:51
Speaker
when we get to paper and hard copy we are scanning a paper so it's sort of this one-dimensional way of learning and so when students are learning from paper they are passive learners because they're taking in the information whereas when they're online it is interactive so Of course, you know, I did this master's degree and I got my thesis. and My husband looks at me. He says, so, so now what are you going to do with this? There's nobody who's into technology right now because even Facebook hadn't been existed in existence yet. Yeah. So I basically put it on a shelf, but I guess you could say my secret passion behind, you know, in in teaching and coaching has always been, I've loved technology for a long, long time and,
00:08:39
Speaker
AI has been around since 1956, which most people do not know. I know. i have I have corporate clients who are like in the actuarial space and in climate change modeling. And they're like, we've been doing this for decades. It's just no one cared until last few years because it wasn't mainstream enough.
00:08:56
Speaker
Exactly. And then and that's the exactly what you just said, that keyword. Because the reason that chat chippy tea came so popular is because of the original company called OpenAI. They've opened the doors so that it has public usage before you really did have to be a computer scientist or data scientist to be able to understand how to interact with the AI because coding was involved. But now that it has been opened and coding is no longer required, this is where everything becomes really fascinating. So right at the onset about two years ago, when I started noticing that
00:09:39
Speaker
i could get into a beta platform and try it out i started doing that and so that's what created the book that i wrote a secrets for unstoppable business success in life hacks.
00:09:51
Speaker
As I was coaching entrepreneurs, I realized that there was this misunderstanding about what AI is. you know We've watched the science fiction movies. I don't know if you remember, but there was a show back when I was a child called The Jetsons. oh yeah you know They were flying in the air and there was a machine making their food and it would pop out.
00:10:13
Speaker
so a lot of The what shall we call it let's say subconscious idea we have of a is that it's this futuristic thing going on but really it's already been existence in our phones if you have a nest you know where you can control the temperature in your home all of that is artificial intelligence yeah so.
00:10:36
Speaker
I think people haven't really realized that. I think people have kind of seen it as like, that's the really techy side. That's not for me. And now we're seeing like what you've done in your business, the the blending, the marriage, if you like, of everyday ordinary tasks, whether that be in your home or in your office and AI. And I think it's going to happen more and more. So that's really fascinating to know where you started with that. And as a coach, what are its limits? Obviously they still need you, right?
00:11:05
Speaker
Right. And so what I did was I, uh, the tool that I created was I have created a digital clone of myself. So it's been an extremely fun process. So after I wrote the book, I thought, you know, how can we move this to the next level? So I did create a ah clone of myself and what's fascinating is training the clone because it is AI. You do have to input instruction. So.
00:11:34
Speaker
What I was inputting was emotional intelligence. So it imagine sitting in front of a computer and you're now scripting and writing, explaining to the clone that when a client talks to you, this is how I'd like you to respond. And you know and and I had to use words, I'd like you to be empathetic. I would like to ask further questions and so on. So it is known that AI lacks deep emotional insight and human empathy. However, if you can train it because AI is so smart and it it learns exponentially with every prompt that we put into it, it will learn the pattern of behavior. So I uploaded hundreds and hundreds of videos. So it has the way that I speak and the nuances of how I speak.
00:12:33
Speaker
So that's what's the fun part is we know that AI is lacking the emotional intelligence. It also lacks creativity. We also have to train it to be creative. And that's the beauty of a human being is that we have the creativity. So And you used this word before, the marriage of the two. That is how I see this. I don't see this as AI taking over. I see this as it enhancing who we already are and making us better at what we do.
00:13:07
Speaker
Yeah, and I guess saving you a lot of time as well, you know, it's very, it's very time intensive being a coach, particularly if you work with clients yeah one on one. And I guess just to play devil's advocate, do you feel like that clients have moved with you on this journey or do they still expect, you know, that more personalized kind of creativity that you mentioned?
00:13:30
Speaker
to my coaching worthwhile, like what's your feedback been from the market? Well, that's really interesting. So I did beta test this digital clone for two months with my clients. And, you know,
00:13:42
Speaker
The first week, no one really knew what to do with it. You know, they were using it like Google and it and I call her Catherine AI. and and And what I said to them is I went back to everyone and I said, you know, and I would meet with them weekly. And I said to them, I'd really love you to try talking to it and chatting with it as if you were talking to me.
00:14:04
Speaker
And so after I told them that the next week, you notice that the conversation became more fluid. They were thanking it or her. So, oh, thank you so much. That's a really great idea. Well, what do you think about this? And because I've trained Catherine AI to be very conversational,
00:14:23
Speaker
all of a sudden the conversations day by day started getting longer and longer so at the end of the two months of the beta testing i went back and i said you know how do you feel about this and they said you know what at first i was hesitant because i really didn't understand the concept of it all but now i get it You know, because I'm not removing the coaching and the human aspect, this is an enhancement of my coaching. So what do I mean by that? You know, if we have weekly coaching sessions, well, what happens if you need my help during the week?
00:14:57
Speaker
or what happens where you just feel stuck one morning, you know, you're you're doing a social media, you want to do a social media post, or maybe you just need help with, you know, what should I really be working on today? This is my goal for the end of the week. Can you help me figure out what that is?
00:15:13
Speaker
instead of messaging me or emailing me every thought that they have, they can go into this digital clone of mine and brainstorm with her so that by the end of the week, they come back. And now we've actually moved a couple of steps forward even faster than we were when, with just the weekly meetings, if that makes sense. Yeah. You really, I guess you're adding value in that sense, which I i guess all clients want, right? No matter what industry you're in.
00:15:42
Speaker
Exactly, exactly. So it's it's as if you have me now 24 seven, always in your pocket. So you know you're watching one of your children's soccer games or a baseball game or swimming or whatever the case may be. You don't have to just sit there now thinking, oh my gosh, well, how do I respond to that email tomorrow morning? you know my My client didn't seem very happy and I'd really like to answer in this way. They can just go into Catherine AI and say, hey, I'm having this situation right now and really not sure how to respond. this is the And then what Catherine AI will do is provide you, here's some possible responses. What if you answer like this? How does that make you feel? And so again, right we have offset some issues or problems that didn't even have to occur because we were able to get to them quickly.
00:16:38
Speaker
Yes. No, I love that. I love the convenience. And I think most people would be sold on that just from your description of it, let alone experiencing it as well. I guess the reality is tech moves fast. You probably have updated your own clone several times since you started this process as well. Deletors need to refresh their AI skills. And what's the best way to do that? Because a lot of people who would seek coaching would be very busy and so they don't want to be in the weeds of tech but they do want to have a grip on what's possible and make sure that you know it's fit for purpose in terms of what they need. How do you advise people to do that?
00:17:14
Speaker
So what I am coaching leaders and entrepreneurs on is adopt three to five AI tools now. And so I don't want them to be complicated. I mean, use an AI email app, for example, that's what I do every day. So now I don't wake up in the morning and have 30 emails which used to happen all in a row in front of me. My AI email will actually sort out these are newsletters and they put them in a newsletter category for me. They will take current correspondence that's ongoing right now, let's say between clients, and they put that at the top as priority. So it sorts my email for me. I can even put reminders on my email now to remind me at four o'clock to respond to that email that I haven't responded to yet. So what I love is I give simple, I like simplicity, but I like it to remove the tediousness of what really is taking up people's time in their day. So for me, it's,
00:18:20
Speaker
It's using an email app. It is using notes apps. So I use a note app in conjunction with either chat GPT or Catherine AI. So for example,
00:18:33
Speaker
I'm going for a walk and I have these ideas or I have a client who I'm i'm thinking about. Cause you know, sometimes we go back and we're thinking about their situation or we're thinking about, you know, a possible plan forward for them. So as I'm going for a walk in the afternoon, I have some ideas and I put all of them down, but they're not always in a logical or rational order. They're just sort of ideas that come to me. What I do is I take those notes, copy and paste them.
00:19:00
Speaker
put them into chat GPT or I put them into Catherine AI and I say, can you organize these for me? I'm looking to create sort of a plan for them for the next step in their journey. And then within a minute, not even a minute, I should say maybe three seconds, all of a sudden I have this bullet pointed plan in front of me of my notes, but it's now coherent and I didn't have to spend the time doing that.
00:19:26
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. That's fantastic. I love it. It's so clever. It really is. Just changing tack a little bit. And look, we have talked a little bit about AI and obviously that's our topic for today around the coaching business you have. What would be another business tool or hack that you're really loving at the moment, either in your personal life or your professional life?
00:19:45
Speaker
Let me see. um I'll give a very quick example of both. So ah I use Slack and I find Slack to be a phenomenal AI tool. And I say AI because it now has AI ah enrolled within it. I also use Canva with AI.
00:20:03
Speaker
And both of these tools, you know, I go back and forth with assistance and so on. And we really have sped up the work process of what content, for example, content creation doesn't need to take long anymore. So that is one of the business tools that I've really enjoyed using. A personal one is I am very much into health and wellness. So I love the health app on my watch.
00:20:30
Speaker
I have programmed it to remind me to drink water. I've programmed it to remind me to stand up. And now I know that sounds like a funny thing, but I know we need all those prompts if you're deep in the zone and you haven't moved for two hours. Yeah. probably So what I do is I compete against myself. So I have set each of those parameters for, for example, I want to be drinking 140 ounces of water a day, which to some people might be a lot, but I find that my body works well with a lot of water keeps me alert and so on. Me too. I never understand those people like I haven't had a drink. I haven't had a drink but all day. I'm literally like my brain, my body, everything doesn't work.
00:21:13
Speaker
Exactly. So when, when I have all these things, what I used to find is that my mind and my brain was inundated with so many things that I had to remember, whether it was to do with my kids or whether it was to do with, okay, what's a healthy thing I'm going to eat tonight, whatever it was, I don't have to worry about these things anymore. I just have alerts letting me know, but everything is It's all AI empowered and I have set the parameters for everything. And so this is what I love about it. it's um And I'll give you this quick, cute little example. In Catherine AI, my digital clone, I've programmed her to also coach mindset and health and wellness
00:22:01
Speaker
And I've been on, let's say, I don't wanna call it a diet, let's just see a lifestyle change where I just want to eat really pure, good, healthy food, whole foods, you know sort of like the Mediterranean diet. So I was at a restaurant with my mother a couple of weeks ago, and honestly, I was really struggling with this menu. I took a picture of the menu, I uploaded it into Catherine AI,
00:22:26
Speaker
And I said, you know, the diet that I'm following now, you know what my goals are. Please scan this menu and tell me what is the best option for me to choose. And that's what she did. She told me how to change one of the menu items, asked the waitress to change one of the menu items for me slightly. She told me how many calories I would be consuming and how many I would have left after that meal for the rest of the day.
00:22:51
Speaker
Incredible. That's amazing. It's phenomenal. And so what I found is my health in the last year has just i been so enhanced. um I have a ah health history. When I was 33, I had a massive heart attack. I then had triple bypass surgery. I then had a minor stroke.
00:23:15
Speaker
And I was able to reverse that in seven years. And so since then, I have not been on medication. But as I get older and many, may you know, if you have audience here who who have ever had any health challenges, what happens as you get older is doctors want you to go back on medication, right? They'll say, I think you should go on cholesterol. I think you should. And I kept making these deals with my doctor. And I said, listen, if I can get all of my blood panels perfect,
00:23:45
Speaker
will you stop asking me to go? And he said, with your heart history, okay, you show me what you can do. Well, in the last year, I have got my blood panels. So, but let's I'm gonna call it ah above average in the goods aspect that I do not take medicine at all, not a pill for anything. Amazing, I love it. It's such a revolutionary. like that's Well, it really is. And that, for me,
00:24:14
Speaker
It's life and and and you know we can we can talk about you know what success looks like and everything. But for me, I really believe in in living this beautiful holistic life. And you know business is wonderful, but so is health and so is our wellness and so is our mindset. So when I coach people and I trained Catherine AI the same way, that we're going to talk about all of these aspects because I don't think we can talk just about business or about being a leader.
00:24:44
Speaker
without talking about your mindset and i don't think you can talk about your mindset without talking about your health and your wellness and what you do every day to improve it you know so for me it's all connected. Yeah i love it i think a lot of people would relate to that as well what's been your biggest life lesson to date and why has it been so important to you.
00:25:04
Speaker
My biggest life lesson, um it has been resilience. You know, it it is having to have bounced back. I remember when I was 33, you know, after having open heart surgery and and the stroke and everything, I mean, I was just scared. I was plain scared. I kept wondering, you know, am I going to die again tomorrow? Am I going to have another heart attack? And this went on for a little while. But what I realized was when you finally decide that you're not going to live in fear and you're just going to say, you know what? No, I've been, this is a blessing. I've been given a second chance at life. Uh, now I'm just going to, I'm going to just go for it. I'm going to go for everything that I have the opportunity to achieve in life.
00:25:48
Speaker
And I have found that this resilient mindset has helped me through business. i've I moved countries, you know, ah when everything happened in my health challenges, I was actually living in Cyprus for 15 years. I left Canada, moved there when I was 22, lived there by myself, ah got married there, had kids there, and then after all my health challenges, we moved back to Canada. So even moving countries and changing jobs and starting over,
00:26:17
Speaker
That element of resilience is really what has kept me going through professional challenges, health, really everything. And and so that's what I instill when I'm coaching to my kids, to anyone who comes in contact with me. I always just tell them, no, get back up. You've got this because you are stronger when you get back up. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. That's very inspirational as well. And how do you define your own version of success these days?
00:26:45
Speaker
For me, it is, you know, I used to think that there was this thing called balance where I could balance the kids and balance my work and balance my health, but I don't really think that it's it's about balance anymore. It's about just being able to flow in all of them. I used to think that everything was disconnected when in fact it's not. So my goal and and my version of success is becoming the highest version of myself that I can be. Because if I can do that, then I can be my very best for everyone that I help and who comes in contact with me. yeah So when I can do my very best and and innovate in AI and in business and help people move their journeys along, then I have succeeded in that quadrant.
00:27:36
Speaker
When I can have a really successful marriage, we're going to be married 28 years this year. ah you know My one son, he is already running his own digital media company. He's only 26. My younger son is studying astrophysics. He's 21. So if I can just be that very best version of myself, I do believe that it creates the ripple effect to everyone around you.
00:28:00
Speaker
Yes. Oh, I love it. Very good. Very inspiring as well. And just to wrap up our conversation today, Catherine, what would be your final takeaway message for everyone listening on the politics of AI coaching?
00:28:12
Speaker
What I would say is it's not something to fear. The only reason we fear something is because we don't fully understand it. So I would suggest that everyone become really curious. That's all. Just become curious about AI and research some of the tools that I mentioned today. I also have a lot of tools in the book that I wrote because if you can start using one tool and you notice just how much your life can change,
00:28:41
Speaker
and the amount of time that you will get back in your day, it's life changing. And so then that will, you know, sort of prompt you to move on to the next tool and say, well, if that helped me, imagine if I could adopt this next one. And then what if I did that to my health? What if I could organize my children's schedules? And it just goes on and on and on. So it's about really just embracing AI is here to stay.
00:29:08
Speaker
and really the only people that AI will replace are the people who aren't using AI. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. It's been an awesome conversation. If anyone out there wants to connect further with Catherine or her clone, there are some details on the show notes. Until next time, take care.