You're listening to cubicle to CEO episode 187. AI Artificial intelligence has entered the chat in a big way this year. But what's just tech hype and what's actually useful to you as a business owner, Jasmine Garnsworthy, creator of female founder world debriefs her personal use case of how three of her favorite AI tools, including the popular chat GPT make it possible for her scrappy team of two to sustainably publish large volumes of content weekly, and plan in person events all over the US all while retaining their brand originality and content quality. Having previously led editorial for mega media brands like Pop Sugar and StyleCaster. I loved Jasmine's honest hot takes on how AI is impacting the future of content, and why more women especially entrepreneurs need to participate. This conversation is equal parts thought provoking as it is practical, with Jasmine sharing very specific examples of how you can apply these three tools to accelerate your content game without a steep tech learning curve. Whether you sell services digital offers or physical products. This episode is a must listen.
Welcome to cubicle to CEO the podcast. I'm your host Ellen Yin. I quit my job without a backup plan and bootstrapped my first $300 freelance project into $2 million in revenue by age 28. On the show, you'll hear weekly case study interviews with leading entrepreneurs and CEOs who share one specific strategy that successfully grew their business revenue. Skip the expensive and time consuming learning curve of testing everything yourself by borrowing what actually works from the best and brightest mentors. You'll also get a front row seat to my founders journey through transparent income reports. And behind the business solo episodes, subscribe now so we can grow together every Monday.
Hello, Jasmine, I'm so excited to have you on the show today, Jasmine and I actually connected a few months back over Instagram, and she is just an incredible person. We've gotten to support each other on a few different things. And I love connecting with other women in media because it is kind of this weird world and something that I'm still very much learning. And so when I came across Jasmine and I saw she was working on you know, similar things had a similar vision. It just made me feel so much more affirmed in the path that I was on and not so alone in trying to learn all these things. So Jasmine, I'm thrilled to have you,
Ellen, thank you for having me. It feels like this conversation has been a really long time coming. So I'm glad that we're on this call. We're ready to do it. And I'm excited to chat with you.
Yes. And you are coming hot off the heels of an amazing event in New York City. You collaborated with the Museum of ice cream and you know put on this huge event hundreds of women showed up for International Women's Day. So huge congrats on that. And I am excited because the timing of our conversation is great, since your case study today is all about how you are able to host these events in collaboration with big partners like Shopify all over the country and create all this amazing content with a scrappy team by using AI tools which I know artificial intelligence chat GBT, all of these tools are very trendy right now very much in the conversation. So that's a preview of the case study that we'll be covering today. But before we get there, of course, I have to ask you, Jasmine, what is your cubicle to CEO story? Yeah,
okay. I started my career in media. I've always worked in publishing, I've always worked in media. And I started off in Australia as a writer for what was then a pretty small blog that was mainly geared towards like young moms, Gen X women. I am very much a millennial, and kind of got my start there. And that company is now the biggest independent publishing company in Australia. They are consistently like topping the charts and podcasts, they do events, and it's called Mamma Mia. And so that really jump started my career, I moved on to Pop Sugar. And I was an editor there when I was 22, which was I think I was at the time, the youngest editor that I'd had, and then got offered a job in New York City and moved over here. And that's kind of where I started to take this entrepreneurial journey like a little bit more seriously.
So I'd been working in media, and I knew that I wanted to kind of start my own thing and I honestly tried so many things. It was like spaghetti against the wall. Let's see what sticks. I started a tech like a tech platform where creators could upload the images and it would be a way that media companies could use influencers images and have the rights to do it because everyone's kind of just doing it at the time pulling them from Instagram. That didn't work. I started a beauty company ran that for about three years. It worked for a couple of years, but it just plateaued. And I was really in this space of thinking, Okay, what am I going to do? This is 2020, I'm thinking, what am I going to do with this beauty company that I've built at the time, I was also consulting with you and women and community building for them. And I started reaching out to my network of female founders that I'd built around myself, really, as I'd been writing about their businesses as an editor, and I built that network. And as I was growing my own company, and instead of having these one on one calls, I kind of opened it up to my Instagram community and said, "Hey, if you're having similar questions, because it's 2020, and we're all hitting roadblocks in our businesses, right now, jump on this call with me and learn from this person, and let's help each other."
And I think that was because I come from that media and publishing background, I'm very much around amplifying things, and, you know, paying it forward and sharing knowledge and that way, and it kind of to be honest, snowballed from there into what is now a really strong community, a newsletter business, and essentially a pretty big events business now called female founder world. So we do these events all over the US, we've done New York, LA and Austin, and like you said, the last one we did was at the Museum of ice cream, which was just insane. It was hundreds of women, we had eight different sessions, we have like six different activations across the space. And I am a team of one plus a part time content coordinator. So we've pulled all that off, I also have a six week old baby, we put all that off with a really small team. And it was absolutely insane and amazing.
Okay, I actually didn't know that piece until right this very moment that it was just in full time. And one other content coordinator that blows my mind. I mean, when I was preparing for our conversation, I knew it was a small team. But I didn't realize just how small and so this makes the case study even more exciting to me. So that's amazing. First of all, congratulations, like I said, and I think it's also really cool to hear that. Like I think a lot of people that we interview on the show, when they're telling their story from employee to entrepreneur, typically, the business that they start is the one that they are still running or growing today. And I think it's actually really cool to hear kind of a different path where you had started multiple different things, some work, some didn't. And that led you to, I guess what you might call your third business venture. Now as an entrepreneur, I am going to insert an early hot take here, before we jump into the Case Study Details. Do you feel that your background working in media as an employee as an editor? Do you think that helped your work in founding female founder world? Or do you think it actually perhaps limited you in some ways? Because you were used to doing things a certain way in a company with much larger resources and stuff?
Yeah, okay. So there's kind of a couple of ways that I think about that. And that's something that I do think about a lot. So I originally started female founder world as a blog in 2016. And I started the podcast in 2016, under a different name, it was called their dream job. I interviewed different founders and entrepreneurs. And I had this blog, I had this podcast, but I was mortified to put things out under my own name, without the protection of this big masthead behind me, which kind of lends legitimacy to you, and almost gives you permission to be putting your words out on the internet. And so I was feeling just so nervous and embarrassed. And I was putting the content out, and I kind of I thought it was good. I thought it was resonating with people. But it just made me cringe. And I couldn't keep doing it. And so I ended up shutting it all down and kind of, you know, focusing again, on working for another publisher, because I felt like maybe other journalists, my peers in the space would be reading it and thinking what is she doing?
And, you know, in hindsight now, if I'd kept going, that we would be so much further along, I would have been so early on this movement so early on podcasting, in particular. And so it's such a shame that I let that stop me. But by the same token, I definitely built the relationship through working in media, I have the relationships publicist, it has lent me some legitimacy that was able to start this whole platform in a much bigger way because I could get great interviews, I had credibility. Right from the beginning. And working in digital publishing. Yes, you're more resourced, but barely, you know, I was publishing 10 stories a day when I was at Popsugar. Wow, that is a crazy amount of content that they're often you know, researched and reported stories that have quotes from different experts. You're also uploading the content sourcing images, all of that, and then usually working on the commercial side a little bit as well. So it's, it's pretty intense. It's pretty fast paced, and it doesn't stop when news breaks you're on and I think that that's really helped us because the content that we put out a female founder world is timely, it is relevant. And that's because I understand how quick the new cycle is.
And I am really tapped into an in tune with that gut feeling of is this relevant? Is this not? Is this interesting? Is this not will this hook work, won't it. And that applies not just to written content that's going to apply to Instagram content that's going to apply to a tiktok is just that, that idea of like what makes a good story and what makes good content is something that you just honed over time, and whether that's running your own blog, or whether that's working for an established publisher, it is definitely a skill that can't be taught and has to be learned over time. Yeah, I can see that
and what a great transferable skill to the work that you do today. I do find it interesting. I'm glad I asked you that question about how it has helped you and how it has hindered you, especially the part where you said that you were afraid of what your peers or other journalists might think about the content that you were putting out under your own neighbor or not under an established publishers masthead, like you mentioned, it's funny, as someone who never worked in media, my mind never even went there. Like I never even thought to compare my work to, you know, say a journalist or, or a big publication. And that could be either good or bad. But again, I think the takeaway I want our listeners to have from this is, I think every job experience, no matter what background you come from, there are skills that are transferable to the work you do as an entrepreneur today.
But in the same vein, don't completely discredit yourself, if you are brand new to the field or industry that you're building a business in, and you have no prior professional experience in because sometimes that naivete can maybe actually embolden you or help you put yourself out there a little bit more compared to if you had more context about what something quote unquote, should look like or should feel like so very interesting. Take thank you for your honesty there. Let's get into this case study. So you already mentioned your team structure is yourself and one other part time content person, how much content are you actually creating on a weekly basis in terms of output?
Yeah, and you know, what I should add that we do have contractors and freelancers that I work with I so for example, when we have an event, and we need to put together some you know, more robust, like visual content, we work with a graphic designer, have a podcast editor who helps with that. But you know, essentially in terms of like running the business and the day to day, it is me, and it is one other person and web publishing across Instagram and Tiktok daily. And we have a newsletter that goes out once every two weeks, that is a very lengthy, very big lift, it's a really heavy lift. And that has grown pretty quickly. You know, we've only had that newsletter for about a year, and we're at about 20,000 subscribers now. And that's happened totally organically, we haven't really had any big push behind that. From like a marketing standpoint, it's really just been referrals. We're also putting out a podcast every week. And we're hosting an event now almost monthly. So we do smaller events in New York where we have usually around 100 People minimum at the events, and then we'll kind of do a bigger one every couple of months, which is usually 500 registrations 300 people show up. And that's kind of where we're sitting at. So it is a lot of content and a lot of programming that we're doing. In addition to that we have a community on Geneva with over 1000 female founders and that space, we host programming that community every couple of weeks. And so they are workshops that are recorded and available to paid members. We also have free programming in there as well in the way of business coaching, all of that gets summarized and shared that gets included in the newsletter and cross posted across all the platforms. So there is a lot going on in terms of content and programming.
Yeah, it sounds like a huge lift. I'm curious, you mentioned of course that you hire contractors on an ad hoc basis as needed for certain projects or events upcoming, where specifically do you feel that AI fills the gaps in your content output? So what specifically when you first started using AI Did you utilize for
so I would think of AI as a junior admin assistant or a junior content assistant, I haven't gotten to a point yet where I would feel comfortable like publishing something without what's called you know, a human in the loop. So having somebody in there to kind of like check or edit or adapt as needed, but it is incredible for that idea generation for admin tasks for getting the bulk of the first draft done. When you want to adapt the tone of something you're not kind of happy with what you've written and you just need something to add like a different lens or a different tone to what you're writing. All of those things are really really helpful. And what I think is super important to say as well the lens that I'm bringing to this is not some tech professional who is deep in the weeds on AI and AI tech like I am an entrepreneur and a content creator and someone trying to build a business who does not have a lot of time and who is putting out a lot of content. And who has just found really practical ways to use these platforms, that helps me. There are API integrations that you can investigate, you can build your own apps to use in your workflows. But I am assuming that a lot of your listeners are like me, and they just need a few ways to make their life easier. And that's definitely like the approach that I've taken in the way that I use AI.
Absolutely. And that's exactly why I wanted to bring you on the show to talk about this. What's interesting about our business show, is that many of our guests are, you know, experts in a specific field, for example, you are an expert in media or in events. However, when they come on our show, the case study that they are dissecting, as far as a real life strategy that they've implemented in their own business that's worked well for them, is actually typically not in the area of expertise that they're known for, which I actually personally love. Because I think it gives us more of a genuine insight into what people are doing behind the scenes in their own business, not just what they're publicly known for, what their platform is about. So I actually appreciate that you are not someone who works in tech. So I just want to affirm you there.
I like the way that you think about AI as almost filling a role in your team, like you said, like a junior content assistant, you think of it as a person role, even though it's obviously not done by a person. But I also like that you distinguish that there's always a human in the loop in the final piece that goes out. I'm curious, do you know off the top of your head, how many hours per week the AI tools that you implement in your business or saving you like, if you were to actually imagine it as a real role? How many hours is that junior content assistant, so to speak, working in your business?
Oh, that is a difficult one to estimate, I would say like it would be it would probably save me a day a week, I would save a junior admin person a day a week, you know, there are tasks that I could do more quickly myself. But in terms of if I was hiring someone to do it, it'd probably be, yeah, around a day a week at the moment. But I really also think about it in terms of it allows me to do more and to do the same things I was doing more efficiently rather than you know, it's saved me time, if that makes sense.
Ya know, like, it allows you to expand on what you're already doing well, and good at it. My understanding. Okay, yeah. So let's get more into the specifics, then I would want to know, what are your top three AI tools that you're currently leveraging in your content process? And can you actually for each tool, walk us through the A to Z process of how you're specifically using it in your female founder world content?
Yeah. So the first one, and this is the one that everyone is talking about. And I actually have like a very specific like tip for this. And it's chat, GBT, everyone is talking about it, everyone is trying it. People are whether or not you signed up to the paid plan, or if you're using the free version, I do think that that's the one that everyone's kind of thinking about. It's like all of your Tik Tok feed, if you have any interest in AI at all, it's dominating this space. And I think that the kind of lowest hanging fruit when you think about how to use AI for content is to use chat GBT for copywriting. This is what a lot of people are doing. There are other platforms that are built on that tech that do the same thing. But you can do it within the chat GPT platform. But I think that where it can really add value is once you understand how to manipulate the tone of voice, because when you first start using chat GPT to kind of create content, the stuff that is fed out to you is pretty generic, it's not super high value. And actually like where things get really interesting and valuable is when you understand how to use the prompts properly to like, manipulate the tone of voice. So for example, let's say I was originally going to say let's write 10 Instagram captions, I need to them as a tip for SEO for business owners. And I would put that into Chat GPT, what would come out would be okay, you know, it'd be fine, you'd get some Instagram captions there that you could use, and they'd be relevant. But it probably wouldn't be something that you would want to publish, like you'd need it to be fairly heavily edited, and might be a little bit low value in terms of the insights that you're getting there.
And the way that you make that better is by giving chat GBT an example of the tone of voice that you want. So for example, you would copy and paste an example of the tone of voice you want. And this is where we could really get into like the ethical implications of this because like, that is a conversation that needs to be had. Because you could essentially be pulling somebody else's writing. You could be putting that into chat GBT. And you could be saying, write in this style, and give me 10 Instagram captions for SEO for for business owners and you are Get something that sounds like that person's writing. So whether or not you're using your own copy, or if you've made the decision to use somebody else's using chat GPT. And adding that tone of voice prompt, just makes it a little bit more valuable. And so one really practical way that I do this, for example, is when I'm writing the newsletter, and like I said, this newsletter is really meaty, it is really lengthy. It is something that covers all the news that would be relevant to particularly women building consumer businesses, we have excerpts from our podcast, we have stories about pop culture that would be relevant to somebody building a business on the internet right now. And so we use this tone of voice trick to just save honestly so much time. So I would quickly write something that would go on the newsletter that would be related to whatever news is out at the moment. And then I would put that into chat GPT. And I would copy and paste it in, I would say rewrite this using a tone like this. And then I would copy in an example of a past newsletter that is edited with his tone of voice that I like, and it would rewrite all that for me. And you can just imagine how much time that is saving and how much energy that is saving in terms of publishing the style of content that you want to and that like resonates with your audience.
Wow, okay, I, I'm so impressed. Now my little brain is thinking currently, we write everything in our business from scratch. Now, whether or not that's efficient, you know, of course, could be contested. But that's currently in full transparency, how we approach our newsletter and all of our copy on social, but I find it so fascinating what you're sharing here. And echoes actually, a lot of the sentiments of other entrepreneurs that I've heard use tools like chat GPT really well is they say the output that you get from a tool like this is all dependent on the quality of the inputs, right? The the raw data that you feed it. And so thank you for walking us through that very specific example. These days, you're feeding it past newsletter examples. If you didn't have a past example of your own share, is that where you would potentially go research another writer or another content source that has a similar tone of voice and copy it into the tool as the example voice to model? Or do you have a different way of approaching that?
Yeah, I mean, look, let's say you had a content assistant, you had a junior rider, and you were briefing them. And you would say I want to write a story about this. You know, I want to summarize these three things that I saw on Business Insider today that I saw on Instagram, and that I saw on entrepreneur.com. And I want to summarize it, but you know, our tone of voice sounds like refinery 29. So make sure that you're writing in that style, but make it a little bit more conversational. And so you would brief chat GPT in the same way that you would brief a content coordinator or content assistant. And that is a way you know, that's the way that you need to think about it. And just think about it in that way of if you're briefing any person what information would they need to do a good job?
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That's actually gold and again I think it comes so second nature to you Jasmine because you come from the world of media but I think for a lot of small business owners Who don't or who are not as content savvy, that one tip right there is brilliant putting yourself in the shoes of essentially what a traditional editor would do at a paper or magazine or publication and, and thinking through, okay, how would I, like you said, dictate a creative brief to a junior writer or content producer. So super, super helpful. So that's one tip that you use for your newsletter, specifically, what's another tool that you love using in your business.
So when you think about the Instagram content that we're putting out, this is a super practical one that is actually really, really easy, anyone can go into it. Now, these are free tools that you can go and use. We have a lot of Instagram content that is either infographics where we're sharing, you know, business tips, breakdowns of the news stories about different founders in our community that are inspiring and expansive for women building businesses, or just, you know, screenshots of tweets with a background. And that's what we're uploading to Instagram. And we're creating that content all the time. When I first started the business, I had a graphic designer who I paid, who created a whole bunch of different background treatments that we used. For those graphics, I think everyone is familiar with that style of content on Instagram. Now, I think a lot of media businesses are using that. So originally, you know, we had paid someone to kind of create that and generate it, we do a lot of purple skies with clouds, that's very much the aesthetic that we're doing. And she saw those images or created those images for us. Now we use image generation tools like you can use like Dall-E2, for example, to create images that you can use as backgrounds. And while the resolution isn't super, super high in the output, you can get great images that you can use for backgrounds for Instagram content, background for Instagram Stories, content that is free, and that is unique to you. And that is really again, just about typing in the right brief.
So for example, I am looking for a futuristic purple sky with fluffy clouds. And it'll give me a whole bunch of images that we can use. And I can kind of refine that as I want. Another example would be we do a lot of content where we put images up on like a billboard with a certain sky, we can generate that in a tool like Dall-E2 and be able to use it for my Instagram backgrounds as well. And again, there are ethical implications. And there's what side of this you want to be on. But I do think it's important for female founders to understand what other people are doing and what the opportunities are for these efficiencies. But that has replaced the role of working with a graphic designer more frequently.
Interesting, can you restate the name of this tool and spell it out? I'm not familiar with that. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
So yeah, so DALL-E2. And there's another platform that you can use as well, which is a little bit more complicated, I would start with Dall-E2, for sure. If you're new to AI definitely start there. That's where we've got a lot of our imagery that works really well. And then there is mid journey, which is a more complicated platform, but you can definitely learn it. And that users essentially you're doing it in discord. So it's a little bit more advanced, I would say but also a great way to generate imagery. There's another way to generate imagery as well, I don't want to get like too in the weeds. But that's a really great place to start. But a lot of the founders in our community are consumer brands. They're building, let's say beauty brands, food brands, they have product imagery, and they want to be able to have a lot of different content that shows their product. But shooting it is super expensive right, you want to have it in certain backgrounds, you want to have it in different places, or you are going on holiday and carrying your little bag your product with you to take photos everywhere. I have been there I had to beat around I've done that, you can use a platform called flare.ai, which has a free version. And it is essentially a way to auto generate product photography, which just sounds absolutely wild. But essentially, you can upload one image of your product, and they can completely change the way that it looks. So you'll add a bunch of prompts. So let's say I've got a beauty product, I've got a jar of beauty oil, which is what my brand was. And you'll select from a bunch of different dropdowns to say I want it sitting on a marble slab. And then I will choose the next prompt in front of a cloudy sky or blue sky and then it'll generate that image for you and you have a brand new piece of content for your Shopify store for your Instagram or wherever you want to put it. It's incredible.
Holy moly, I feel like I keep saying wow, you just hear me saying that all throughout this episode, but truly that's That is very impressive. So essentially, it's taking your product image and superimposing it on different backgrounds but based on Like you said, the placement directions that you give it, and that one, and they move that one one more time.
So that's called flare flair.ai. And I've used this personally. So we have merch, we have, for example, for the event that we're doing, we had gift bags, we had a lot of content around the products that were in the gift bags, the gift bag that we had printed. And so instead of, you know, trying to stitch that together, trying to shoot it working, trying to coordinate all of that, we use flair to generate all this product photography.
Wow, okay, oh, my goodness, I literally just want to stop after this interview and play with all of these tools. I don't even have a consumer brand. But I'm sure many of our listeners do. And so I know that there will be a lot of people pausing this episode to try flair.AI. So those are two tools. You've talked about how you use AI for your newsletter content, how you use it for Instagram posts and product photography, what is your third and final favorite AI tool you think every female founder every entrepreneur should know about?
So there's a great platform called otter.ai. It's otter.ai. And the way that I learned about this platform was basically to use it as your assistant to summarize zoom calls and to transcribe them automatically. And basically take meeting notes, that kind of admin assistant, which is helpful. But for me, I run a small team, I have external meetings with partners. And in that case, it can be helpful rather than me taking notes during a call. So it's good for that. But I've taken somebody else's workflow that they used and published on a platform called the AI Exchange, which I highly, highly recommend you subscribe to if you're interested in this space. And I've taken it and I've applied it to the application of our workshops. So we're doing these workshops all the time, it's one of our programming pillars that we offer to the female founder world community. And after the workshops, we want to send around a summary of what was discussed, right, and we want that to include the audio of what was discussed, we want it to include what was in the slides. And I don't want to sit there for two hours after the call and do that. So we use otter.ai, it automatically transcribes and basically creates notes from your zoom calls.
And it also includes notes from the slides that are shown visually as well. So that's an amazing way to take notes and summarize what's going on in those workshops, and then have something that I can then edit, like I said, to keep a human in the loop, I wouldn't send that straight out there often grammatical or spelling errors in that automated content. But it gives me the big bulk of what I can then just pare down and edit quickly and then share with the community right after the call. And then we also use that when we upload the workshop that is then the description and the notes that accompany the workshop recording. That's what we can include in the newsletter. So it just saves so much time. And you can use out you can I don't do this. But you can also plug it into other platforms, for example, to do that editing and grammatical checking for you. So there's a platform called quill bot that can do that. I do it manually, because I like to be in there. But if you wanted to automate the full workflow, you could do that.
Wow. Okay. And the AI exchange, is that a forum? Is that a newsletter? What do you mean, when you say you should you know, engage with this thing or or be a part of it.
So this is incredible voice in AI, Rachel would love that she's a woman, there's not a lot of women in this space. And I do feel like, you know, this is the next industrial revolution that is going to change the way that we work. And more women need to be at the forefront of this. And she is one of them that is really leading the charge. And she's built a platform called the AI Exchange, which basically shows you all different AI tools. So there are a million different platforms that essentially do the same kind of things. But it just helps you kind of figure out which one is right for you. And she also has a newsletter, that to be honest, can get in the weeds a little bit, I think for people who aren't super interested in the future of tech and how you know, AI as a bigger conversation. But she does have some really practical stuff in there that can be helpful. For example, she shed this kind of workflow as an admin assistant that I've then adapted to use for our workshops, which has been super, super helpful.
Amazing. So if someone just searches AI Exchange, they could view this platform that Rachel has created. And I totally agree with you, I think more women in tech in general, there was a really interesting study, actually, that Girls Who Code an amazing nonprofit based out of New York, actually, we interviewed their CEO and I can't remember the numbers, but we'll link the episode for you below. If you're curious. There was an interesting study done on women's contributions in tech and how it actually makes our society a better place When more women are involved in that. So thank you for sharing those very valuable resources.
We actually recently became a customer of otter.ai. The third tool that you mentioned, and I haven't used it in the way that you described to summarize workshops, like you said to repurpose that content elsewhere. But it has been wonderful just to use it even on the most simple level. For those of you listening who are fellow podcasters, like jasmine and AI, you can use otter AI to create transcripts to make your podcast content more accessible to those who are deaf or hard of hearing. And what I love about otter AI in comparison to a lot of other transcription tools is that you can and you'll see this yourself, if you scroll below to the show notes and click on the transcript notes for this episode that you're listening to right now, it actually plays the conversation visually for you. So it's not just like a document like a Word doc of the transcript, it actually distinguishes between the two voices. And when you play it, it highlights each word as it's being said and identifies who the speaker is. So if you're a podcaster, I highly, highly recommend making this available, just to make your content more accessible overall. So thank you for again, these super, super tactical tips.
Jasmine, I think this is probably going to be one of the most tactical episodes on our show in terms of things that people can literally take, and immediately start implementing in their business today. So very excited personally, to try everything that you shared out. I also want to know though, before we kind of leave this conversation of AI behind, I want to ask you a little bit about something you had referred to earlier about growing your newsletter to 20,000 Subs organically. But as one last thought here, I think a lot of people fear that AI will remove, I guess human creativity or authenticity that only really comes from a lived experience your own thoughts. What's your hot take on that? Like I know, you said for example, you even dictate like, here's my voice, our newsletter voice, go ahead and copy this, if that functionality is available, how do you still stay true and try to foster creativity and originality within your own content?
Look, it's definitely a conversation that needs to be had. I think that that is not just around you know, I'm I am coming from a writing background. And writing is a skill that you get better at as you do more of it. And if you write one piece of excellent content, and then use that as a as a prompt for AI for the rest of your career, that's not going to make you a better writer. And so there's definitely you know, there's conversation and there's tension there. I think, for me, as a trying to build a business with very little time. You know, I'm already at a point where I feel really comfortable with kind of the my ability to create content and be innovative, this, these tools are really helpful, I think that you still need to have right now. And I don't know how long that's going to be the case.
Because these tools are getting really good right now, you do still need to have that intuitive idea about what is good content, what is going to resonate with your audience. And that's why there needs to be kind of a human who was leading this, but I don't think that's going to be the case forever. But in saying that, I think that these changes are inevitable, whether or not I am someone who is adopting the technology and making the most of the these efficiencies, the changes are coming. And I do think in the past, women have been hesitant to get involved in these conversations because they are like it is scary from for multiple reasons. And so we have just been left out of the conversation, and then you don't get to shape what that future looks like. And so I think it is really important that female founders are getting on board with these platforms and are investigating AI and have a good understanding and that they are shaping the future of how these tools are used for creativity.
I love the pioneering mindset you have around this. And I agree. And also I read a really interesting Facebook comment the other day, I wish I could remember who wrote it. But I think they made an excellent point. Basically, the comments said something along the lines of even if these tools become more and more efficient to the point where human interaction is not necessarily required for the quality to stay at the level that you want it to. There is still something to be said about people's innate love for the actual process of creation that doesn't go away. Right? It's like the same reason like you could create ceramics with machines and it's perfect right every single time. But that doesn't stop people from throwing clay on a wheel because there's something about the actual process that they genuinely love and would not forsake just for efficiency. So I guess in summary, efficiency, love that reason we create, right?
Yeah, I love that. And that is so true. You know, no one becomes a writer so that there is 1000 blog posts on the internet. That's not why they do it. They do that so that they can use their words to connect with other people and to have that Created output and experience.
Yes, that is such a good line. I feel like I don't know, whenever I hear a good line like that needs to be on a mug somewhere on a shirt somewhere. So, to your merch shop, no one becomes a writer to publish 1000 posts on the internet. One last okay, I know I had said last thought on this case study. But to truly wrap up this case study. You're such a queen of repurposing content. I mean, that's evident just based on the tips that you shared today. What do you think people get wrong about content repurposing? Is there anything that you would add here for extra insight?
What do I think people get wrong? I think the way that I've kind of been approaching and thinking about content, I've been in media for a while now. And I kind of started my career in Australia, as digital publishing was really just in its very nascent stage, like it was just starting vogue.com.au was literally a corporate website where you could download their media kit. And that's all they were not publishing content. And I am 32. I'm not in my 50s. This is very recent history. And people were moving from print into digital. And I never worked in print, I always worked in digital, I wanted to work in print. But because that was a glamorous thing at the time, couldn't get a job. So I ended up in digital. And I kind of saw these traditional magazine editors adapting to the publishing cadence of a digital platform, the way that things are slightly different, and was also hiring for people for these roles as well. And I was hiring people who had worked in print because at the end of the day, I knew that if you understand what makes a good story, and what makes a good piece of content, it doesn't matter where you're publishing it or how you're publishing it.
That innate storytelling ability translates and that is this skill. It's not understanding how to use like a CMS or how to, like technically use Tik Tok. It's understanding what people want to consume in terms of content. And so I think as we move into new forms of content, and there's always a new platform, I think a lot of people were really hesitant to get on Tik Tok, who maybe had built up their following on Instagram or who had built up followings in terms of like traditional blogs maybe. And Tik Tok felt scary and different because it was younger, and people were approaching it a different way. But at the end of the day, what we're seeing now as that platform matures is good content is good content. And it's even if it's being adapted into video, it is essentially the same skill. It doesn't matter where the content is going or where it's being published that storytelling skill is the skill. So I don't care if you're 70 years old, and you were a news journalist, and now you're getting on Tik Tok. You know how to do it, you do
That wisdom, okay. I highly suggest all of you rewind, like two or three minutes wherever you started and just listen to that. Again, I feel like that's such a such a great personal affirmation. It is very timely to because just this past week, in my private mentorship group, there was someone who asked, you know, my thoughts on the current state in the US have the potential for Tik Tok to actually be banned, which, who knows that legislation will actually pass. But even if it does, I could not agree with you more that it's not about the actual mechanics of the platform that you're creating the content on. It's about understanding storytelling. And it's the same tenants whether you're creating through, you know, cinematic film that you sit in a theater and watch or whether it's a stage production, or whether it's a digital newsletter that lands in someone's inbox, storytelling is the root of great content. And so I love the wisdom that you share there.
And selfishly, I feel like I can't let you go from this interview. Before I ask you about that. One quick thing you had mentioned at the beginning, you have grown your newsletter for female founder world to more than 20,000 subscribers completely organically. Word of mouth. Organic email referrals is something that I think not a lot of people have really actually been able to accomplish in the way that you have. So what is your number one tip for how you have gotten people to actually take a moment to share your newsletter with a friend or with a peer? Because I think we can all agree, we read great content, listen to great content, watch great content all day, every day, but it takes that extra motivation to say I'm actually going to spend some time sending it to someone. So how do you think you've activated them to do that?
Okay, so there are two things that I think of one of them is an answer, I don't think people are going to love and that is just essentially I create a really good newsletter, you know, I'm creating content that people want to read, people want to share and they think, oh, I need to afford this to my team. So if we have a founder, who's on the newsletter, she is going to afford that to her marketing director to her social media manager because there are some thing in there that they all need to say. So that's one piece of it. And the way that you make good content for a newsletter is that you're not using the newsletter to summarize content that's published elsewhere. We are not summarizing, we're not linking to the podcast and creating couple of points for the podcast, I am taking what was said in the podcast, and I'm writing an article for the newsletter, you know, that is that is what we're doing.
The newsletter is its own product, it is its own piece of content. It's not something to market, other content that lives elsewhere. So that's like a really important way to think about it. Another thing that we do is, you know, anytime I mentioned someone, and we're constantly talking about what founders in the community are doing, and by the community, I mean, people who are specifically within the female founder world community hub on Geneva, and also that are within the broader female founder community that are maybe kind of famous, you know, they've got a lot of followers themselves, they've got big businesses, and we're covering what they're doing. And I always forward those newsletters to them. And I say, hey, we probably do a newsletter today, or I'll post it on my Instagram stories, or I'll share I'll talk about it on Tik Tok. And I'll mention it, I mentioned them, and they will share it, they'll amplify it with their team. And that becomes like one way to kind of organically grow things.
And then of course, we have a referral program, I use a platform called Beehive that has an inbuilt referral program. It was started by I think he was maybe the head of growth, or he created the referral program for morning brew. Exactly. And so he's gone and started his own platform now, which is great. They wouldn't inbuilt referral system, which works really well. But to be honest, that hasn't been the main way that we've been getting people it's really been through that really scrappy, word of mouth, you know, sharing with people who are mentioned and asking them to amplify it. And that's been working.
Well, it's so smart, because who doesn't love when they're featured or mentioned somewhere? Right? It really, really feature so of course, you're going to want to showcase that. And then I am really appreciative of your honest answer to that first tip being that it's the fact that you create content that's worth sharing in the first place. Right. And I would just agree with your viewpoint on even for us, like we used to treat our newsletter in the way that you had shared before where it was kind of like marketing, our podcast where it was just a few bullet points, like go listen to our show. Now we ever since the beginning of 2023. We have treated our newsletter as its own product, like you said, and we create articles and work that live only on the newsletter. So that is again just super for me and why I'm so glad that I met you a fellow media founder in this industry. Jasmine, where can our listeners continue to follow female founder world and the work that you're doing?
All of the links to what we're doing our community our Tik Tok our newsletter are all on femalefounderworld.com Please go and find us go and follow us. There are so many great resources there. And then I'm Jasmine Garnsworthy on Instagram and @jasgarnsworthy on tick tock
amazing. We'll drop all those links for you in the show notes so that it's super easy and clickable. And all of the AI tools that Jasmine mentioned today will also be below in the show notes. So very resource heavy, make sure you scroll below and click on those. Jasmine, thank you so much. It was wonderful to chat with you.
Thank you for having me. This has been so much fun.
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