Tea with the Queen

[00:00:00] As a business owner, you can ask AI what to do next, and it'll give you a solid answer. It can even tailor it to your niche, your tone, your offer, your goals, but your experience tells you what to do next for this person in this season with this context. I've been thinking a lot about AI lately. Hasn't everybody?
And yes, I use it, quite a bit actually. I've even given mine a name, Chatty. She, and I are wonderful friends and have some wonderful conversations. She helps me organize my thoughts. She challenges my thinking 'cause I've asked her to. She will write some things. She'll brainstorm ideas. She'll get through work that might otherwise take me hours.
But here's something else that I have been thinking about. I've spent more than 20 years working in leadership, human resources, business, and coaching. I've sat in boardrooms where the tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. I've had [00:01:00] conversations with people who were absolutely terrified about their future.
I've managed difficult teams. I've had hard conversations that I didn't wanna have. I've built businesses. I've made mistakes, lost money, made money, and learned an extraordinary amount along the way. And I wonder sometimes in our excitement about everything AI can do, whether we're forgetting the value of everything we've already done.
Because there's something that happens when you've spent 10, 20, 30 years doing something. I don't know, you develop judgment. You develop instincts. You learn to recognize patterns. You know when to speak, and perhaps more importantly, when to shut up. And you know that sometimes what someone is asking you isn't actually what they need.
And I don't think we talk about that enough. So today, I wanna talk about lived experience, human connection, nuance, and why I think the more AI becomes part of our lives, [00:02:00] the more valuable these things will become. See, information is not the same as wisdom. Let's just start here. We have more information available at our fingertips than any other time in history.
You can ask ChatGPT how to have a difficult conversation with an employee. It will give you a great structure, perhaps some lovely sentences, even a script, dare I say. And some of it, some of it will be excellent, but here's what it doesn't have. It hasn't sat across from that particular employee for three years.
It doesn't know that her father died six months ago. It doesn't know that she's normally your highest performer, but lately she's been struggling. It doesn't know that she's gone quiet in meetings, and that isn't like her And it hasn't developed a relationship with her that means you can say something difficult and she knows you're coming from a place of care and good intent.[00:03:00]
Now, of course, of course you could give AI all that information and it could help you think through the conversation. But you still have to walk into the room. You have to notice her body language. You have to hear the change in her voice or the side look. You have to decide whether to continue the conversation or put the script aside and gently ask, "Are you okay?"
That's not just knowledge. That's wisdom applied in a real human moment, and that is incredibly valuable. The nuance of knowing when not to follow the advice, right? One of the things I love about coaching is that two people can come to me with exactly the same problem and leave with two completely different pieces of advice.
Two women might tell me they're struggling to make sales. One needs to pick up the phone. She's procrastinating. She's overthinking. She's avoiding rejection, and [00:04:00] she needs someone to lovingly tell her to get on with it. The other woman might be absolutely exhausted. She's been doing all the business development activities, but her offer isn't right, her pricing is wrong, or she's attracting clients who aren't a good fit Telling her to go and make another 20 phone calls would be terrible advice.
Same problem on the surface, completely different solutions. That's the nuance of lived experience. When you've coached hundreds of people, you begin to recognise what sits underneath the words. You hear what's being said. You notice what's not being said. And sometimes you challenge the very question someone has asked you.
AI can absolutely help explore those possibilities, but the responsibility for understanding that human being and deciding what to do next remains with us. [00:05:00] A good answer is not always the right intervention, and I think it's really important to understand this. Number three, your experience is more than your quals or your qualifications.
I wanna speak directly to the women listening who have been doing what they've been doing for years. The accountants, the lawyers, the consultants, the designers, the HR professionals, my beautiful allied health practitioners, my awesome business owners. You have something incredibly valuable, and sometimes I don't think you realize it because you're so used to, to knowing what you know, you forget that other people don't know it.
You look at something and you think, "Well, that's obvious." But no, it's not. It's not obvious. It's only obvious to you because you've seen it 100 times. You've seen what works. You've seen what doesn't. And you've seen the warning signs. You may have watched people make the mistakes, and you've probably made a few yourself.
Me too. [00:06:00] And all these experiences have shaped the way that you think. Let me give you an example. When I was a HR director, I didn't just learn employment legislation and policies. They were quite boring actually. I learnt about people. I learnt about power dynamics. I learnt about how people behave when they're frightened, when they're under pressure When they're ambitious, when they're feeling insecure.
I learnt that the person speaking the loudest in the room isn't necessarily the person with the most influence. I learnt that a beautifully written strategy means absolutely nothing if the person responsible for implementing it don't believe in it. And I learnt that sometimes, sometimes the most important thing you can do as a leader is shut up, sit quietly, and listen.
You can't put all of that into a neat little prompt. Well, I mean, you can try, but it's the accumulated experience that makes the difference, the compounding effect. Your years [00:07:00] of experience are not a footnote in your business. They're part of you as the human, and humans connect, they don't transact. You knew I was going to bring selling into this, didn't you?
I've just written a whole book called Selling Without the Ick, and one of the things I talk about is moving from transaction to connection, because selling, when it's done well, is deeply human. It's about understanding another person. It's about bringing your curiosity. It's about trust, and it's about courage to ask a question that might feel a little bit uncomfortable.
Can AI help you write a sales email? Sure. It can help you prepare for a sales conversation. It can help you think about the objections, but it cannot build a genuine relationship on your behalf, yet. You never know. It cannot be the person who remembers that someone was nervous about launching their new business and picks up the phone three months later to [00:08:00] ask how it's going.
It cannot replace the trust built through years of showing up, following through, and doing what you said you would do, and it certainly cannot take responsibility for the promises that you make. I often say humanize the front end and systematize the back end, and I think that philosophy is more relevant than ever.
Use technology to take care of the things that don't need your unique human touch, and protect the things that do Because the relationship isn't an inconvenience that we need to automate away. The relationship, any relationship, is often the very reason someone chooses us. So the question I really want you to sit with is this.
If everyone has access to the same information, the same content, the same AI, what makes you worth paying for? Seriously, if your client can ask ChatGPT the same question they ask you and get a [00:09:00] pretty decent answer in 30 seconds, why would they pay you hundreds or thousands of dollars? It's actually a really confronting question, isn't it?
But I think it's one we need to be asking ourselves consistently because if the only thing you're selling is information, I think you've got a problem. Information is becoming cheaper and more accessible every single day. But information is not transformation. Knowing what to do and actually doing it are two very different things.
And knowing what to do when things don't go according to plan, that's another skill entirely. Let me give you a quick example. Someone could ask Chatty how to grow a business from 200,000 to 500,000. And I reckon it could pretty well produce an bit of a plan. Some marketing strategies, some sales activities, pricing models, financial projections, the lot.
But what happens when that business owner is terrified of putting her [00:10:00] prices up? What happens when she's got a team member who isn't actually performing, but she doesn't have the courage to address it? What happens when her marriage is under pressure, she's exhausted, and she's wondering whether she even wants the business that she's built?
That's when the plan becomes the easy part . And that's when the human part of coaching really matters. I've been coaching women for years, and I can tell you that the thing someone initially tells me is wrong with their business is not always the thing we end up working on. Sometimes they tell me they need more clients.
But what they really need is to stop undercharging. Sometimes they tell me they need a marketing strategy, but what they really need is the courage to pick up the phone. And sometimes they tell me they need to grow, but when we dig a little deeper, what they really want is to make [00:11:00] more profit, work fewer hours, and enjoy their lives again Here's the thing.
I don't know those things because I've read a textbook. I know them because I've spent decades working with people. I've seen patterns, mistakes. I've asked thousands of questions. I've watched what happens when people take action and what happens when they don't. And all of that experience comes into the room with me and with you.
Now, could AI help uncover some of those things? Yeah, of course, especially if they know what questions to ask and are prepared to be really honest with themselves, right? But that's not the same as having someone who knows you, who understands your history, who can challenge you, and who is prepared to have a difficult conversation with you.
Someone who remembers that six months ago you said you wanted something completely different. Someone who notices [00:12:00] that you're avoiding the same decision and you have done for the third month in a row. Someone who can look you in the eye and say, "I think you're getting in your own way here." And someone who will celebrate with you when you finally do the thing you've been putting off.
Yeah, that's the difference. We've got to pay attention to that. It's a really important commercial lesson here for every woman running a business. If you're charging for what you know, you're competing with information. If you're charging for what you can help someone achieve, you're competing on value.
They are very different conversations. So don't just tell people you've got 20 years of experience. Tell them what those 20 years allow you to see, understand, and do that someone without that experience might miss. Don't just tell people you're an expert. Show them. Show them how your expertise changes the outcome.
And please, please, please stop [00:13:00] assuming that because something is easy for you isn't valuable? It might be easy for you precisely because you've spent 20 years getting good at it. I can sometimes have a 15-minute conversation with a business owner and help her make a decision that she has been sitting with for six months.
She's not paying me for the 15 minutes. She's benefiting from 20 years. And I think we need to remember that. I think that's really important because AI might make the work faster, but it doesn't automatically make the judgment better, and it certainly doesn't make your experience irrelevant either. In fact, I would argue that in a world where everyone has access to the same tools, your ability to think critically, exercise judgment and wisdom, build trust, and create meaningful outcomes becomes your competitive advantage.
So here's my challenge to you. The next time someone asks you what you do, don't just tell them your job title. Besides, [00:14:00] that's boring. Don't just list your services. Tell them what changes because you're in the room, because that's what people are really paying for, isn't it? And that's what I don't want you to forget.
Experience alone isn't enough. Now, before you think I'm suggesting we all throw our laptops out the window and go back to handwritten notes, although I do love a handwritten note, I'm absolutely not, and I do love AI. Because there's this other side of the conversation, right? Experience is valuable, but experience can also make us complacent.
We can get stuck in our ways. We can assume that because something worked 10 years ago, it will work today. Psst, it doesn't. We can become so attached to what we know that we stop being curious, and that is dangerous. I don't wanna be the business coach who says, "I've been doing this for 20 years, and I therefore I know everything."
Bow-bow. I'm not Sail-Mail Pale. Just saying. I wanna be the [00:15:00] business coach who says, "I've been doing this for 20 years, and I'm still learning." And that's where AI becomes really interesting. It can challenge our assumptions. It can give us alternative perspectives. It can expose gaps in our thinking, or not, and it can help us test ideas before we take them into the real world.
Not always good things, but it also makes mistakes. It makes a lot of mistakes, ladies. It can sound incredibly confident while being completely wrong, which is another reason your judgment matters and your wisdom matters. The opportunity isn't to choose between human experience and artificial intelligence.
It's to combine them thoughtfully. Let AI expand your capability, not replace your critical thinking. So what does this mean for business? I wanna leave you with three questions, 'cause you know I love a question or two. Firstly, what do people actually come to you for? Not just the service on your website.
What is it that [00:16:00] people trust you to do? Is it making complex things simple? Is it helping them feel safe? Is it seeing opportunities that they can't see from inside? Is it telling them something they need to hear even when it feels a little bit uncomfortable Secondly, where are you undervaluing your own experience?
Where have you become so good at something that you've forgotten how much expertise it actually takes? And where might you be charging for your time when you should be charging for the value of your thinking? Yeah? And finally, how could you use AI to create more space for the human parts of your work?
Could it take away some administration? Could it help you prepare better? Could it make your systems more efficient so you have more time for the conversations that really matter? Because that, to me, is the exciting opportunity here. Not using AI to become less human, [00:17:00] using it to give ourselves more room to be human.
The thing I hope we never lose... I just, like, wanna finish with this. I, I hope we never lose our curiosity. I don't want us to be frightened of AI, but I do think we need to be really intentional about how we use it, because the world doesn't need more people who can simply produce information. It needs people who can think, who can listen, who can be human, who can connect.
People who can make good decisions in difficult circumstances, people who are willing to be accountable for those decisions, and people who bring everything they've learnt, including the mistakes, the hard conversations, and the failures, and the breakthroughs, into the work that they do. So please, use the tools, learn the technology, stay curious, but don't forget what you bring to the table.
Your experience matters. Your [00:18:00] relationships also matter. Your judgment really matters. And your humanity matters more than ever. Chatty might be able to help me write all the things, but it can't help me live my life, and it certainly can't replace the years that have made me the coach that I am today.
That's all mine. Whatever you've lived, learnt, built, and overcome, that is all yours. Do not underestimate it. AI might know everything. Ha. Everything you've learnt, but it hasn't lived everything you've lived. And knowing something is not the same as knowing what to do with it. That is it. That's my rant.
It's over. We love AI, we love tech, but we also love being human. Stay human. Thanks for listening to Tea With The Queen. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It really does help to get the word out. For more about me, please visit emmamcqueen.com.au, and I [00:19:00] look forward to your company next episode.