In this episode, I’m talking to Monica Froese of Empowered Business. She helps women create digital shops so they can maximize their profits. We discussed AI and its impact on digital product creation. Sign up here for Monica’s Free Challenge, “Start Your AI Engines,” which starts Monday, January 27th. You get a BONUS AI training from me here If you sign up. During this challenge, Monica and her team will help you come up with ideas and create your own AI-powered digital products.
Becky Beach: Welcome to the Becky Beach Show. I’m Becky Beach, and today’s guest is Monica Frose. She’s a digital shop coach. Welcome, Monica.
Monica Froese: Thanks so much for having me, Becky. I always love talking to you.
Becky Beach: Oh, yes, I’ve been following Monica for years. I’ve also been in her mastermind and she is just such a life changing coach.
I highly recommend her to everybody. So Monica, I understand that now you help people with AI products.
Monica Froese: Yes, well, this is like a relatively new thing that we are dabbling in. Basically, uh, we’ve been teaching people how to create digital products since 2019. And we, I kind of, I, I’m the type of person that steps back and likes to see how things play out before I’m like, okay, let me just go with the next new shiny object thing, right?
Cause that can distract you. So AI came on, came on the scene and we now came to the conclusion after I’ve, now. Done enough with it that we’re going to redo our entire program about how to create digital products. It’s called the Empowered Business Lab and we’re going to infuse AI into it and not just not just infuse AI from the sense of creating the products, coming up with the product ideas, creating the funnel and all the copy.
A lot of people talk about that kind of stuff, but also using it to help you understand your data better, to make better decisions once you get the data back about your conversions. And then also, I have not dug far enough into this yet, but I’m convinced, because I love using like user behavior analytic stuff, you know, So we can see what people are doing in the funnel.
We can watch the videos. We get the heat maps, like when people are falling off the page. Mm-hmm . There’s gotta be a good way to, to leverage ai to take all that data for us and [00:02:00] spit back insights because I, you know, I used to, I do sit there and watch people in our funnels and in our shop hundreds of videos, but that’s like a waste of time.
I have to process all that in my brain. There’s just gotta be an easier way to do it with ai, you know? So, honestly, I see AI just changing. Pretty much everything in terms of how we, how we create and everything through the funnel straight through optimization. So we’re excited.
Becky Beach: Well, would you tell someone out there that’s listening and going, Hey, I don’t know if AI is for me.
Like, isn’t it hard? Like, what do you think about that?
Monica Froese: Well, to be honest, when AI really came on the scene, right? Like when chat GPT started. I started blowing up and stuff. I wasn’t in a great, in a great place personally in my life, and I just didn’t have the bandwidth to want, want to learn something new.
I was like, I’m just going to ignore this. And then slowly, you know, you hear enough people talking about it. I started using it. And it’s like, it’s super easy. It honestly, it’s super easy. I just start like before chat GPT was actually not the first thing I started using, we started I always used otter for our transcripts and it would, you know, shoot back really great like meeting summaries and stuff and I was like, this is wow this is, you know, gives you action items if you if you’re Cored meetings.
I’m like, okay, this is making my life a lot easier. Then we got Cast Magic, and we use Cast Magic for like everything. So anytime, any podcast, any training I do, and it’s like having a hub of like all the things that have come out of my brain and out of my mouth, but like so easy for us to search and like pull out quotes for social media if we need it.
And so then I was like, okay, this is making our workflow so much easier. Then I figured it was time to figure out how we were going to make, make our product creation easier. So
Becky Beach: No, it’s so true. I really does speed up your product, your product creation. Like I use it too, you know, and it’s like really helpful.
Like what, what kind of products can you make with AI? [00:04:00]
Monica Froese: So I, okay, so this is one of my things that I feel like a lot of the objection that I get from people is I just, I don’t like someone wrote in and said, I don’t want my products to be like robotic. And so this is my take on AI and I, I’m still trying to figure out the best way to articulate this to people.
But the way I see it is. When I’m using, when I’m using AI to help me create my products, I’m inputting a bunch of information and AI, AI, it’s helping me streamline it and make it more effective. And it helps me think of different ways to present the information that I might not have thought about, or it fills gaps with things I hadn’t thought about.
So it’s shooting the information out to me. And then through my experience, if I’m creating a product, like right now I’m working on a divorce planner because it’s near and dear to my heart. Oh, yes. Yes. And the thing is, AI was, has been great at helping me structure it, in terms of like, what I should put in it, the questions.
It gave me some really great ideas. But, AI does not have [00:05:00] human emotion. It did not go through it like I did. And that’s where our human connection still comes in and layers in on top of AI, because AI, yes, it can give me a lot of practical stuff. But since I’m the one that went through it, I can, I can sit there and deeply connect with other moms that are going through it and the things that they may need to, they may need to know that I just simply cannot tell me there’s that.
And then. The next layer of that is, yes, AI shoots back a ton of information at you, but then we bundle it and create it and make it a usable tool for people. So, for example, if I was using AI when I, in the beginning of my divorce, and I was like, hey, give me like the top 10 things I should think about before I go into mediation, because you’re in a really bad emotional spot, and you, you know, all this stuff.
And let’s say it shot back to me the 10 things. Well, then how am I using that? And how is that going to be useful to me? Like, how do you package it so people can actually. Get benefit out of it. And that to [00:06:00] me is still like where are what makes our products unique. Um, so it’s like I say like AI helps us get helps us fill gaps and get like 75 percent of the way there.
Yeah. But it’s still your unique experience that makes your products what they are.
Becky Beach: You know, that’s what I tell other people, too, when they’re using AI, like, we use a lot, a lot of training to make, to use books, like, write books with AI, I always tell them, you need to proofread it, you can’t just slap it up once it’s, when the AI spits it out, because you have to kind of give it a human element, like you said, you know, because the AI may sound robotic, it won’t be your unique voice.
Monica Froese: And the thing is, is that it’s kind of, I can, I can draw a lot of, like, parallels, um, to this, like, for example, like the one hit wonder funnels on when Facebook ads, like you could just have a funnel and make a ton of money on it back in the day. But then, but then they felt that was it, that that was their entire business.
And as soon as Facebook changed something, they weren’t good at converting or [00:07:00] having other products in the back end. And it’s the same thing. If you put out junk, eventually people are going to stop buying it from you. And that’s not going to change. And I, I’ve said this for a long time in my trainings, and it’s so applicable for AI.
So, people would come to me and be like, Yeah, but you can get that online for free. Okay, so this is like the biggest objection. Yeah, but you can get that online for free. And I would shoot back and say, cool. Go Google budget spreadsheet. Okay, the spreadsheet that I have made nearly a million dollars on without putting ad spend behind it, you can get a version of it, right, on the internet for free.
But when you buy it from me, you are going to get the video of how to use it. You know how, like on our sales page, I say it helped me pay off 65, 000 in debt. When you’re just Googling and these random templates come up, you don’t know how they helped people. Is, is, you know, so if I had listened to that advice and just been like, but you know, AI can just give that information for me, then I would have a lot less money, you know?
[00:08:00] So, It’s still, it’s still, people want to buy from people still. They just do. That’s not going to change.
Becky Beach: Mm hmm. Yeah, it’s so, so true. Yeah, because you can’t just have everything sound like a robot. But you, you can program it with like a GPT. Have you guys used GPTs over in the power business?
Monica Froese: Okay, yes. We, that is one of the things that we are diving deep into now.
I’m actually curious, how do you, how do you use them?
Becky Beach: Oh, I, I create GPTs for a variety, just depends on what I need. Like, I have one for my MomBeach blog called, um, FunnyExpertMomBloggerGPT. And, and I’ll have one for myself, you know, just when I just can’t think of anything to write. I call it BeckyBot.
Becky bot. Okay. Yeah, and I you just feed it once you’ve written yourself and then it ends up kind of sounding similar to you But still it’s not a hundred percent you like you can always go through the content and kind of edit You know how to your liking, you know
Monica Froese: So Haley writes the majority of our emails and even though our emails come from me like the [00:09:00] send from name is Monica froze Which is hilarious because to this day my mom still thinks she’ll comment about something that I emailed and I’m like mom I didn’t write that Like, um, but Haley’s been with me for five years, so she already knows my voice really well.
She can write in my voice because she’s been doing it and listening to me talk for five years. She, she did, she used chat GPT to basically train it on how we talk. And now she was telling me the other day, she was like, oh, emails are so much faster for, for me now. And that’s like one of the reasons people ask me a lot.
And you know what, you do this too. You email like every day. We meet email almost every day. Mm hmm. Like, that’s, we, we use AI to help us be able to do that. That’s a lot of brain power for someone to write an email every single day.
Becky Beach: Oh, yeah, like, we’re not before, like, sometimes now, like, I’ll use AI to help me if I’m trying to transition into selling something.
I usually I’ll use a story. Then I’ll transition the story into selling something. So sometimes I can’t make a parallel between my story and the product. So I’ll use [00:10:00] AI to kind of help with that. You know, nowadays I used to do it myself and it was like, I was sitting a long time, probably like an hour or some time just trying to think of a way to segue into the product.
And if I couldn’t, I have to pick another product to segue into.
Monica Froese: Uh, same, um, that, that reminds me of when I went to see Taylor Swift in London over. Um, the summer with my daughter and I was like, Oh, I have no idea what we should do for the, for the shop. I was just like, you know, flying over the ocean. I just didn’t have like the creativity of like a promo to run.
And I was like, well, I put it into ChatGPT and I was like, I want to do a Taylor Swift, um, inspired, Promotion. And the, um, the, the things I got back were great. It ended up being one of our top promotions in the shop. And I, I had no brainpower to come up with it. They ended up being, cause you know, 13 is a big number.
It was a 13 hour promotion, 50 percent off in the shop. I’m like, that’s actually kind of genius. And I think we like themed it with like our 13 favorite songs or something, you know, [00:11:00] and it just, it, it made everything so much easier. Um, I actually did something kind of cool with it the other day. If you want me to tell you about it.
Oh, sure. I’d
Becky Beach: love to hear.
Monica Froese: Okay, so I mentioned that the very first product that we ever created was our family budget spreadsheet. This was back in 2016. This is before anyone talked about digital products. It was like not a concept on the internet at this point. And I didn’t even realize when I came out with the spreadsheet that I was creating a digital product.
I just was like, my audience has said they have this need. I’m creating a solution. That’s, and that’s how I define a digital product to the stakes. It’s what it is. Someone has a problem, you create the solution. Well, this spreadsheet has needed an uplift for a while, like a facelift for a while. And we’ve, we’ve kind of put it off, but we’re relaunching our Redefining Mom brand, which is where we sell that.
And I was like, Huh, I wonder what ChatGPT could help us with in terms of coming up with new ideas. So I uploaded the spreadsheet into ChatGPT and I said, [00:12:00] Analyze each of the tabs and come back with ways we can enhance it. Oh,
Becky Beach: cool.
Monica Froese: So that really was cool. It came back with a lot. Because Haley and I were sitting there like, I don’t know, I mean, we could add like some charts and stuff and like make it look better, but like, what are we missing?
Well, it came back with a lot of cool ideas, but then I was like, Huh, I wonder because now that I talk. About, like, divorce topics and we’re, you know, co parenting, single mom stuff, where the blog originally was for working moms.
Becky Beach: Yeah.
Monica Froese: Our Google search council has started picking up on some single mom terms.
And so I said, hey, to the chat GPT, I said, how can I, how can I take the family budget spreadsheet and make it, for single moms. And honestly, I was like, I don’t even know what different I would do about it because isn’t a budget kind of a budget. I was stumped. So many ideas. And so I’m like, okay, this really opened up my mind to the fact that you can use it to enhance your, to make your current products better, but then also to [00:13:00] help you take your current products and Pivot them to also serve adjacent audiences.
Like, I’m going to take this one spreadsheet, and I kept going down the rabbit trail. I could probably do about seven different variations of it for different adjacent people in my audience. And I’m like, this, and this is the power, like we’ve taught for our shop strategy, the power of repurposing our existing content for shop listings.
Because There’s a lot of times like we have people have like bigger courses, right? And how do you, you can take a lot of stuff out of those courses and they can be standalone products in your shop. So we’ve talked about this for years, but now I’m like, Oh, but with the help of AI, you can like plug it in.
And just the, like the amount of ideas and they’re good ideas too. Um, so that was, I had a lot of fun doing that. And I, I’ve only done it with one of our spreadsheets and we have a lot of spreadsheets. So I think that’s going to be like one of our top projects for Q1 is to really. Like, create more spreadsheets with the help of AI.
And the only thing I haven’t figured out, and if you know this, well, I haven’t really [00:14:00] dug very deep in this, so I’ll ask if you have. We haven’t really found anything that helps you create the spreadsheet with AI.
Becky Beach: Oh, yes, you can do it. Because, um, because Python is integrated in ChatGPT, and they recently Imported some Python libraries that make, uh, that use Google, not Google, but, um, yeah, it does use Google and it does Microsoft Office.
So it will generate Word docs, PowerPoint, and also Excels. And you could just tell it to generate you a spreadsheet like what it would like, but it will spit out like one that has like columns done for you with the the categories listed. And that really helps, you know, like as a starting point, but it won’t do calculations.
It just won’t do it.
Monica Froese: And it doesn’t do design either, right? No, don’t
Becky Beach: do the design. ’cause I actually had a course where, um, where, or I showed how to make printables with the spreadsheet by using a PowerPoint, so it just spit out the print, the printable. But it didn’t have a much of a design. It just had like, like, like you make a, like you had a planner but had like the categories in the tables.
Like you would make the tables for you, but you [00:15:00] had to go back and design it and stuff.
Monica Froese: Yeah.
Becky Beach: But it does the same with the Excel spreadsheet, like it’ll spit out an Excel spreadsheet at you, and then you download it, and then it has like the categories listed for the spreadsheet, and some ideas you may not have thought of.
And it won’t do multiple tabs either, it just does the one tab with the categories in the table.
Monica Froese: I feel like that’s going to be something that someone’s going to come up with, because if, and I, I, I feel like there’s got to be something out there that would help, would help you with this design. Have you used Google Gemini at all?
Becky Beach: Oh, yeah, like a little bit, but not much, like I tend to use Midjourney and Ideogram.
Monica Froese: Um, what’s Midjourney like? I’ve heard about it, I have not used it.
Becky Beach: Oh, it’s really good, it uses the DALI, the same as Google Gemini, it will use images, it will create images for you with AI, you can make coloring books with it, you know, clip art, like all different kinds of things, you may want to talk about that.
You know, to your audience, it’s like really fun, and we use it a lot for like wall [00:16:00] art too, you can make, because wall art sells really good on Etsy.
Monica Froese: Oh, okay, that’s cool. Yes, these are, so I’m definitely, like, I, I, when I am learning something, or like, kind of, I like to do one thing at a time, and then now I’m ready to, like, branch out a little bit further from chat GPT, so I’ll definitely look into that.
Becky Beach: Oh, yeah, they can make so many different products. Yeah, since since the AI started with mid journey like I was doing a coloring business where I was selling commercially used coloring packs and since Since the AI came out where people can make the coloring books themselves like that business really tanked So it’s always good to pivot, because sometimes the AI will mess up the business you may have, because that was a really good, I was making like, like 7, 000 a month sometimes from a single pack.
And now I can’t, I can’t match those numbers. Like really now even on the price. Yeah. Did you create a training to help to, to teach people
Monica Froese: how to do it? If, if
Becky Beach: Oh, well, I didn’t start off doing that. Somebody else in my audience did teach [00:17:00] people how to do the AI coloring books. And that, that kind of rattled my business.
Cause at first I didn’t really want to teach that because like then people wouldn’t buy my packs, but eventually like all these other people will start jumping on the bandwagon and soon everybody was teaching how to do coloring. And I was like, I just have to, you know, Kind of like re market this as hand drawn and kind of like, like beefing up hand drawn instead of saying that it’s better.
Because you know, when you publish a book on Amazon, it will ask you if the image is um, AI. And they’re, they’re kind of coming down on people that are using AI content, I noticed.
Monica Froese: Well, okay. So that was a big question I got, um, from a student of mine, actually, about, um, like AI stuff, saturating Pinterest, for example.
And like, how do you stand out? And I still have the These platforms are going to have to crack down, in my opinion, because if you have a platform that just gets overridden with junk, people aren’t going to want to use it anymore. So we’ve got that. But also, it’s still, I [00:18:00] go back to the human connection thing, like, at the end of the day, so, all of these, um, platforms are algorithm driven, right?
So, if junk’s going in, people might, it might rank for a little bit, but if people aren’t getting value out of it, it’s gonna eventually drop. Because, you know, and that’s just the way that works. And Amazon, especially, like, they’ll start getting bad reviews and all that, so, At the end of the day, I still think people, like, instead of focusing on what AI could ruin, or not, you made a good point, keep in mind, it might force you to have to pivot with your niche, and that’s, and that’s fine, that’s going to happen, no matter what, like, I mean, stuff in the world will happen that happens, right?
Will force you to pivot. It’s not just, it is, it is what it is. That’s part of being in business. But, um, it’s, I don’t have a, uh, outlook of like, Oh, this is gonna, this is gonna like ruin us because we’re still humans, like AI
Becky Beach: can’t be human. [00:19:00] Yes. And so eventually I end up coming up with my own training, you know, but then then I now have a coloring book membership And I’m going back to my hand drawn one all the hand drawn stuff I have some all this hand drawn content and I was gonna put that in the membership, too So I’m kind of working on that this month the coloring coloring book, you know publishing membership that teaches how to do like coloring books But it’s all hand drawn, and I guess I can have a training on how to use AI, too, in it, as well, you know, kind of brace the two together.
Do you hand draw it,
Monica Froese: or do you hire?
Becky Beach: Well, I can hand draw, I’m an artist, and I can do digital art, but I tend to pay people in the Philippines, like, I’ll pay them between, like, 300 or 400 for a pack. Okay. And I sell it for higher prices, like, I used to 7, 000, you know, one of them won’t sell that much. Yeah.
Yeah. Wow, that’s very interesting. Yeah, but like you said, I did have to pivot. So, like, it was a good thing I had other things. Like, I have a bit of a membership for [00:20:00] business owners, and I got, you know, like, the PLR for the planners and stuff, and I got that, and there’s just a number of other things. I do coaching, so I was able to pivot, you know, and work on other things in the courses, too.
So, I wasn’t relying on that only. What’s your,
Monica Froese: I’m so, I know we’re supposed to be talking about AI and stuff, but I’m always very curious. What is, like, sense Like what is your main thing that you do now? Because you you do so much like I read your emails you do so much
Becky Beach: Oh, yes I have three different businesses Like I have the mom blog and I I sell products for them and they have their own membership now And I do the PLR beach and the PLR beach is gonna have the coloring book membership and they and it sells PLR and PLR planners and printables and Some courses, like I’ll do courses for that, and then I got the Business Beach Club, and that’s for the Coach Makey Beach Business.
Monica Froese: Okay.
Becky Beach: Yeah, so I just got a number of things. I’m always, like, I kind of ADHD. I always want, I just have to keep doing things. I’m always focusing on different things, you know.
Monica Froese: Well, we’re, we’re somewhat similar, [00:21:00] but one of the things I’ve done, I got asked this by a student the other day. They were like, since I’m relaunching the Redefining Mom and we, I mean, it is.
to launch a brand the way I want to at least. It’s a fair bit of work, right? I have to separate a lot of things in my business to make it happen. A lot of our systems have to be like our email list has to be separated out, which had never happened. So there’s a lot of things going on. And on top of it, we’re now redoing our, one of our top programs, the empowered business lab.
And she said, how do you have, how can you do both of this at once? And I said, well, we kind of have, we’re fortunate in regard that. We’re actually teaching in Empowered Business Lab AI what I need to do for the Redefining Mom relaunch. Because in order for me to relaunch, I have to have the products ready.
So as we are teaching people, I’m creating the Redefining Mom products. And the cool part about that is it’s killing two birds with one stone for us, but then people actually get to see us create the products that we will go on to sell. [00:22:00] And, you know, so it’s, I feel like it’s going to be pretty helpful, hopefully.
Becky Beach: Oh, yes, definitely. Yeah, I wanted to sign up for that training you had on, on your, on, on showing that what you’re doing with word for finding mom, but I just never got around to it, but I heard it’s. Might have been really, really helpful, you know?
Monica Froese: Yeah. Oh yeah. We, so I, I had this idea when I decided, okay, I’m going all in on relaunching redefining mom.
It was just time. And I’ve wanted to do it for years, but I just have not had like the mental bandwidth to do it. And I’m like, this is going to be the year I started. It’s just basically a behind the scenes. So I, it’s a shared Google doc. And as I’m making podcast that comes with it. So like the other day I was recording, I just, I’ll have like, Okay, my email marketing strategy, for example, and I’ll record a private podcast about it.
But basically, it’s me documenting all my decisions that go into this relaunch. So it’s been, it’s been helpful to keep me accountable to
Becky Beach: Oh, awesome. Yeah. So like, tell us, tell us more, more about, um, [00:23:00] about your life, like how, how you got started doing this. I’m sure people are wondering, that’s, that’s a question I would have if I was listening, like to learn more about you.
Monica Froese: Well, okay. So I, I do feel like I kind of have an interesting journey online. So Redefining Mom was where this all started back in 2013. I had really bad postpartum PTSD with my first daughter, did not know it at the time, but I was really, really upset at the lack of maternity coverage in this country.
And, uh, I started a blog to talk about it. And during that, once I started the blog, then I got diagnosed with postpartum. So a lot of, um, that story was on there and it started gaining traction, but I was not trying for like, I never envisioned it would be a business. It was just like, A hobby, and I didn’t, I unintentionally was growing a platform, but my corporate career, I was in marketing, so I understood the tenets of what I was doing, so like, I knew to have an email list and all that stuff.
Well, I ended up getting invited to meet President Obama through the blog, and he, [00:24:00] like, I, it was, I mean, I got to, like, literally get to go into the West Wing, the small six person table with him, and he, And the premise of it was that basically he was listening to real working family stories, like why, you know, the struggles that we were having.
And I thought, well, when am I ever going to have an opportunity to unleash, like, in front of the leader of the free world? So I did. And he was like, what are you going to do? He called me a spitfire. And he said, so what are you going to do about this? And I said, what do you mean? What am I going to do about this?
What are you going to do about this? You’re the leader of the free world. And, um, he was like, ah, but you have a platform. And then this really got my wheels turning, so eight months later I quit my corporate job. That was in 2016. And that’s when I really started developing digital products, unbeknownst to me that I was doing it.
I just, I, I needed, I needed a way to control the money. Cause at the time it was like, I was like, why would I be driving people to my blog for display ads? Like I didn’t, that didn’t relate to that. Cause I’m like, I’m putting all this effort to get people [00:25:00] there. I need to be, I need to sell them something.
So then I got really good at Pinterest advertising before it. It became, it was a very new, um, thing. And a lot of people were confused why they would want to pay for paid ads on Pinterest if you could get free traffic. And I was like, because I want to pay for ads that lead directly to my paid products in my funnels.
And so I was paying for ads to a blog post. So I got really good at that and teaching that for four years, getting to go meet the CEO of Pinterest. And then,
Becky Beach: yeah, I took that course that, like, that’s how I first found out about you was I took that course.
Monica Froese: Oh, was it? Okay. A lot of people, a lot of people in my audience still did that and did that course and that’s how they found me.
And then after four years of talking about Pinterest, I built this house that I live in now. And I woke up one morning and I looked at my ex husband and I said, so. I don’t want to teach Pinterest anymore. And he was like, maybe you should have decided that before we built a house. [00:26:00] And I said, no, no, no, it’s going to be fine.
Cause I know exactly what I want the new business to be. And he’s like, yes, but is your income going to dip? And I’m like, I don’t, I’m never going to miss a beat. No. So I announced it. that we were closing down all the Pinterest stuff, and that’s when I decided to pivot into teaching digital products. We launched a new brand called Empowered Business.
That’s like where the Empowered Business Lab falls. And then in 2023, I really, well, 2022, 2023, I, my shop took off. So basically through all, creating all these products for all these years, teaching people how to do it. The one thing in this online space that just seems nonsensical to me is every time you create a product.
You have to have a sales page and an individual checkout. And I’m like, so people would come to us and say things like, I got X template pack. I love your templates. I want to buy all of your templates. And we’d have to send them to check out 10 different times. Like. That does not make sense. And it really came to a head, like, on Black Friday, for example, like, everything’s 50 percent off, but you [00:27:00] have to put in your credit card number 25 times if you want all my stuff.
Becky Beach: Yeah. It
Monica Froese: just doesn’t make sense. So that’s when this, that I, the concept of an e commerce shop, because really, digital product sellers, I don’t think we have seen ourselves as e com, but we are e com. It’s just, it’s just digital. We don’t physically ship something, but people should be able to go somewhere Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Click what they want from you, add it to the cart, and check out one time. You know, and, and still your shop has a customer journey. There’s still order bumps and upsells that you do on there. There’s all that marketing stuff that happens, very similar to a funnel, except you’re not limited to just what’s in the funnel.
We still use sales funnels, that’s how we attract new people to us, because we want that like specific buying journey, like when they’re new. But now once people are in my business, we send them to the shop. So I, I actually have three shops. One’s not launched, but Redefining Mom has a shop. And that’s really what we do now, and I guess the next iteration is kind of now really layering in the AI stuff to make everything that we do easier, better, faster.
[00:28:00] Um, I think it’s gonna be really fascinating to see. in another year or two, what, who’s still left standing in terms of keeping a pulse on creating, like we were talking about earlier, good products and not just falling into that trap of, I can pump out a lot with AI. Yes, but are you still keeping that level of, you know, like, because people have said to us for years with our products that we over deliver, like, that’s still important even when you’re using AI and I’m just, it’ll be interesting to see people who, who get that and leverage it to just make their businesses better or, or people who try to leverage it, I guess, as like a shortcut in terms of like not using AI.
Keeping their uniqueness to it. You know what I mean?
Becky Beach: Oh, yes. And also There’s people that have been closing shop like in the PLR space There’s probably three people this year I mean, I guess last year in 2024 that closed shop because they just can’t compete because [00:29:00] with the um, Yeah, PLR it stands for private label rights for those that don’t know and that’s one of my businesses and I noticed that we were like three sellers that quit, you know and closed shop because they just aren’t making sales because people can Use the AI to create their own products You
Monica Froese: So, okay, that’s very, okay.
Thank you for bringing that up. Cause I was curious because you still, though, you have your PLR shop. So is that, are you pivoting more to like the membership on that side or like, how are you addressing that?
Becky Beach: Well, I’m coming out with, um, I do planers to this day. You still can’t really make planers with the AI, like doing the layouts.
AI cannot do layouts, you know, like a planer layout. So that’s where. I have this edge, but a lot of people were doing, you know, hand drawn clip art, and then, or hand drawn, like, wall art and stuff, and, like, just graphic, graphic intensive things. And now, now they can’t, you know, really sell it anymore. This one lady had her own hand drawn clip art, and she was making a lot of money with it, but she had to close up when AI came about.
Monica Froese: Yeah, that’s a [00:30:00] great example of someone who has to pivot. I mean, because her skill set, I’m sure there’s something she can do and pivot. Um, but I mean, it is true. AI is gonna, gonna change the way we do things. It just does. And like, my attitude is when I see something that happens, like I’ve always said, I’m not the sky is falling person in my business.
Like people have said over the, over the 12 years, I’ve been doing this. The sky is falling every other day. I remember it was falling with GDP GDPR and the Facebook ad implosion of 2021. Things like this are going to happen. You just have to be, you have to be open to pivoting when they do.
Becky Beach: Oh, yeah. So true.
Yes.
Monica Froese: And embracing. Like, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to embrace, um, AI, it was just that my tact was, let’s see where it settles, because I didn’t want to be chasing my tail either. If it wasn’t going to end up being as big of a deal as people were saying, I didn’t want to get all tizzy about it. But now, I think it’s fair to say We’re here to stay, [00:31:00] and it, and there is a lot of positive things that can come out of it.
Becky Beach: Oh, yeah, yeah, I agree, because it can help you a lot, because I was a web developer for like 25 years, and, and now the AI can even write the code for people, and so a lot of the web developers are having to pivot and come up with a different skill set, so I think it really helps you, you know, decide to pivot and, and just get more educated, and then grow your skill set instead of relying on one thing.
Like, I think it’s good for the long run. I know there’s a lot of people that are losing their jobs over it. Like, uh, my sister in law lost her, her job as a call center, in a call center because, um, they implemented AI, like AI bots, like chat bots. Ooh.
Monica Froese: Yeah, I mean, yeah, jobs, I read somewhere that someone said that the jobs that we know today, about 50 percent of them will be taken over by AI, but I think what people don’t also talk about when they say things like that is, it’s also going to create new opportunities.
Like it goes both ways. I mean, think [00:32:00] about jobs that existed a hundred years ago, like the milkman. There’s no milkman anymore. You know, like, and I, cause my last house, we had a milk door. My, I remember my daughter asking, she’s like, what is this? I’m like, literally a milkman used to come and deliver fresh milk every day because there were, there was not.
Refrigerators. I mean, think about that. You know, the milkman’s out of a job. He had to figure out, he had a pivot. I mean, I, I know that like with the drones that they’re starting package delivery, I live in Buffalo, so we don’t get cool stuff like that until everyone else does.
Becky Beach: But like,
Monica Froese: I, I watched the mailman out my window every day.
I sit at this desk and I’m like, eventually. There’s not going to be a mailman. They’re going to figure out a different way to deliver our mail. You know? It’s just the way it is. But like, but with innovation comes new, think of all the jobs that existed a hundred years ago that don’t today, but didn’t exist a hundred years ago and do today.
It’s the same thing.
Becky Beach: Oh, yes. I just think every business owner needs to embrace AI. At first, I didn’t embrace it. I was against the idea when I [00:33:00] heard about ChatGBT. I was like, oh, that’s awful because I’m a writer. Like, I’ll write my own blog post and I refuse to use it for my blog. Always people were saying, oh, you can use it for your blog to write your blog post.
But I was like, oh, I don’t like that. You know, I don’t like the idea. Just, It’s just not my brand. I want to be, you know, uh, more authentic, you know, it doesn’t seem to be, but eventually I embrace it and I’ll, like, I help, help, help direct my blog post, like, we’ll do the outline, but I still like to write it myself, you know?
Monica Froese: Same. It’s just, it’s an, I view it as an assistant. Oh, right! I just recently turned on the Zoom AI feature, so every time I get off Zoom now, it sends me a meeting recap. And I’m like, this just cut out so much. Like, I used to sit on, you know, our team calls, or like, even my student calls, and I’d get asked these great questions.
But, you know, like, all this information’s coming in at you, and I would just I would try to keep it on my sticky notes sitting here and I would forget about it and now AI just packages it up and makes it actionable for us, you know, and it’s like, it’s just, it’s, there’s a lot of good [00:34:00] things that come out of it.
Becky Beach: Yeah. So a great. Yeah. So let’s go ahead and talk about your, your, um, start your AI engines. It’s a four day challenge and we’ll have the link in the show notes, but go ahead and let us know more about it.
Monica Froese: Yeah, I’m really excited about it. I actually just created all the content for it last week. Um, basically it’s teaching you how to, so I have always taught a concept called reverse engineering, where we use search engines to help us figure out the different products we can create.
And I still do that. Um, And that’s like how you find like what people are actually searching for out there. You know, like that’s kind of how you validate demand. So that’s one way I’m still teaching that. But then I teach you how to take what you discover on the search engines, plug it into chat GPT to then actually come up with your entire digital product outline.
Um, and I actually like walking, we give you prompts, um, And walk you through how to do it. And I actually show you, as I mentioned, the first product I want to create for the redefining mom brand is a divorce planner. Cause that’s like a new pillar that we’re launching. Um, [00:35:00] and so I, I take you through the entire process and at the end, I now have my entire planner mapped out.
Um, so then like after, so that’s the challenge basically gets you to understand how to leverage AI properly to, to actually have a usable product at the end of it, and then, um, our Empowered Business Lab is being redone and that’s going to teach you how to take that outline and then actually create the product.
So.
Becky Beach: Oh, that sounds so interesting.
Monica Froese: I’m excited and the reason I pre record, I used to teach this, I, historically I would have taught it live, but I decided to do like shorter videos so people could get through it and then we’re going to do implementation sessions because I know AI is new for a lot of people and also it can be intimidating when something’s new.
So we’re going to do on, um, Zoom meetings, like not webinars. So you can actually like talk to us and, um, and work through the different prompts and stuff. So I, I’m excited about that too.
Becky Beach: [00:36:00] Oh, yes, it’s going to be happening Monday, January 27th to the 30th. And it’s going to have a daily lessons, private Facebook group, and live implementation.
Monica Froese: Yes.
Becky Beach: So we’ll have a link to this in the show notes. You can like check out her free challenge, go to beckybeatshow. com. I’ll give you all the information. I’m offering a bonus if you sign up to Monica’s free challenge with my link, make sure to go to beckybeatshow. com to get my bonus. It’s a bonus AI training.
To help you in Monica’s challenge, make sure to go to the show notes@beckybshow.com to grab my bonus as a thank you for signing up to Monica’s free challenge. Well, thanks much for being here. Monica, do you have any last words for our audience?
Monica Froese: Oh, well thanks so much for having me. I always like to, I always enjoy talking to you.
You’re one of my favorites. Becky’s a great one to learn from and uh, just thanks so much for having me on.
Becky Beach: Oh, great. Well, again, check out the show notes at beckybeachshow.com. And also check out Monica’s site, EmpoweredBusiness.co and also EmpoweredShop.com.
co. So,
Monica Froese: EmpoweredBusiness. co, EmpoweredShop. com. And also, probably the easiest way to reach me is on Instagram. It’s just Monica.Froese is my username.
Becky Beach: Oh, very cool. Yeah, she always says interesting, interesting things going on there. Well, thanks again for listening, everybody. Again, check out the show notes at beckybeachshow.com and thanks again, Monica, for being here today.