How AI Is Changing Your Business Model (And What to Do About It)

You don't have to blow up what you've already built. You just add this layer in your AI tools, can be a standalone product that lives alongside your existing offers, a premium upgrade inside your current program or membership, a way to serve more clients without adding more hours to your calendar.

Welcome to the next evolution of the podcast Entrepreneur School in the AI era. We are here to figure out how to integrate AI into the business you've worked so hard to build in a way that still feels like you. I'm your host, Kelly Sinclair, award-winning marketer turned AI platform co-founder. AI has fundamentally changed how I thought about work systems and what's actually possible. This show is about navigating that new reality together. It's going to be a wild ride, my friend, but I truly believe there's a way to leverage AI in a way that's intentional, human-centered, and aligned, it's an ongoing evolution. So, let's explore, because AI may just be the unlock you need to achieve the life-first business you truly desire.

Welcome back to Entrepreneur School. I am really excited for this episode today. I've had a lot of conversations in the last few weeks about monetizing AI and really how AI is impacting the industry of course creators and service providers and anyone who runs memberships in any kind of online business, which is a world that I have lived in for the last almost 10 years, and I have just been seeing some trends, and I wanted to bring this episode to you to talk about the different ways that AI could be impacting your business model, and some opportunities that you have to adjust and shift and evolve really the way that you are offering what your expertise is, and to make that align with one, the speed at which AI is moving forward, and two, your actual clients' expectations, because in the end, this is really all about creating an amazing client experience. We know that the better the results, the better your ability to fulfill the promise that you have with what it is that you do. The better your business is going to be, the more referrals, the more recommendations, testimonials, and all of those things from your clients as well.

So, before we dive into it. I want to let you know that this episode is officially brought to you by Waiv, that's W A I V, that is our brand new platform built for online experts who want to securely build and sell AI tools that are powered by your thinking, your frameworks, and your methodology in a secure way. Wave helps you create what we call bot squads, which is a suite of AI tools that work together to help your clients implement your expertise faster and with better results than ever before. You can join the waitlist for Wave and grab our AI tool launch playbook at waiv-ai.com and I will come back to that again at the end of this episode.

So let me start with a question, When was the last time that you opened up ChatGPT or Claude or any other AI tool and type something like write me a caption for social media based on this photo or summarize this email for me or help me write a welcome sequence. Well, most of us have done that and it works kind of right. You get something back that is decent, you tweak it, you move on. But here's what I really want to talk about today. That approach, it's actually the wrong way to be thinking about how to use AI for your business, and just even in general, and more importantly, if you're someone who teaches your expertise to coach clients to run an online course, or you lead a membership community, there's a much bigger opportunity sitting in front of you right now that most people are completely missing. So today we're talking about the difference between generic AI and expert-backed AI, and why that distinction could genuinely transform your business model.

So, let's get into it. So, here's the wake-up call. Most people, I really do mean most. People are approaching AI as a task machine. They see something they need to do, and they think, can AI do this for me? Write this, summarize this, draft this email, create this image. Totally makes sense that you would approach AI to do tasks, I do tasks with it too. It saves time, and it's useful, but that's really only scratching the surface of what AI can actually do for your business, because that tasked-based thinking is reactive. It's like an afterthought. It's like having a world-class chef in your kitchen, and only asking them to wash the dishes. The real shift happens when you stop thinking about AI as a task doer, and you start thinking about it as a strategic asset. And for those of you who are in the business of teaching or selling your expertise, whether that's through courses, coaching, consulting, memberships, the strategic opportunity is this: you can take everything you know, your frameworks, your methodologies, your signature process, the way you think through problems, and you can embed that into bot squads that your clients can actually use, and I mean, use, not just learn from, implement, and that is the difference between generic AI and expert-backed AI, and you want to make sure this lands, so I'm going to like come at it from a few different angles, generic AI, like Chat GPT, Gemini, Claude, incredibly powerful tools. Of course, they have been trained on an enormous amount of data, and they can do remarkable things. But they don't know your approach to launching a product, they don't know your frameworks for building a brand, they don't know your methodology for getting clients results, they give general answers to general questions. Expert backed AI, on the other hand, that is AI that's been trained on your thinking, and it answers questions the way you would answer them. It guides your clients through your process, and it has a lens of your expertise

built right into it.

So, what's really important here as well is that this is all about context, and actually, in this case, more context is not better. Generic AI has access to all of the context in the world, and now you're basically saying, let's just look through this one little section in this lens and get a much more specific result. And you do not have to become an AI teacher to do this either. You don't have to start a whole new business around AI. You don't have to learn code. You don't have to become a tech person. This is just about getting AI to help you teach your expertise, so your clients can actually implement what you teach, and at a higher level than ever before. So that's the shift that I'm inviting you to consider today. Now I want to talk about the problem that I know every single person listening to this has felt. Whether you're a course creator, a coach, a consultant, or membership leader, you have experienced this implementation gap. You know what I'm talking about. Your client buys your course, they're so excited, they tell you this is exactly what they've been looking for, and then they do nothing, they don't finish it, they don't implement, they don't get the results that you know they could get if they just did the thing, and you know it's not because your content isn't good, it's because learning something and doing something are two very different things, and this is the real opportunity with AI. It is to allow your clients to implement your learning. So, here's a few stats that I've shared before, but the average online course completion rate falls between 10% and 20% which means for every 100 people who enthusiastically sign up for your course, 80 to 90 of them are never going to reach the finish line. Like that sucks. You didn't create, you didn't pour all of your, your brain into that, so that only 10 people could finish. You want people to get results. This is really about creating an amazing client experience, and it's also

becoming the expectation that your clients are looking for now in this world that we live in. People are looking at how are people, how are the program providers, the experts that I look to.

Actually, embedding AI into what they're doing, I can tell you for sure, I would not buy a single program out there right now if it wasn't including some level of AI as part of it. So, think about this for you. What if there was a tool built on your thinking that could walk your clients through your process at like 2am when they're finally sitting down to work on their business, or you know, they're in an entirely different time zone, so it's really hard for them to get to Q and A calls and things like that, so instead of having to watch a video lesson and then staring at a blank page, they would have a bot squad that they could access that would walk them through your exact framework, how you would respond, how you would help them to get unstuck through what they're currently working on. And I'm not just talking about the future, this is happening right now, and the experts who are figuring this out first are going to have a serious competitive advantage. So, let's do a little like before and after segment here. What this would look like in your business in three different scenarios to make this really concrete for you. So, three different types of businesses, what it was like before, and what it's like potentially after you add expert-backed AI into what you're doing, so example one is the online course creator. So, let's say you're a brand strategist. Hi, it's me, and you've built a course that teaches entrepreneurs how to develop their brand identity before expert-backed AI student buys your course, they watch some of the model modules, and then they get to like the brand voice lesson, and they get stuck. They're not sure if they're capturing the right tone, and now they have access to this big, huge thing called Chat GPT or Claude, and they type in, "Help me write my brand voice, and they get an answer, but what they don't have is any idea on how to validate whether that answer is actually good? Because the generic model does not have any idea

So, example two, let's talk about if you're a service provider or a coach. Say you are a business coach who works with women in their second year business, and you have a signature 90 day coaching program. Your clients pay a premium to work with you before expert backed AI, aka bot squads. Between your weekly calls, your clients would hit roadblocks, they have questions, they need support, but they're waiting until next Tuesday office hours to talk to you or your one on one session, so some of them spiral, some of them make decisions without your guidance that then need to be undone, some of them disengage because they don't feel supported between sessions, and now your time is maxed out, you can only take on so many clients, and you're answering the same questions over and over again on every call, I know this is real. This is what our clients, who are using Wave, have told us about after expert-backed AI. Your clients have access to a bot squad that are built on your coaching program and your frameworks, and there's one for mindset blocks, one for offer strategy, one for pricing decisions. When a client hits a wall at 9pm on a Thursday, they don't have to wait. They open your bot squad, they get your thinking, your frameworks, your coaching style right in that moment, and then they show up for your Tuesday office hours. Having already worked through that surface level stuff, now your calls go deeper, your clients get better results, your testimonials get stronger, and now you can package and sell that as a bot squad at maybe a recurring subscription fee, so an entirely different revenue, new revenue stream for you, and your clients can start using those AI tools and upgrade to full coaching. So, you've created a new entry point into your business that doesn't require more of your time.

And now, example three, you have a membership of some kind, you're an ongoing membership community. Let's say it's for content creators who want to grow their audience and monetize their social media platforms. So you might have hundreds of members in this community at different stages, and you're showing up live every month, and you have a resource library, you're doing your best, all the things right before expert-backed AI members joined, excited, but then they get overwhelmed by the library of resources, they don't know where to start, maybe they're lurking, they don't engage, they cancel after three months because they quote didn't get around to it, I know this is true. Also, now imagine after adding expert-backed AI, new members are greeted by an onboarding bot that asks them a few questions: where they are in their journey, what their biggest challenge is, what they're trying to achieve, and then maps out a personalized path through your content and resources, then maybe there's a strategy bot that members can ask specific questions to, like, I have 800 followers and I want to launch a digital product. What should I do first? It answers using your methodology, and it's meeting them where they are at. Then maybe there is an accountability bot that helps them to set weekly goals, check in on their progress, so your members feel very supported, they get results, and they stay. And here's the business model shift: your AI tools become a premium tier of your membership, or they become a standalone product that you sell outside of the membership, or they become the thing that makes your membership stand out from every other community in your niche. Industry research has found that AI tools increase coaching session efficiency by 25% and improve client retention rates by 30% 30% better retention, I mean, start calculating your MRR now. So, for a membership business, that is everything.

So, I want to zoom out for a second and talk about what this means for your business model, because this isn't just about better client results, although that is absolutely huge. This is about a new way to package and monetize your expertise. So think about it this way. Right now, your expertise is probably packaged in one or more of these ways. One, you trade time for money, you do coaching calls or done for you services. Two, you've productized it, you have a course, a membership, or a digital product, and those are great, but expert-backed AI opens up a third category. Now you can sell access to your thinking, not just your time, not just your content, your actual thinking, like an extension of your brain embedded in a tool that your clients can access at any time at scale, so this is a fundamentally different business model. And the beautiful thing is that you don't have to blow up what you've already built. You just add this layer in your AI tools can be a standalone product that lives alongside your existing offers, a premium upgrade inside your current program or membership, an entry-level offer that brings people into your world before they're ready to invest in high-ticket work, a way to serve more clients without adding more hours to your calendar.

This is what gets me genuinely excited, because for so long the ceiling on an expert business has been time. There are only so many hours in a day. We know this AI is making it feel like there's more, but expert-backed AI is removing that ceiling, and your thinking can literally be in 10 places at once, and the clients who get to experience it, they get amazing results, which means better testimonials, better word of mouth, stronger business all around, and what we are hearing from our beta clients as well is that when their students are using. Tools that they're building with their expertise baked into it, they are actually getting to be using their own expertise in a much more exciting, deep, and nuanced way. So, instead of answering service level questions in your weekly office hours as a coach, you're having deeper, nuanced, strategic conversations where is actually highlighting the fact that you, as the expert, are the real value, right? We, I think, we had this fear a little bit around, well, if AI is coming, AI is coming for our jobs, AI is going to take away the need for humans. I am loving what I'm seeing with our beta clients so far, where it's very much a hybrid approach. It's here's AI tools that will help you get 80 90% of the way there, and let's get together and talk about the other 10% you have access to me, the actual me, because there's only so much you can program into a bot, so many frameworks and strategies and patterns, but it's your lived experience and your nuance and your ability to see between the lines that actually makes you stand out as the expert that you really are.

what you taught in your course, it doesn't know your framework, doesn't know the questions that you would ask to help people find their authentic voice. It just gives them something, so the student maybe takes that generic answer and applies it, and the result doesn't feel right. They feel like they're failing. They abandon the course. What, what? After expert-backed AI, the same student gets stuck on the brand voice lesson, but now, instead of going to generic AI, they open your expert-backed AI tool, your bot squad. They say, I'm stuck in my brand voice. I feel like I sound too corporate. I don't know how to fix it. And that tool, which is built on your methodology, it responds the way that you would. It helps them the same diagnostic questions you would ask in a coaching call. It guides them through your framework for finding authentic voice, it maybe actually does a strategic analysis on writing samples based on what you have taught them how to do them being the AI tool, and the student gets unstuck, they finish the exercise, they complete the module, then they come back tomorrow for the next one, and that is a difference. They are actually moving forward, they're making progress, and they're feeling results.

Okay, time to bring it home. So, here's what I want you to walk away with today. What most people are using AI wrong. They're thinking task by task, not strategically, but there is a much bigger opportunity available to you, and also an opportunity for you to help your clients and potential clients to see that as well, because that's going to break down that objection of well, I don't really need you. I have AI. Well, you don't have the AI that was made by me that has my frameworks and such built into it, but that is an opportunity now. So, second, there is a real and meaningful difference between generic AI and expert-backed AI. Generic AI is smart, AF, like it's trained on so many things, but the context is so big it has a hard time narrowing it down. When we narrow it down to expert-backed AI, it's smart, like you, and that distinction has the ability to change everything for your clients.

Okay. Number three, and I really need you to hear this. You do not have to become an AI teacher or a tech expert to do this. It's not about starting to teach AI, it's about getting AI to help you teach, so that your clients can implement it at a higher success rate than ever before. Number four, this is a business model opportunity. It is a revenue move. Expert-backed AI isn't just a nice to have feature, it's a new way to package and sell your thinking, reach more clients, and create more impact without adding more hours. Number five, it's time to start thinking about this now, and that's not just because of hype, but it's because your clients are already using generic AI to try and replicate what you teach. You have the opportunity to give them something so much better, which is your thinking in a tool they can actually use.

So, if you want to figure out what your expert-backed AI actually looks like here's a few questions that you can ask yourselves. One, what frameworks do you have that your clients are constantly trying to implement on their own? Two, where are the gaps in your client journey where they get stuck and need regular support? That is where your bot squad lives, and if you want help building it, then that is exactly what Wave was created for. Wave is currently rolling out in beta. It is our new platform that is built to Wave, is currently rolling out in beta. It is our new platform built specifically for online experts who want to securely build and sell AI powered by their own methodology? We call them bot squads, because one bot is never enough. And you can join our waitlist right now, and when you do, you can access our AI tool launch playbook, which is a resource that walks you through exactly how to start thinking about your first bot squad, what to put it, it, what it will solve for your clients, what to name it, and exactly how to build it. So, just head to wave waiv-ai.com and you can get on the list, and the link will also be right below in the show notes, so that you can easily click over there. Thank you so much for being here today. I really hope it helped you to think differently about how your business can evolve with AI instead of compete with it, and I would love to hear about it. So, please feel free to reach out to me on Instagram. We also love. When you leave reviews and share these episodes with other entrepreneurs in your world.

Thank you for listening. If this episode got you thinking about how AI is impacting your business and what it might look like to integrate it in a way that actually fits, I'd love to help you think that through. You can book an AI strategy chat using the link in the show notes. It's a space to talk about where you are, what's shifting, and how to move forward with intention. And if this episode was helpful, please share it with another business owner who's navigating this evolution too. And make sure you're subscribed, so you don't miss what's coming next,