Episode 499: AI can’t do this
Your business is unique. Your story is unlike anyone else's. And no matter how smart technology gets, it can never replace the heart and soul you bring to the table.
In today’s episode, Fiona Killackey dives into how you can reconnect with what makes your business yours—even in a world that’s increasingly driven by AI. Because while AI can help with tasks, it can never replicate the creativity, the human touch, or the authenticity that makes your brand stand out.
In this episode, Fiona discusses:
The truth about AI: it’s a tool, but it’s not a replacement for the personal connection you’ve built with your customers.
Why your journey and story are the most powerful parts of your brand—something no machine can imitate.
Practical tips for using AI without losing the realness that your audience connects with.
How to embrace your individuality and keep your business aligned with your true self.
This episode is all about reclaiming your passion, staying authentic, and using technology as a tool to enhance—not replace—what makes you and your business shine. Tune in as Fiona shows you how to reignite that fire!
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Fiona Killackey: Do you love your life as a small business owner?
Let's be real. Sometimes we just don't. It's my hope that this, the My Daily Business Podcast, helps you regain a little of that lost love through practical, actionable tips, tools and tactics, interviews with creative and curious small business owners, and in depth coaching episodes with me, your host, Fiona Killackey With more than 20 years experience in marketing, brand content and systems and having now helped thousands of small business owners, I know what it takes to build.
A business that you can be proud of and that actually aligns with your values, your beliefs, and your hopes for the future. So much of our daily life is spent working on and in the businesses and the brands that we are creating, and so it makes sense to actually love what you do.
So, let's get into this podcast and help you figure out how to love your business and your life on the Daily.
Daily hello and welcome to episode 499. Oh my goodness. We're almost at 500 episodes of the My Daily Business podcast today. It is a quick tip, and this is one that I've been having a lot of conversations about lately.
I have an AI group with small business owners that we meet once a month. If you want to be part of that, anyone can join. We've got people in the US, people in Hong Kong, people in Singapore, people all over Australia and New Zealand. You can come, and it’s a Zoom meeting. If you can’t make the live meeting, you can always send questions through. We have a WhatsApp chat, which is an AI chat for small business owners, and you can join any time at mydailybusiness.com/aichchat.
I’m prefacing by saying that because today we’re going to talk about AI, and this particular question is something that comes up a lot. I want to answer it today, but also know that it's an ongoing thing. So, as I said, if you want support with AI in a very safe, non-judgmental, non-"tech bro" kind of world, you can join the AI chat group at mydailybusiness.com/aichchat.
Before we get stuck into this and talk about AI, one thing that keeps coming up whenever I talk about it with small business owners is I want to acknowledge where I'm coming from and acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the lands on which I record this podcast and run the AI chat group.
For me, that is the Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung people of the Kulin Nation, and I pay my respects to their Elders past and present. I also acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
I should also say, if you're listening to this and you're First Nations, we do offer a scholarship on pretty much all our courses, coaching programmes, and the AI chat group. If you would like to get in touch with us, please do. You can just email hello@mydailybusiness.com.
We run that because I feel very strongly that in Australia, access and opportunity have absolutely not been equal between non-Indigenous and First Nations people. So if you are First Nations and you're listening and you're thinking, "I’d like to work with her," please get in touch.
Alright, let's get into today’s Quick Tip episode. I want to give some context to this. So, I used to run my "Marketing for Small Business" workshop everywhere. Like, I used to run public classes a lot when I started this business, and it was actually amazing. I always say to people, if you're going to make an online course, go and run a public live workshop of that online course.
You will see the types of questions people ask, the stuff they want to know more about, and you can build out the course that people will actually want to buy.
Years and years ago—and maybe I’ll bring it back because people keep asking me, "Can you run a live workshop?" I kind of love them and the energy. But anyway, years ago, I was running a marketing for small business course. I ran all of my courses, aside from the podcast one, live.
Anyway, there was a woman in it, and this happened a bit, and she said, "Can I take a photo of your slides?" I was like, "Sure." We don’t typically give out a slide deck when doing workshops, but I do say to people, if you want to take photos, take photos.
I remember we went around and did the little "welcome" intro thing, and the woman said, "I want to be doing this exact thing. I want to run these exact classes. I love your work and I’m kind of following in your footsteps."
I was like, "Okay, that’s nice, flattering, etc." But then, somebody else afterwards said to me, "Are you totally fine with her copying everything?"
I said, "She can take photos of the slides, but she's not me." Without sounding like... I won’t say the word because children might be listening, but people are not you.
So I said, "Yes, she can take photos of the slides, but the slides are like 10% of what I’m actually saying. So much of it comes out of my head versus a couple of bullet points on a slide deck. She can take the photos, but she's not going to have all the knowledge, experience, storytelling, and just ideas that come out of my mouth all the time."
I had no issue with her doing that. People will say to me, "Oh, but you work with this person, and they’re a business coach. Aren’t you scared of them stealing your whole thing?" I’m like, "No, because we’re all going to do it our own way."
Now, that brings me to AI, right? Because you hear so many people saying, "AI is going to kill my vibe." And, "How do I stand out when everybody’s using the same ChatGPT prompts and the same data sets and data points?"
First of all, I’ve talked about this before, and I talk about it strongly in the AI chat group. You need to create your own knowledge base with a whole bunch of different tools, documents, and items that are specific to you and your business. That’s going to help you massively.
I think a big problem is that people don’t input the right information and then they expect some magic result from AI. But the other thing is that AI can’t truly ever kill your vibe because it is not you.
Yes, I get it. You can clone your GPT, and you can make all of these clones of yourself, but they’re not going to have the depth of knowledge that’s in your brain. And not just knowledge... randomness. I want to talk about the randomness.
We all have random things. We all have friends who come up with bizarre questions in a really weird way, or friends who make some link between what you just said and something that happened to them 11 years ago. Now, that is not going to randomly come up when they’re putting in AI chat prompts as it is when you're just talking and being human.
So I want to reiterate that if you are multi-passionate or if you have lots of different interests, that is the magic of you. That is the difference and the differentiator in your brand. Often, that is what comes forward in your storytelling when you're doing a keynote or a presentation. AI can’t replace that.
Me, for example, I’ve done three degrees. I did a Bachelor of Arts, with sociology as my major. I did a postgrad diploma in journalism and another one in book publishing and editing. I’ve done a bunch of other courses and things. But when I did my Bachelor of Arts, I majored in sociology, and I was accepted into honours in English Literature.
But anyway, sociology was going to be my thing. I honestly thought I was going to become a professor in sociology. I was obsessed with all these philosophy and sociology people and their writing. I also loved literature—Dostoevsky and a whole bunch of incredible thinkers of their time.
I was also equally obsessed with cults. So, I tried to do a lot of my essays on cults and religions. I went and spoke with a bunch of non-confrontational, non-violent cults. I remember one of them, not that far from where I live, where a group of people really believe in a particular tree. That tree is almost like a God-like thing that they worship. And I find it fascinating.
I have a very big spiritual side that I probably don’t talk about much on this podcast, but I have all these things in my brain. So, if somebody says something, I might come with all that weird randomness. I can’t put that into AI because it’s not me.
Even if I had the biggest knowledge base and the biggest data set in the world, it’s still not going to work the same way that my brain works. Between somebody saying something and me linking it to some memory or experience or something I saw the other day, that’s a unique process to me.
I just want to offer some reassurance: AI can absolutely help you and is incredible, and yes, there are ethical problems with it. But it will never replace the human side of all of us.
So, if you’re worried about this, look at your marketing, look at your storytelling, look at the way you do things, and think about whether there are parts of you that you could bring into this. Are there parts of your staff you could highlight?
Not that you need to get into every single detail of your past trauma or anything like that and bring it into your storytelling—absolutely not. But there are parts of you that make you you that make you interesting, and you need to bring that to the forefront.
The more we become who we are on a whole scale, as opposed to, “This is exactly who I am in business, and this is who I am in my non-business life,” the more humanity we’re actually creating. And the more connection opportunities there are.
So I know this has kind of gone off on a bit of a tangent, which is what I’m prone to do, but AI will never replace the randomness. It’ll never replace those bizarre kinds of questions or things that come up or weird thoughts we have.
I went to an incredible workshop yesterday, which I’m going to make a whole other podcast about. I was just laughing a lot of the time because I was imagining this wedding with horses and a bat wedding, and some other random stuff.
I was imagining all these little people I used to work with. And I just had this fun time imagining that we were all horses at this wedding. And it was really fun. I feel like we’re getting a bit worried about AI taking over everything, but the humanity and randomness that we all have can never be replaced.
So, just keep that in mind. Yes, use AI, but just know it will never replace you. It can’t. And even if they build it out and build it out and build it out, unless they figure out a way to take every single memory and every experience we’ve had and somehow put it into a computer, they’re never going to be us.
So, use AI, but don’t get too caught up in the idea that it’s going to replace you. And in that, look at your storytelling. Look at what makes you you, look at the things that interest you, and start talking about them. The more you talk about those things, the more the connection will happen.
Even if it’s random stuff, that is what makes you, you. My husband often says how I ask random questions at night. And I do, because these are the things that go through my brain.
I remember asking him once, “Imagine if you were in a cult and all your family and friends were in a cult, and then there was one of those mass deaths? Who pays for the funerals? Where do your bodies go if everybody you know is in that cult?”
I really hope anyone listening has never been traumatised or impacted by that, but this is where my brain goes sometimes. And it’s totally fine to go there. I have some of the most incredible conversations with business owners, friends, and other people about just random stuff.
And it’s like, that’s what makes us human. AI will never be able to replace that. So keep that with you.
If you are interested in AI and how you can use it in a way that feels exciting rather than daunting, then check out our AI chat group. You can join that at mydailybusiness.com/aichat. We will of course link to that in the show notes for this episode, which you’ll find at mydailybusiness.com/podcast499.
But again, it’s just mydailybusiness.com/aichchat to join the AI chat group, where we talk all things AI, how to implement it, which tools to use, best practices, and how to not get too worried that it’s going to take over the whole world and your job.
Alright, I’ll leave it there. Thank you so much for listening. I’ll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Podcast for a range of tools to help you grow and start your business, including coaching programmes, courses and templates. Check out our shop at mydailybusiness.com and if you want to get in touch, you can do that by email at hello@mydailybusiness.com or you can hit us up on Instagram at mydailybusiness_. You can find us on TikTok at mydailybusiness or find me Fiona Killackey on LinkedIn. I look forward to connecting.
