Essential AI Tools For Speakers & Coaches

AI Tools for Speakers & Coaches

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John: [: 00:00:00

Some of the tools I'm using, some of them I. Not and haven't yet tried out, but if you would like a copy of that report for relevant AI tools. If this is new to you or you just wanna see what's available for speakers and coaches that might be relevant without having to do your own searching around

with a list of AI tools for [: 00:01:00

You may just want to flick through it and see which tools you may actually want to try out and for what reasons. I hope you'll find this episode helpful as well as I share some of the tools that I use to help me as a professional speaker and coach.

Welcome to Present Influence the show for professional communicators who want to inspire, impact and influence. My name's John Ball. I'm your guide on this journey to mastery level communication skills.

As we kick things off today, what I'm gonna start with is sharing with you the AI tools that I have been using as a coach and a speaker. Ones that I found useful to, for me, especially when it comes to things like content creation.

at a stage where we can just [: 00:02:00

Gemini, which is Google's own AI system, is one that I have been mostly using and I have recently been using a paid version of Chat, GPT, which I've also to be very good. We've also recently been given the joy of image creation available even on free levels of chat GPT.

stly they are creating these [: 00:03:00

You will probably need to go into a paid version of Chat GPT. It's not expensive, it's 20 bucks a month kind of thing, but if you are gonna use it, maybe even just for a month or so, try it out. It gives you so much more opportunity to create and it can do a lot of things for you. I have been using a tool to create mini products I can start to offer on the podcast. Because a lot of us doing virtual work these days, some of the things we're gonna use in AI are built into things like Zoom. Now you may be using already things like Fathom or fireflies as note takers within Zoom and Zoom meetings, which are great, really good tools that can help to recap and save the need for a lot of note taking.

like to take notes myself. I [: 00:04:00

They could be useful for you as a speaker to help to summarize and recap meetings that you have with potential bookers. So discussions and contract negotiations can then get summarized for both of you so long as the other party is happy to have the note taker recording on the call.

Definitely in terms of creation, content creation, and as speakers, we tend to have to do a lot of it. Grammarly is a really good tool, and I think

you write the way you speak [: 00:05:00

~We don't have yet grammar. ~We don't yet have AI tools that are autocorrecting our grammar and punctuation as we speak. I hope, really hope that doesn't come to be honest with you. 'cause that would be so annoying. But we do have that when we are writing.

And I do think a good use of grammar is great, but a perfect use of grammar might actually be unnecessary. I would still encourage you to write and communicate the way you would, not the way Grammarly necessarily tells you to, but do utilize it for basic grammar and spelling mistakes that might just make you look a little less than professional as a communicator.

's fantastic. It's great for [: 00:06:00

It's great for creating images for social media. With the AI tools that are in there now as well. You can have it create AI images that you can use in your posts and your newsletters and whatever else you may be putting out there. You might even want to use some of them in your slideshows.

But as has always been the case with these tools, utilizing in slideshows, just be careful and make sure the images are good and appropriate and that we don't end up with a situation like we did with Clip Up 20 years ago where it just looked horrible ridiculous and cheap and everyone was doing it.

Sometimes using stock images is really helpful and it gets us out of a bind, but there are times where we probably do want to step things up and use our own images, and certainly as speakers, we are the brand of our business. So make sure a lot of your images are including you.

y want to see you on stages. [: 00:07:00

People want to see that. So the reality of your end deliverables of what you do are far more valuable to your audience, are far more interesting to your audience than the conceptual elements of what you do, which are still useful, valuable, and interesting, but not so attention grabbing, not so impactful.

ates as professional images, [: 00:08:00

try and get someone to do it who does have that expertise? It may not end up being very expensive for you, but it could make a huge difference to how you are perceived online. Now, as speakers and coaches and professional communicators, one of the things we do have to do a lot of the time is speak, and some of that's gonna be virtual.

Sometimes we'll be on podcasts, maybe our own, maybe guesting on someone else's. Maybe we are just creating video content, video courses, and as such, we're gonna be putting videos online as well. We want those to be as good and easy and effective as possible. And there are a number of tools that can really help you with things like video editing

of the tools that I use the [: 00:09:00

They make it so easy to do things like create B roll and put scenes into your videos and script them and transcribe and so much more.

And I use it a lot. It is absolutely worth having. It's not perfect, but it's getting better all the time to a point where they are potentially moving towards descript being able to do most of your editing work for you, so isn't how much time or money that's gonna free up potentially. If you can cope with probably what's gonna be more basic level editing skills that still aren't gonna be up to a professional editor, I'd say no.

rd professional editing. Get [: 00:10:00

But another tool that's really good for this is Riverside. And Riverside is an online tool, and very similarly, you can create your videos in there. There's a degree of automatic audio engineering in there as well.

I'll say this, descrip isn't perfect, Riverside isn't great. But they do have automatic AI editing. So if you ask someone who just wants to quickly turn around episodes for a podcast or online content and have it edited how. Fluff cut out of conversations and videos and make it really easy for people to be able to access them direct, upload them to whatever channel you wish to, or even live stream.

e free levels, that could be [: 00:11:00

The only place that I would even consider live streaming to these days are LinkedIn and YouTube. But you may have other ideas and that's entirely up to you. Instagram probably is one of the other better places to do that as well.

Now when it does come to audio engineering, there is a tool that I do use. It does a great job, but it has limitations and it is called Adobe Enhance. It's part of Adobe's podcasters kit, and you may not want to pay for another service, but it is something like $9 a month.

excellent, and I probably do [: 00:12:00

If you have video that is maybe. I would say you probably want it to be on the lower side of 30 minutes, 30 minutes or less. It will probably do it, and you don't want super high quality video because the higher the file size, the less likely it's to do. So if your file size is over one gig of information,

it just won't do it. At the moment I have been in contact with them and they do say they are going to aim to raise the file size limitations so that we will be able to do longer form video. They have lots of people who are podcasters who want to do video as well, who are feeling like myself restricted by the file sizes that they're currently capable of processing.

However. When it is able to process the files for you, it does a really good job. And now also has the option on the paid version for being able to control how much effect is used on your voice and on your background.

hose. So you can be somewhat [: 00:13:00

Adobe Enhanced is fantastic for that.

So those are the main tools that I use. I spent a lot of time using Google Gemini. I use the paid version. It's included in my Google Workspace. If your professional email is through a Gmail account and you pay for Google Workspace, you probably already have access to Google Gemini, and I think for a very small fee, they will upgrade you to the professional version, and it's pretty good.

I realized whilst I was editing the episode, so I've come back in to tell you this, that with Google Workspace, I've been paying something like $120 a year for Calendly.

endar service like Calendly, [: 00:14:00

you can essentially do what Calendly does for you within Google Workspace and it's free. So look up calendars in Google Workspace.

If you have a free version of Google right now, you can have at least one of those set up.

But if you have paid Google Workspace, then you can set up multiple calendars with invites. It works very much the same way with Calendly. You can even set up payment options into that as well. So if you're offering paid services, you want them paid in advance, people can pay for that and they can book it onto the calendar.

So. You know, I wish I'd discovered that before. I'd just renewed for another year with Calendly. But certainly next year, sorry, Calendly, be using the booking services in Google Workspace. Now, I haven't even looked to discover what else may be available in Google Workspace that I haven't been utilizing yet.

tially gonna save you money. [: 00:15:00

it's all gonna fit in well together, and you're not gonna be paying any extra for it. I think we're gonna see a lot more of those kinds of things coming in as AI advances, but that's a great one to save you a bit of time and money I hope.

I haven't used too many other AI tools, but it is pretty good. It does some great jobs, and it's getting better and better as we go along it is important to use the right kinds of prompts for this, but I don't just want to ask AI to do stuff for me. When I'm creating videos, for example, I may go to her and say, Hey, recommend some episode ideas. What would be some good episode ideas? Some are good, some are not, that it comes up with, but I often sometimes get inspiration from some of the things that it suggests as well. So I'm not gonna do exactly that, but I could do this and that would be interesting.

cript from it 'cause there's [: 00:16:00

It'll create social media posts, it will create YouTube descriptions, et cetera. Again, not perfect. It does a good job, but you still need to check what it's doing and you can give it specific instructions for how to do those things. But you can get other AI tools to do those similar things as well.

For example, you can, and I do this put your transcripts from episodes or from something you're doing into AI and get it to create a newsletter or create a summary that you can then share, and that can be a useful tool. And again, you need to check these things. One of the biggest reasons for that is if you are English like me, are not American.

st do everything in American [: 00:17:00

But to come back to more general AI tools, it is a really good writing tool. But if you are gonna ask ai, for example, to create a talk for me on this topic, it'll go away and do it. Or give me a 45 minute keynote presentation on this topic. It will do it. But will it be good? Probably not.

Will there be stuff in there that you could use? Probably. But you still have to be very into the creative process yourself. We are not at a level where, and I hope we never really do get to a level where AI is doing everything for us. It would take away so much of our creativity, I think is super important.

gs that we are using AI for, [: 00:18:00

There are ways that you can get your AI tools to forget all of your stuff so that it doesn't go into contributing to the greater AI development. And I would suggest you look those up because I'm not an expert in this stuff. I'm just aware that there are ways for you to clear your trail, to clear the path behind you and get AI to remove your contributions so that it's not stealing your work, or at least, hopefully not so much, but the reality is.

. It's gonna be unavoidable. [: 00:19:00

And to some degree, we'll take away a lot of the, a lot of need or requirement for expertise in the future. However, we are never going to lose human connection. And even with things like AI tools. There is an art to prompting them to do more of what you want to do, the way you want to do it. And so now for some of us, it's definitely beneficial to have the AI tools, thinking and speaking the way that we do, the way that we would want it to.

left behind and missing out [: 00:20:00

So I do encourage a lean in to different AI tools. Some of them are just gonna make you life and your processes easier, and some of them are potentially gonna improve your output as well. I guess we'll have, at some point we're gonna have to deal with all of the moral implications of AI tools, but that moment probably isn't today.

I. So one final quick reminder for you. If you want to get hold of the report on AI tools for speakers and coaches completely free, just go to the show notes or the YouTube description for this episode and you will be able to download it from there. You don't need to give me your email or anything like that.

This is no strings type whatsoever. Just go and get the report if you'd like to take a look at it. But I hope this has been useful. So that's it for this episode, or present influence. I'm happy to say. Are we back next time talking to Dr. Thomas Trautman? We're gonna be talking about neuroscience of influence.

I encourage you not to miss [: 00:21:00

I'm gonna do a bunch of these so you can actually get to see some of the processes that I work with clients on to coach them in their speaking journey to becoming ace professional, speakers. So today's session with Julia was a great one that's gonna be out pretty soon. And more exciting things to come as well with Present Influence.

But make sure you're subscribed to the show if you're not already, if you are on YouTube, hit that notification bell as well, so you'll get notified at all the latest videos that come from the channel.

And I will look forward to seeing you again very soon. So wherever you're going, whatever you're doing, have an amazing rest of your day. See you next time.​