Dolly DeLong: Hi, friend, and welcome back to another episode of the Systems and Workflow Magic Podcast. I’m Dolly DeLong, your systems and workflow BFF and guide, and today I’m so happy that you decided to hit play on this episode. Now I have a solo episode for you all. I haven’t done a solo episode in a while, and so I just thought I’d come in and share with you the listener of how I.
Used and leaned into AI for my most recent launch, which was in Q1 of 2025. Now, the reason why I want to share this is because I know I have a lot of solo business owners Who listen to this podcast and you are listening in, not only to develop better systems and workflow strategies to impact the backend of your business, whether if you are a family photographer or if you are a small business owner, doesn’t matter what you do.
You want to develop a better system for your business, but you also want to develop better launch strategies because you want to launch either a group program or a digital product. Or relaunch a service. So regardless of who you are, what type of business you are running, this podcast episode will help showcase how I, utilized AI in five ways, and I’m hoping that will encourage you to lean into AI because the truth of the matter is this If you are not utilizing AI right now, you’re really, you’re missing out. I’m not trying to create FOMO or anything, but you are wasting time. and if you are scared of it, you need to embrace it because it’s only going to be more and more integrated in our space as small business owners. And so now is the time to start.
Just taking baby steps and integrating AI in your workflows of your small business. All right. Now it took me like, I am embarrassed to admit this, like almost two years to start embracing ai. And now that I’ve been integrating it into my own small business, I can’t believe that I wasted so much time to adopt it.
it’s, I, I know it’s intimidating. I know it can feel and seem scary, especially if we have a negative like mindset about it. oh, it’s just like copy pasted messages. It’s not really authentic, it’s just robots. no, like it can help you in so many powerful ways. And in this episode. I just wanted to peel back five tangible ways how you can start using AI for your next launch, and my hope is that you’ll take one of these and you’ll run with it and it’ll showcase how you can save time.
All right, so. Again, you may or may not know if you are an OG listener, you should know. I just wrapped up a huge launch myself for, the Family Photographer’s Advanced Blueprint Summit, and so I just wanted to pull back the curtain on how I leaned into AI to stay productive, to stay present and strategic during the whole process.
Because remember, it’s just me. I have a few contractors, but I don’t have any full-time employees. My business, it’s just me. Working 20 hours a week or less. Alright. Now this summit was, created to not only to educate and encourage family photographers, because remember I’m a family photographer too, and a systems and workflow educator.
So I wanted to merge those two together. So it was. A way for me to help educate about systems and workflows to family photographers, but it was also my way of planting a deeper flag in the ground because I’m here to serve family photographer as their go-to systems and workflow educator. I want to be the go-to trusted resource, and I want to connect other family photographers with trusted resources on systems, workflows, and SOPs.
at the end of that summit, I also want to share this, I open the door to my brand new membership, is called the Family Photographers Marketing Society, and I’ll share more about that at the end of this episode. So, if you are a family photographer, you’ve been following me, you love systems and workflows, I want you to stay tuned If you’ve been craving consistent.
Systems and workflows for marketing to help you with the backend of your family photography business. All right, so that’s just a little teaser. So let’s just like dive into the heart of this episode, which is, how I used. AI during my summit. So a little bit more context about this past launch. So the launch was for a summit.
All right. So it was a free high value virtual event packed with education around systems, workflows, automations, and backend strategies just for family photographers and strategies that. Are applicable in 2025. And so I will be honest with you, I was so afraid of just creating a summit for family photographers because the last four years I’ve been serving every type of creative business owner with systems and workflow education.
So to narrow that down to just serve family photographers was scary. Now you were like, well, do you only serve family photographers? No, I serve two. Groups of people. I serve family photographers, group one, and then group two is small business owners who want launch education, like strategies, systems, workflows around launch education.
And sometimes there’s overlap and sometimes there’s not. So I always feel like I have to explain. Okay. Like this podcast, I try to educate both sides, but very specifically the summit, it was just geared for family photographers. And I was like, nobody’s gonna come to it. But I was blown away by it. All right.
and so I will share more of a full summit recap in another episode because it really blew me away. and the connections I made and the photographers I got to interact with and just what I learned from it, I really wanted. Just like to share, just like my thoughts behind that. So stay tuned for a future episode, but why you’re here is to learn five ways AI can support you behind the scenes for your own launch as a team of one.
So I guess in no particular order, I will start with how AI helped me, and I’m gonna start with the most tangible way is helping me with my social media. So. This is gonna be kind of a two-parter. So this is a two part, way in how AI helped. Um, the first way was it helped me create strategic Instagram reels and captions powered by ai.
Now, let me explain by what I mean by that. I did not just open up chat GPT blindly, and I’m like, create. Instagram reels and captions for me and hit enter, and then I just took whatever it gave me because it’s not getting, I’m not putting inputting anything correctly and that is assuming I haven’t put in my brand voice or anything like I do want to tell you and be clear, I have done a lot of foundational work with chat GBT before my launch, so.
It knows my brand voice. It knows that like I have two bots. I have a Dolly DeLong photography bot for the family photography side of my business, and then I have a systems and workflow education bot, which that was the bot I. Who is assisting me. And so for that side of working with ai, I knew that leading up to my summit launch, so like my launch week, which would essentially.
A lot of people call that cart open week. That’s when my summit was. I know it was a free event, but I still wanted to build up a lot of anticipation and excitement to promote the summit. And so how I did that was through podcasting. I created podcast episodes that would naturally lead to a person wanting to sign up for the free summit.
And instead of doing solo episodes, I invited the summit. Speakers to do one like podcast interviews with me, and instead of doing the interviews week by week, like on the go, I actually batch recorded them. Ahead of time. So once I knew when the summit was gonna be in January of 2025, I scheduled out all of these podcast interviews and recorded them.
It. So batching really went hand in hand with leaning into, this phase of the content creation. And so once I had batched them out, that is when I leaned into ai. ’cause I knew, I was like, okay, I have all of these podcast reportings. What do I do besides like, you know, like batching them out, putting them in, pre-scheduling them out in my podcast player.
What else should I do? How. How can I lean into ai? So what I did was I took the transcriptions from each of those podcast episodes. So they were my words, they were my guest speakers words. And so I went to cha GPT and I literally, in, in my specific bot, I copy pasted the transcription. So, and I let Chay BT know, it knows I don’t like it when it sources from like the web or, that sounds weird.
I, I just don’t. I want it to source from unknown sources. I want it to source from when I’m feeding it, and so that way I knew like the output would actually correspond with the transcription. It would make sense. So I asked it, I was like, okay, based on the transcription, can you help me like create, different types of Instagram real ideas, hooks, captions, and for my social media strategy.
And so that is how I utilized. Chat GPT with the transcriptions from my podcast. And so it would gimme ideas on how, like what type of reels to create and what type of carousel posts to create and what type of static posts to create. And I did these batch these ahead of time. And so that’s something that I want to encourage you, listener, if you are.
Leaning. If you are wanting to do a launch, lean into utilizing an AI tool to help you figure out how to like batch out some social media that would naturally lead to building more anticipation and excitement and awareness of your upcoming launch. And so. Every week I had a podcast episode that was leading to the summit.
I made sure that that podcast episode had corresponding Instagram reels, carousels, static posts, and again, I was able to extract ideas from the transcriptions and chat. GPT helped me. Do all that. All right. And so that kind of leads me, that kind of goes with 0.2. So like 0.1 I shared, I leaned into utilizing chat GPT.
To help me with transcriptions, but then chat, GPT, helped me understand what type of, like, it helped me extract like, oh, from this point you should create a carousel. From this point in the conversation, you should extract a uh. A quote from your guest. And so it just helped me see what I wasn’t seeing because sometimes something can be so close to me like my podcast and I can miss out on, oh, this quote, was a great pull quote.
And I could use that for not only a carousel, but maybe I can use it for static post or a reel. And so that I had chat, GPT really analyze every transcription. From each podcast episode. And so it helped me create launch specific content for my social media. Now, I know like points one and points two, they kind of like go hand in hand.
but I wanted them to build on top of each other. and I also wanted you like to know like every single. Guest who was on my podcast leading up, they were acting kind of like a domino effect leading up to the summit. So every single speaker in my mind, they were like building more and more anticipation and excitement for a family photographer to want to sign up for this free summit.
And so, I like. Knew the speaker lineups going in. I knew all the podcast episodes going in before I actually released them. So I asked chat GPT to analyze it and let me know Hey, which ones should I do in order? what order would make sense? And so chat GPT helped me analyze that, which then helped me like figure out my social media strategy.
So that’s why I kind of meshed those two points together.
Okay, so the third way I used AI for my own launch was with my newsletter creation in like the strategy and structure of that. So, I mean, you all know this, or maybe you don’t know this, but I will confess this openly. I’m not. A copywriter, I would be, I would declare myself to be a very long-winded person and my husband would agree with that.
Um, something that I could describe in a sentence, it takes me like 10 se 10 paragraphs and 10,000 exclamation points. ’cause I just wanna express everything. And so I know I struggle with this as a small business owner. When I want to concisely describe to my audience, okay, here’s what you need to know.
Here are the action steps to take. Here’s the strategies. Without giving a thesis. So I’ve known the struggle about myself. So when my fellow business friend Ashlyn Carter, now she’s been on the podcast several times and I interviewed her for her newsletter marketing strategy, in 2024. I should, link that episode in the show notes.
But, when she opened up. Her, she, she like soft launch this, uh, newsletter marketing, I don’t even know what it is called. The copy bank club where she sends out, ’cause she’s a copywriter and she sends out this newsletter every week and she essentially walks you through this strategy that week. And then how has you, copy paste it like.
As you analyze it and then you can copy paste it into chat GBT, and if chat GBT has your brand voice, like it can change it to fit your brand voice and then you can tweak it from there and it helps you cut so much time and it helps you serve your audience really well because hopefully chat GPT has your brand voice.
So this was an obvious no brainer for me to join this. We like. Weekly email marketing newsletter, copy, bank club. And so how I utilized it with my launch, I was like, okay, I’m getting these weekly email newsletter prompts from Ashlyn and Chat, GBT has my transcriptions from my podcast. So what I’m gonna do is I took, um, the template that was given that week and I put it in that podcast folder of my chat bot and I said, okay, you have my transcription, you know my brand voice.
You know who I serve. You know who this is, the purpose of this newsletter right now is to serve family photographers to lead them closer to signing the summit. And here’s a template that I wanna use, and it would literally change it to fit my voice, and it would structure it based off of like the, the skeleton outline, and then it would spit out this amazing newsletter I could use that week all within minutes.
Because it was going back and forth and like of course I had to tweak it, but this was within minutes instead of me being agonizing and like not knowing what to say. So that’s a third way of how I leaned into ai. Like I was utilizing a newsletter template, but then I was utilizing chat GPT with it, and I had a transcription.
And so the result for me was high quality on brain emails. That didn’t take hours to draft, and it helped me create a better system for myself and it was pointing people towards the summit week after week after week. So it was like the whole point of email marketing for me is to nurture my warmer leads and for them to get to know me and for them to be pointed to something bigger, which is my podcast and like my different systems and workflow events I have.
Alright, so I’m so happy. Like that was like one of my favorite strategies with ai. Now the fourth way I leaned into AI for my launch was leaning into MiniChat and kind of like going back to my batching strategy, but very specifically ManyChat. So I am, I. I have always been kind of skeptical about MiniChat.
I will start with saying that, but I do know that. It does. It does work over time. Like you just have to be patient with it. You have to, you actually do need to stay engaged on your social media platform with your audience. Yes. That is important. And so I had to get over like I. My negative like thoughts about MiniChat and, and thinking, well, I’m such a small business owner, it won’t work for me.
And so what I did after I got over myself and my like negative thoughts about it is I decided, okay, I’m gonna utilize MiniChat and I am going every week, whenever I. Post about my podcast and I weave in my content of leading towards the summit. I’m gonna also have like strategic call to actions to sign up for the summit or sign up to listen to the podcast, which will lead to the summit.
And so of course I dug into chat GBT to help me set those up. And then I had a MiniChat strategy so that I wouldn’t have to be like manually sending out the DMing everyone, like whenever they commented on my Instagram posts, because my goal for, and maybe this is a lame goal. My goal is to open up Instagram and to during a designated window of time, and then to comment back or to engage back with whoever dmd me.
And then not to doom scroll, because doom scrolling is. It can be like, it is what it sounds. It’s like you are literally wasting so much time and energy and you can’t stop scrolling and you can’t stop comparing yourself to others. And I just, I don’t want to do that. Especially during launch period. So going into this launch, I was like, I’m leaning into MiniChat.
I’m leaning into this way of automating this part of the launch and leaning into the AI strategy of how to do that. And so did you know I like tools like chat, GPT, like it can act like your mini chat expert and it can help you set up mini chats. And so thankfully before, like I didn’t have to ask it to help me set up a mini chat, I already had a strategy in mind.
Very simple one. but I did utilize chat GBT to help me concisely create like one to two sentences to describe what the episode was about. Based off of the transcription from the podcast and so that in that way, I am thankful for chat GPT to concisely describe everything in my voice. And then that was what was delivered in the mini chat automation, along with the link to the podcast episode.
So yeah, definitely leaning into many chats. And then of course, batching out that work ahead of time helped save me so much time and energy. And so the result of that was I was consistent every week with my content creation because I had batched ahead. I’ve thought through my keywords of what I wanted to do for ManyChat, and I wasn’t stuck in.
Creation mode every day. Like I had purpose every single day and I, I decided I’m gonna be in here for 15 minutes and leave. And, but everything else was batched out. Right? And then finally, the fifth way that I wanna share with you of how I utilized AI for my launch was AI definitely helped me refine my messaging for my landing page for the summit.
So what I would do before chat, GPT and AI utilizing AI is it would take me weeks to refine my messaging or I would just, like one or two times I did hire out a copywriter to refine messaging, which is fine, but I couldn’t justify it for a free event.
Because I, I would be spending so much money, but hiring out a copywriter is worth it. If you like, you know for sure you’re already getting a good ROI. But for me, going into the summit, the whole purpose of the summit was to serve with a free virtual event and to continue to establish myself as a systems and workflow educator.
So I knew going in the, the front end. The ROI will be the relationships made. Alright. So going in, I was like, okay, I can’t, I don’t wanna spend money on a brand refinement with a copywriter. Not, not right now. ’cause this is not a paid event. so what I did was I was like, okay. I brain dumped everything on a Google Doc and I let, like, I literally wrote down who the summit’s for, who it’s serving, all the summit presentations, like what I want the outcome to be who, like literally everything.
And then I took that to chapter GBT, of course for the, the systems workflow education bot. And I let it know okay. Please analyze this and see any holes I’m missing. And it analyzed it and we went back and forth and it produced a really good outcome. And so then I took, I had a template that I was using.
- As a landing page and I, and I went through each section of that landing page, which is the summit registration page, and I analyzed it with chat GPT, like where should I put this? what do I need to put here? And so that helps shave off so much time that would normally have taken me over a week. It took me five hours.
To create that landing page and five hours from one week down to five hours. I, I will take that any day. And I, it’s sa this part saved me days of overthinking and it helped me finish the landing page again for this free virtual event. And I am so happy. I just got over my fear of being worried about sounding too robotic and.
I guess like unapproachable and I ha, like I did have to do a lot of work foundationally. I had mentioned this earlier with chat GPT, like finding my own brand voice, but because I did that, it knew who I served already. It knew my goals for the summit, and so I am so happy that I utilize that. So, yeah. Those were my five ways of how I leaned into AI for my recent launch, and I’m really hoping that you’ll take one of these points and you’ll be able to use it for your own launch as well, and you’ll be encouraged to like, Hey, Maybe I need to lean into AI and let it know my brand and who I serve and have it get to know me well, that does take time.
and I’ll, uh, like link to the, I took a mini course on how to refine my brand voice using chat GPT. How it can get to know my brand voice, I should say. And so I, I will link that in, in the show notes for you. All right. And it is my affiliate link, full disclosure, but this is something that I used twice, so I went through it.
Over the course of two weeks, one week for my family photography business, and then one week for my systems and workflow education business, because those are two different voices and those are two different audiences. And I put in the time and now I’m saving so much time. By leaning into the specific bot.
All right. I’ll get off my, I’ll get off my pedestal. Like it, it takes time, but it will save you time. Okay. So listening to all this, like I just want to bring you back in and explain to you again, I want you to know AI should not and does not replace your strategy. Okay? Like you should still have strategy going into your launch.
You should still know like who you wanna serve, like who it’s for. Like you, you shouldn’t just depend on AI to give, spit out a strategy because it’s gonna, it’s gonna feel like. People will know. Like people will know that there’s a disconnect. Like you still need to have that connection. You still need to know who you’re serving and your strategy going in before using ai, but it will help you stay in your zone of genius.
And so when used well, I believe AI can be your best behind the scenes support system. As a solo business owner, and you all know this, you can integrate it as a system and workflow every single week for your launch and. I, I want, I really want you to know this and I believe this. Launching doesn’t have to mean burnout for you as a small business owner, like you can still launch very well and very strategically as a solo business owner.
You don’t have to have a giant team. Does it help to have a giant team? Oh, of course it does. Do I wish I had a giant team? Yes, yes. One day, but actually like I enjoy just. working for myself and just me, myself, and I, and I, I don’t envision myself having a big team. It’s not because I am not dreaming, like refusing to dream big.
Like I have no desire. I have a desire to have several contractors, that’s it. But I still wanna launch well, and I know I can do that as a solo business owner, I’ve experienced that. I’ve done that for other, other small businesses, so I know it’s possible. so you don’t have to burn out. Alright. You could still launch well.
but you don’t need to be running The candle from both ends during your launch, you can lean into using AI to help you out in so many ways you don’t burn out. And then I, I just wanna point out the obvious. If you know you wanna launch something like course. A summit, a product, a digital product, or you wanna relaunch something and you wanna do it more purposefully and strategically, you know how to get in touch with me.
All right, every week I have a call to action at the very end of the podcast episode about how you can contact me. You can fill out my, uh, contact form, which is in the show notes about working with me as your launch strategist, and I will work with you for three months. And help you prep and prepare for your next launch.
So again, you don’t have to do it alone, but if you are still wearing on the hats and you need to lean in on this solo time, then use AI to help you in those five ways. All right. Now I did want to bring the conversation back to the Family Photographers Marketing Society, so I know I teased at the very beginning of this episode that my summit launch led to.
The Family Photographers Marketing Society, which is my monthly marketing template that I send out to family photographers who want a consistent, cadence and to stay visible on Instagram and through email marketing. So I wanna tell you a little bit about this. So if you are a solo business owner who’s also a family photographer, listen in.
Okay? So if you’re craving consistency in your marketing, Please consider. Checking out the Family Photographers Marketing Society. I created this, to help photographers like you stay visible with a strategic weekly marketing cadence, especially like when it comes to Instagram and email. So I will be honest, I am not a social media strategist.
You know that. And this membership isn’t about hacks or trends. It’s about showing up with intention as the CMO of your family photography business. Because I believe marketing and launching go hand in hand. And so as a launch strategist, I want to help you build a system that keeps you in front of your audience, even when life gets busy.
So if you’re tired of doing marketing last minute or worse, not doing it at all, I want you to join inside the society where you’ll get a new weekly marketing plan. Every Thursday with a Loom walkthrough so you can stay consistent. So I normally send out a template every Thursday for the following week so you can batch everything out from Thursday to Sunday and have everything batched out for that week.
All right, so if you are interested, I want to encourage you to check out all the details in the show notes, and I’d love to see you inside and if you’re not a family photographer, but if you do know of a family photographer who is looking for a very consistent visibility and marketing plan, have them check it out.
And so if you listened all the way through, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening in, and I want you to send me a DM and let me know what point helped you out and let me know what point you’re gonna use for your next launch. All right. So until then, say streamlined and magical you, amazing muggle, you and I will talk to you later.
Bye.
