KIS News Issue #50 - some links included in this issue may be affiliate links

Update: Buonasera from Italy. This week marks the start of my summer in Europe which is something I’ve been working towards for a long time. After my second baby I really gave myself permission to consider, and most importantly, accept what I actually wanted from my life and my own definition of success. And the reality is, that definition of success isn’t like a lot of people who run businesses. I’m not interested in raising tens of millions of pounds or speaking on big stages or being “known”. I want to work in sprints, I want to take the school holidays off, I want complete flexibility and I want multiple, small-medium sized, highly cash generative and profitable businesses.

Everything else was just the noise of chasing and pursing the dreams of someone else and what I thought I should want.

So finally here I am, after months of building the systems and infrastructure - living my definition of success.

What I’ve been reading: Superagency by Reid Hoffmann and Greg Beato - Superagency is all about how tech can support human agency (aka our ability to choose, act, and lead). Think: smarter education, fairer systems, better healthcare—not just robots doing your admin. It’s a smart, hopeful take on where we’re heading if we get intentional. Worth a read.

What made me stop and think: Arriving in a small(ish) coastal town just north of Napoli this week, it’s amazing how quickly life has slowed down once you strip everything right back. No tv, no massive supermarkets, no packed schedules. The common denominator - less choice. I realised this week just how much I’ve being cramming everything into my life at home, largely fuelled by having too much in it and too much choice.

A bigger house has meant more stuff to fill it, which means more to clean, which means more to do.

Bigger supermarkets mean more choice, more meal options, more meal prep and more money spent.

A packed calendar of work, goals, social events, kids clubs has meant more rushing, more stress and more frazzled feeling at the end of the week, just to start all over again on Monday. No matter how organised and even automated your “more” is - it’s still more than necessary.

In Italy, life is much slower and much simpler. The apartment is smaller. The supermarket stocks simple, seasonal ingredients, almost everyone has fruit trees in small courtyards with produce shared amongst neighbours. Kids play together and activities and clubs are centred around the beachfront and a large piazza where in one corner you’ll find nonnos playing cards, in another, nonnas are shelling beans and planning a wedding and in the centre are a mix of dance classes for all ages, kids football and watercolour painting.

I think the Italians have found the secret to happiness - keeping it simple.

This week in pictures:

HOW I’VE BUILT MY AI SYSTEMS

Earlier in the year I decided my measure of success was how much leverage I built myself and systems I had that meant I could work in 6 week sprints, term time only and be in Italy for the summer. And here we are.

Since I know many of you want to set up these kinds of systems in your business too, I thought I’d share an overview of what you need to get started.

Software: I use chatgpt plus for building AI assistants in the openAI playground and developer platform (this means you can connect them via an api to other software). I use Notion, Google sheets and Google docs for processing information, compiling reports etc and then I use make.com and Zapier to connect it all into automated systems and workflows that talk to one another.

Workflows: I started out building automations around 7 years ago and as soon as generative AI was available on the market in 2022, I added that in. I started with automating admin work, then quickly expanded into anything that was repetitive each week. Now I have over 80 different automated systems and AI workflows across 5 businesses.

Where to start: split your business into sections - marketing & sales, operations & admin and client work/product delivery/new products. I would start with the workflows that are going to save you the most time and make you the most money. I have 2-3 systems in each category that are the most valuable for me and each start with a specifically trained AI assistant which is built inside the openAI playground. This process is very similar to setting up a customGPT where you write training manuals with data and your expectations on output and upload them to OpenAI.

Connecting your AI system: once you have identified the steps of your workflow and trained your AI assistant, you then need to connect all the pieces of software and steps together using API keys. Don’t worry this is much simpler than it sounds. I use Zapier and Make.com for this. I do find that make.com is more cost effective and I also use it for the programmes over on Espresso AI because it means students can download the exact blueprints of my automations and then just upload them to their own accounts.

Time to implement: to go from 0 to where I am now would take around 6 months of building and testing on the side as you have to be realistic about the time it will take you to learn the new skill (well worth it!) but with some effort of 5-6 hours a week focused on building this system I know students of the Espresso AI business programme who have completed everything in 10 weeks. Like everything, if you commit to the time to building the systems it will pay off in the long run!

SETTING UP A SIMPLE AI SYSTEM

Below are step-by-step instructions for setting up an automated AI email system (one of my hardest working systems).

1. Train an email assistant. In a Google doc complete the following information:

• This is my business and the kind of emails I get:

• These are the buckets we want to divide enquiries into

• Emails that are like this are urgent and a priority (or come from a specific email address)

• Here are examples of my tone of voice and I how respond to each one of these emails

Give as much insight and data as possible.

2. Upload your training manual into OpenAI (platform.openai.com) and login using your ChatGPT details. Navigate to assistants on the left hand side and upload your training manual to the files. Give the following instructions: “You are my email assistant responding to emails in my business email address in draft form. You will be connected directly to my email account and will read all the emails in my inbox and draft replies ready for my review.” You don’t need to save your work in the OpenAI playground it’s saving for you. Give your assistant a memorable name (I name mine people because I have multiple email assistants for different businesses), it’s easier to connect your assistant later if you are looking for a name rather than a string of numbers or a description you can’t remember.

3. Make a free account in make.com (you’ll get 1,000 operations a month for free). Connect your email account and set your first module in a work flow as “watch emails”. You can then add a filter to only watch for emails from certain people or email address or you can have it watch your whole email account.

4. Next module add in OpenAI chatgpt “message assistant”. Connect your openAI account by following the instructions and then select your email assistant you just made from the drop down menu. In the instructions paste this message: “please draft a reply to my emails using the instructions in your training manual. Remember to stick completely to my tone of voice and writing style. Do not make things up or add things in that aren’t in the original email message.”

5. Next add in a module that says “draft email response”. Configure the settings so that the reply is going to the emails picked up from the first module. The response message should be the text output from the previous chatgpt module.

6. Hit save and set your workflow live to run either constantly or on an incremental basis (mine runs twice a day every 6 hours)

Now instead of manually replying to each email, you just need to login and check your email drafts twice a day, make any amendments and hit send.

If you’re interested in learning more about implementing AI systems and automations in your business like this, Espresso AI are running a half price promo on AI for Business until Monday.

You can check it out here >

Have a great week ahead & remember to keep it simple.

Was this email forwarded to you? You can sign up for future issues here >