Feeling buried in admin when all you want is to focus on your patients?
You’re not alone. The naturopathic profession has long struggled with burnout as practitioners juggle clinical work, business management, marketing, and ongoing education—often single-handedly.
In this groundbreaking conversation, Amy Skilton and business mentor Tammy Guest explore how artificial intelligence is creating unprecedented opportunities for naturopaths to reclaim their time, amplify their unique gifts, and ultimately become more human in their practice. Beyond the fear-based headlines, AI offers practical solutions to longstanding challenges in our profession.
Discover how practitioners are using AI to transcribe and summarise consultations, freeing them to be fully present with patients. Learn how research that once took hours can now be completed in minutes, with practitioners maintaining discernment while AI handles the heavy lifting. For those who struggle with marketing and content creation, hear real-world examples of practitioners finally launching the courses and programs they’ve dreamed of—all thanks to accessible AI tools.
Perhaps most compelling is the recognition that our predominantly female profession has a unique opportunity to influence AI’s development. With 70% of current AI users identifying as male, naturopaths can bring a holistic, patient-centred perspective to ensure this technology reflects the values we hold dear.
Whether you’re tech-savvy or tech-phobic, this episode offers practical starting points and free resources to help you explore how AI might enhance your practice. The world needs the special gifts that only you have—don’t let them remain hidden because you’re weighed down by tasks that AI could handle with ease.
Check out Tammy’s Clone Yourself with AI course
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DISCLAIMER: The Information provided in the Wellness by Designs podcast is for educational purposes only; the information presented is not intended to be used as medical advice; please seek the advice of a qualified healthcare professional if what you have heard here today raises questions or concerns relating to your health
Amie: This is “Wellness by Designs,” and I’m your host, Amie Skilton. And joining us today is the amazing Tammy Guest, who, I feel like reducing her to “naturopath and business mentor” just doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of this human. But for the purpose of our conversation today, those two hats, of the many that she wears, is very, very relevant. And today, we’re speaking about a topic that I feel like is sort of a spicy one, a little bit, and that is the role of AI in the naturopathic profession, and really, I guess, the business landscape at large. And, really, I couldn’t think of a better person to be speaking to about this, because Tammy is just such a visionary and a pioneer in this space, a beloved mentor for many practitioners, as well as a speaker and an author. And I know, Tammy, your heart is very much about tapping into people’s gifts, and having them be lit up on purpose, and really setting them free to share their gifts with the world in a way that really works for them. So, thank you so much for your time this afternoon.
Tammy: Thank you so much, Amie. It’s always an absolute pleasure talking to you. And, it takes one to know one, right? You’re such a many-hatted, most-amazing human as well, and I’m looking forward to this conversation.
Amie: Oh, me too. And I feel like I’m probably not alone when I say I feel like I am sort of a reluctant adopter of AI, and I think I’ve just really scratched the surface of its use in practice, that there’s just so much more that we could do. But I want us to start at the very beginning, for all of our beautiful colleagues who are like, “I just really, I don’t understand it. I don’t get it. I’m concerned about it from a number of aspects, whether it’s environmental and sustainability, and, you know, privacy, but also just being, just flat-out being intimidated on how the heck we even implement this to make our lives better, and not have it feel harder.” So, maybe we could start with addressing some of the common fears and concerns around AI in the space and at large, but really giving it the context and perspective that it requires. So, how about we start there?
Tammy: Certainly. I mean, you and I have been in the profession for a while now, and we’ve been on the planet a while, and we’ve certainly, as a human race, seen all sorts of technologies come and go. And with every technological advance, there’s always fears, right? When the radio was coming in, print media was very upset, and a lot of people were wondering what was going to happen when it came to having noise pollution, and having, you know, voices all of the time. And then we had the television come in, and we were worried about what those types of tubes were going to do to the environment, and the excessive waste and the consumption, and what we were going to see, and how that was going to come into people’s, you know, worlds. Then, I was around at the turn of the good old internet, just appearing in our living rooms, in our kitchens, just off the kitchen there, one computer for the whole household, and hearing that dialup tone, and it interrupting my wonderful phone calls with my friends every time somebody wanted to get onto the internet. And then there was, of course, fears around search engines, and doctor Google and things like that. And the thing is, every single time we’ve had a technological advance, there are early adopters, there are when the rest of us join, and there are the reticent few that last. And, you know, we still have some people who don’t own mobile phones, and I am here for all of it.
But the little thing that comes up for me, particularly for our practitioner world, is that, for the past decade, since I’ve been mentoring, I’ve seen time and time again practitioners get overwhelmed and stressed, and want to blow up their business, and even leave the profession because of burnout, and not enough support systems to enable them to do the job that they were actually qualified for. They’re busy doing all of these other jobs, that have the potential to be automated or delegated, but they’re busy doing those things instead of being the amazing humans and practitioners that they are, with the next person in front of them, or the next group of people who need to hear exactly their version of their gifts and talents. And so, seeing the benefits come to the fore has helped me start to dive deeper, and I think that’s probably the first place, where, instead of feeling the fear, starting to get curious on the possibility is something that I invite everybody to start to lean into.
Second is, fear is one of the biggest things that gets social media going in the first place, and the more we can clickbait on all the fears that are coming up around it, the more likely we are to see more of it, and create an echo chamber of all the more fears, rather than be part of the actual solution, which is engaging with AI, in a ethical and positive kind of manner, that has a feminine edge to it, that has a natural health tendency and lens, and I think that’s really already missing from it.
And then lastly, I always wanna touch on the environmental one. I mean, we are all nature lovers, and that’s how we got into our profession in the first place. And, again, if you look into the facts of the environmental issue there, every technology is going to have an environmental impact. The internet, in and of itself, has data centers that take up so much water, and so much energy, but they’re the same data centers that we’re using for AI. So, if we were going to actually shut down these things, we’re gonna shut down the whole internet, which just isn’t gonna happen.
So, another way to consider this environmental impact is actually things like comparing it to something that we also use every day, and we also see a lot of our clients use every day, things like fast fashion. And in actual fact, the environmental impact water, just to make denim, in the world, to keep up with the denim usage in the world, is actually 100 times more than every data center that AI is currently using. A hundred times more to make jeans. But we don’t hear that. We hear, “Oh, it’s taking up all the water. Oh, it’s changing all of the environment.”
And lastly, my favorite concept of this is generative AI has been around since 2023. And the interesting thing about generative AI, rather than just classic AI, is that it is not just predicting, based off patterns, what you want to hear. Generative AI is taking a whole bunch of ingredients that we have, you know, heard, from every different cookbook available, and creating something very unique, like, a very unique recipe. And in a similar way, all of the problems that us humans haven’t been able to solve by ourselves, it’s taking all the ingredients from all of these problems that we have tried to solve, whether it is storage, water usage, ability to engage with the amount of energy being used for computers, supercomputers, and the environmental impact of technology itself, AI’s coming up with solutions that we haven’t been able to, in the decades we’ve been working on it, because it’s now generating its own ideas, which is amazing. It’s generating its own solutions to its own problems, and problems that we couldn’t solve ourselves. So, yeah.
Amie: Wow. That’s just such an incredibly, almost explosive re-jig around the perspective on AI, and, you know, I think that example with denim manufacturing just really puts to bed that argument that people are just touting mindlessly, around how much AI is going to be using, as far as energy and water goes. And I think, you know, when we consider all of those other technological advances that have come, all of the ones that are going to arrive after this, it really is up to us as individuals, and as a collective, to decide how much space that takes up in our lives, how we want to engage with it, how we can make the most of these tools, but also minimize the impact. But the fact that this tool is also trying to solve problems it’s potentially contributing to or creating, I think, is just actually really quite special, you know, to have a quantum computer to, can actually, or it can actually generate solutions to things, you know, light years quicker than a human being can. I think that’s really quite a blessing in disguise. And very much like social media, or any of these other technological tools, things can be used, you know, for negativity. They can be used for powerful, beautiful change, and I really love that we get to engage with it in order to actually enhance the human experience and human health. And I think there are so many opportunities there. When I think about, I still remember that sound of dial-up too. I’m taking that to the grave, and how slow that was, and how long it took to send one blinking email from the old Hotmail address.
Tammy: Absolutely.
Amie: And you think today, now we can, you know, mass email all of the people who have, you know, who are in our ecosystem, to update them on something that’s happening. We can send notes and instructions via email, instead of handing them 20 printed-out things, or worse, handwritten notes, like it was back in the olden days.
Tammy: And we’re currently seeing one another, in high definition, here immediately, with what we are doing, and all of it’s data, and it was originally based off us doing exactly what you’re describing. And I think that that exponential shift, we were a part of that, and we are currently a part of this situation that’s happening, and we’re going, if we choose to, we can continue to be at the front of this change that’s occurring, and be part of that change for good. There is some other issues when it comes to AI, you know? Seventy percent of the users are, you know, there’s 70% more people using it who identify as male. The main bias of AI historically is because it has a male gaze and a male lens. Our profession is, give or take, 87% female, so we’re predominantly a female series of modalities and profession. And there isn’t enough input, from us, as women, from us as people who have a voice when it comes to a holistic perspective, a patient-centered perspective, a personalized medicine perspective. What it’s been taught on, AI, is a whole bunch of very masculine, very, you know, in its original form, pre-2020, tech bro kind of conversations. And so, if we’re not a part of the ongoing conversation, and we’re not part of this generative part, it’s generating new content, based on us engaging with it, then we’re going to just see an echo chamber of the people who have already used it before, and we don’t want that. We want a different world moving forward.
Amie: And I think that almost gives us more purpose with which to engage it, even outside of how we can leverage it for more time, more freedom, more joy, and more peace, but also, it literally is growing, developing, and learning from the human inputs that are being put in. And, you know, when we look at, historically, you know, the, I guess, the focus of allopathic medicine and research, for instance…
Tammy: Absolutely.
Amie: …like, how tragically omitted women have been, as far as medical research goes, we can, you know, this potentially could be the same kind of situation if we don’t engage and get involved, and actually input our voice as well. So, that’s an exciting thing to consider, isn’t it?
Tammy: Absolutely. Absolutely. And there are no, you know, bars to entry of this, whereas if we were to try, you know, many of us have ideas about what we would love to research in women’s health, or a notion of what could be possible, but getting into academia, and being part of this kind of research push for this amazing opportunity that we have, because we’ve missed decades’ worth of experience because we had a very different group of people looking after that situation, now, there isn’t any gates to entry here. You… It’s a free thing to use, and we’re able to contribute in a way that’s actually really quite powerful.
Amie: Really powerful. And I think, you know, and we saw this with the invention of the internet, and of course, social media, how we can connect with people all around the world, share ideas, share information, and support each other in a way that’s so incredibly rapid. And I think what that’s going to do to advance learning, understanding, research, clinical application, I’m not even sure I can fathom it, to be honest, over the next decade, how incredible that’s going to be, and how different the landscape will be. I just know that’s going to be good for professionals, your practitioners, and patients alike. But I guess if we were to, I guess, pull back from that, and think about how we can utilize this as health professionals, now, as it is, and what’s currently available, and why we might want to, I’d love to explore some of the applications around that, and I might even just start with how I began using it.
Tammy: Please.
Amie: I remember saying to a girlfriend of mine, saying, “I love consulting. I love my patients. I love talking to them, but after I hang up and have to write notes, I just want to scream into a pillow….”
Tammy: Yep.
Amie: …book a flight to Fiji, and never come back. Like, and I’m like, if I could just have someone who could type everything up for me…
Tammy: Yes.
Amie: …and that would be amazing. And then, literally, within six months, the practice software that I use introduced an AI assistant for transcription and summarization, and I’m like, “My prayers have been answered.”
Tammy: Yeah. And, isn’t it funny? It’s those things that we put off, or that we’ve put to the bottom of our to-do list for such a long time, that they’re finding really quick and easy solutions for that. And if we can start to, and this is the kind of crux point that I see a lot with practitioners, if we can start to do it, and the fascinating thing about AI is, literally, the tool that you’re describing, whether it’s inside your practice software, or you can open it as another screen whilst you’re using your practice software, if you click the button, it’s gonna do its thing all by itself, while you do what you’re already doing. And so it doesn’t take any more effort. You’re just clicking a button to get it to transcribe, to get it to summarize, and to get it to give you an action plan, possibly referral letters, possibly a description of your prescription, and you’re able to then just maneuver that straight into the patient treatment plan, or into their patient notes. And if you see that working side-by-side, the vast majority of people that have used it already see that, in actual fact, AI’s picking up way more, because we are spending time doing the human-to-human bit, right? We’re spending time being more human with the human in front of us, because all that automated stuff, and all the detail that we can’t hold space at the same time as get those, you know, really niche details that sometimes we can forget to write down, it gets looked after, in an instant, without you actually doing anything.
Amie: That’s just such a game-changer, and I think, you know, there’s lots of ways this could be helpful in someone’s practice, from a scalability perspective, or just simply freeing up your time to do more of the things that you love outside of your business. But as you said, when you’re having to think and write and pause, and then ask a question, it breaks that connection, to a degree. It breaks your train of thought and your flow. It then limits how much you have to give and ask, and, you know, the inputs don’t equal the outputs. Whereas if you can just be fully present with your client, and allow the conversation to flow naturally, and have someone else, you know, your computer-generated assistant taking care of the notes, that is just going to vastly improve patient care, just in and of itself.
Tammy: Yeah. I mean, back in the day, there were stenographers for all the important conversations. It’s literally an automated stenographer for your important conversation. And it’s a very accurate, very efficient, and very cheap stenographer, that we wouldn’t have usually been able to have access to as solo practitioners. And I think there’s a gateway for that. Once you start to notice the type of assistance that you probably couldn’t have afforded before, there are opportunities, with AI, to have staff members that you have trained in the way that you would like them to interact with you, and the way you’d like them to interact with the information that you usually have, that we wouldn’t have been able to afford before. It really levels the playing field in access to guidance and advice that we would have had to pay too much…it just would have been cost-prohibitive before.
Amie: I think this is useful for any practitioner, no matter where they’re at, but especially, I’m thinking new grads, when they have a limited budget, the, you know, just at the beginning of their marketing journey, and finding new clients, but also setting up systems, and, you know, resource, client resources, there’s a lot of heavy lifting there, and you have perhaps more time, but not much money, and you’ve gotta choose how you use that carefully. But on the flip side of that, you’ve got really busy practitioners, who feel really stuck as to how to grow, because every minute of their day is just, they’re juggling so many hats. And I know some of the things I’m seeing it being used for more frequently now are helping with marketing copy. Like, I think so many of our practitioners, like, are incredible at what they do, but business and entrepreneurialism is, like, a separate sort of spirit. It’s a separate part of the brain, and some of us have that and love it, but many healers and practitioners do not.
Tammy: Yeah.
Amie: And they remain…
Tammy: It’s a really different skill set. It’s a really different skill set. We’ve learned an entire human body. We’ve learned an entire motivational and counseling techniques to talk to the psychology of a human, in their health crisis, and that… We spent a lot of time, you know? It took us years to understand that. Similarly, it takes years to understand that skill set of marketing, and messaging, and presentation, and storytelling. But now we have a little assistant to be able to do that.
Amie: Absolutely. Which means if you do love it, you can expedite what you’re doing, by either getting the assistant to do the groundwork for you, and you polish it, or, you know, feeding in some inputs, and having it be polished by AI. But, if that thing doesn’t float your boat, if that just makes you wanna cry, the thought of writing social media captions, or add, you know, copy, or an email newsletter, you can get support to actually tick those, you know, marketing pieces of your business off, with very little effort. And I saw something really fascinating, just in the last couple of weeks, that someone has worked out how to program a particular type of AI software to clone your facial features, and then, with the right inputs, you can generate photo shoots of your likeness, in whatever clothes and location you wish, and whilst I don’t think that’s gonna replace branding shoots, and the energy of live photos, if we think about how laborious it is coming up with content for socials…
Tammy: I agree.
Amie: Gotta feed the beast. Just, rather, just having some basic images, where you don’t have to do your hair and makeup, and get the lighting right, just to be able to instantly produce something to improve your visibility, I think is also just such a game-changer for practitioners too.
Tammy: Yeah, absolutely, and it’s that old adage of, are you somebody who works with the blank page, or does the blank page freak you out? And in a similar way, if you’ve never had a headshot before, but somebody’s taken a nice shot of you at a birthday or at an event, and that is actually something that looks like you, and already represents you, and you’re in a good mood, and you feel confident about it, and then you take AI to do some… It’s better than having a blank page and doing nothing. Similarly, there is some really great tools out there that you can use for…you can write a transcript. You can basically copy your features, and the way that you talk, and your mannerisms, and copy a certain period of time, and then AI will actually clone you as a presenter. And so, for many of us, you know, we do a lot of research into the practitioner dynamic, because I run masterminds and accelerator programs. And for those, we dive into what makes you unique. And many of our clinicians, their least favorite skill, their darkest side, their, you know, we don’t like to use the term “weakness,” but their blind spot is presenting. And they’re amazing sages. They have wisdom and knowledge to share. They are doctor as teacher, and the embodiment of that, one on one. But if you put them in front of a camera, they completely freak out and melt down. If you put them in front of people, they do. But, if we were to take their wisdom and their knowledge, and create an opportunity for them to share their wisdom and knowledge through an AI tool like that, it’s better than not having their wisdom and knowledge out in the world. It’s better than it being stuck in their head, and not being useful to their clients while they’re not there, you know?
Amie: Oh, I 100% agree. And, you know, I appreciate that perhaps all of us would love to be great at presenting. All of us would love to be comfortable to just flip the camera on and speak to camera, and not be sort of searching for our words, or feeling really nervous, and perhaps looking back on it feeling disappointed, you know, at how we’ve come across. But you’re right. It would be such a shame for the amount of wisdom and experience and expertise that our practitioners have in their brains to remain in there, or be limited to sharing one-on-one in a situation that feels more comfortable. So, to be able to create a likeness, and feed it your words, and actually use our technology to put our message out into the world, to elevate humanity, to educate people on a larger scale, that doesn’t require our time and energy, and also, from a business perspective, actually give potential clients insight into who we are, what we stand for, what we know, what we’re passionate about, and allow that to magnetize them into our world, you know, I think that can only be a good thing too. And, look, maybe that’s the bridge also. You know, the mirror neurons, I think the more we sort of see ourselves showing up, doing a great job, that can be the gap between, “Oh, no, actually, I do look, you know, I come across on camera. That sounded amazing. I’m really pleased I got that message out there.” And that can also build confidence to eventually step in front of the camera, if that’s what you wanna do, but.
Tammy: Oh, I couldn’t agree more. Like, the first time that I had my website updated, and a graphic designer listened to me enough that they reflected back visually the type of and level of professionalism I had, and the vision I had for my clients, and the change I wanted to make in my local community, for my multimodality clinic, as soon as I saw it, all of a sudden, I stepped up. I was like, “Oh, this is a possibility for me. This is something different.” And similarly, every time I see myself or my mentees go through a actual photo shoot, same deal. There’s something that pulls the newest version of you through. And if this is the bridge to get us there, I think it’s fantastic.
A little note on that, and I know a lot of people listening will be like, “Yeah, but that’s fake.” And the truth is, this is a place where we need to have ethics, and we need to have a conversation about being transparent in our use of AI, and ensure that we are making it clear to the people who are listening that we’re utilizing AI so that we can get our message to you, while I, you know, I can get my message to you while I’m not there. We’re utilising AI in a consult so I can be more human and be more present with you. I’m currently utilising AI, and here’s the security details of the particular AI program I’m using to transcribe, so that I can be here, as the practitioner you need me to be. It’s being transparent and intentional with our use of AI that allows us not to be so fearful of it because we’re being real about its use and our purpose in its use.
Amie: I think, you know, everyone has to decide their own comfort level, decide where it’s going to make the most difference to them, and really get clear on why they’re using it. And if you can reconcile that in yourself, and be fully comfortable and own that, then there’s really nothing to be afraid of, at the end of the day. I’d love to ask you…obviously, you mentor many practitioners, and you’re also technologically savvy, and an early adopter. And so I’m sure you are at the forefront of seeing how this is being applied in clinic and in other ways in business, and in our profession. Outside of the things we’ve covered already, where else are you seeing this make a big difference to praccies?
Tammy: Oh, my, goodness. Where?
Amie: How long’s a piece of string?
Tammy: Exactly. So, clinically, we see it in the transcriptions, the summaries, the treatment notes, all those people who are the people that go, “I’m gonna get it to you by the close of business on Friday,” and then they find themselves over the weekend randomly trying to search, and do all that kind of stuff. So, summarizing treatment notes, getting them out, ensuring that they’ve got communication with their current clients. The research aspect is huge. Right at the beginning, and it’s one of those fears that has managed to kind of cross over to now. “Oh, AI hallucinates. It’s making up,” you know, “it’s making up posts,” sorry, “scientific articles, and it’s hallucinating.” And the truth of it is there is very specific AIs that have been programmed not to do that now, things like Elicit, and Scribe, and some others that are really specific, deep research tools.
And, of course, I’m a big believer of the human-AI-human sandwich. So, the human, we start by prompting it properly. AI, the tool that helps, and then us, human on the end, that edits, that discerns, that double-checks, that, you know, notices biases, that brings in the human element. So, it’s human-AI-human sandwich. And so, ensuring that you’re not just doctor googling, and then pretending that it’s got the right answer, we go, of course, and do our PubMed search afterwards, just to double-check, and we do all the other things that we need to, to do our duty of care.
But, research tools are extraordinary in AI. Being able to research and put literature reviews together is mind-blowingly easy now. And it was one of, again, one of those real hurdles to get over for a lot of practitioners who really wanted to get into research before, but didn’t have a means or understanding of what was actually required. It’s quite quick and easy to do those things now. Then, of course, clinically, we’re having translation for people who have clients that speak languages other than English. We’ve also got tools to be able to ensure that they are keeping in contact with those clients. We’ve got workflow tools that allow clients to get information about their testing. We’ve got pathology tools that do all of the research for you, to look at whether there is a trend, whether things are within a certain reference range, for us as natural health practitioners, versus others, or optimal health or otherwise. And the…oh, gosh. There’s so much, especially in the testing part of healthcare, at the moment, that’s really rapidly changing.
Then we’ve got the connection to wearables. So, a lot of AI is in wearables. Our CGMs at the moment are all updating to have AI tools on them, so, continuous glucose monitoring, and it’s a mechanism to give feedback. And then, business. Business cases is, oh, my goodness. Marketing, messaging, social media, blog posts. Giving advice, business advice. You can utilize these tools as business coaches, and ask for things like getting a clear prompt of, “Looking at my last six months, and taking into account my top three goals are working less than twenty hours a week, seeing X amount of clients, and having Fridays off, give me the top five things that I could be doing to optimize my profit and ensure that I’m not in burnout for the next six months. My income goal is X. What else could I do?” It’s phenomenal at giving that type of advice. And again, these types of things are cost-prohibitive before, but you’re able to engage in a way that you wouldn’t usually.
We have PR. We have people writing, you know, media releases, grant proposals. We’ve got people who are getting scholarships that wouldn’t have been able to before, because that is a minefield, especially for the neurodivergent pracs that, you know, forms can really do our heads in. Then we’ve got the personal side of things. We see a lot of small business owners doing it alone, and the most recent research has shown that the number one use of AI is as a personal counsellor. And that went up from the third spot in 2024, to now the first spot. First use, globally, is actually having a personal counsellor, which is a shame, but, again, is accessible, immediately, and it will usually get people onto the track of, “Oh, this is a thing. And now I’m narrowing down what I need a personal counsellor for.” “Oh, I need a psychotherapist, or a X, Y, Z. I will go and book in with them,” because they’re much clearer, because they’ve been able to go through that.
And then, yeah, the other one is looking at how you can look after yourself as a practitioner, rather than all of the other people around you and your business, how you can look after yourself. So, scheduling, time management, Notion, Monday, others that are sorting out your inbox for you. There’s so many mechanisms that are making life so much easier. And again, we wouldn’t have usually had access to those types of time management people, or experts before, and now we do.
Amie: It’s almost like, you know, that journey from A to B used to be a straight line, and now we’re collapsing time…
Tammy: Yeah.
Amie: …and really just quantum-leaping to what our next steps need to be, rather than having to go through the process of working things out, making, you know, errors, wasting time, money, resources, trying to get to what we need. And I think knowing, you know, for lots of reasons that otherwise might be out of reach for people, this gives people an avenue to take action, to have things reflected back, and sometimes that’s enough for you to go, “Oh, that is true for me,” or, “No, I don’t think it’s that,” and then just to keep things moving forward. And it’s almost like… And I don’t wanna say this, because I’m kind of thinking of, like, dystopian movies as this is coming to mind, but, like, it’s almost like a confidant, counsellor, business coach, assistant in one. And if we can engage and utilize that in a healthy way, understanding that, its limitations, but allowing it to move us forward so we can actually find the right humans that we need, or take the right actions to get the results we’re after, for very little, sometimes no cost, I think that has to be a recipe for more joy, more peace, more freedom, claiming your personal time back, more satisfaction and fulfillment in your practice, and course-correcting more quickly. You know, I think most practitioners can relate to starting out one way, usually solo practice, and then not becoming victims of their own success, but reaching a point where it’s like, “This model isn’t working for me anymore, because of, my goals have changed,” or, you know, “I want to do something different with my skills,” and this really is going to fast-track our ability to shift, pivot, and make use of our skills in a way that actually feels really good to us too.
Tammy: Certainly. In my membership, I have had, over the years, and the masterminds, I always get practitioners who are, “Oh, here’s the thing I was going to do. Here’s the course that has been sitting in the back of my mind forever. This is what my clients ask me about all the time, and I bang on about this. I say the same thing over and over and over again, and if I could just tell IVF couples, if I could just tell perimenopausal women, if I could just tell my IBS clients…” And they’ve been sitting on these ideas for such a long time. Honestly, the past six months since I’ve been teaching the AI tools that are actually helping, we have seen a huge amount. These people who are like, “Oh, I’m so tech-phobic, and I can’t possibly do that, but I really wanna get this course out,” the shift is exponential, and it’s so fast. As soon as they know how to ask the right questions, the course idea that they’ve had, and all of the content that they’ve been sitting on, suddenly gets turned into a course outline. That course outline suddenly gets turned into PowerPoint presentations. That PowerPoint presentations suddenly gets turned into a website, sales page. That sales page converts, because you’re optimising it for SEO and all these other things that we wouldn’t usually think of as a practitioner, and then we’ve got a launch process that’s written for us. It can be done in, like, an hour and a half, and they’ve been sitting on this thing, that could help thousands of people that they already have sitting there as their clients in their community, that they’re already helping, but it’s never been able to be distilled out of their heads. And, you know, one of my beautiful clients has been sitting on this idea for a webinar for three and a half years, and it’s only been since she’s learned, the past twelve weeks, about AI, she got it done, she got the sales page done, she learned how to code the back end of her website so that it would work, because you can ask ChatGPT how to do that tech stuff. And then she set up the autoresponder sequence, and she just launched it only two weeks ago. She… And the amount of people that she helps in person-to-person, one at a time, is just going to balloon now that she’s got this opportunity to talk on a bigger scale. Yes.
Amie: Oh, that makes my heart so happy, because I think there’s nothing sadder than reaching the end of our life or the end of our career with all of this knowledge inside us that should be outside of us and in the world, and it provides another avenue for people to engage with our work, you know, in perhaps more accessible ways, outside of one-on-one, if it’s a location thing or a budget thing. It also provides a beautiful resource that we can bundle in with our services, to support our clients. But also, as a professional, it’s like, you can exponentially increase your income, which allows you to reinvest in yourself, your family, your business, your clients, your profession, in a way that actually doesn’t mean you have to compromise the hours you sleep, or your own self care, or time with your children, and it’s the best of both worlds. And I don’t know, if anyone’s listening to this, I’m sure you’re starting to be like, “Okay. Well, how do I do this? I wanna do this. And I don’t know where to start.” So, I’m going to give you…we’ve got some amazing resources, actually, to point you to. We were really lucky. Tammy actually just did a webinar for Designs for Health today, on AI, which will be available soon. We’ll pop a link for that in the show notes. If you are in WA, I believe… Is that coming up, your talk with Rener?
Tammy: Yeah. Yeah. I’m going to be at the Rener Expo, the annual Rener Expo, and we’ll be walking through proper case studies, just like I described to you now, of practitioners and how they’ve actually utilized it, and got, you know, 10 hours back, or made these things that they’ve been sitting on for such a long time, in an hour and a half, you know. It’s just incredible.
Amie: Incredible. Well, if you are in WA, do not miss that. The Rener Expo is always fantastic, and… But, don’t panic if you’re not in WA, because Tammy can still help you. Tammy has, we’ll put the link to her free resources in the show notes as well. There’s a lot more…there’s a lot in there, but in particular, I want to point you to the free top 20 AI tools list…
Tammy: For practitioners, yes.
Amie: For practitioners. And that will be a beautiful place to start. And I also understand you’ve got a workshop up on your website, that people can purchase, called Clone Yourself. Can you tell us how that works? What they’re gonna learn?
Tammy: Yes. So, Clone Yourself with AI, you know, we often have that notion of, “If there was just two of me right now,” you know? Especially when we are talking to our clients, and we’re doing that one-on-one, and we’re doing the humaning, and we’re doing the person-to-person, if we could just have a little, you know, version of us, that’s over there writing the newsletter, and over there, you know, writing the blog post that we said we would do, however long ago, and writing the da da da da… So, Cloning Yourself with AI is specifically for those people who go, “Oh, if there was just an admin version of me, or there was just another version of me that could do the other stuff, that isn’t the practitioner side of things,” that one’s for you. All those people that are really frustrated that when they put things into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or any of these other large language models, that they’re spitting out really generic, really robotic, very strange, emoji and dash-friendly kind of stuff. Trying to get it to speak in your speak, that’s the point. So, we, in Clone Yourself, we create customised versions of that, that are a version of you, speaking like you, sounding like you, with your values, your vision, your mission, your branding, and giving you feedback, basically as you, which is a fascinating experience to do. And then by the end of it, you have 30 days of social media made, you’ve got 12 blog posts made, you’ve got your newsletters sorted for the next 3 months, and you know how to do that for yourself over and over again, and you’ve got your own version of you, to be able to do with what you will.
Amie: Oh, my gosh. I am signing up tonight, because I absolutely relate to just wishing I had variations of me to do the things. And as I said, I have been using AI, in a limited way, and it has been a game-changer, but quite clearly, from our conversation today, the gap between how I’m using it, and how probably a lot of practitioners are using it, and the potential for it to free up our time, bring more joy in our practice, is essentially limitless, from, is what I’m hearing, and it’s really only about how we wanna shape and mold it, the kinds of areas we want more support in, that we can program it to do. Leaving the fun stuff, the things that we really like and that we’re good at for us. And I think, you know, as we wrap up this conversation, something you said to me in our pre-chat, and mentioned as well this afternoon, was that we’re really engaging in this technology to allow us to be more human…
Tammy: Completely.
Amie: …to be more present. This isn’t a replacement for ourselves. We’re not becoming more synthetic. We’re not moving into an artificial universe. It is in really creating staff members, or versions of ourselves, so that we can do more of what we do, in a more personal and connected way, and therefore actually be less distracted and less digital at the same time.
Tammy: Absolutely. Just being more human. I think that’s what it’s all about, utilising AI to be more human. And reiterating exactly what you said, that [inaudible 00:44:23] I mean, and that’s an even bigger topic that I absolutely… Like, what does it actually mean to be human right now, when all of this is about, and we’re seeing, you know, fake versions of this, that, and the other online? But then, truly, what’s a deeper question for us to ask? How can I be my most human? How can I be my most human for this human that’s in front of me for this telehealth experience? How can I be most human for the humans that I love in my life right now? How can I be more human, and most human, for this sunset that’s, you know, coming up, and I’m present to, because the other parts of my life are just automated, or delegated, and I can actually be more human? Yeah.
Amie: Oh, my gosh. I feel like that’s the perfect note to end on, and I think, yeah, I’m sure everyone listening to this is feeling inspired, and lit up, and really probably a lot more at peace with the idea of using AI, to the degree they feel comfortable, in the areas they need the most support in, for very little investment, but really huge returns on getting back into their own life. Is there anything else you wanna share in closing, anything we haven’t touched on today you want to make mention of before we say goodbye?
Tammy: No. I just really want everyone to have a…go in with a curious mind, just the same as we do for anything that is new to us, or different, and start somewhere. Don’t keep ignoring it. Start somewhere. Open your ChatGPT. Open up a little hidey. Open up a little, whatever little gateway, just to start playing, and seeing what it is capable of to support the areas of your life that you might need to support, so that you can be more human. Yeah.
Amie: Yes, please. Was it Marie Forleo who said, you know, the world needs the special gifts that only you have? Like, don’t allow them to be trapped inside you because you’re buried in admin, or are in, you know, not a fan of social media, or you don’t have the time and the energy to distill that course, you know, information and knowledge you have inside you into the course, when you can get support to do that now very quickly. I’m really excited for the future of our profession, and the dreams and the gifts that all of our practitioners have to contribute to the world. And, Tammy, I can’t thank you enough, and I’m sure I speak for all of us for how much we appreciate you and your gifts, and for taking us through AI in practice today.
Tammy: Thanks so much. It was a great conversation, Amie.
Amie: Yeah. Thanks, Tammy. And for all of our listeners, thank you so much for joining us today. Remember, you can find all of the show notes and resources I’ve mentioned down below, and on the Australian Designs for Health website. I’m Amie Skilton, and this is “Wellness by Designs.”