Why Agency Owners Are Burning Out (And How AI Automation Fixes It)

Agency burnout is killing the creative industry. Here’s what stinks: brilliant agency leaders are working 80-hour weeks, losing employees every 18 months, and sacrificing their personal lives for client service.

Over my 40-year career in business storytelling, I’ve watched talented agency owners grind themselves into the ground. They’re drowning in manual processes, hemorrhaging institutional knowledge, and convinced that working harder is the only path to excellence.

BUT there’s a breakthrough that changes everything: AI automation that actually works.

Meet Alane Boyd: The Agency Automation Expert Who Solved Employee Retention

Alane Boyd is a serial entrepreneur and workflow automation expert with almost two decades of tech experience. As Co-CEO of Biggest Goal, she focuses on AI and automation to streamline company processes and increase bottom-line results.

Her credentials speak volumes:

• Three-time published author
• Recognized as Top Leader under 40
• Finalist for Top Companies to Watch in 2021
• Tools voted Best for Remote Work in 2022
• Featured on SXSW, HuffPost, and Entrepreneur

But here’s what makes her approach revolutionary: when Alane built her 125-employee agency, her average employee tenure was seven years. Industry average? Eighteen months.

The AI Agent Revolution: Beyond Manual Automation

Most agencies are doing AI wrong. They’re using ChatGPT manually, creating AI fatigue, and getting inconsistent results.

Alane’s solution? AI agents that integrate seamlessly into existing workflows.

Here’s how it works: Move a deal to “proposal stage” in your CRM, and the AI agent automatically creates a customized proposal using your templates, call notes, and company voice. No manual prompting. No AI fatigue. No inconsistent results.

Three Steps to Agency AI Automation Success

Alane revealed the foundation every agency needs:

1. Train Your Team on AI Properly Don’t assume your employees know how to use AI effectively. Hire experts to train them, and establish company-wide AI policies.

2. Start with Basic Automation Begin with your project management system. Create templates and automatic workflows based on status changes. These are the building blocks for advanced AI integration.

3. Standardize Everything Standardize file naming, processes, and templates. You can’t automate chaos. Without standardization, asking AI to find something is like telling an intern to locate a file without providing the client name, location, or description.

The Business Case: Why Agencies Must Adopt AI Now

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: agencies without AI automation will be priced out of competition within two years.

The numbers are staggering:

• $1.2 trillion lost annually in North American businesses due to miscommunication
• This equals one lost day of productivity per person per week
• AI-enhanced agencies can deliver services at 4X-5X lower costs than traditional agencies

Park’s EI + AI = ROI Framework in Action

This episode perfectly demonstrates my EI + AI = ROI: Your Return on Intelligence concept created through the StoryCycle Genie™. Alane’s emotional intelligence in understanding agency pain points, combined with AI automation mastery, creates a remarkable return on investment.

The classical principle remains: understand your audience’s deepest struggles, then provide systematic solutions that transform their reality.

Getting Started with Agency AI Automation

Alane recommends using N8N (n8n.io) for building automated workflows. This platform allows agencies to:

• Integrate multiple AI models (Anthropic, OpenAI, Perplexity)
• Create custom workflows without coding
• Maintain and update AI agents as technology evolves

The Future of Agency Management

We’re witnessing the emergence of billion-dollar companies run by single individuals powered by AI agents. The agencies that survive and thrive will be those that embrace both classical systematic thinking AND modern AI precision.

The choice is clear: adapt now or become the Blockbuster of the agency world.

What’s In It For You

• AI can help agency owners avoid burnout by simplifying systems.
• AI agents can automate repetitive tasks, freeing up time for creativity.
• Companies that resist AI may struggle to compete in the future.
• Automation can significantly reduce administrative workload.
• The future of agencies may involve one-person billion-dollar companies powered by AI.

Chapters:

Links:

• Alane Boyd on LinkedIn
• Automate Your Agency podcast
• What users are saying about the StoryCycle Genie™

Deepen Your Storytelling Mastery: Three Essential Episodes to Explore

To amplify your transformation from today’s conversation, these carefully selected past episodes provide complementary classical wisdom:

• How to Effectively Position Your B2B Brand With April Dunford – Builds foundational understanding of positioning methodology and complements Laura’s strategic enemy approach with tactical positioning implementation.
• Growing Revenue and Retention for Your SaaS Brand with Dan Balcauski – Demonstrates how positioning drives pricing power and revenue growth, showing the direct business impact of strategic positioning decisions.
• The Five Essential Elements (the H.E.A.R.T.) of the Perfect Pitch With Ben Wiener – Reveals how positioning translates into compelling presentations and investor communications, applying strategic enemy principles to pitch storytelling.

Each recommendation selected to deepen your mastery through The Business of Story’s archive of classical storytelling wisdom enhanced by modern application.

Connect with me:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/parkhowell/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BusinessOfStory
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0ssjBuBiQjG9PHRgq4Fu6A
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ParkHowell
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parkhowell/
• Website: https://businessofstory.com/abt/

Transcript of Show:

Park Howell: Elaine, welcome to the show.

Alane Boyd: Thanks Park, I’m so excited to be here.

Park: AI agency automation. I mean, that’s really what we are talking about today. And when I asked you in the, in our guest rap sheet that we always set that I really liked the one thing. So I like to get focused on one thing. And the one thing we’re going to address today is about how you help agency owners to keep from getting burned out by simplifying their systems. so that they can actually do better work on behalf of their clients and not kill themselves in the process.

Alane: I mean, it’s so hard when you’re in that agency life. You started the company, you’ve got so much institutional knowledge, and there is so much nuance in the details that now with AI and AI agents can help alleviate just so much stress. And I always say it’s not about necessarily getting more done in the day, it’s about getting done with the day so you could go and do other things outside of work.

Park: I love that. Getting done with the day. I like to get done with my day so I can go play golf or go for a hike or do anything but what I’m doing right now. Although I love what I’m doing right now, we all have another life out there. How did you get into, you know, the management world and helping fix broken processes for people and specifically for agencies?

Alane: Well, I created an agency that we did social media management and reputation management for car dealerships. I built that up for 11 years, had 125 employees and I sold the company in 2018. And a couple of things happened. One, when I sold the company, they were blown away with how I had every process documented, had a full knowledge base, had a project management system with everything you could imagine. And they were just so enamored with what I had built. And they said, before you leave, will you stay on for a period of time and help us put in place? This was a much larger company than mine. They wanted what I built. And so I said, yeah, sure. Okay. So I’d had, I had my exit agreement and then I had an employment agreement for 18 months where I stayed on and did that. And through that, I realized that what I built was I took for granted. Not every company does that. And after I sold and I got, I was bored in retirement. I just was not meant to not do anything. needed purpose. I was, I was 34. I was 34. So I just really reflected on what would I want to do next? What did I enjoy? And it was when I decided in my agency to put in processes and I built my own Zaps from Zapier back in the day. What I saw is that people got to leave work and the employees started staying longer.

Park: Well, you’re too young for retirement.

Alane: And I thought, wow, this is a culture thing where people like coming to work and they can, they like leaving work. They could go on vacation and nobody bothered them. And so I thought, well, maybe other people need what I built. And so that was the basis of the start of the company. We helped put in automation. We helped put in project management systems like ClickUp and Asana and Monday. But as AI became more developed and AI agents were there, that was just such a seamless piece to add to what we were doing because that puts, that’s like having an intern on your team doing work for you, just waiting to do work.

Park: So I’ve got to do a sanity check here. You were able to bring this efficiency to, and these tools into your agency that made your colleagues’ lives easier, and presumably they were getting more done faster so they could leave earlier, but they weren’t leaving. it because you were able to create somewhat of a flow in their world to that productivity that it actually became more fun being at the office and producing things versus get me the hell out of here?

Alane: Yeah, it was social media and when we started the company, social media wasn’t even the word yet. They didn’t have a word for it. And so it was so early on. so by the business, we attracted very young people. They were early 20s, maybe right out of college. When they get out of college, they think work is gonna be so much fun and they went to school and they’ve got all this education. And then they realized the world world is not like that. And so you see a lot of people leave jobs, you know, after six months a year, they do a lot of hopping around, especially in that younger demographic. And once they realized they’re talking with their friends and they’re like, I got to go on vacation for a week and nobody asked me anything. They started to appreciate the things that we had been put in place and they could, they just stayed. So like our average employee was there seven years.

Park: That’s awesome. Yeah, especially in the advertising social media world, the average churn is about 18 months.

Alane: Mm-hmm. And man, they’re leaving with institutional knowledge. I don’t care how good your training is for a new employee. There is still time that they have to learn your services, your business, the software tech stack that you use. There’s so much for new employee to learn that every time you lose somebody, you are losing so much more than just a person walking out of the door. To train a person to where they were is going to take a minimum of 12 months.

Park: Yeah, I’ve heard it’s like a 10x cost against their salary to be able to, you know, have to go out and replace them and retrain, let alone all the institutional knowledge that you lose as the business owner when someone walks out the door.

Alane: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Park: So you got in that you were you had retired, you had made money. It sounded like you were doing pretty well in the early 30s. And you’re like, OK, this retirement stuff isn’t for me. I’ve got too much going on. You decided to what help agencies? I mean, with that company that bought you, is that kind of a like a wake up call for you? Say, hey, there’s an opportunity here to help agencies. And by the way, everyone listening to this episode is not necessarily an agency. And I can assume that what you’re going to share with us today, anybody can incorporate into their business.

Alane: Mm-hmm.

Alane: Absolutely. mean, we work with all kinds of companies. So I have an agency background with the company that I built, but we work with every industry because every industry has internal operations that can be better efficient using AI. but to back to your question is I was, I was a little bit even naive, even at that point where I decided to start another company and I just decided I will do consulting and I’m going to see if anybody would be interested in. this. And I was even like, will anybody buy it? Like I really was that naive to think that companies didn’t need what I, my expertise in that. And so I just started and it, and it was slow to park. Like I was really tired after getting, having my company bought. And so I did want to have a break, but I started off slowly and it was COVID really started to put pressure on companies because people weren’t in office and It wasn’t that the things that were slowing them down weren’t already there. It’s that they didn’t see them because they were in office. And so they couldn’t see the conversations happening like they could when they see people are in Slack huddles all day or they’re on Zoom calls all day with their internal team trying to figure out where do I find this? Where do I go for this? I have this question, you help me? Which just… 20 minutes a day of bringing somebody out of their day, that’s a month’s worth of time for that one employee over a year. That’s a huge, that’s just one ask. Somebody taking away from one thing in their day is 20 minutes. You, guarantee, are getting asked more than one thing in a day.

Park: Mm-hmm.

Park: And have you seen that report done by Harris Poles and Grammarly? And they’ve done this study over the last couple of years and they have found that $1.2 trillion are lost annually in North American businesses due to miscommunication or that lack of accessing resources very quickly. And you know what that equates to Elaine? That is one last day of productivity per person per week. That’s pretty astonishing.

Alane: yep. Yeah, yeah. I have seen that. And there’s even a side here that without these systems and without automation being in place, your company lacks consistency. So the way Park does something is different than the way Elaine does something that’s different than the way Bo does something. And none of them may be the right way or some might be right, some might not be right, but your customers are seeing that they are not getting the… the level of services that they need, especially even just kicking off a new client. You got a new client, great. Now you need to kick off that new client. They don’t see the backend work that you’re doing to do that and they don’t care. They just want their services to start and the win that they want that they purchased from you. But there’s so much backend stuff happening. People just circling around on what to do, not having a template to work from. setting up Dropbox, like all kinds of things that are just bogging them down.

Park: So how do you fix that? And I know AI is at the center of what you do, but we are also getting this big AI pushback. People have such AI fatigue, and I think it’s really changed fatigue more than it is AI, because it’s here to stay. It is an evolution. It is a revolution in how we work. So how do you fix it, and how do you get people to buy into your AI-first approach to management?

Alane: Mm-hmm.

Alane: So the best way to think about it is with an agent, an AI agent being a part of it is that we do want to reduce the amount of places and things that a team member needs to do. And if you were just using custom GPTs or Claude and they’re manually going and writing prompts, all the AI is telling you is what you should do at that point, right? You went into a chat, you pasted something in, and then the AI is coming back and saying, this is what you should do, or this is what you should say. Every part of that is manual. It only reduced a piece of the time and.

Park: And it’s manual and individual, I might add, because you’re teammate next to you.

Alane: Exactly, that’s exactly what I was gonna say next. May do it differently. How they write the prompt is different. So that is all still a very manual process and still, like you said, fatigues employees. That’s another thing that they have to do. Well, with an agent, it’s already built into the process. So a simple one would be you’re using PipeDrive CRM, which is very popular, or HubSpot CRM, very popular with agencies and other companies. and you move that to proposal stage. So you’ve got a deal, you move it into proposal stage. Well, manual might look like, well, I’m gonna go to ChatGPT, I’m gonna take this chat transcript from our sales call, I’m gonna paste it in and I’m gonna ask it to put together a proposal. Okay, then I’m gonna take that and I’m gonna go put it back into Google Doc and I’m gonna edit it. Okay, long process, right? Well, with an AI agent, we just move it from PipeDriver HubSpot into the proposal stage. The AI agent goes, here’s the call transcript. here are my proposal templates to use, and I’m going to create a proposal based on the call notes, based on the services that this company offers, and it’s done. The person, all they had to do was shift the deal stage from one place to another, and that was it. And that’s where alleviating all this fatigue, the employee doesn’t need to be part of the AI process to get the benefits of the AI.

Park: And by what do you say, being a part of the AI process, you mean having to go in there, having to figure out their prompts, having to figure out if what general AI is giving them is accurate. Is it hallucinating? Does this actually make any sense? what do you have a platform that you’ve built that has already done all that prompting for them? Because you know what the end game is as a former agency owner and what the output needs to look like. And so what you tell your customers,

Alane: Mm-hmm.

Park: Don’t worry about the prompts. We’ve done all of that. Just feed our tool. It could be your CRM or whatever. Tell it to now create a proposal. Now proposal is written in the form and the tone and voice of the company and of the brand. then voila, they got it.

Alane: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s a very simplified version of it. Yeah. But we work with them. So we’re very transparent. We build the workflows and a software called in the number eight in so N eight N.com and we build it in there, which is a tool for putting these automations together. And then we use different AI models because not every AI is the same. So we will do feasibility on which AI model is going to work best for. this instance, and we will do the prompting and feasibility and go back to the client and we’re working with them. Okay, how do you like this? And some of it might even be a little bit of a co back and forth on a call. Let’s work through what this looks like to get you the end result. And then once we get a green light, then we start doing some bigger testing with their team members. And then once we get, hey, this is working exactly how we want, then we deploy it to the rest of their team.

Park: How long does it take typically to ramp up an agency to use your system?

Alane: So we usually, so we start with strategic planning because one thing that we’ve noticed across the board with clients is they have a lot of ideas for where things could be automated. And that’s fantastic, right? There should be a lot of places, but where do you prioritize and where do you get the biggest impact is the first part. And then we need to know the process. So we work on documenting the process. What is your current state? I don’t want to know what you want in the future. I just want to know right now, what do you do? And then once we get the current state, we plan out the future state. You tell us where you want changes, and then we will also tell you where things could be automated with AI or AI agents, whatever it is, and we may make a future state. And the future state is what we will then build off of.

Park: And when you are selling your services, do you talk a lot about AI or is AI just like the table stakes for doing what you’re going to do so that people aren’t freaking out about AI and you say, don’t worry about it. Yes, it is AI infused, but what we’re really looking at are the outcomes that you will get.

Alane: Ah, Park, that is such a great question. I don’t think I’ve ever been asked it like that before. So I used to present it that way, where it was everything is automation, right? Doesn’t matter if you’re using AI or not, everything’s automation. And that worked for a while until AI agents came out. And now we have reversed it and we talk about AI first. And what I’m finding is companies… There are two types of companies, ones that are fighting it because they believe that it takes away from the customer experience. And those I’m going to move on from because we’re not on the same page.

Park: I mean, that’s silly that because what you’re doing is actually increasing the customer service experience because you are helping those that are providing the customer service, find flow in their own world so that when they show up to help a customer that’s always in need, that they’re showing up with the proper attitude, not an exhausted, God here. just climbed through nine different programs to figure out how to answer this problem.

Alane: you

Alane: I I just need to clip you saying that because I agree and it is really about that giving you the time to be a better person to be a people person, but not everybody sees it like that. but the other side and companies are really, know, AI has been mainstream for three years now. The people that were fighting it three years ago may not be the same people that are fighting it now. And they are seeing that they can’t keep up if they’re trying to do things the old school way. And so, and that’s part of how I reverse it is let’s talk about AI agents. And then if we don’t need an AI agent, that’s fine. We could just do regular automation. But they’re so intrigued by what an agent can do that if I didn’t talk about that first, we would feel outdated.

Park: So that’s the thing, huh? I mean, people are, even though they’ve got this AI fatigue and AI fear, quite honestly, you are leading the conversation with AI and say, yeah, it is infused, it’s embedded here, but that’s what makes it work so seamlessly.

Alane: Yeah, and I was just on a call right before this and this question came up is the owner of the company was asking, well, is every single one of the workflows we’re gonna be building with you all AI based? And no, not every workflow has to have it. A lot of companies could just use straight automation and it would alleviate 50 % of the work they’re doing. And I’m not over exaggerating that. If they had an automation from, yeah, from a closed deal,

Park: Mm hmm. Well, you’ve experienced it.

Alane: to launching new client onboarding and monday.com, like that is an automation that you don’t need AI for. But companies aren’t even doing that. So there’s things that a company could be doing. They could be going into make.com or Zapier and building some simple workflows that it would alleviate two hours of work per each workflow every time it was used. Two hours of work? That is a full-time employee over a period of time that doesn’t need to be doing administrative work.

Park: That’s a nine hole round on my golf course right here, if you saved me two hours. So give us a, no, I’m sorry. Go ahead. didn’t mean to cut you off. ahead.

Alane: Hahaha! I mean, when I had, go ahead. I know, was thinking about when I, in my previous agency, AI was not a thing. And we just alleviated that CRM one deal to new client onboarding in Asana. That’s what I use, I built my company agency on. And for every new client we onboarded, it did save two hours of work that we had an admin doing. Well, if we were onboarding 10 clients that week, that’s 20 hours of work, but not immediate. She can’t get all those done. in a week. So we really did alleviate her full-time role and moved her to another department.

Park: So was gonna ask you before I rudely interrupted, me one of your favorite case stories where you have seen a company just completely out of control, totally out of whack, trying to get stuff together in their management of their people and their resources and using your system.

Alane: You’re fine.

Alane: So one of the first things is a project management system. I find that there’s not a core hub for a lot of places to do work. So, you know, if they’re Microsoft based, it might be teamwork or they might be using ClickUp, Asana or Monday. And so a lot of times it’s just, let’s get that in as a core where everything else is going to come from is that core piece. And then adding in these other agents. So like an example would be a podcast agent. So we do this often for our podcast clients is you finish recording. Well, now you need to create a title. You need to create a show description. You might reference a previous episode and it’ll you’d have to go and pull that. Then you might be creating a blog. You’ll be creating social posts, everything that you would need to do for a podcast. Well, a team. would have almost a full-time person if they have it internal, if they’re not outsourcing it. And with an agent can do all of those things, create a draft in your Google Docs or in your work management system of everything that you needed. And then you have a human go through and say, all right, here, it got me 80 % of the way there. I didn’t need to go and pull this link from a previous episode. It already did that for me because I mentioned it and it had access to all of my previous links and it just those things tire people out if I can just go in and edit and I can be the brain everything else is so much simpler.

Park: And are you using an outside agent, say a Clod or a Chat GPT to do that? Or are you building this on your own proprietary platform, just calling those agents in to give you a hand?

Alane: Great question. So we build everything in 8N. So it’s not our software. It’s literally a software for building automated workflows and incorporating AI agents. So everything is built in there. And we will use, depending on the best workflow, the agent needs a brain and that’s AI, but the brain can change based on the best AI to use. So it might be Anthropic or it might be OpenAI or it might be Perplexity. And so it depends on the job that it’s doing that we would pair it with the right AI model brain.

Park: Mm-hmm and that software again did you say is 8 in in eight what?

Alane: N, N, eight, N. So the letter N, the number eight, and the letter N.

Park: gotcha. It’s funny, many years ago, back to my old agency days when we were doing a lot of branding, we helped brand a software startup tech company in Phoenix here, actually Scottsdale, and they were working with, now they’re just fully embedded with AI, they were working with big construction management, mean, large scale ERP programs for construction, and we called it, ended up calling it Innate. because it just innately understood you if you gave it the right Intel. And now with AI is probably even more innate. So I was kind of surprised at N8. And did you say it was N8n.com? Did I get that right? Okay. Cause I had it written down wrong on this. I don’t want to make sure I’m directing our listeners to the right place that they’re interested in.

Alane: wow!

Alane: Yes.

Alane: Yeah, so n8n.com takes you there. n8n.io is the main one, but n8n.com will take you to n8n.io.

Park: Great. And so that’s your platform that you work and you do the prompting and you get that all sculpted properly for the customer. So it’s very much customized for them. Does it learn as it goes? Does it get smarter on the customer start reading how the changes they make in their scripts for their podcasts or whatever so that down the road it actually its brain grows with your brain.

Alane: Mm-hmm.

Alane: That it depends. So there are gonna be certain database structures that we can incorporate it to learn from. Some don’t, some of the ones that we work don’t do that because you would need it two way, right? You would not just need an output, but you would also need a re-entered input. So it depends on how it’s built and it doesn’t always need to have it go both ways. So with the podcast one, it may not need to know how you’re doing things going forward, but we might need to change the prompt. So there is maintenance involved in these. And so it is never going to be a set and forget, but your maintenance on building them is a fraction of the time that it takes an employee to do the job.

Park: Mm-hmm.

Park: that leads to a question I hadn’t thought about. That is, so if I’m working with you and my agency and you and your team come in and get me up and running on this, how much of a learning curve is there for me as the owner of this within the agency to now stay on top of it, manage it, feed it, water it properly so that it keeps working? And do you train me how to do that?

Alane: So we have training cohorts that we do train on how to do it. We’re not going to train you on how to be a developer and develop them, but we train you on how to maintain them and understand some of the basics of what’s a RAC database. What is N8N? What is changing a model and a prompt look like for an agent and where do you go to do that? So we train on these. Pieces, now I would say you would need to be a technical founder if you’re a technical person on the team to be able to go in because it can be really easy for creative to be overwhelmed on something like that. we, yeah, so we do offer that as a training course that we will train on. And then we also have maintenance packages. So we’ll continue to maintain them. The maintenance isn’t just maintaining how the agent outputs.

Park: yeah.

Alane: It’s also, if you think about, if you have a lot of agencies that listen with WordPress, back in the day, you had to update your plugins, you had to update the latest version of WordPress. So if you’re familiar with what that looks like, the same thing happens with AI models. They need to be having the most updated version of that model. And so we are maintaining the upkeep of those AI agents for our clients if they’re on. on a package. there’s that technical side, but we really want to support our clients and going in. If you want to play around with the prompt and you want to change things or you’ve updated the template that you want to use, like we want you to feel confident in being able to go and do that.

Park: So you are obviously brilliant at this. mean, at a young age in your career, you built a very stalwart agency and then you sold it. You could have retired. You got bored, didn’t want to retire. You’re back into this doing it. You obviously have a good sense of trending and what’s happening in the world, especially the agency world. What will happen to agencies that don’t adopt some sort of AI in the management? of their company. What do you see happening down the road? And give us a time frame.

Alane: So what I think is gonna happen is if you’re going after FIFA and you wanna do a job for them and you’re, you have sent, know, they’re probably getting two or three proposals from different companies on the job, you will not be able to compete. You will be 4X, 5X times larger in the amount of money that you are gonna charge for that. There are predictions that, in the next 10 years, you will have billion dollar companies of one person because the rest of the company will be built with AI agents. And I do. And I will say the reason that I feel like that is something that is obtainable is that I’m in an organization called EO stands for Entrepreneurs Organization. And I was part of an AI panel recently and there is a guy.

Park: Do you believe that?

Park: Mm-hmm.

Alane: who has built, he is not a software developer, he has built a software platform, has built all kinds of technology for his new company, getting revenue, and he is the only person in it. And he is using AI as his assistant to build everything. companies that are starting out that way are going to be able to adapt so much faster, because they’re already starting that way. I mean, think about the infrastructure like Blockbuster. companies go out of business because they can’t keep up. Like that just happens. So the timeframe, I think a year from now, I think companies will still be able to maintain something. But two years from now, just like Blockbuster, when Netflix came out, it took a couple of years and they tanked. It wasn’t even a slow process. They tanked and couldn’t keep up. And there are companies like that, that you have so many employees. You have so many ways doing things the old school way that you can’t

Park: Mm-hmm.

Alane: Change you can’t adapt.

Park: You know, you just gave me a metaphor that popped up in my head when you were talking about that. A couple summers ago, I took our sons Parker and Kaden down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon for a seven day river run. And it was just an absolute blast. And what made me think of it is what’s happening today in AI and how it is making so many more things. I mean, almost every function more efficient, more effective. And I picture it. that trending is kind of like the Colorado River. If you’ve ever been on it, and I know you’re up in the Denver area, Boulder area, maybe you’ve been down or been on the Colorado, that is a wild, raging, moving river. And that’s kind of what I equate AI and what’s happening around us right now. So you could either be standing there looking at it going, wow, that’s pretty incredible. You could tip your big toe in there, get it wet, kind of get a sense where you can jump in and you’re swimming trunks and probably drown.

Alane: Mm-hmm.

Park: But what you’re saying is no, get in one of those big 12 man rafts, fully prepared with all the food at the beginning of the headwaters, which is right now, by the way, of what’s happening and get yourself prepared. Find a guide like yourself and then run those rapids and be in control of what’s happening. And by the way, it’s a lot more efficient to run through the Grand Canyon on the Colorado than it is hiking it.

Alane: Yes, I love that analogy and it’s so true. you know, if you’re in business, you want to either have an exit or you want to continue to have it find your lifestyle. You’re not looking to have to close because you can’t make payroll. So adapting and putting these things in place, having a life jacket, having a raft, having some other people on your team so you can cruise happily and have fun. That’s the point of having a company.

Park: But you got to do it now. You can’t be waiting because you’re going to see lots of rafts of your competitors blowing by you as you stand on the shore trying to figure out what you want to do next.

Alane: There was a recent study that McKinsey and company did, and I’m not gonna get the numbers exactly right, but it was like out of the 90 % of companies that are trying to figure out AI, you have a 65 % failure rate if you’re trying to do it on your own. You need an implementation partner. It might’ve been higher. I told you I may not have the numbers right, but it was like, if you’re trying to figure this out by yourself, you’re failing already.

Park: I’m surprised it’s that low. Yeah, I would think.

Park: Yeah, one of my clients is Green Irony and they are like the go-to AI resource for Salesforce and MuleSoft. They do a whole ton of work with them. And I’ve really in the last year and half have had a peek inside the efficiency train working with them. We did their branding once the old fashioned way, and then we ran them through the StoryCycle Genie again about a year later as they have rebranded because things have moved so quickly around them in the AI world.

Alane: Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Park: And yeah, they are indispensable to their customers because they can go in. are like, I mean, they’re like Navy SEALs in AI to help optimize your Salesforce, MuleSoft and whatever. And so you are doing the same thing for agencies, basically.

Alane: Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, one thing that I was thinking about when you said that, because it’s truly amazing when you get to see how efficient things can run. like that example you were sharing, and I see that from, I’m on a sales call or even just somebody that reached out and like, hey, would you mind doing a call with me? And they always say, I would love to have what you have in place because they can see the automation. You know, if somebody wants me to do a speaking engagement, I have a template ready to go. for even my email communication. And so, and they’re always saying, I would love to have what you build. Your systems are amazing. I see it as an end user and it’s incredible. But they want those things, but they don’t wanna put the work in. There’s not a magic wand. You have to put the effort in. You have to have a software stack. You can’t automate people. You automate processes and technology, not people. So…

Park: Mm-hmm.

Alane: You have to have technology, you have to invest in technology. And then you have to put in the work to define what your process is so that we can define what the automation looks like. But I see a lot of companies fail there. They just want, well, it shouldn’t be that way. Well, then you’re gonna stay stuck.

Park: Yeah, I mean, that is so true. So are you finding an uptick in your business? Are you finding, because it sounds like you’re kind of ahead of the trend and now people have to get kind of caught up with you with what you can be doing on their behalf.

Alane: Yeah, I was looking at, so my business partner and I, we just do a small 20 minute podcast episode, just him and I, where we talk about a topic. And we were looking at the data this morning and there is a topic that we covered in March on AI agents. So six months ago, that is the number one listen to episode right now. And it’s because we were so far ahead, people didn’t know even know what that buzzword. word was back in March. So yeah, we’re starting to see and I do a lot of speaking engagements. And so once that I had, you know, six months ago where I’m talking about this, people are going, I heard you, but I couldn’t understand you. But now I get it. And they they’re ready to start talking more about it. So I am seeing people are catching up. They’re hearing it more often and they’re getting scared that if they don’t do something, then their business is going to suffer.

Park: Yeah, and that line, I heard you, but I didn’t understand you. And I don’t think it’s on you. I think it’s on how fast everything is changing with AI that it’s really hard, even for us that are on top of a lot of it, in our own little specialties, to stay on top of it. And then to be able to communicate it to people that aren’t there. haven’t just, they’ve got other things on their plate.

Alane: Mm-hmm.

Park: more pressing than learning about how to implement AI in their business. And it is hard to talk about sometimes.

Alane: Yeah, I mean it is, I do what I do, because this is my business. I can’t do what other companies do, that’s your business. So that’s why we have to work together, because it’s so much now that people can’t do it all. You can’t be an expert at everything. You can barely be an expert at what you do now, because it changes so fast.

Park: Absolutely. And I was really excited to have you on the show because, typically we’re, well, always we are talking about story storytelling, storytelling techniques, AI and storytelling brands, storytelling, storytelling and sales, storytelling marketing. I’ll take a breath right there to say, you’re the first time we’ve really had someone on that’s talking about AI efficiency at the helm of a storytelling company, in this case, an agency, which they get paid. to tell stories on behalf of their customers. But really every small to medium company, every large enterprise is a storytelling operation, right? So I was really fascinated by what you are doing with AI to help them get up and running and make their businesses more efficient. And it’s what we’ve been trying to do with our story cycle genie is to make brand story development. Take the overwhelm. And you probably have been there in your own branding and branding with your customers. You know how overwhelming it is to just contemplate a brand development. It takes months, it takes lots of money, it takes lots of thinking, lots of time. And we thought, you know, can we do what you’re doing in the efficiency realm in helping customers create their brand stories faster?

Alane: Mm-hmm.

Park: develop really brilliant strategies based on those brand stories and then create of course on brand content that converts. And so like all guests, I ran your new brand through the story cycle, Genie, and I don’t think you’ve had a chance to look at the output. Do you have just a second? We could pull that up and just, I would love to hear your take on it. And what it did is it first gives you a brand assessment, which I put in the email to you, a short little assessment, and then you graded on how.

Alane: Yeah, yeah, I’ve got it. I’ve got it pulled up. Yeah, let’s do it.

Park: accurate you think that assessment is. It typically comes in at around 90 % accurate because there’s some things that aren’t showing up on your website and how you’re telling your story that you’ll want to fix. And then from there, we send it through our story cyclone process and it then develops your brand narrative strategy with no input from you at this point. It’s just looking at your website or any content you give it. And then it’ll come back and say, here’s how you’re showing up with your brand narrative. What do you want to tweak?

Alane: Yeah.

Park: What are you, what’s missing here? And if it’s missing with the genie, then it’s missing on your website. And so it validates what you’re doing well in your storytelling. It reveals gaps, highlights missed opportunities, and it hopefully inspires you with some fresh new ways to think about telling your story. So I sent you over that PDF. There’s a lot in that PDF, but the first three audiences it identified for you is knowledge workers and productivity seekers.

Alane: I love this.

Park: goal-oriented professionals, and teams and performance-focused managers.

Alane: I loved this and it nailed it.

Park: And then it tells you, gives you the emotional triggers that you are dealing with as your brand and speaking to them. So we’ll just take the first one, knowledge workers and productivity seekers. It’s what are their challenges? Managing information overload while maintaining strategic focus on meaningful work. Does that sound like the main challenge they’re facing?

Alane: yes.

Park: Their fears, what do they personally, individually fear? Falling behind professionally due to inefficient productivity systems and scattered efforts.

Alane: Yeah, these typically are the like COOs.

Park: And then what frustrates them? The genie says it’s working harder without seeing proportional results or career advancement. So they, as at CMO might be saying, you know, I’m trying to do as best I can here, make my team as efficient as possible. Why am I not getting advanced for what I’ve been doing? And maybe it’s because they’re not doing their job well enough. But if you come in, you can add what 10x efficiency or more to that.

Alane: Yeah.

Park: It makes them the hero and then hopefully that advancement comes.

Alane: Yeah, this sounds a lot like the Story Brand framework. This is brilliant.

Park: Well, it’s different. And here’s the thing with Storybrand and what they’ve done over there is really remarkable. But to me, Storybrand is a bit of a misnomer because to me, it’s more of a marketing tool where I call it branding Botox. It adds fluff and puff to your website so that converts better, which is really important. And their process does do that. Our Storycycle Genie does a deep dive. It really understands your vision, mission, values. It builds the heart. of your brand story and then all of the strategy and content based solely on your brand story. that’s the difference. Story Brand’s nice. Marketing tool, ours is definitely a brand story development tool and activation tool.

Alane: I mean, this is so cool. So is this a tool that you have available for anybody to use or do you only do this with your podcast guests?

Park: Any? Yeah. Now we it’s now available. We just launched it. We’ve been building on it for about two years. We launched it about a month ago at Storycyclegenie.ai. You can go in there and Elaine what you can do and anybody can do is go in and get a free brand story assessment. Just go to the Storycyclegenie.ai click on the little white button there that says get your free assessment. Just put in your name.

Alane: Okay.

Park: email address and your URL, no credit card, nothing. And then, you know, put the URL in that you want it to grade out and in 30 seconds, it’s going to give you a grade from A plus to F minus and 14 point assessment of all the areas that you’re doing well in or that needs to be fixed.

Alane: That is so cool. I love this.

Park: So let’s go down to your positioning statement. this, do you have one that’s built for your brand already?

Alane: Okay, let’s see here. We do not.

Park: So it came up with what it knows about you simply from your website is, Biggest Goal is the only AI powered productivity platform that transforms scattered professional efforts into systematic achievement through intelligent goal methodology and workplace automation. A lot of big words in there, but does that sound about right?

Alane: Pretty cool. The only thing is we are not a platform. we provide a service. So we don’t have a software powered. We use the software N8n to build everything in. But I love that it says transform scattered professional efforts into systematic achievement. that look, that’s really nice.

Park: So that’s perfect. So what you would do then if you were using the Genie is you just simply tell it. And we’ve done, of course, all the prompting. So you do not have to be a prompt engineer. You just say, I really love the position statement, but we are not a platform. I’d like for you to rephrase it. And in five seconds, they’ll go, OK, how about this? But here’s the thing that’s highlighting right here is the way you are showing up in the world suggests you are a platform. That’s what it pulled from it. So it may be just like a,

Alane: Mmm.

Park: Aha, maybe we need to visit our website and maybe, yeah, to make sure we’re not coming off as a platform. The StoryCycle Genie is a platform. It’s built on Brightsy. And so everything that we create in the Genie is locked down in the fortress of the Genie. No one else can access and get to it. It’s just you and your brand alone in there. You know, we have lots of brands, but only you can see yours. So ours is a platform versus just a service.

Alane: change some things.

Alane: Okay.

Alane: Yeah.

Park: Let’s go on to your unique value proposition. Do you have one already in place for your company?

Alane: No.

Park: Well, here you go. Maybe you can use this one. Systematic achievement through AI powered productivity transformation. And you can look at that too and say, I like that. Lots of big words. Jeannie, give me three options that says the same thing, but simplify it or even have more fun with those words. And boom, you know, in a few.

Alane: There we go. Yeah.

Alane: That’s pretty accurate. That’s really cool.

Park: seconds, maybe up to a minute, it’ll come back and give you three options to choose from.

Alane: I love it, this is so cool.

Park: And then it goes down to create your brand personality traits. We call it the ooh exercise. The three one word descriptors for three categories, your organization. says it’s intelligent, systematic, and innovative. And from those, you would then go and tell stories based on those one word descriptors that show them in action. The second category is you’re offering. What do people actually experience when they’re working with you? And that is transformative, empowering, and guided. And then the third one is outcomes. What do they get? Actually, you know, what do they achieve working with you? Mastery, clarity and progress.

Alane: Mmm.

Alane: Mastery and clarity are two big words that we use. So I love that it took those and sees that as an outcome to reference.

Park: Great. Then it levels it up to the emotional promise your North Star, which is mastery. And it says, mastery represents the ultimate emotional promise of biggest goal, the deep satisfaction and confidence that comes from systematic achievement and productivity excellence, appealing to ambitious professionals seeking systematic control over their success.

Alane: amazing.

Park: That’s kind of cool at the very end of that last clause there, seeking systematic control over their success, not over their operations, not over their people, not over their resources, but their own personal success. That’s kind of cool. And then the physical gift, the measurable outcome is progress. Progress represents the tangible, measurable advancement that users experience through biggest goals, AI powered systematic frameworks.

Alane: Mm-hmm.

Alane: Mm-hmm.

Park: providing concrete evidence of productivity transformation and goal achievement.

Alane: Mm-hmm.

Park: What do you think of all that? know this is first time you’ve really had a chance to go through. It’s a lot to take in all at once.

Alane: the archetypes are cool.

Alane: I mean, I think this is amazing. And some of the hardest things when you’re trying to sit down and come up with your brand story is using someone else’s words to give back to you. And so it’s really difficult to go through that exercise. So I think this tool is amazing and having it accessible. And also what you can do is probably check yourself. So if you make these changes and then rerun it. and see how it’s evolved and if you’re feeling like it’s a better spot on based off of what it can find out about you.

Park: Well, that’s a stint too and why I had asked earlier about your systems there. Do they automatically learn about the company they’re working in? The StoryCycle Genie does. So the more you iterate, the more you give it instruction, the smarter it gets about your brand story, how to tell it. And it will even look outside into the industry. and give you an idea of how you are positioned against your top three competitors, where the white spaces are that you could go in and own through your storytelling. So it’s not just inward looking, it’s also outward looking at your competition, at your market, and then as reporting back into you, you know, other ways to think about telling your story.

Alane: so

Park: Yeah, well, thank you. It’s always kind of a surprise when I put people’s brands through it. Guests were like, whoa, I wasn’t expecting that. What is this exactly? And I love doing it because it demonstrates the power of the StoryCycle Genie, but it’s also communicating your core services and differentiation in the world. And you you can sit down literally, Elaine, run your brand story through it, develop your content playbook and everything within about 60 minutes.

Alane: Yeah.

Alane: Yeah.

Park: don’t have to do any prompting. The prompts have already been done. It’s guided by our StoryCycle system. And voila, the way you go.

Alane: That’s cool. Congratulations on building that. That’s going to be amazing.

Park: Yeah, well, thank you. And yeah, check it out. And you can go there and again, share with anybody you know that would like to go in and grade their brand story, see how they’re showing up. It’s absolutely free. Just run it through it and you are going to get the full 14 point assessment in that big grade, whether you like it or not.

Alane: I will, I will do that.

Park: So as you and I are trying to make agency owners lives easier, more productive, more fruitful, and provide better customer service, what would you say are like the top three things a listener should do right now from your point of view to start really bringing your systems and or AI into their world to get into that life raft on the Colorado River of AI. And instead of just trying to survive, have fun. bolting through the Grand Canyon.

Alane: So the first thing is train your employees on how to use AI because most companies aren’t. then you, no, no, you are, so hire somebody to come in and train your employees. You don’t have to be the one to do that. And most likely you don’t have the time to put that together. So have somebody in and then listen to it. Cause one thing that I see is people just let their employees use the free version of Chatubti with their personal email.

Park: But what if you don’t know? Do you offer that? Okay.

Alane: Well, when that employee leaves, they also leave with all of your information. And so not just having a company policy, but having a company way of doing things. So that’s number one, train your employees and then give them the support they need to use AI. The second thing is there’s already automation that can be used even within your project management system. Start there, create templates, create automatic workflows based on statuses. Those are the building blocks. of using AI automation. And then the second thing is start standardizing. Use, that is the number three. Yeah, this is the number, the last one. Last one is to standardize how you name your files, how you save things. Because you can’t automate in a system that has no standardization. It would be like telling an intern,

Park: That’s number three, I think. Yeah, there we go. Yeah.

Alane: to go and find something, but you don’t tell them where to go find it. You don’t tell them the client name and you don’t tell them what they’re looking for. That’s what happens. An AI agent, you’re like, hey, go find this. And they’re going, there’s 800. What’s the latest version?

Park: Right and that’ll get them going and then when do they call you?

Alane: That’ll get them going. Yep, then we can help you train you, implement some things. It’s very difficult for a company to start building AI agents when you’re not a developer.

Park: So how can people learn more about you and what you do?

Alane: I’m really active on LinkedIn, so I’m Elaine Boyd, and come and find me. I share all kinds of free assets and resources. And then my company is biggestgoal.ai.

Park: Biggest, and why’d you name it Biggest Goal?

Alane: Park. We’ll have to save that for another day. But the short version is when I retired, I just said, I’m going to start a consulting company and I am going to call it Biggest Goal, Biggest Obstacle, and I’m going to abbreviate it BGBO. And do know how hard it is to explain BGBO to somebody trying to spell it? It was very difficult. And so we renamed to Workday Ninja and we realized we kept getting associated with the software Workday. and we don’t do anything with work days. So then we had to go back to our roots and we were like, we’re just gonna call ourselves Biggest Goal. We’re gonna help you achieve your biggest goal.

Park: Well, that’s funny because I ended up running two of your brands through it because I was confused. did the BGBO first. thought, what does that stand for? I did not know what it was. I’m not even sure the genie came up with what that stood for. And then I reran, yeah, biggest goal through it and became much more clear. So, well, this has been awesome. Yeah, Elaine, thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

Alane: Mm-hmm.

Alane: It’s a long journey. Yeah, Park, thank you so much for having me.

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