How I Use AI in Compass Canine

Whether we like it or not, AI is part of our lives now and is embedded into so many of the products and services we use on a day to day basis.

Now of course, AI can't train our dogs (as in, physically get out there and do the training), but it can answer dog training questions. I believe. I've not actually asked it any as such🤷‍♀️ Which leads to the question of how I, as a dog trainer with online content, use AI in my business. I'm going to break this down into three main areas; writing, graphics and general business stuff.

Writing

Here's an important thing to know before I dig in - whatever AI I'm using, it's read all of my blogs, all of my emails, most of my video transcripts, my websites and anything else that I can think of to educate it on who I am, what I believe, how I train, etc. It remembers all of that information, and can draw on it more easily than me at times (because I've been writing blogs, etc for nearly 8 years now 😱) Interacting with AI (I currently use Claude) is like having a conversation with my own brain (I don't want to overthink that 😂) More on this in a minute.

I actually really like writing. I wrote a whole book, back when AI was something that mainly only existed in films. People like the way I write - they've told me as much! My sense of humour comes through, and I write much like I talk (you'll know this if you watch any of my training). I have a butterfly brain, and at least in writing I can usually rearrange things into some sort of cohesive order 😂

I write a weekly email newsletter. No AI involved in that - an idea pops into my head, or is inspired by something that's happened during the week and off I go. I also have a weekly email series called the Friday Five - again, I write those emails, but this is where AI comes in - it keeps track of the topics that I've covered, and I will also ask for ideas for topics for future emails. Just the topic, I then write the actual email. If it comes up with a topic that I don't know about then I will either do the research, or not use it.

I mostly write my social media posts, although I may occasionally get help from AI to summarise something (because social media often favours short form, and my brain is definitely long form 😉)

Website - this website pre-dates AI, and whilst I've tweaked things over the years it was all written by me. Where the AI has come in is on some of my opt-in pages. The ones with details of my freebies and courses. Even then, I've written the content and just had some 'help' organising it. I will ask AI to write a summary for SEO (search engine optimisation) - I might as well take advantage to increase the chances of my content being found!

Courses - again, these are all me! If I want people to understand how to train something, then I need to be the one that explains it!

I am in training programs with copy coaches - real actual people whose job it is to read my content and provide feedback to help with the goals of that particular piece of writing. It's OK to run something past AI, but it's a bit of an echo chamber (see above), and so a proper outside view can be invaluable.

Graphics and Videos

For a start, all of my videos are 100% created by me. I think that's abundantly clear 😂 They're not highly polished or edited, and my live content is generally a bit rambly 🙈

I have used AI to create some of my graphics, but honestly I find it hard work to get exactly what I want so don't do it often. And am reminded why not every time I try again!

Below you'll see a few examples, along with the original photos that were used.

Photo credit: Wendy Searle Photography

Photo credit: Wendy Searle Photography

Photo credit: Rebecca Reed Photography

I use a few different platforms to produce thumbnails (like the Walk This Way one above), but I create them - I don't write a prompt and wait to see what is churned out! I pick up little icons and elements from a site called Creative Fabrica when I can't find what I want in Canva. I might share the output with AI, because sometimes I don't see a spacing error or visibility issue. But I can also share within my support programs for feedback from humans 😁

I have a stash of professionally taken photos (see examples above), and the rest I take on my phone.

General Business Stuff

Mostly I use AI as a bit of a sounding board. Somewhere I can brain dump, and then try to make sense of the chaos that's in there! As mentioned above, I've trained 'AI' so that it knows my 'voice'; my training philosophy, how I write, the way my business and courses are structured, etc.

For example, I'm about to start a new video series about common dog training terminology, and AI has created a database to track the terms I want to discuss, which ones I've done, when I posted and so on. I could do that myself, I'm a dab hand with a spreadsheet. But I won't 😂 I want to get on and just do the thing, and then in six months time panic about whether or not I've alread covered what a conditional emotional response is 🙈 Now all I need to do is blather in to AI about the video I just made and it will add it to the database. Then I can either look at the database or just ask AI to check what I've covered, and what it makes logical sense to talk about next!

Essentially, I will ask it questions when I want an answer relevant to my thinking (rather than the wider reach that a Google search would produce)

I don't want a business built on AI, or reliant on AI. This business is all me. However, if AI can do some of the things that I either won't do (even though I probably should) or can't do (I'm looking at you VLOOKUP formulas 👀) then it would be remiss of me to not use the technology that's available to me 🤷‍♀️