Ep. 144/ Building Authentic Personal Brands with AI: Former TODAY show producer Patrice Poltzer

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This week you’ll hear from the brilliantly inspiring Patrice Poltzer, a force in storytelling and a trailblazer in integrating AI into creative processes. From her days as a Today Show producer and Emmy award winning journalist to her current path as an AI expert, Patrice has always been at the forefront of meaningful storytelling. Patrice discusses the nuances of using AI as a mirror to explore personal stories that have long been hidden, revealing our deepest truths and connecting more profoundly with audiences. She also shares about her new product StoryPro AI.

Through AI, Patrice was able to view her story from a new perspective, transforming it from a source of insecurity to a superpower. Her passion for leveraging AI to help others overcome similar barriers resonated deeply with me. This episode is a testament to the potential of AI as a tool for empowerment and connection, urging us to step out of our comfort zones and into the light of our unique stories. Don't miss out on Patrice's incredible insights and the actionable advice she offers to help you elevate your storytelling game. Grab her newsletter here.

You will learn:

Using AI as a mirror - 12:29
How using AI in storytelling can spark human empathy - 13:23
Audience-driven storytelling strategies - 16:17
Using AI to gain new perspectives - 27:36
How to put quality into AI to get quality out - 35:52

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Patrice Poltzer is a professional late bloomer who turned her unconventional journey into a powerful asset. As the founder of a New York-based video storytelling agency, Patrice leverages her background in journalism and film to help individuals and brands unlock their own compelling narratives. Her career includes roles at CNN.com, Bloomberg TV, and The TODAY Show, where her exceptional video storytelling earned her a Gracie Award and an Emmy nomination. Patrice's path to entrepreneurship began after hitting professional rock bottom — an experience that ultimately fueled her mission to empower others to embrace their stories and achieve success.

You will learn:

Using AI as a mirror - 12:29
How using AI in storytelling can spark human empathy - 13:23
Audience-driven storytelling strategies - 16:17
Using AI to gain new perspectives - 27:36
How to put quality into AI to get quality out - 35:52

Quotes from our guest:

"Storytelling is so powerful because it's our experiences and our perspectives and our lived, Our lived life, our moments, and being able to convey that to another person, especially as a founder and a business owner owner, the potential for connection is so massive." - 3:24
"I really believe, when used properly, AI can actually bring out the human in us. It can bring out the empathy, it can make us feel more empowered to show up as ourselves." - 13:57
"The best way to do that is to actually understand what your audience cares about and what do they fear and what do they desire and what are their triggers?" - 16:40
"But here's the thing, like in this AI world, the, the irony of this is that the more AI there is, the more of your human experience and your real voice and how you think that is going to be the superpower." - 26:02
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PATRICE’S LINKS:

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Patrice’s Linkedin

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Patrice Poltzer: Okay, Hi, Kim, I'm going to. I'm gonna kind of just chat. So hopefully, your editor.

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Patrice Poltzer: It's gonna not want to kill me. Okay,

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Patrice Poltzer: okay, got my Internet is being a little bit funky today. Okay, hopefully, this is okay.

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Patrice Poltzer: Actually, you know what? Maybe

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Patrice Poltzer: we're gonna try this again. I'm gonna just sort of chat through some of the questions that you sent Kim. And then also, I'm just gonna kind of almost, I wanna say, like, I'm gonna read my article. I'm not gonna do that. But I'm gonna kinda use my own article as prompts for this.

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Patrice Poltzer: okay. So the point of this podcast or the point of this is, you know, unexpected ways that AI has quite literally no drama here has changed my life and a really unexpected experience with AI that happened to me

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Patrice Poltzer: was a huge impetus for leading me down a path to really explore this question of, you know. Can AI help us tell more human stories like we all know that Chat Gpt can write your content calendar. It can give you 50 hooks in 5 seconds. It can help you write email subject lines. But

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Patrice Poltzer: as someone who is a storyteller, and as someone who has, you know, dedicated a lot of my professional career to the craft of storytelling and teaching, storytelling and telling other people's stories. And now working with businesses and founders like writing for us and writing for me isn't what I'm after, you know, at the end of the day. Storytelling is so powerful because it's our experiences and our perspectives and our lived

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Patrice Poltzer: our lived life our moments, and being able to convey that to another person, especially as a founder and a business owner, the potential for connection is is so massive and so can AI help us do that. You know, that was like, really my whole

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Patrice Poltzer: entry point into AI, and and I kind of got into it early if I'm being honest. So you know, I was teaching an AI storytelling class, you know, back in the fall of 2,023, and you know Chatgpt was more or less just released in 2023. So this this kind of caught me by surprise, because let me kind of take you back a little bit. So

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Patrice Poltzer: in a former life I was a today show producer. I was a producer for many years. I was very good at it. I won awards. I loved it. I was on the ground. I was putting people on the air. I was like embedded with other humans. And you know, really helping craft stories for our audience, and I left that world to go to a very cliche horrific startup, which is like a

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Patrice Poltzer: whole other episode. But that did not work out, and I was sort of at a crossroads in my life. I had a newborn and a toddler. This is around 2017, and I honestly had no esteem. So I'm like, I can't even go back to corporate America because I am just so just what just happened to me. And so I decided that I would freelance a little bit. And I would, you know, start making videos because I knew how to make videos.

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Patrice Poltzer: And so like everything in life. You sometimes go down a path, and you're like, Oh, my God! This was not on the Bingo card, but I more or less eventually ended up having a video storytelling company fast forward. Covid came. Shut me down. I had to get online. I started running boot camps and classes really, just just to make money because I wasn't able to do production anymore. And during 2020,

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Patrice Poltzer: this is where everything was going online. And so that was a big moment in my business. And so I started really getting into storytelling and the art of storytelling, because at this time, too, everyone was leaving corporate. Everyone was starting a side hustle. You know. Instagram and Tiktok were coming around in a way that was like we just hadn't seen it used in that way for marketing and business. And so I was in that arena during that time. And so

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Patrice Poltzer: you know, I got really nerdy. And so I developed programs. And so, anyway, my whole thing is like, how do I help people show up as themselves? You know, it's the hardest thing to do. But, as we know in business, and especially nowadays, like you have to be able to call in your people.

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Patrice Poltzer: There's too many people online. Now, you know, there's too many people starting businesses. And so how do you stand out? You stand out by being you by being yourself. Well, that's really hard to do for most people like, just be yourself. Well, if if it were that easy, everyone would do that. And so the

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Patrice Poltzer: best way that I know how to help business people be themselves is through storytelling, because when we learn how to tell a story, we naturally infuse ourselves in it because we're naturally talking about our history, our past, our childhood, our struggles, our failures, what we learned, what we didn't learn, what we regret. And so all of a sudden, you start to build a narrative over time that allows someone to get to know you. So when someone says, Just be yourself.

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Patrice Poltzer: really, what they're saying is start telling stories. So that's I feel like that's important. So you have some background into understanding why, I became very obsessed with this whole notion of AI and storytelling. And so, when I was running a course I'll never forget it. It was 2023. I was running. I have a founders fire. It's called founders. Fire. I run it twice a year, and we incubate a group of entrepreneurs. And we write their big founder story. And we make a video. And I remember

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Patrice Poltzer: at the end of this program. You know you hand in your script, and then I send it to my team

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Patrice Poltzer: to get it made. And I had been working with some of these founders for 3 months, doing unbelievable work. They were like connecting these dots like crying sessions like, Oh, my God! These amazing Aha! Moments of this is why I do things the way I do it. Because this moment, you know, back in childhood and it makes sense why I have this business. It's like the most beautiful things to witness. They were turning in scripts.

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Patrice Poltzer: and at the time I wasn't using chat gpt, so I literally did not know what was going on. I was like. How are all of you, all of a sudden, like the most perfect, grammatically correct writers? There was 2 people in particular I had ever witnessed like this is insane. I go. But the script was completely soulless. It was lacking all that amazing work that we had been doing so

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Patrice Poltzer: at the time. My, my online business manager. She's like, Patrice. They're using chat, gpt, like she was super into AI, and she's like, yeah, that's what they did. And so I'm like, Oh, my God, what is this?

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Patrice Poltzer: What is this horrible technology? But I had to get into it. So in the summer of 2023 I dove in like I dove into the deep end, and I have not looked back, but I dove in again with this question of Can we use AI to help us tell more human, vulnerable stories? And at the time I didn't really know.

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Patrice Poltzer: And

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Patrice Poltzer: this, this is what I want to talk about today, because this has been what 2,000, almost 25, about a year and a half now, and my answer is a resounding yes, and I want to share with you why, I

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Patrice Poltzer: have come to this this conclusion, and also to share some tips and advice for how you can maybe think about using AI in a totally different light.

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Patrice Poltzer: after I started doing some of my own exploration, I remember thinking to myself. Okay, like, what are the tenements of good storytelling? You want to showcase struggle? So I remember thinking to myself, Okay, well, Patrice, what is something that you struggle with? What is something that you struggle with sharing that you have not shared before, and the 1st thing that came to mind was my hearing loss. So I have a hearing loss. I've had a very severe hearing loss since I've been a child. I've worn hearing Aids as a child.

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Patrice Poltzer: It's actually something that some people have just learned about me. It's 1 of these things where I have been hiding it, and I've been so masterful at hiding this. What I have viewed most of my life as a huge weakness that people will meet me, and they're shocked like when they find out, or they see a video which I'll get into in a minute. It's something I always was ashamed of, and it doesn't matter that, you know, I had parents telling me it's nothing to be ashamed of.

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Patrice Poltzer: you know. You have to remember, too, you know, in in the nineties, you know, when you're a kid like it's not like you had social media to go and find, you know, a hundred of your besties that also wore hearing Aids, you know, that were kids like it. Just that is not how it worked. And so you, when I was my age, I really felt like, I don't know anyone who has to wear hearing aids. And so

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Patrice Poltzer: it I said to myself, I gotta hide this at all costs. And I really did. You know, I worked my way up through New York media. I got to very high levels. And I remember thinking no one can know, because at the time, too, you're in media. I made it to the today show. I just felt like, Oh, my God! Anything that would view me as like, not

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Patrice Poltzer: normal. And I use this in massive quotes.

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Patrice Poltzer: You know I I wouldn't. I don't want to give them any reason to for them to tell me like I can't work here, so I mean I would never wear my hair up. If I had to wear headphones in the control room I would place them in a very particular way, because if I put them over a certain angle. My hearing aids would get feedback, and every now and then, you know, the person sitting next to me would like, look at me and be like, what is that cause? It was just like screeching, beeping noise coming from me is my hearing aid feedback, and I'd be like, Oh, God! I don't know what that is.

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Patrice Poltzer: in hindsight. I just it's I feel so I almost feel I feel sad for me right. I feel sad that I felt like I had to hide it, that I had to hide it like that. And so one day I was in the in the newsroom, and

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Patrice Poltzer: actually, that part's not important actually to this. Podcast so anyway. So I just want to like, you know, this is something, that. And I get that. It's ironic. The irony is not lost on me, you know. You know I built my entire career around helping others share their truth, and I was the master of making others feel seen in order to share their stories while doing literally everything possible to hide a major part of my own.

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Patrice Poltzer: And so when I sat down with AI, this is in 2023. The 1st thing that came to mind was like, What are you struggling with Patrice, and I said to myself, Why the hell am I so weird about my hearing aids like? Who cares? At that point? You know I had like 3 kids like running a business. I've gone through enough like, you know, the transition of like corporate and the struggles of trying to get your business going like, why is this? It had such a hold on me still it really did. And so.

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Patrice Poltzer: as I I kind of sat there, you know, one night I I opened up Chat Gpt, and rather than doing what I think probably people typically do with Chat Gpt, which is like, Hey, write this for me, or, Hey, I need to do a social media post. And here's a topic like, Can you write it for me? I actually said to Chat Gpt, I want to explore something that I've been hiding my whole life. I wear hearing aids, and I'm exhausted about concealing them.

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Patrice Poltzer: Can you help me understand why I'm struggling to be open about this, and I kid you not like I went down this total rabbit hole of like talking to chat, gpt like it was a therapist, and I think now maybe you hear that more. But I know in 2023. I don't know that many people that were using the AI like I was. And so

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Patrice Poltzer: I started doing this, and it kind of started pointing out, you know, through my chats like, Well, have you ever considered this, or actually, the story that you're telling is this is what I'm seeing. And it was like for the 1st time. I'm seeing it spit back to me like my own story, but it was

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Patrice Poltzer: being told in a new way, and it honestly, it like had the 1st time I ever saw this I literally was in tears because I could not believe like, is this the same person

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Patrice Poltzer: that this computer, this robot, is talking about?

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Patrice Poltzer: And so this that moment really led me down the path where I am today. And so I started running courses and classes on like this intersection of AI and storytelling and like, where? How can we work together here? Right? Because I really believe, like.

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Patrice Poltzer: when used properly. AI, AI can actually bring out the human in us, it can bring out the empathy, it can make us feel more empowered to show up as ourselves so often, and especially in the line of work I do with founders, you know, they tend to be Type A. They're perfectionist, especially females like, you know, there's not. There's less room for error, right? There's less room to quote unquote fail. And so, as a result, you end up

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Patrice Poltzer: up getting you kind of condition yourself to not to tell yourself that you have to show up in a certain way.

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Patrice Poltzer: And so how and when you condition yourself to do that, what ends up happening is you censor yourself. You don't actually put your real self online. You don't put your thoughts, you hold back on your opinions because that is what you need to do in order to survive right. And so I'm like God. If only we can get out of our own way like, why don't we could like get out of our head? And so this is this is how I got into it. So when I started one of these classes, I was like, All right, everyone, you know. I remember the 1st time I ever

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Patrice Poltzer: suggested to my 1st like storytelling AI cohort. I'm like, all right, we're gonna get into the brains of your audience like we're gonna really get into the psychographics. We're gonna understand what they fear, what they desire, what their aspirations are. And so I started telling them how to prompt the chat gpt, and to like talk about their audiences, but in a new way, right like we often hear about, you know. Oh, if you want to tell good stories. You got to know your audience, but

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Patrice Poltzer: people don't really know their audience, or they think about it in terms of, Yeah, my audience, is this demographic, or they're this age, or they make this much money. But as we all know that that the human condition and the

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Patrice Poltzer: human connection piece, it doesn't matter how old you are, right. It's ages that all that stuff doesn't matter. So I was like, Okay, let's start with trying to like, get into like the inner workings of our audience. And so we started doing these psychographic audience charts. And so what we would get is we would see in front of us

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Patrice Poltzer: what our audience actually cared about. And then from there we were able to see. Wow! Like, well, my audience actually fears this, or they really desire this, and a trigger is this. And so what happens is when you can see this.

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Patrice Poltzer: I was then able to teach people. Well, now we can use this amazing chart that Chatgpt just spat at you, you know, in 10 seconds. And now we can use this as our own storytelling compass, because now we can see. Well, what story should I tell that is actually going to relate to this particular fear of my audience that I can pull from my own life. So all of a sudden, you're not pulling

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Patrice Poltzer: random events from your life because the other objection I hear a lot from founders is well, I don't know what to share.

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Patrice Poltzer: I don't know what my audience is going to care about. Well, the best way to do that is to actually understand what your audience cares about, and what do they fear, and what do they desire, and what are their triggers? Because when you can see that

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Patrice Poltzer: now you at least have like a starting point to say, well, you know what I'm going to talk about that time. You know that I did this because that is actually going to really hit home to this fear of my audience. And that's gonna make me relatable. So it started out like that. And so when I then, okay, so fast forward. I did this class. This is like, in the fall of 2,023.

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Patrice Poltzer: It was it was very successful. And so I kind of kept going on this train, and I kept talking about AI and storytelling. Yet

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Patrice Poltzer: I still had not fully, even though I had done this like initial deep dive.

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Patrice Poltzer: search on myself with like the hearing aids, and like having AI kind of spit back all these amazing things at me, I still had never publicly shared that story. All right. So I was kind of keeping that in the back of my mind, and I kind of remember, got to a point one day where I'm like

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Patrice Poltzer: this, this is crazy. Like I I need to like, I'm going to share this story. I have never shared this story publicly. I've never learned anything like a post or nothing like literally. And I'm pretty open, right as a founder and as someone who teaches storytelling. And so

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Patrice Poltzer: I so I decided, I'm like, all right. I am going to share for the 1st time publicly, my hearing aid story. And I said to myself, I'm going to share it on Linkedin, which you wouldn't normally think like Linkedin would be the 1st place to share. Linkedin is definitely more my scary place. Instagram is my home. But all this time, while all this is happening with.

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Patrice Poltzer: you know, my AI and my diving deep, I had actually did a huge life move. I had moved my family of 5 from New York

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Patrice Poltzer: in the fall of 2023 a lot happened in 2023 to Lisbon. So I actually currently live in Lisbon. And when I came to Lisbon.

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Patrice Poltzer: everything changed like I I started. I mean, my my life started from scratch. You know I had no community, no friends we. We definitely came out here for like a life adventure. And at the same time my husband found out that he had lost his job, so the job that he was supposed to, I promise, stay with me here, stay with my tangent because I'm winding around to like how this all ties back in

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Patrice Poltzer: But when I came to Lisbon, I, you know, was running like I had a you know, New York production still going on, and I was running classes. But when I got to Lisbon like I really had to step on, step up in a way that, like I had not before you know, I was always double income, and for the 1st time ever I was faced with holy cow. My husband doesn't have a job.

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Patrice Poltzer: And now we live in Lisbon. So it's not like he's gonna just like, Go get another job is easy because he's in Lisbon. So it has to be a job that is cool with him living in Lisbon because we're already here. My kids are in school. And so I really went into this mode where I was like, okay, I gotta make this work online, like, I don't have my brand video

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Patrice Poltzer: company in the same way, because I'm not in New York City, and I have my classes. But like I have got to, just, I gotta evolve like, I gotta like really bust out. And so as I was doing this in this, meantime, I actually had developed with my partner, my online business manager.

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Patrice Poltzer: because we were both into AI like I was teaching it. And then she was totally nerding out behind the scenes and teaching herself like how to code through AI. We decided because I really needed to increase my customer base and my email list. Because now I'm the breadwinner. 3 children just moved to a new country. She's like, why don't we do a lead magnet? And we'll I'll just make this really cool, like free AI storytelling tool

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Patrice Poltzer: for you to use and we'll attract people. They'll give you their email. You'll give them like a fun, little like post using your frameworks, and then they'll buy your courses like that was our grand plan. So we did that in March I released this like free tool, and it was just supposed to be a lead magnet, and people lost their mind.

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Patrice Poltzer: and it was sort of at this moment where my business had a massive pivot, because and it was kind of in a weird way, all things were leading to this, because.

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Patrice Poltzer: as I was getting into being more online and AI was becoming more and more and more prevalent, and there was more crappy content, flooding, because now everyone was using Chat gpt, but they weren't using it properly. They hadn't taken my storytelling classes. Yet I was like, this is horrible like this is horrible, like we got to do something about it. So we ended up building

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Patrice Poltzer: a storytelling coaching platform called My Story Pro. And while this was happening. I was like, I have to. I gotta put my own story out there, right. I gotta like walk my walk here right instead of just talking my talk so

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Patrice Poltzer: The 1st thing I do, which is what I've been doing a while like I use AI as a mirror, right? So I sort of started, you know, getting that information from AI like, you know, I'm nervous about putting this out there. Can you help me? Why? And I would get insights back

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Patrice Poltzer: from Chat Gpt. I also use Google notebook Llm, which is also like an amazing AI tool as well. And basically, I'm just trying to understand myself, because here's the thing. The best stories really just connect dots for other people. The best storytelling allows other people to see themselves in your journey. And so if you think about AI, AI, what AI is amazing and better than you in a lot of ways is, it can connect dots. It's able to get like big amounts of information

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Patrice Poltzer: and maybe make like pattern connects that you like can't see. And so I use my own tool. My story pro, which is this, like, it's designed. It's

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Patrice Poltzer: custom made by me and Vibco, we have no tech background, that's a totally different podcast but it's very exciting what's possible in today's world now. And we built this this platform, baked in all the storytelling knowledge and expertise and making it like, how do we get more human stories out of people that are using this tool. And so the AI spit back at me like all these things about my hearing loss

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Patrice Poltzer: know, like this is a superpower like this is inspiring, like, you know. Have you ever considered that? Maybe you've like had a look at people differently your whole life, because you can't hear that. Well, so you had to pay attention, and you had to listen, or you had to look for body cues. And have you ever considered? That's a super like all these things? It's telling me. And I'm like, Oh, my God, like.

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Patrice Poltzer: yeah, like, I guess it is a superpower like. Why would I ever view my hearing aids or my hearing loss is not a superpower, and it inspired me to write this script. I use my own tool to write this beautiful script. But the difference is is like, it's me. It's like, you're pouring your stuff into this.

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Patrice Poltzer: and it's helping you connect us because it keeps asking you questions. So it makes you go deeper. So I wrote this post about my hearing loss, and I posted it on Linkedin, and it went viral 3.5 million impressions. I'm not joking you. I've never gone viral on Linkedin in my life. I have a love hate relationship with Linkedin. And this post went completely bonkers. To this day. I get

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Patrice Poltzer: request about it. I get post. And so my, my, I was on podcasts from it like it. Just it hit a nerve. And here's the thing like.

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Patrice Poltzer: I've been thinking about like doing that story for a while. And it just never felt right, because I could never figure out the angle I could never figure out like, I don't want to, just like, go online and be like. I want hearing Aids like but using my own tool and using AI. But using AI is a mirror and using AI is like, help me pattern like.

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Patrice Poltzer: help me connect these dots. I'm too, in my life. I'm too, in my own sorrow of like my own insecurity, my own bias, like help me get out of my own head about this hearing loss. Once I was able to like see it written on paper.

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Patrice Poltzer: or like AI spitting this at me. It was like it. Just it released something. And I'm using myself as an example. But this has been happening now for the past, like 9 months, like in programs that I run because I run a lot of programs with founders. We now use my process right? For how do we use AI to help

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Patrice Poltzer: us get out of our own way, like I've had founders I have a founder of. She has a soap company, but it's really an ocean conservation business. She's never. You go on our website. There's no picture of her like you don't even know who runs this. It could be like a Vc. Backed, you know faceless company, for all you know. And it's this amazing woman who lives in Switzerland, and she's in for the 1st time ever using AI and using like my, my.

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Patrice Poltzer: my tool, my story pro pocket, Patrice, is the there's different lanes. But within the tool there's a pocket, Patrice, where it's kind of like your best brainstorm partner

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Patrice Poltzer: by using pocket, Patrice, she was able to like

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Patrice Poltzer: literally get out of her own head. She's like I've had years of therapy, and I've had, like all these people telling me I need to get out in front of my business, and it was only with this and your help like that I'm starting to actually see myself differently. And why I do need to get in front of my business. I think that's the key, like we as founders, especially females like there's a tendency to be like, I don't want to brag, or, you know, know, why would anyone care about this? It's about my business. It's about my service. But here's the thing like

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Patrice Poltzer: in this AI world. The irony of this is that the more AI there is the more of your human

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Patrice Poltzer: experience and your real voice, and how you think that is going to be the superpower. And when we use AI to do that, that is, when it is like scary good. And so the

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Patrice Poltzer: you know this, this was such a this was so life changing for me last year that

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Patrice Poltzer: you know, I I mean, like we literally like, I pivoted my entire business. And here's the thing, even if you don't use story pro right, like story pro is my product. You, by the way, anyone who uses it for the 1st time you get 25 free uses, and that's enough to make a sales page. It's enough to, you know. Tell, retell your brand story. It's it's enough. It's a lot of uses to really get a feel of the product. But even if you're not using story pro like, even if you're just using

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Patrice Poltzer: chat, Gpt, or using cloud, or whatever, I encourage you rather than asking the AI to write for you.

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Patrice Poltzer: Ask it to act as your mirror, hold up

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Patrice Poltzer: a mirror to yourself through the Chat Gpt, and ask it to tell you some uncomfortable truths, and you don't have to agree with the truth. But

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Patrice Poltzer: and you ask it, and you put it out there, and you give the context of like. Here's my issue. Here's what I'm thinking. Here's what I've always thought.

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Patrice Poltzer: But can you give me a different perspective, like purposely ask for the opposite perspective of what you tell chat Gpt, because you will be amazed.

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Patrice Poltzer: What comes out of it. And sometimes all we need is just to see it from a different point of view, and I don't care how many times your mom, your spouse, your best friend, tells you something, or says like, Oh, God, no! But you're great or no, you're this, or why do you don't think like that?

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Patrice Poltzer: It it sometimes doesn't matter. You're right, and sometimes you. You do need to hear it from someone else, and not everyone has the luxury of being able to afford therapist or being able to hire a coach or a life coach or a success coach, or you know there's coaches for everything these days. But what happens if you don't have that?

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Patrice Poltzer: This is why, like it's just, it's mind boggling to me like how we can use AI now to

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Patrice Poltzer: really help ourselves get out of our own way, and to help us be better versions of ourselves, or to help us not be better versions to accept ourselves. And that is what really has been like my full circle journey. You know, if I look back in 2023, until now, like

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Patrice Poltzer: I talk about hearing Aids all the time. Now I've talked about my hearing aids more in the last like 9 months, and then I have, like my in the last, like 30 years, right like it is just wild. How like all of a sudden seeing this, AI generated insights spit back at me.

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Patrice Poltzer: Just give me this like total new perspective on it, and if we in in sometimes, that's all we need right? Especially as founders when we're wearing so many hats. And then, in addition to running your business, you now also have to do marketing. You have to do social. There's so many hats you have to wear.

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Patrice Poltzer: and it's really easy to just get tripped up in yourself in your head. But start using AI. And all of a sudden stories that you dismiss is not that interesting? Are going to reveal their power through AI, because AI is going to help you thread the dots. It's going to help you thread the needle that you have not been able to, or stories that you're like. Oh, that is so lame, or that is so

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Patrice Poltzer: boring. And maybe you don't have a you know, a Patrice, you know, or a Kim storytelling coach telling you like, hey? No, that's not boring. That's amazing. And here's why you can use AI to do that for you

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Patrice Poltzer: continue to join

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Patrice Poltzer: And yeah. And maybe I don't know I'm gonna like, say this, I'm sorry. This I feel like this is so rambly. I just kind of went off. I feel like Will Ferrell in that movie where he just like was like old school. He like blacked out at the podium. But let me give you okay. So

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Patrice Poltzer: and I, you know. So in one of the breakthroughs came when I started teaching this approach to other business leaders. So together with AI, we excavated deeper meanings behind their business decisions, and they would reveal stories that they would never think to tell. So we use prompts like, you know what themes emerge, and how I talk about my business journey, or where might I be holding back out of fear?

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Patrice Poltzer: Or you know, how could my struggles actually help my audience? And this is where I saw founders who would have been hidden behind their Logos for years, finally step into the spotlight, for really, sometimes, the 1st time with full confidence. You know, all of a sudden sharing about yourself wasn't bragging, but it was necessary to connect to the customers. Because you had AI like telling you. This is why you need to show up.

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Patrice Poltzer: It's like cognitive dissonance. I think right where you have like a computer telling you something. And all of a sudden you take it as like, okay. But it was like a human. You know, there's there's again, when there's a human, there's more odds that they could be biased.

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Patrice Poltzer: okay? And then maybe just, I'll just do a little. I don't know if this is, let me see here.

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Patrice Poltzer: Okay, so one of my favorite ways to start your own journey of discovery is is kind of called the mirror prompt. So you can open up your favorite AI tool. I suggest a story pro which is, which is mine.

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Patrice Poltzer: But if you don't have that, that's cool. But open up your favorite AI tool, and you know, Pace, I need your help exploring something I've been hesitant to share. I'll start by sharing some of my past writings. You can understand my voice. Then I'm going to tell you something about something I feel cold to share with my audience. Tell them tell AI about your audience, but I haven't found the right way to express it. Can you help me spot patterns and connections I might be missing?

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Patrice Poltzer: Please ask me, follow up questions, and you're going to start having like a windy conversation, and you're going to get to a place, and maybe at the end, if you're feeling overwhelmed, I would say, like, Show me 3 small ways to begin sharing the story, starting with the gentlest 1st step that I could take today. Because really it's it's that's what it's all about. It's not by, like, you know, showing up and vomiting your entire life story. But it's kind of revealing

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Patrice Poltzer: parts of yourself that you know will connect to your audience. And again the hearing authority hit because I did some of that pre

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Patrice Poltzer: research beforehand, asking about psychographics and asking AI like, Hey, talk to me about like what my audience really wants. So I can then figure out like my hearing, you know, or figure out how I can back into their wants. And so, with one of my audience fears.

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Patrice Poltzer: You know it's a it's a it's a, you know, insecure, right? Insecurity, feeling or feeling like you know, they they don't want to be unprofessional, or they they don't wanna you know they they seem silly like I can relate to that, because that's what my hearing aid issue was. So again, you see how like using AI as almost sounding board and emotional sounding board can actually help you get out of your own way and show up more powerfully and effectively in your own business.

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Patrice Poltzer: 3, 2, 1

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Patrice Poltzer: And really the past 18 months has transformed everything. I thought I knew about AI. You know, I really hated it initially because of you know what my students were turning in, but it was new. It was a new tool. It still is a new tool, you know, and people are still understanding how to use it. And so it is not here, and I and I categorically say that it is not here to replace our creativity. It's not here to replace your voice, but it is a powerful mirror that can reflect back stories that you have kept locked inside yourselves for years.

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Patrice Poltzer: and that's exactly why my story pro came about, because I'm so passionate about helping people tell stories, because I see the ripple effect right? I mean, I saw it every day as a today show producer like one story

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Patrice Poltzer: could change a life overnight. One well told story. And so it's the same thing for us founders. You know. We have such power in our marketing. Now we can be direct ground to the people, and we can connect actually quicker and deeper with our customers and even a larger brand who are much further away from the customers. So that's why learning how to storytell

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Patrice Poltzer: is so important. And so if you do struggle with it, and and you and you're not going to be able to get like coaching help or mastermind help, or you know you you want to shorten that time like using a tool like my story. Pro is like having me at your side. It means it's like having Patrice in your pocket. There's a pocket, Patrice, function where we take you through all the the frameworks and the and the questions that I would if if you were working with me, you know one to one. And so.

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Patrice Poltzer: okay, I think this is it. I'm so sorry. This is like, is this too long? Okay, I think this is good. I'll stop. And if you need me to more, if you need more, let's see? Last question.

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Patrice Poltzer: Yeah.

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Patrice Poltzer: I I think my, I think, like another final tip would be interest in terms of AI in general is like, you know, you know some of you might have heard this before, but it's like, you know, garbage in equals garbage out. And so you know it when used to purely slash time. And when used to okay, we do one

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Patrice Poltzer: another tip I would have is like to start looking at AI differently. You know, right now, the majority of people use AI to write for me.

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Patrice Poltzer: Do this quicker. Write this faster, right? It's like a fast tool, and it's a little bit of a lazy tool right? Like, I don't wanna have to think like, just write this email for me. But if you start flipping that a little bit and you start using it as like your own guide and your own storytelling and marketing or co-founder, that that smart strategic friend that's gonna push you. It's gonna give you like that tough love.

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Patrice Poltzer: That's when we start to uncover really amazing

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Patrice Poltzer: use cases for for AI. And that is what I'm here for, because AI is is one of the best storytelling guides I have ever ever seen outside of, you know, you know. Maybe your your favorite storytelling expert like being right by your side. But you know that is that is why it's

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Patrice Poltzer: you know it's it's powerful. And the more. And I'm a big believer, right? The more people that are out there

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Patrice Poltzer: sharing their story, you just increase the chances for more people to connect with you and connect with your ideas. And right now we need more voices in the world. We need more diverse voices. The voices that tend to be diluted are the ones that aren't. You know.

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Patrice Poltzer: of a certain gender and look a certain way. And so I am all about like getting more people out of their own head, because those are usually the people that are quieter, you know, and I and I put women in that category right? You know. Especially and let's this is, I was going to go on a little tangent here, but especially from like an AI Tech perspective. You know I find myself now as the founder of this tool. I am in circles now, with mostly men.

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Patrice Poltzer: And it is wild. And I'm like this, industry is true. This is not like a trend. This is shaping policy. It's shaping society. And if we don't have women

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Patrice Poltzer: and you know, marginalized communities and other underrepresented, underrepresented. If we don't have women and other underserved communities getting involved with AI.

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Patrice Poltzer: I don't expect everyone to build a tool right, although it is super easy right now to build a tool. But if you. You have to get involved like I'm really. I'm a big believer in that. If you don't get involved, we are giving away power. We are giving away agency because AI is shaping everything, it will shape everything, and the money that's funneling into it is astronomical. And so like, we need to be a player at the table.

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Patrice Poltzer: So if anything, if you take away anything from this episode other than like, you know, use story pro and start using AI in a more of a mirror Co partner way to maybe reveal some uncomfortable things about yourself that you can then use to connect with your audience, to then use to sell your product or service if you don't take any of that away.

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Patrice Poltzer: My biggest hope is that you at least get curious to to try AI, even if it's just starting a chat. Gpt account for the 1st time.

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Patrice Poltzer: you know, starting a cloud account for the 1st time getting curious, and to see how it you can use it, because I don't want people not using it because they're afraid of it. We need people that are going to dive into this, but dive into it with like really good intentions, and want to use it for good.

Kim RittbergMarch 12, 2025Comment