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Why do your clients choose you?
In this episode, Samantha and Leon dive into the future of business in an AI-driven world and uncover why authenticity, emotion, and storytelling are the ultimate differentiators.
You’ll learn why clients connect with people, not polished logos or AI-generated posts, and how leaning into your quirks, values, and zone of genius can transform your business. This conversation is a reminder that the gold isn’t in the perfectly logical answer. It’s in the emotion, the vulnerability, and the stories that make you unforgettable.
Understand why your story is your most powerful business asset, and why you need to embrace it so your prospects lean in and say, “I want to work with you.”
WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER IN THIS EPISODE:
- 00:00 – Why leaning into your quirks, values, and unique perspectives naturally amplifies your brand
- 02:24 – The AI trap vs. the human advantage
- 06:25 – Why clients buy from people, not businesses
- 10:44 – Why building a business aligned with your version of success is the real goal
- 15:56 – How chasing speed and efficiency with AI can backfire
- 19:20 – The missing pieces AI can’t replicate and how to use them to stand out in your industry
- 23:55 – How to instantly build trust and connection with clients in ways AI never can
- 28:53 – Why your story matters now more than ever
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
CONNECT WITH LEON FLITTON
TRANSCRIPTION
Samantha Riley 0:00
I‘m Samantha Riley, and welcome to the Business Growth Lab, where visionary entrepreneurs come to experiment, evolve and expand what’s possible.
Samantha Riley, welcome to today’s episode of Business Growth Lab. Samantha Riley here alongside my hubby, Leon today, we’re going to have a bit of a riff. We’ve had some really cool conversations over the weekend, and I thought it would be great to actually bring some of the topics that we were talking about to to the podcast to get people thinking, because we kind of had some really deep Convos about AI and sort of where business is going, what needs to change. And I think why I wanted to talk about it today is some of the conversations started in one direction, and through some really deep conversations, almost did a 180 and went back the other way. And it was so interesting.
Leon Flitton 1:31
Yeah, felt a bit left field, sometimes, not where we started, and it didn’t end up in the same direction at all.
Samantha Riley 1:36
So super interesting, absolutely. Well, let’s start off with the first topic. This was a conversation we were having with another agency owner. So we do own a podcast agency alongside our coaching business, or as well as our coaching business, is probably another way to say it. And we were chatting with another agency owner, and we were talking about AI, and you know what the future is looking like within those businesses. And the conversation obviously started off in, you know, is there a future right in agency work, and where’s it going and where we needed to pivot and what needed to change? And it was super interesting. Leon, do you want to share a little bit around where the conversation ended up going?
Leon Flitton 2:24
Yeah, so essentially, it started off, you know, chatting about AI, essentially, where that’s going, what effect that’s going to have on a lot of businesses. And what ended happening was we, well, really came back to something else that I didn’t expect it to be going towards, which was being human.
Samantha Riley 2:44
Yeah, and that sounds weird that we didn’t expect it to go back there. But the more and more we were talking, we were sort of saying We don’t like reading the AI posts, right? Oh my gosh. Like, seriously, yeah, well, you said it before, right? AI slot. Yeah, it is, AI slot, and it’s got a certain format. It’s not even, I mean, you can tell it by the words that are being used however. You can even see it by the format. And we were talking about the fact that when we start reading a post, if we notice that format, we don’t even finish reading the post, because what’s the point? And that sort of brought us back to So, what is it that is standing out right now? And it is the humanness like us, who we are and our difference like I would rather read a post that isn’t, you know, I put it in air quotes written well, like as judged by year nine English teacher, I would rather read that post than something spat out that’s just come straight out of AI.
Leon Flitton 3:51
Yeah, yeah. I think what I look at is that it comes out looking like it’s all exactly the same. And, yeah, these people writing posts or making videos or whatever they’re doing, and they’re using AI to create them, and thinking it’s going to be amazing because AI is going to be faster and better, and sure, it’s faster, but I think once you lose the humanness that you start losing your authenticity.
Samantha Riley 4:16
Yeah, totally, because that’s what we connect with. Yep, it’s the real person. It’s a point of view. It’s, you know, what do you stand for? It’s your passion, it’s your zone of genius, it’s the way you say things, it’s your nuance, it’s your quirks. That’s all the things that we connect to.
Leon Flitton 4:41
One of the words that we’re throwing around as well, apart from humanness, was actually emotion. Yes, I feel that AI is emotionless.
Samantha Riley 4:52
Yes, yeah. And I think that that was one of the big things that stood out to me, was we can get. Get education, we can get logic. I’m going to put that in a very loose, loose frame there, because, man, I’ve seen Chat GPT spit out some absolute rubbish. That’s not even true, but, which is why I say loosely. You know, we can get that from Ai, but that’s not what we connect with, right? We connect to feeling, and we connect to vulnerability and we connect to stories. That’s actually part of what makes us human. Yeah, yeah. And I think that it’s a very I want to say this in two different ways, a as a business owner, it’s a, not a great place to go, because humans connect to humans, but from a humanity standpoint, that’s a really, really sad road that we’re going down, if that’s where it’s going to go.
Leon Flitton 5:54
Yeah, it’s quite a hole that they’re driving themselves into using AI. I was just thinking as well based off the conversations. And this did come up over the weekend as well. Is, and you probably heard it before that people buy from people that buy from the business. And so if you’re using AI essentially, and not having the humanness, not having the emotion, you actually becoming, well, less human for one but you’re not actually being authentic in yourself and showing up as the person that they want to buy from.
Samantha Riley 6:25
Yeah, totally, you know. And I look at people that are running social media accounts that have a logo, like, as a business logo, and they try and keep everything nice and logical and super you know, like really good marketing hooks and speech, and I just don’t connect with that like, and most people don’t, right? They actually connect with the human behind it, the person that’s got the vision, the person that’s got the passion, the person that has got that fire in their belly, like, that’s what we connect with.
Leon Flitton 7:03
Yeah, yeah. What I was gonna say was a bit of a quiet movement in social media, video and, like, kind of YouTube and that kind of thing at the moment, where it’s leaning more towards having conversations so the Rough and Ready kind of feel to it, which is authentic. And if you could imagine sitting down at a table with a few of your friends having a chat, and you get a bit more deep and meaningful, and then you lean into it. And I think that’s where we can go, where AI can’t go, yeah?
Samantha Riley 7:35
I think, well, we need to lean into that, yeah, because it’s easy to ask a question like AI, could give me a question that I could ask you, and you could answer it, and that would be okay. But what if, then I said, Tell me more about that. What happened then? What was the feeling that you had that made you pivot, or the feeling that made you go down that path? Or why did you do that? That’s where the goal is.
Leon Flitton 8:02
Yeah. I feel entrepreneurs. So, you know, in business owners, we have like, I was gonna like a hunch. I don’t want to call it like, a feeling, like, No, this is the right thing to do. And you go for it, yeah? And I don’t think you get that with AI,
Samantha Riley 8:16
No, because there’s no gut feeling, there’s no intuition, there’s no, I don’t know how else to say it. Let’s just go with that. Like there’s, yeah, it’s, is this feeling that that we want to go somewhere that’s deeper, that that’s part of our beauty. I think, as entrepreneurs, I’ve never met an entrepreneur that doesn’t like to go deep. Yeah. You know, that’s why we do what we do. And it was really interesting, because during this very long and deep and meaningful conversation, which went in a million different directions and went very deep, and we’d been having a logical conversation around, you know what the business does, and then someone said to me, Well, why do you do what you do? Yeah, and you know that that was where the gold was in itself, because I actually started to cry in this conversation. Look, I’m already doing it now, like, yeah, because it’s so important to me that people build profitable businesses, because it gives them the freedom to live the life that they want to live, a life filled with purpose, a life that changes them and their partner and their children and their family and their friends, like when you’re doing Something that you absolutely love, and it pays you and gives you the chance to live the life that you want. That changes not just your life, it changes your family and your children and when everyone’s happy and how many people that changes, it will make the world a much better place and right. Now, with all the absolute utter crap and horror that’s going on in the world, we need to be doing this and impacting people and changing people’s lives, because something’s got to change in the world, right?
Leon Flitton 10:18
So I’m sure you’ve said this numerous times before, but something I really like about what you do and the way you feel about what our clients particularly, and you’d like everyone to be with you on the journey, on the Super yacht, together, partying, or whatever you want to call it, you know, together. And I think that’s really cool, because we want to see everyone doing really well and living their best life.
Samantha Riley 10:44
I want everyone to win. And when I say that, I don’t mean it from a masculine standpoint of, I want everyone to have a million dollar business. What I mean is I want everyone to win and to be happy in their own way. Yeah, have a million dollar business, have a $20 million business, work 10 hours. Like, I don’t care. I don’t care if you earn enough to go and, you know, be pulling weeds in the garden, and that’s you that’s winning for you. Like, it’s not me saying my version of win. It’s just I want everyone to win and to be creating this life that they want, and you’re right, celebrating together, yeah? Because that’s the human part about it. Yeah. Like we’re in business to connect. And I think that all of us actually, you know what, I’m going to just talk from me at the moment, sometimes we forget that because we get so caught up in what we’re doing, and it’s like, oh, you know, I’ve got to do X, Y, Z, and I’ve got a to do list as long as my arm. And we all go to those places. But it’s like for us this weekend, it was that stop and that breather to go shit like we’re building something freaking epic here.
Leon Flitton 12:03
I don’t know, you’re getting a little bit emotional now, and back in my corporate days, I keep saying that. I gotta stop saying that. But the people that get emotional, what I always found was they give a shit to actually care. Yeah, you know. So I think that I love seeing the emotion, and I know you care. Side note from that, something else we did over the weekend was did a bit of a Ferris Bueller. And if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you might miss the world. And I don’t know what the quote is, because that’s not it.
Samantha Riley 12:35
But we get the idea. We stopped and we looked around and we saw a lot of beauty.
Leon Flitton 12:40
Yeah, yeah. And just pause and look around and watch.
Samantha Riley 12:45
Yeah, didn’t we? People watched, and we sat next to the ocean in silence and just listened to the waves lap and pondered. And I think that’s really important too, yeah, to quiet your mind, to show yourself some love. You actually just said, you know, like to me, it’s really important, like about, you know, when we love what we do, and that creates harmonious families, and, you know, creates an impact that’s all external, yeah, but we need to love on ourselves too, like someone actually, man, I’ve cried a lot this weekend because someone said to me, you know, who were the three people you love most? And I’m like, Oh, that’s easy. You know, my husband, you, my children and my grandson? Super easy. And she went, Well, did you ever consider yourself? And I was like, Shit, no, I’ve never, no, I’ve never, never thought of that. And it was like a real, you know, scratching the record moment of like, hang on a minute. Yes, we do. We have to love on ourselves too. So that I’m always talking about, we’ve got to fill our own cup. But it was just sort of phrased in a different way that made me think it’s not just maybe in some way, I was still logically thinking, fill your own cup, like, very visual when I see the actual cup feeling, but to actually go, oh my goodness, like, let’s give myself some love. Let’s go and sit by the ocean and feel the sun on my face and the breeze in my hair. And, you know, that’s very Mills and Boon.
Leon Flitton 14:39
Well, the thing is that that I look at, there’s a bit of a practical way as well. So there’s that you know, emotional way, and keep looking after yourself. The other part, and I say the practical way, is because if you want to show up for your clients, you need to make sure that you’re ready to perform the best for them. And if you. Haven’t done what you need for yourself, then you won’t show up the best way. For your clients, for your family, for yourself, as yourself, you won’t show up in the best way. So I think it’s a really, you know, key part. The world’s so busy, it’s so fast. Everything moves so fast, and yet we don’t stop to actually rejuvenate our sports. It’s like charging a battery, isn’t it recharging now? And I don’t think we do that enough, and I think the world is so fast, so hectic. You know, there’s like information bombarding you, there’s people that want your time, and you’re always essentially, you’re almost chasing time, and it’s busy, and you get exhausted, mentally exhausted, physically exhausted. And you hear about people burning out, you know, and they’re not recharging, rejuvenating, regenerating, however you want to say it, fill in their cup. They’re not doing that. And they’re just, you know, burning themselves to the ground pretty much.
Samantha Riley 15:56
Yeah, totally on that. That moving going back to the AI discussion, we were all discussing the fact that when we say originally, like it’s not original, I don’t know AI has been around for a really long time, kind of before I really knew what was happening. So let’s just go from, you know, day zero, of us all finding out that there was this thing called Chat GPT, yeah, I think maybe 2022. Yeah. And we’re like, oh, this AI thing’s coming in, and we’re going to save ourselves so much time, and we’re not going to need team. Was the story that was being bandied around. And we were going to let AI run our businesses, and we were going to go sit by the beach, and we kind of, there was a small group of us, and we all went, who is feeling that? And we all looked at each other and laughed like, AI has made us go faster. Yeah, we’re constantly trying to keep at the forefront of it, and we’re moving faster and faster and faster. And I think that our brain is constantly on, and it’s going at super speed, like at warp speed. We’re not giving it’s like our brain isn’t having that time to to calm down so, or to switch off, or, or just to, you know, go into some sort of boredom state. I can’t remember that. I can’t remember being bored.
Leon Flitton 17:16
It’s probably like, you know, when they like this, I said that T-shirt with, you know, caffeine in the morning to dumb shit fast or something, whatever it’s called, yeah, it’s like that. But you’re on that, that trip, like, all day, all night, yeah, never ending. It’s like caffeine fueled rage of AI, of just keep continuously rolling on and never it never ends. Yeah, and you do so much more stuff, but then I think you end up doing it yourself now almost, yeah.
Samantha Riley 17:42
I have seen some posts of people that said they’ve fired teams so the AI could do the work, and now what they’re doing is managing the AI. So what they’ve done is actually made life even harder for them. We haven’t let any of our team go. We’re just re-skilling them, yeah, like, I don’t want to be sitting behind Chat GPT. You know, I don’t want to be doing that. So it’s not about AI, actually. You know, you firing people and taking on more work, I think I’ve just gone down a completely different rabbit hole there.
Leon Flitton 18:24
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think if we come back to link that back, right, we can link this back to what we very first started the conversation with and about being human. Because if you let AI just continue to steamroll through your business, you’re going to have the same AI slot punched out that everyone else has, and you don’t get that and look at it might be AI might get 90% of the way there, but that last 10% in anything is always crucial to like the outcome being awesome. If it needs to be human input, which, right now it does, then that’s where the gold comes from. So I think it’s like, you know, you know, when I’ve seen you do this for your coaching, where you ask someone, give me seven things about X, whatever it is, you know, and they get to, like, three, four, and you go, push it harder. Then they get to like, five, man, that last, like, you know, the last, number six, number seven, and they come out. They’re freaking awesome.
Samantha Riley 19:20
Yeah, that’s where I think pushing that boundary, that invisible boundary that someone hasn’t been able to get through, yeah, it’s not pushing in a horrible way, but you have to break through that barrier, because that’s where the gold is, yeah, that’s where the growth is.
Leon Flitton 19:35
Yeah, yeah. And I feel like for a lot of the things that we do use AI for that it needs that human touch to actually get the maximum effect out of what you’re doing.
Samantha Riley 19:45
Totally. I did run a prompt over the weekend, and the data that it gave me was exceptionally logical, like it from a logical standpoint, it made sense, and when I ran it past someone in a conversation. Conversation, we were like, okay, logically, that works, but in alignment with one of my top three values, which is love, it does not work at all. Yeah, yeah. And that’s where, again, we come back to that human pieces. We have to tap into our values and something else I wanted to bring to this conversation is our zone of genius, yeah? Because if you don’t tap into what makes you so special, you absolutely lose the game. And I believe we all are just playing a game.
Leon Flitton 20:39
Yeah, yeah. But do you think that’s, you know, like, your experience, like, I know you’ve had multiple seven figure businesses. We’re even chatting about what your career as, from being young and having a job to being a business owner and multiple businesses, and the experience that you gain from that, with all things through, from like, team staff you know, to actually, like, you know how your life looks when you’re like, running multi, multiple businesses do multi, seven figures, figures. Yeah, multi in there. There was lots of multi in there, running multiples and yeah, and that gives you a whole different experience. And that then becomes your zone of genius. And everyone has this somewhere you know, that they need to lean into. And I think that’s the things that separate us from the AI, separate us from the other people in your industry as well. And I think a lot of people would waste it.
Samantha Riley 21:33
Yeah, that unique perspective that everyone, when they’re in their zone of genius, can see things that other people can’t see, and they can see those things or notice those things through experiences that they’ve had, through lived experience, yeah, and that’s what makes us special, and that’s the stuff that AI can’t see. Yeah, yet, I’m not saying that it can’t. I don’t know where it’s going. I’m not an AI expert. All I’m saying right now is that, you know, it’s always been the right time to lean into this. But if there’s ever a more perfect time, it’s now like, lean into your humanness, lean into your zones of genius, lean into your perspectives. And I think that the biggest advantage that we have right now is storytelling. Yeah, if we’ve got the ability to tell these stories in a way that resonates with other people, that has someone going, Oh, I’ve had that or that, you know, I’m in that place now and now I understand then that’s just completely changing it. Yeah.
Leon Flitton 22:46
So from your point of view, where people can relate because you’ve been there, you’ve been through the pain that they’re going through, because that’s what happens. As an entrepreneur, growing a business, there’s always a pain. Nothing’s easy. Kidding ourselves, you think it’s easy, and those are the things that makes you relatable to other business owners, entrepreneurs. And what happened was someone asked me, What makes Sam, Sam and makes her so good? And me being me, thought of one of the things, but I really wanted to add to it. So one thing I know about you is that because you’ve had those multiple businesses, and you’ve the levels you’ve been at, you’re able to, from a 30,000 feet helicopter view, you know, look into the business, and then zoom into it and see what needs to be fixed. And you zoom back out, and you get all right, that’s fixed. Now we go, the next thing, we fix that. So, and that’s much your process. What I didn’t add, though, was, Sam has this X-ray vision. So she goes, there’s the issue. We’re going to zoom into that. Then she X-rays that and makes out what the real deal is behind it. And that’s something I really love about you and your coaching. So, oh, thank you. Yeah, I think it’s freaking awesome. Thank you.
Samantha Riley 23:55
Oh, you’re so sweet. I want to go back to the storytelling a little bit, because there was a story that someone shared while we were chatting to him, and it affected you and I greatly, because it was just it gave us an insight into who this person was, into their values. And we asked him, What was that moment that helped you to grow your business to what it is today? Like, what was that catalyst that made you successful? Let’s just say that okay, you know that helped you to go to that next income level. And he shared that him and his wife were overseas, and an option came up to bid on an upgrade into business class. And even the bid was sort of out of his comfort zone. He didn’t really have that money to burn, but he went, you know what, I really want to give this opportunity to my wife to fly in business class. And he shared that his wife was so happy. So the bid was successful. And he looked over at his wife mid flight, and she was just so happy and so relaxed. And he’s like, I love her so much. I want to be able to give her these experiences all the time. And he said, and it was at that moment he was like, I have to do whatever it takes to make sure my wife’s happy. And it was, it was just from such a pure loving space that he said it, that it gave us such a connection to him as a person. And that’s the power of storytelling.
Leon Flitton 25:36
Yeah, yeah. That was a very small story, but I felt like I got this, you know, from a very small story, the way he told it and the emotion he brought, I felt there’s massive, massive insight into him, you know, like it was like such a small story, but like a 10x insight into how awesome he is.
Samantha Riley 25:54
Because it wasn’t just words, right, but as he was telling it. And I think that’s why I’m getting choked up again, the tears welled up in his eyes. You could see the love that he had for his wife and how important this was for him to give that to her and that that gave him so much joy of being a provider and seeing her happy yeah and yeah that then it’s like, oh, this is an exceptional human being. You can see why he does what he does and you know that, in business, he’s going to be like that as well. And you’re right, it was just such a short story, but it was so powerful.
Leon Flitton 26:33
Yeah, yeah. And I think it just, I try to explain like, I feel like he has so much more value as a person. Like, I knew he was a good guy anyway, but this just like, magnified the value of him. Like this, he’s a good guy. He’s a really, really, really, really good guy. Like, yeah, you know, and just listening was great.
Samantha Riley 26:52
So yeah, because at any time, he could plug anything into AI and pump out 10,000 posts, and it never would have had us talking about him in the way that we’re talking about him now. And I think that’s why I wanted to bring this conversation today, is because that our humanness needs to come into our business. And I say for you, for me, for everybody, because this is our unique God. Even this is going to sound so logical, it’s our unique selling proposition. But proposition, because this is the thing that connects our customers and our clients, prospects, our prospective clients and prospective customers to us. Yeah, that’s exactly why they come. They don’t come because of an AI post. Yeah, they come because they connect with us, and we’re all unique and with there’s some, there’s a whole group of people out there in the world right now, when all the billions of people on the planet that will resonate with you, with what you do, with your unique perspective, that need your solution right now, and you’re the person that they’re waiting to hear from, and they’re not going to connect with you through a piece of AI, yeah.
Leon Flitton 28:05
Totally agree, and that storytelling is just so important.
Samantha Riley 28:09
Yeah, it’s been a big weekend, as you can tell, you can tell where we’re heading into the end of the eclipse season. There’s been a lot of shifts. I don’t know if, as you’re listening, whether you’ve experienced this over the last two weeks, yeah, some big things. The energy is helping us to step up, and, you know, really step into who we are. And I think that the energy has supported these big conversations this week to help us all evolve into that next version.
Leon Flitton 28:43
Yeah, I was gonna say, move through it. It feels like a roller coaster for most, get to the end of it.
Speaker 1 28:48
Yes, absolutely. Anything you want to add, Leon?
Leon Flitton 28:53
I really want anyone listening, that’s out there listening to this to know that your story is important. It’s one of the reasons I started podcast editing in the first place, because everyone has a story. It needs to be told. Yeah, and I really believe that. And I think, you know, over the last couple of weeks, in particular, weekend, realising how important it is for you to tell your story, yeah, and that’s that was, you know, I said that’s the reason I started podcasting. That was the reason we got into it, was like they get why do you do it? And that’s why. And I think now more than ever, it’s super important, and I don’t want people to lose that. I want, you know, I love hearing from people that story, you know, about one of our friends and his wife was, it’s like, burned into my brain, you know, like, yeah, it was so big and and it just, it really gave me a good insight into him, you know.
Samantha Riley 29:43
Yeah, totally, totally love having him on our boat, yeah. Thank you so much for listening. If there’s something that I want to leave everyone with is to lean into your authenticity, who you really are, into your quirks, your values, into your unique perspectives. And really, I was going to say, amplify them, but I don’t even think you have to, because I think when you lean into them, it’s already amplified. Yeah, yeah, gosh, processing that is even as I’m speaking it out, lean into you. The world needs you. The world needs your genius. The world needs your stories. The world needs your unique perspectives. Thanks for listening. Big love. Catch you next week on another episode of Business Growth Lab.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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