How To Use AI For Business Growth With Jeff Borschowa

AI isn’t replacing leaders—it’s empowering those who know how to use it. In this episode, I sit down with Jeff Borschowa, a seasoned business coach and AI enthusiast, to uncover how technology is reshaping leadership, marketing, and decision-making. Jeff shares how AI feedback transformed his communication clarity, revealing the surprising role of clear instructions in leadership success.

We explore Jeff’s innovative approach to relationship-driven marketing, where every campaign feels like a love letter to your ideal client. Jeff also reveals his process for building custom AI models, like his avatar Maya, to align business strategies with audience needs. Whether you're looking to streamline operations, create impactful marketing, or amplify your leadership skills, this conversation offers actionable insights to revolutionize your approach.

Don’t miss Jeff’s game-changing tips on integrating AI into your business, along with his book recommendations to spark new ideas.

Connect with Jeff Borschowa :
 
Connect with Jeff Borschowa on LinkedIn and join his Big Thinkers Universe group to explore innovative ideas, dive deeper into AI-powered business solutions, and take your leadership and communication skills to the next level.

Books Mentioned:

• The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann 

Join the New Catalytic Leadership Community

Check out our new online membership site, with new resources by Dr. William Attaway and his team added weekly: https://checkout.catalyticleadership.net/

Chapters

• 0:01 Introduction to Leadership and AI
• 4:00 Communication Clarity Through AI
• 8:50 Relationship-Driven Marketing
• 13:10 Leveraging AI for Business Growth
• 17:00 Building Custom AI Models
• 23:36 Amplifying Leadership Skills with AI
• 28:31 Recommended Books and Closing Thoughts

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:00

It is such an honor today to have Jeff Borchoa on the podcast. Jeff is a business coach, an author, an educator and curator of all things related to business efficiency and technology. Jeff first joined the accounting world in 1991 and has spent the bulk of his career working with and advising small to medium-sized enterprises. Jeff has experience working with all sizes of businesses, from sole proprietorships to international organizations. The focus in Jeff's career has been to find new and better ways to integrate innovation and technology to enhance the customer customer experience and improve efficiency in businesses. Jeff is AI obsessed and, jeff, I'm so glad you're here. I'm looking forward to a great conversation. Well, william.

Jeff Borschowa : 0:54

I'm excited. So I know we had a great conversation before we hit record and I can't wait to share some of the things we covered in the recording. I think it's going to be great.

Intro/Outro: 1:04

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:20

I'd love to start with you sharing a little bit of your story with our listeners, particularly about your journey and your development as a leader. Jeff, how did you get started?

Jeff Borschowa : 1:45

took a lot of courses and all that taught me was that I didn't know anything and what I eventually you know what I came to was as a leader. If I don't work on myself, how can I help other people find themselves and bring out the best in them?

Jeff Borschowa : 1:56

So, probably the last, and this is going to be a weird twist for people. The last year I've been building virtual AI models and I'm training them to be employees in my organization, so I've actually really honed my communication skills, and the aha moment for me was that if I give AI good instructions, I get good results. If I give them bad instructions, I get bad results. And so I've sort of recognized that, when it comes to human beings, if I give better instructions, I get better results. Isn't that funny how that works. The most annoying thing, william, I promise, was I realized that most of the leadership problems I've had in my life were from the guy staring back in the mirror.

Dr. William Attaway: 2:46

What a realization.

Jeff Borschowa : 2:48

Oddly, AI has helped me understand that.

Dr. William Attaway: 2:52

That's brilliant. I can relate to that. You know. I think about my own leadership journey and so many of the lessons that I've learned. I have learned by driving into a ditch Yep and then looking in the mirror and saying, all right, who was behind the wheel? Oh, that's right, him again. That's so good and honest, sorry go ahead, no go for it.

Jeff Borschowa : 3:16

I was just going to say what I realized when I started using AI is that I would give it a prompt and then it would come back and say I think what you're asking for is this. Is that correct? And I actually had a long conversation, because that's what I do. I said I really like how you communicate. Could you explain the methodology that goes into how you communicate? And it explained to me how it paraphrases back to me and I was like I'm going to use this in the stuff I do now.

Intro/Outro: 3:48

So I do it with my kids.

Jeff Borschowa : 3:49

I do it with my family and it's just. You know, we all think I'm in too much of a hurry to be clear, but the reality is, if you're not clear, you're going to come in back and have this conversation tomorrow, the day after, and what I love about AI is it's instant feedback. So I got to really improve my communication skills by asking it to comment on my communication skills and, by the way, that's a simple prompt anybody can do is, at the end of the conversation, saying would you mind analyzing my communication skills? What could I have done to improve? Would you mind analyzing my communication skills? What could I have done to improve? Now you got to have a thick skin there, because AI will tell you exactly what you did wrong. It's not looking to spare your feelings, but if you do that a few times, you'll grow exponentially, you know.

Dr. William Attaway: 4:37

I think that clarity is kindness, and that is true with other people and it's most true with ourselves, and what you're describing is this search for clarity. Asking the right questions is always how you get the right answers. Yep, and I love the question that you asked the model. Hey, analyze this. Help me understand this.

Intro/Outro: 4:58

Help me understand first, because that's what it's built for Right.

Dr. William Attaway: 5:02

You're leveraging its strengths in order to make you stronger. Yep as a leader, as a communicator. I think that's absolutely brilliant, jeff.

Jeff Borschowa : 5:11

Well, thank you, and honestly, it goes to my pet peeve. Everybody says AI is going to replace me. No, it's going to be the guys who figure out how to use and gals who figure out how to use AI. They're going to make you no longer necessary because they're going to upskill so fast, and I think that's the exciting part about AI we can master something in months instead of decades.

Jeff Borschowa : 5:36

And it's just having that deliberate practice and, honestly, I don't know a single skill that matters more to human beings than communication and clarity. So why wouldn't you use, while you're there I mean, you've got this large language model. It's built to evaluate language. Ask it to evaluate your language.

Dr. William Attaway: 5:58

And this is something that you work with clients to help them leverage.

Jeff Borschowa : 6:02

Absolutely. This is the first little spoiler Before the show. We were talking about my favorite custom AI model and her name is Maya, and Maya is a custom GPT. I created her in the GPT builder for OpenAI's platform and Maya is programmed as my ideal client avatar. She knows everything about my avatar. She knows their fears, their frustrations, their wants, their aspirations, their goals. She knows how they think. She knows how educated they are. She knows what language they like.

Jeff Borschowa : 6:37

She's trained, believe it or not, to be optimistic and to repel pessimists, and so whenever I'm working on something for my business, whatever that something is, I go to Maya and I ask her how does this come across? And I'm a relationship builder, I'm not a transactional person. I work with people long term. So I asked Maya about I got a whole bunch of Black Friday sales and I ran it through Maya and she said personally, jeff, I find these offensive. It diminishes the value. If you were to offer me something like this, I would look elsewhere and I was like wow to have. I knew she would say that because I built her, but also the nuances that she gave me were fascinating, because I knew what her answer would be in terms of yes or no. What fascinated me was her justifications and well thought out reasoning. And, by the way, I use that then to refine my marketing and I'll go back to you.

Jeff Borschowa : 7:40

Know, let's say I'm doing a landing page, I'll feed it to Maya and I'll say Maya, this is the landing page. What feedback do you have for me now? Now, for the record, I don't eliminate the human beings, but the reality is I see most marketing done without an avatar in mind, and you know, it's that old saying if you serve everyone, you serve no one. At least I know that my first draft is appealing to my audience. Next step is I'm going to reach out to people and say, hey, I'd love your feedback on this. But it went from oh, do I have to? To oh, my God, that's amazing. And I truly believe, william, that marketing should be a love letter to your ideal client. It should attract them. You're not chasing them down and trying to trick them into buying crap they don't need. You're saying I can solve your problem, I care about you.

Dr. William Attaway: 8:47

Let's do business, any real conversation with a client, but particularly prospective clients, with that posture, because that's something that they feel may not be able to identify it right off, but they feel it if you want something from them and they feel it if you want something for them.

Jeff Borschowa : 9:06

Yeah, and you know I was very lucky early. I've had a lot of sales training and almost all of my mentors I think we seek the mentors that resonate with us they all taught that sales is something you do for your prospect, not to them, and that's right and honestly, I think I'm going to say this. I don't know exactly your audience. I'm going to piss off a lot of marketers and a lot of salespeople. We should be the two functions that can be eliminated. First, because if we communicate well, our clients become our fans and they bring their friends to us. It is in fact, you know, a lot of people say oh, that's not scalable. I can go on Google and buy ads. Well, I'd rather have the passion of, you know, an Apple fanatic than an indifferent PC buyer.

Dr. William Attaway: 9:54

That's so true.

Jeff Borschowa : 9:55

Like you think about it, apple's biggest problem is where do we put our surplus cash? Yes, the PC market is fragmented and everybody's fighting over margins. And you know Black Friday sales. I've yet to see an Apple Black Friday sale in my inbox. I don't know if they're out there, but I've yet to see an Apple Black Friday sale in my inbox. I don't know if they're out there, but I've yet to see one. I got them from Samsung, from IBM, from you know you name the PC makers. I got something Black Friday from them. If we'd all stop competing on price and compete on value and relationships, the world is more abundant in that space. Well said.

Dr. William Attaway: 10:32

Your new book Leveraging Chat GPT in Business yes, is really all about the simple AI solutions that are effective for people who are entrepreneurs. I'd love for you to share a little bit about that.

Jeff Borschowa : 10:46

Well, it started with my background and my discovery. So I know a lot of people who've been in AI since the 50s. So I'm going to acknowledge that I've only been in AI for about two years now, which still makes me old, relative, because, you know, there's new people coming in every day. But when I started with AI and sorry if this offends anyone I was seeing all the noise that it was creating and I looked at it and said AI must be really stupid because I'm seeing a lot of really stupid things. And I looked at it and said AI must be really stupid because I'm seeing a lot of really stupid things. And I dismissed it. I said I'm a purist, you know, I'm elitist, I'm going to stick to the human touch. And what I realized was and this is where it becomes revolutionary when you go into AI and you ask it can you print, can you write a LinkedIn post for me about catch flow? Yeah, what it does is it goes out and it looks at the most frequent measures, the most frequent comments, which is the loud, noisy people and it comes back and it'll repeat the gibberish that's out there. And so what I realized was, if I learned to tune out the signal noise, I could get a really clear message. So my little tip for everybody listening is, instead of saying, could you write me a LinkedIn article about cash flow, the first thing I always do is say what categories of experts could help me write a LinkedIn article about cash flow, and it'll narrow it down, and what that's doing is it's narrowing down the noise, it's filtering it out. The next thing I say is who are the experts that I must follow in terms of cash flow? And then I'll ask what are the best practices these experts ask? And then I'll say you're a LinkedIn expert, help me write this article. And just to make it a little bit more useful, I'll say my avatar is Maya. Here's what she likes. Here's her profile. Make sure this is something she would want to read. Now we're going to get into books.

Jeff Borschowa : 12:44

I know this, but I am a diehard GoGiver fan. If you don't like GoGiver, we don't need to talk. I promise I will annoy you. You'll annoy me, but everything I do, I believe, has to add value, and if it doesn't add value, shame on me. I shouldn't be asking for somebody's attention.

Jeff Borschowa : 13:04

So what I realized and this is just a really simple analogy most people go in and expect their first question from GPT to generate a result. It's kind of like walking into a high school classroom and asking what's the formula for this physics equation and you're going to get. If there's 30 students and a teacher in the room, you'll get 31 answers. Large language models would weight 30 weirdly worded answers equally with the one expert, whereas when you filter it down it's like saying, okay, william, you're the expert on this, I'd like your opinion, and then going forward because I love my son, but I'm going to trust his physics teacher over his opinion of something in physics. And that's what most people are doing. Wrong in AI is they're asking the students to come up with an educated answer. I've never thought of it that way that AI awaits every opinion equally.

Jeff Borschowa : 14:08

Yes. Now think about this for a minute. If you ask and, by the way, that was a trend for a while, I don't follow it anymore Everybody was asking how do I get rich quick using AI? And so, if you think about it, and so if you ask AI, how do I get rich with AI? It will tell you the number one way to get rich with AI is to teach other people how to get rich with AI, because that is the most like.

Jeff Borschowa : 14:59

If you think about it, millions of videos are being produced on that topic. Millions of videos are being produced on that topic. Now, what I found is that you know, some 18 year old influencer in San Diego is telling entrepreneurs here's how you get rich using AI, and it's like but I don't want to create videos on how to get rich using AI. I run a you know, a marketing company or I run an accounting firm. I don't want to get rich with AI, I just want to work less, have more impact, make more money. So the thing is and this is something people don't necessarily recognize most of the advice you're getting on marketing and sales is coming from unqualified 18-year-olds. Just sleep on that for a moment. That's exciting to think about and dangerous as hell, right.

Dr. William Attaway: 15:46

Just a little bit. Wow, there are so many directions from this point in the conversation. You're two years into this field, yeah, and these are the thoughts that you're having in the book that you've written. Where do you go from here? What is next on the horizon? As you are looking ahead, where do you?

Jeff Borschowa : 16:07

go from here? What is next on the horizon as you are looking ahead? So here's the thing ChatGPT is just the shiny tip of the spear, so everybody is debating do I enter the world of AI, yes or no? I'm sorry, but this is the paddling pool. This isn't even the real world. So you'll notice if you see my book online it has a white cover, and so I plan on doing a. I love martial arts, I love the gamification of learning, so I'm going to next do a book that has a yellow cover and so on until we get to the black cover is going to represent mastery.

Jeff Borschowa : 16:43

So here's the thing For all those people who are debating do I use ChatGPD, yes or no? You're asking a three-year-old question in a world that is collapsing on itself roughly every I'm going to say every three months. You know, in the old days, you know the HB number two wood pencil that had a life of probably 50, 100 years. In today's world, it has a life of maybe six months. And so here's the thing AI has been around since the 50s. It's accelerated exponentially in the last two years. Chat GPT, in my humble opinion, is the equivalent. If you're in business, if you want to stay alive, you need to breathe, and I think chat GPT is going to be the oxygen we need.

Jeff Borschowa : 17:35

The reality is and, by the way, if you watch the TikTokers and YouTubers, everybody's talking about agents now and they're always an agent. A chatbot is a chatbot, an agent. The reality is, as a mere mortal, we can't compete with chatbots, which can respond almost instantaneously to clients. So you need to look at chatbots. But the reality is true agents and I joke because I use I'm building a team, so I am the CEO of a company of 150. I have zero humans. I have no desire to have humans, but the reality is we're getting to that point. I don't need to be an expert in everything, I just need to know enough to know. Does Maya like this, yes or no? So every one of my little models right now they're AI models, they're custom GPTs, they're autonomous and they have their own role. They're specialists at one thing there's one who writes LinkedIn posts. There's one who creates visuals for LinkedIn posts. They're very, very specific.

Jeff Borschowa : 18:41

At some point and this is probably two months in the future I'm going to have all of them connected together and I won't even be necessary to do something. I just hit the start button and I step away and it'll do it. Most human beings can't compete with that, and here's the key. Now I will say this AI amplifies the person at the keyboard. So if you're smart and you know your stuff, it will make you smarter and brighter. But if you are just going, close your eyes and hope for the best, good luck, because you'll get noisy garbage. And if you don't know the difference between good and bad, you're going to just like the world's going to be flooded with noisy garbage and people are going to lose that desire to engage with online content, but they're going to look for that genuine human connection. They're going to look for it, and that's where I can really amplify who we are and what we believe. So I do believe the next step is going to be autonomous agents that have specific tasks and they do them well.

Jeff Borschowa : 19:47

This isn't brand new. It's just now. Everybody's come out with these low-code, no-code platforms. It's getting easier and easier, and I think there's a law of integration where it cuts in half every two years or something like that. We're seeing that timelines have collapsed on themselves. If I take a month off, I'd probably feel really behind right now.

Dr. William Attaway: 20:10

Wow, you know, I love what you said there about how AI amplifies the person behind the keyboard. I think that's so true and, with that in mind, your business, your clients, they need you to lead at a higher level today than they did a few years ago, and that same thing is going to be true even more so two, three, five years from now. Yes, how are you staying on top of your game and leveling up with the new leadership skills and other skills that your clients and your business are going to need you to have, particularly in light of knowing that you are being amplified?

Jeff Borschowa : 22:20

That is a fabulous question and it may surprise you that part of the answer is very analog and part of it is very digital. Like you, I read a lot. I have a large library of books. You know. My favorites are Bob Bird, john David Mann, simon Sinek. I read a lot, but what I've discovered lately and this is going to reveal way too much about me, my wife's going to roll her eyes I created several AI models specifically to help me get better at certain things.

Jeff Borschowa : 22:51

So I actually built one. I call it my asynchronous book club and basically when I read a book, I put my thoughts in as I have questions, I put my questions in and I literally have a conversation with the book so I can learn from it and I process the theory of the book, whatever that theory is, and then I'll say help me create an action plan and it'll help me take that theory. You know, and that's the thing, one year I read about 100 nonfiction business books and at the end of the year I had so many ideas and nothing accomplished because I was busy reading and nothing accomplished because I was busy reading. And now I read less, but when I read it, I go. I really like that nugget on page 37. Let's implement that Now. That's the learning side. Now, on the other side, I've built custom models. So I actually built sorry to the business coaches out there, but I built a business coach, I built a CEO. I built a business coach, I built a CEO, I built a CFO and I asked them questions and I have an HR one, by the way. I asked them questions and what I did? So this is again very nerdy. I literally took the idea of fantasy football leagues and I said you know, if people can bet on these and if they can build their teams, why can't I have a fantasy business league? So all of my Patent pending on that? No, I'm kidding, but what I did is all of my favorite books, and this is the wonderful thing about really good books. They'll say here's who inspired me, here's what I learned from this person. There's a book about Bill Campbell. He was nicknamed the trillion dollar coach, great book. What I love about that book? They shamelessly name drop everybody that Bill ever touched in a coaching world and my theory is well, if Bill had that much impact, he should be guiding my coach. So I actually built a business coach. That kicks my butt as if Bill Campbell was still alive today. Wow, you know it's.

Jeff Borschowa : 25:02

And here's the secret part that really came through. If I'm not willing to work on me, I need to work on my mindset, because that's what drives the results. So, for me, I focus on clarity, curiosity and mindset. And from that and by the way, this is just strange, but if I'm learning leadership skills, I might as well ask Buddha, muhammad, jesus, etc. Like if you look at the leaders in history, you know I ask how Julius Caesar would make this decision. Again, what I love about AI is it answers as if it was him. So it's. You know especially historical figures. We have so much. You know why wouldn't I have Benjamin Franklin, george Washington? You know Martin Luther King on my personal advisory board, so you know there was those wristbands everybody had. What would Jesus do? You can now ask AI what would Jesus do, and it gives a pretty decent answer.

Dr. William Attaway: 26:05

You know the question that I ask everybody is around a book that has made a big difference in your journey and, like me, you are a voracious reader. I can't wait to hear your answer to this one. You've already dropped so many, and I mean what's one, or even two, that really triggered growth and learning in you?

Jeff Borschowa : 26:29

So I'm going to give you my top two and this should not surprise anybody but Bob Berg and John David Mann. The entire GoGiver series is brilliant. I love how they tell the story. The other book is a recent find. It is called the Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan, and Noah is the founder of AppSumo and what I love. He's built eight or nine multimillion dollar companies, and so, first and foremost, when I first heard about the book, I'm like, oh, that's a little hypey for me. I'm not going to read it. But what he does is he gives an actual, detailed framework that says here's how you validate a business idea, and if it doesn't generate a million dollar market, why would you put your effort into it?

Jeff Borschowa : 27:17

So it's not like he's saying you're going to make a million dollars in a weekend, but you're analyzing your business and saying, would this be a viable million dollar business? And what I love is you can rapid prototype. He teaches you how to validate and if you get a no, if you don't get the math to a billion, next weekend you do it the same. And the magic of it is he's teaching people with nine to fives how to build their side hustle on the weekend so that when they leave their job they're not starving to death as an entrepreneur. So I love the balance of it, but most importantly, I love the practical steps, and I'm one of those people. I read it once and I'll try it, and then I'll miss something. So I now have my million dollar weekend verification AI and I run it through and it'll remind me that I skipped a step.

Dr. William Attaway: 28:09

So I have not read this and I can't wait to check it out.

Jeff Borschowa : 28:13

It's like it's got some really simple stuff, but it's like, oh my God, if everybody did this, we wouldn't see a 90% failure rate in business, my goodness. So it's just simple genius that works.

Dr. William Attaway: 28:28

Jeff, I've so enjoyed the conversations that we have had and I'm so grateful for your time and your generosity. Today I could talk to you for another hour and just continue to learn. I know our listeners are going to want to connect with you and learn more about what you're doing. What is the best way for them to do that?

Jeff Borschowa : 28:48

So absolute best connect with me on LinkedIn. That's where I'm active. I don't do any other social media. I have a YouTube channel, but I don't use it that much and really truly if you want to learn what's going on in my world. I have a LinkedIn group which I shared the link. It's called Big Thinkers Universe, and that's just where I share my random thoughts of the day. And and that's just where I share my random thoughts of the day, and I spend two or three hours a day contemplating big questions that don't have answers, just because I know that I'll answer something else by accident. So my burning question is how do businesses attract clients? Because everybody's chasing them. Reality is, if we stop chasing and if you want to catch a stray cat, you put a bowl of milk out you know you don't try to run the damn thing to the ground. That's true, and yet when it comes to clients, we chase them.

Dr. William Attaway: 29:41

So well said, jeff. Thank you, this is, this has just been a masterclass today, and I'm so grateful for your time and your generosity.

Jeff Borschowa : 29:50

It was a blast, thank you for having me.

Dr. William Attaway: 29:52

William, thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Dr. William Attaway: 30:28

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.