The Future Is Mentored: Real Connection Is Required in an AI-Driven World

Automation won't replace you, but it will amplify you. For years, we were told automate everything, make it evergreen, passive income. But in 2025, the pendulum has swung back. People are craving human connection. They want coaches who care, mentors who guide, and programs that feel personal even at scale. So how do we do that when we are trying to build a scalable business? Because the future isn't just about more automation. It's about smarter, personalized automation that supports real relationships. Hey everybody. Welcome to season three of the Scalable Expert™ Podcast, the show for established expert business owners who are maxed out on time and ready to find the scalable impact of their work. I'm your host, Tara Bryan, founder of The Scalable Expert™, and creator of the Infinite Scale Method™. If you've built a business around your expertise, but feel stuck in the time-for-money trap, this podcast is your path forward. Each week, I'll share stories and strategies and shifts to help you step into a new, scalable business model by declaring your authority, packaging your expert framework, and streamlining your offers and systems to ultimately become a scalable expert, because it's not about working harder, it's about building smarter. All you need is one signature expert framework and you can deliver an infinite amount of ways to be able to scale your business. Alright, let's get started. Welcome to episode 402, The Future is Mentored, episode of The Scalable Expert Podcast. I am thrilled that you're here today. Hey, in this podcast I want a really dive into what is working today in the online business space and what we need to shift. So here is the challenge that we have, and I've alluded to this before, but when we're talking about The Scalable Expert, we need to talk about how do we scale our expertise in a way that doesn't max out our time. So how do we do that, right? How do we do that when people are starting to crave more connection and relationships in a business than ever before. We are inundated with information, with AI, with all of the things and so people don't want a just purchase an automated or evergreen thing to be able to hope that they could get a transformation based on what you're teaching them or what you're delivering. So how do we change that in our business today and still be scalable? How do we take all of the automation and systems and all of the things that we need to make our business run and to leverage our time, but yet still create an awesome experience and relationship for our clients so they stay and become customers for life. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, you grow when your customers are happy and they're referring you and they stay, and continue to engage with your brand. All right, so let's dive into that because I think that, the, the, there's a big question out there right now, which is, well, do I just need to have more events? Do I just need to have more one-on-one? Do I need to have more time and delivery with my customers? Because people don't want more automation. They're maxed out by just being blasted with AI automation or just, automation in general. And I would say that we've reached a critical point in time where, for a long time, you know, people were, open to learning and going through online evergreen experiences from people that they trusted, from different industry leaders who had a system that allowed them to put it out there in a way that people could consume it. But with the rise of AI, with the rise of, I would say, information starting to become more and more distilled where it was, for a while we didn't have access to the information and then we got access to all the information even if we had no idea if the information was, valuable or not. Right. There was no way to look at it and and look at it with a critical eye. Now, I would say AI allows us to do that and so there's less of a need for kind of the secrets of how people have done things in the past because we have access to really be able to get to those secrets that we weren't able to get to before. So if you think about even some sales messages that you had where it's like, you know, if you, join my thing, I'm gonna give you my proprietary system and that's going to, you know, help you with these, you know, private or secret things that, um, that you can't get out there in the wild, and so you need to learn, social media from this expert because they have some sort of secret formula that you need to buy their thing to figure out. That's not the case anymore, right? In most instances, you can actually get that model that they are talking about in their program by using AI. And as business owners, as the ones who are creating those proprietary systems, it's really becomes a question of okay, so if they can get that through AI, where's the value that I'm providing? Where is the opportunity for me to really still be able to guide and mentor my clients towards a result? And that is where the magic is because here's the deal, is that you can get all the information, you can distill all the information in AI, but AI is not gonna help you implement or apply the information into whatever it is that you're trying to do. And, and if that were the case, everyone would be doing all of the things. And so it doesn't help the overwhelm, it doesn't help the mindset traps that people have. Or the false beliefs or even the complexity of trying to implement something in their business. So there's still so much value in, how do I take what I, what the information that I have, even if it's distilled down from AI, and apply it into something that's meaningful, that helps me go from point A to point B. And I'll argue that all day long. I don't care how many AI bots you have, it's still necessary to help people bridge that gap from where they are today to where they want a go. And that is, if you are paying attention to what's going on in the industry, that is what people are asking for. That is still what people want, is somebody to help them go from point A to point B. And and so when we look at that in the Infinite Scale Method, what we're doing is we're defining what your unique way that you help somebody go from point A to point B, right. That's your signature framework. How do you uniquely do that? And how do you consistently do that for all of your customers? Instead of having random kind of success paths for all of them, you build your business on your expert framework or your signature framework. And then from there, how do you deliver a personalized experience for your people so that they can apply it and get the results, but it still feels personalized. So you are taking automation or systems and creating personalized experiences. The best way to do this, honestly, is to map it out ahead of time. How, how do you want your people to feel? How do you want them to go step by step by step through your experience? How do you want to show up? To help them. How do you do that while still maintaining your ability to be scalable? So you're using systems and automation to support that journey, that personalized journey that you are creating for them and each one of the different automation tools that you apply really is for that goal and that goal alone. It's not just to blast people with information or cookie cutter experiences that you're providing to people as they're going through the journey that you've provided for them. It's really looking at how do you give them the fastest path to results. And I've talked about this before, but I can't say it enough that the biggest value that you provide, other than providing them with the fastest path to results, giving them the actual roadmap, the highest level of value that you can provide to them is to help them get there, right? Help them overcome the obstacles, overcome the hurdles, overcome their false beliefs or mindset traps. That is the magic that you provide within your signature framework. That all can be created as an orchestrated and automated experience that doesn't feel automated. And that's what people are craving is the personal connection and the personalized experience. And, I'm telling you, if you put somebody into your signature, roadmap that you've created for them and they feel completely supported and they feel like they're having a personalized experience with you, you can deliver that at scale. And everyone feels supported. Everyone is getting consistent results, and everyone knows exactly where they are on the path. It provides so much clarity for you, for your team, for your customers, and it creates consistency and where people are getting stuck and so you can jump in, create a solution for that particular obstacle or hurdle and keep them moving forward. And so much of this is just creating that customer journey before somebody goes into it, right? So they know exactly how to go through, you know, how to drive them through the process and you end up getting consistent results. It will change the game for you and it's not that difficult. One of the things is to just think through how somebody steps through where they are today, like the problem that they have to the solution they're looking for. You've mapped out your steps, and then within those steps, where are they going to, where are they gonna have some hiccups? Where are they going to kind of fall off of the path? Some of this comes from your experience that you've had in helping your customers, either one-on-one customers or, or group or however you've been delivering in the past. And so you intuitively know where people are gonna get stuck. As an example, if you take, I don't know, take like a social media framework, right? Like how to create your first ad for your business. And you map out, okay the problem is you don't have any ads so you don't have any visibility in your business. The result you're wanting is to have people consistently come in from social media and buy your thing. Okay, that's the path that you are creating. So then your job as the expert in social media is to say, okay, here's what you need to do first, and then do this, and then do this, and then do this. However many steps you need to lay out for them, that's becomes your signature framework. But then you lay out your framework and you're like, step one is, and I'm totally making this up on the fly, so it's not gonna be right, but like step one is to dial in your messaging. And, and so you're, that's what you're teaching them to do in step one is like, okay, so you've, you've identified your avatar and you've, you've identified, you know what it is you're selling, right? Like that's kind of pre-work. So now we have to nail down your messaging so that you can put the right messaging out there to start attracting people. So that's the step, that's the goal. And you find that you're teaching the mechanics of that, right? Like, you're like, okay, do this and do that, and do this other thing, and da, da, da, da, da. But people aren't doing it because they are like, well, I don't know what my messaging is, or, I have this messaging for this person and this messaging for this person, but I don't really know how to talk about this in a way that delivers a transformation. And then you're like, oh, okay, this is a common problem that people are having in this step. Now you can create a piece of content or you can create some sort of personalized, you know, interaction or something. A workbook page or an activity or a touch point where you're getting on a coaching call with a group of people or whatever it is, right? You can make up whate however you want to tackle this challenge with your people, but you're like, oh, this is a common challenge people are having. So you've created something that is part of that customer journey because that's where they're gonna trip up. So you create something and then all of a sudden they're not tripping up anymore. They're moving through it so naturally because you've already solved that problem for them, that you know that they're gonna have. Same thing in step two. Maybe step two is creating the visuals. And you're like, oh my gosh now they're all like losing their minds 'cause they're not creative, they don't know what kind of visuals to create. So you have created a whole page of visuals for them or some sort of tool that they can use to create their visuals in Canva. I don't know. But you've created something for them. Now all of a sudden that hurdle is gone and they're able to move through without needing you or your team, or some fancy pants something or else because you've created that for them. So you literally can go through and do this for every single step. Where are they usually tripping up? Where do you anticipate that they're gonna trip up. Create something for them to go to get over that particular hurdle so then they keep moving through. Once you do that for your entire signature framework, and you have figured out most of those tripping up places, your time just got minimized because they're able to get through the experience in whatever way you're planning to do it, without any of those random emergency firefighting conversations that you usually have because you've been able to eliminate that. So often one of the things that we have as table stakes in the experiences that we help our clients create is you have your signature path that you've created, your signature framework, you have created the training, the foundational training for each of the steps, and then it's like, okay, so then what's the next layer? What should they need? How do they need to take action? How do they apply it to their business? So then you create that layer, whether it's a workbook or it's some type of light implementation or tools and templates and all sorts of other things. What does that look like? What do they need to be able to implement into their business that fast tracks their process? Maybe it's, like I said, maybe it's those visuals that can be customized to their brand, right? That is something that fast tracks the process for them that they didn't even know that they needed until they were on the path and they came up against, that issue. The other thing that we always say is like add in an hour long call once a week or once a month, or however you want a do it, where you like are literally just available for people when they have questions or they want to, you know, work through something that they're going through. Again, you showing up one hour a week, every two weeks, every month, whatever that looks like for you and your customers, helps them feel totally supported because they know that you're having a call that they can jump on and ask their questions. You could have a Slack channel where they could ask you questions as they come up in the flow of their work, and you are able to easily answer those questions. I promise you that model is so scalable because they're asking questions, one that you like to answer because they're a little bit more complex because they have everything else that they need as they're going through the experience, but you can streamline the amount of time that you are there delivering a personalized experience because you have already created that strong customer journey. So there you go, my friends. That is my tip for you today, but I do feel like, when you look at re-imagining your business in 2025 and moving forward, that personalized connection at scale is where things are going to continue to go through. People want to feel supported. They want a guide. They want a mentor. They want a know that they have somebody that they can go to when they need support and when they need, um, almost validation, right? Think about when you're trying to implement something new in your business, sometimes you just need somebody who can just remind you that you're on the right track, right? Or keep your focus. In an, in a completely overstimulated, um, dopamine filled world sometimes we just need somebody to keep us on track. So think about that as you are, reimagining your business as we go from more of the automation from the sake of just, blasting information at people to using automation to enhance that personalized experience that we're using to help our customers actually get results. If you love this episode, I would love it if you would give a rating, make sure that you subscribe both to the YouTube channel, and to wherever you listen to podcasts. Share this with a friend if you find it valuable. And hey, in the show notes is my contact information. If you've got something out of this episode or any of the other episodes in the 401 other episodes that we have, I would love to hear about it. So send me a message and just let me know what resonated with you, what would you love to hear, or what questions you have for me that I could answer on some of our future podcasts, so feel free to reach out, I would love to connect.