How AI Helps Experts Amplify Their Message and Grow Their Reach with Dr. Angela Mulrooney

What if the thing holding you back from visibility isn't a lack of skill but a lack of clarity about your own brilliance? In this conversation with Allison Lane and Dr. Angela Mulrooney, they break down why highly accomplished experts freeze when they try to talk about their work, and how AI can serve as a clarity tool rather than a threat. They explore how to own your genius, how to choose what to be known for, and how to use AI to streamline your author marketing so you can write your book, build visibility, and expand your opportunities.

If you want practical steps to position yourself as a trusted expert without overthinking, listen to this episode.

In this episode, Allison and Angela discuss:

• [00:03] How experts freeze when they try to market themselves
• [00:10] Why owning your genius matters more than your resume
• [00:15] Using AI to clarify your brilliance instead of diluting it
• [00:18] The Playbook app and how it helps experts articulate their value
• [00:23] Why consistency builds trust faster than perfection

Resources Mentioned:

• The Playbook App: unleashinginfluence.com 
• Dr. Angela Mulrooney on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelamulrooney/ 
• Seven Shifts to Build Real Authority: https://www.lanelit.com/authority

If you found today’s conversation useful, take a moment to rate and review The Author’s Edge. Your review helps more authors discover the tools and strategies they need to build real visibility and get published.

Get Allison's free guide 7 Shifts to Build Real Authority - and get recognized for your expertise (not your follower count): https://lanelit.com/authority   

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Transcript

Allison: 0:59

Welcome back to the Author's Edge. I am your host, Allison Lane. And listen, I'm here for you and I know why you're here because marketing yourself is hard, and especially when you're so accomplished and you have this overflow of wisdom and decades of insight and experience and stories, but you're not sure how to turn that into something that gets attention or time on stage or income or just expands your opportunities. And then, comes AI, which could be the ultimate clarity tool or the ultimate panic button, depending on how you use it and how you see it. It could be a hammer on your hand or it could be a hammer on a nail. You don't know because no one is teaching you about how to use it. That's why I wanted to talk to Angela Mulrooney because your work is all about helping experts pivot without burning out and selling out, and incorporate their skills into what's next. let's talk about it. It's my pleasure. Thanks for

Dr. Angela: 2:09

having me.

Allison: 2:10

Yeah. Everyone does want to do more. but they're not expanding because they're busy doing. So, what's a mistake that you see all these accomplished people doing and making when they start exploring what's next for their career?

Dr. Angela: 2:28

What I often find is they get frozen because what has allowed them to be highly accomplished is always reaching. And so, when they decide to put themselves out there, they start to have this major doubt, like who am I to put myself out there as an expert? I don't know enough. There's always more to learn. Which has served them in the technical side of what they're doing, but it doesn't serve them when they're putting themselves out there. So, they often get into imposter syndrome. They get into, oh, I need to get more accomplishments before I put myself out there. So, there's always something that they need to achieve before they can actually put themselves out there. Instead of owning exactly where they are, being centered in that and going, what I have is brilliant. I'm a genius at this thing. It doesn't mean you're a genius compared to everyone else in the world, but you're a genius at what you know. And if you know how to codify that and explAIn it to people. So, it's not just, oh, you magically can put these patterns together in your head, but you actually understand how those patterns are working. That's when you can actually really get ahead with putting yourself out there. Because then you do become the expert. You're not just someone that people can ask questions to and voila, they get an answer. You're actually teaching them how your genius works so that they can leverage your genius in a new way.

Allison: 3:40

That is such an interesting way to put that. I've never heard that perspective before because usually it's, let's talk about the need for someone else, like a gatekeeper to say, yes, you're ready for the next level. But you're saying it's about them understanding their method. And to me, that's even more of an invitation because you don't have to depend on anyone else. You can make that shift yourself, which actually is perfectly aligned to a resource I share on my website seven Shifts to build real authority without playing the influencer game. Because gag, no one wants to be that Which is about leading with clarity and confidence so that you can scale and continue doing what you love to do. So, I'm not saying stop teaching classes at the university or stop being a physician. I'm saying, do more. But no, you don't have to go and get an extra degree or a certification in order to do the thing that you're now just expanding. You're already qualified.

Dr. Angela: 4:50

There's this box that gets put around us that this is the only path to get to where you want to go or maybe there's a couple of choices. I lived abroad the last four years. And so, I met a lot of interesting digital nomads and entrepreneurs who were doing things very differently. And the ones who weren't subscribed to that system that we were trained into to achieve in university are the ones who are making way more money than the smartest people out there. They have a much simpler life because they didn't have the box. What I find is oftentimes I'm chipping away at the box that people are in and showing, you can build a business whatever way you want to build it. You can build it with whatever you have. When you can think about how impactful you can actually be. You can be doing very well and creating a massive wave of impact in the world, but you have to break out of that box and think differently about your knowledge.

Allison: 5:39

This makes me think of an email I got yesterday from someone asking me, how I got to where I am? Because I pivoted from a very successful corporate leadership, two and a half decades to a new industry entirely. And working for myself, I do miss having a staff of dozens of people. That was fun and super nice, where you could just turn to the left and say, could somebody make me a website? And then it was like, poof, it happened. Now, it's just me. And I had to learn everything. And in the beginning, I did feel like, who am I to say that I can do this? And people would ask me, they would come to me and say, I really want you to help me. And I would try to give them my accomplishments as proof that I could do it, and they didn't care. They were like, yeah, but your skills are what I'm looking for. People never ask me what my background in global marketing is ever. They have not once asked me about the celebrities that I have worked with. No one gives a hoot and they shouldn't because it's your skill and your expertise and the wisdom that you can give people that they're looking for. They're not looking for your resume.

Dr. Angela: 7:01

Yeah. And even more so than that, they're looking for your filter. So, people can get information for days from AI now. Your knowledge is in the machine. It is already there. And if people have the right prompts, they can be pulling that information out and actually pulling your exact frameworks. So, the reason they now still want to work with humans is they need that filtration to be discerning about all that information that they could get from AI so that you can be the time collapser. Because we've all sat at some point talking to chat GPT or the like, and gone down a rabbit hole and an hour later we're like, are we still on track about what we were originally like got on this conversation about? So, it'll tell you that everything you're doing is great. And honestly, chat GPT five. I love chat GPT, but everything is yes, that's a great idea. That's brilliant. And I'm like no. Tell me why this sucks and give me some discernment here because it will keep going, giving you more and more of what you want. Instead of actually being that filter saying, Hey, let's cut this part out and simplify and only go after these ideas.

Allison: 8:02

when other people are using AI or thinking, how do I incorporate this, because they see other people using AI in a way that makes them work less and think bigger. They get nervous because of the reasons that are logical, authenticity, verifiable information, ownership of ideas. What can we do to help people see what the opportunity is and not see it as the greatest threat to them?

Dr. Angela: 8:36

What happens with people when they go in, oftentimes they don't know who they are going into leveraging AI. And so, if you're going in haphazard, it will amplify the haphazardness. But when we see people leveraging AI to write an article on their behalf, it comes out very generic. This is one of the reasons I developed the Playbook app is what it does is it interviews people, takes them through their past, their present, and their future. And they don't have to know exactly what kind of brand they want to build. But it gives them their niche of genius. It gets them centered in what they know that they know, and then they can take that to the tools. And with the level of people that you work with, they have a lot of crayons in their box, right? And so, oftentimes you're like I need to show all my crayons. And the truth is, you don't. Pick the select crayons that make sense to your ideal market that are also in your niche of genius that allows you to use your best skills and then build from that. You can feed that into the machine and then it can give you better answers. And now, it can start amplifying what you actually want to do instead of everything that you possibly could do. And that's where people go down these rabbit holes of, are we on the right path here? And again, it'll keep making you feel good about where you're going because it'll give you atta girls all the way along. But it may not actually be where you want to be taking your brand.

Allison: 9:48

Putting all the crayons in the pot, it really just makes a big old mess for sure. The other thing I've seen people do is try and just divorce themselves from their past. Like I know I'm a neuroscientist, but now I want to be an executive career coach. And I'll look at their linkedIn profile, and it won't say neuroscientist. Like you can't erase neuroscientist. There's a reason why that's applicable to being an executive leadership coach. That's a crayon we want to keep, correct?

Dr. Angela: 10:20

Correct. And all your past informs how you work now. I was a dentist, how I ran my practice, how I worked with phobic patients, how I worked through trauma with my clients as well. That informs everything that I'm doing, even though I'm 12 years out from having to retire due to an injury. But it still informs it. We showcase how you actually got to where you got to and make it sensible to your audience. That really helps people to marry their past, their present, and their future together without having to feel like I need to erase when I graduated, I need to erase these skills. And we're seeing that a lot with our senior professionals is they're actually, you go on their LinkedIn profile and you can't see when they graduated'cause they're experiencing ageism. You can actually showcase how all these fit together. That's when you're going to start winning. If none of it makes sense, you look at my background, dentist, professional dancer, business coach, had a marketing agency, now I build AI products. It could be confusing if they don't understand the through line of all that, which is increasing potential.

Allison: 11:18

Let's talk about your big career pivot because you had a massive pivot. You were a dentist and then, you built five businesses from scratch, what did that experience teach you about identity? And how can we take that because a lot of us have to rebuild when your career suddenly shifts.

Dr. Angela: 11:42

Exactly, I was told like I was not allowed to touch another patient because my hand was misfiring. And what happened was my whole identity had been wrapped up in my achievements. Suddenly my identity as a dentist was gone. A lot of my friends disappeared as well, which was really disappointing when you're going through a really big hardship like that. And this is what I'm seeing with professionals as well that are getting exactly what you described or out they're getting aged out. They have relied on these external validators. But you know who you are, you know that you know what you know. Which is a beautiful place to be in. A lot of people that you work with have a lot of high level skills. And it's hard to understand how they have that many crayons that they're good at, right? Yeah. And so, when you can actually own that and not be apologetic about it. We're trained to be humble. I'm Canadian, so we're really trained to be humble and not throw shade on anybody.

Allison: 12:34

Let's talk about humility, especially with women. They say things that just make me want to pluck my eyebrows out completely. They say, I don't want anybody to think I'm bragging. I wouldn't call myself an expert. I don't want to seem arrogant. And here's what I say to that, and I'm going to just whisper it because I hope you're listening. Your humility is boring. one cares about how you think or how you are afraid of what they might think. They don't care one bit. The bad side is if you don't claim your genius, no one is coming to beg you for that. You have to step forward. Your humility is a barrier to you helping people. all the people who feel like they want to shift careers or entire industries. They feel like they have to start from scratch, from the bottom somewhere else. You don't have to, you're a grownup. You have mad skills

Dr. Angela: 13:43

It took me a long time to let go of the dental identity. I used to be like, I'm doing this, but I used to be a dentist. So, I was apologetic about what I was doing now and still trying to claim that understandable credibility and status. And a lot of my clients do the same thing, right? As they're moving into their new career, they're not only me because they're not centered in their genius, they are still looking for those outside accolades. So, when you are centered in that, the outside accolades start to not matter anymore. When you have that identity shift and you can actually claim who you are now, that makes a big difference, I think.

Allison: 14:15

A lot of times when you're making a pivot, the old school advice is get a piece of paper and write down all your skills. And then, circle the ones that you really want to take with you. Because there are certain skills that you acquire, early in your career that you think, I don't want to be known for that anymore. And a great way to take stock of those is just to look at your LinkedIn profile and look at the skills that maybe you added 15 years ago. And you think, I don't want to be known for being a great project manager anymore. Just delete, delete, delete. It's okay that cull that down. If someone is sitting at home and listening to this, what can they do right now to take stock of the skills and the identity that they want to take with them?

Dr. Angela: 15:06

What I have people do is we play this game of sticky notes. You have to write down all your skills that you can get paid for or you think maybe you can get paid for. And then you order them from most loved to, most hated. And I like sticky notes because you can pick them up and move them. Yeah. It's different than trying to organize it on a screen. And then, the top three, that's what you start saying yes to. That you would be pleased as punch to be doing for the next five years and nothing else. Those are the skills that we want to focus. Those are part of what's going to make up your genius. And then, we have to figure out how to frame that niche of genius. What I ask people to do is put up a whiteboard or just a piece of paper, and you have Yes. And you've got those three things that you say yes to If it's not in those categories It's a no, not a maybe. Maybe I can do this, maybe I should do this because it's money, it's a no. And you find people that you can refer that work out to instead of you taking on filling your time with things that you don't want to be doing. It's easy to say yes to everything. It's really hard to say yes to only those three things. But that's how you actually start pivoting and start building your brand in a different market like here's three crayons we're going to use. And that's all we're going to say yes to. And it's terrifying. Everything else is off, these are the three things. Some people have to like slowly dimmer switch it, which is fine. Yeah. But as you get more comfortable with it, then you start actually building momentum to fulfilling clients that need those skills. Then you start getting those aligned clients. You start getting those aligned projects, you get those aligned referrals because you start building a brand of about that genius. And then, you become known for that genius. Nobody's going to label you with the genius that you want unless you show them the genius that you want them to know. And that's what marketing is about. That's what building your LinkedIn profile is about. You want to showcase what you want to be known for and only that. Put out content that is within those three yeses. Take on those products that are only in those yeses. When you're on sales calls, don't talk about all the other skills that you have. Talk about those three yeses.

Allison: 16:57

You really dove into AI because you could see the shortcuts that can help people. Can you talk a little bit more about what that is'cause I know that you have a method, but you actually, codified it with an app, correct?

Dr. Angela: 17:14

Last year, I decided to take an AI mastery course. I could see AI coming and I was like, I don't understand this well enough to not feel a little bit afraid and I don't like feeling afraid. The point was to teach us concepts that we could jump from. And as I was doing it, I was like, you know what? What's called a cracky open session used to be me interviewing people, then putting together their 60 plus page playbook. I realized that I have a pattern recognizing brain. So, I decided to teach AI my pattern recognition and build an app that interviews people so I don't have to do the interviewing. Because it has my pattern recognition system, then it pulls together their playbook. Part of the process of being interviewed allows you to have realizations about yourself. So, it pokes at you from all these different dimensions in your past, your present, and your future. Yeah. And then, when you get the document, most people go, I didn't know that was what I should be saying about myself, but it's exactly what I should be saying about myself. So, it gives them their archetype. How they operate in the world, which informs their tone of voice. So, that informs your content, how you write websites, how you write books. It gives them their headline, their claim to fame. It gives them their niche of genius in depth. So, when they get discouraged or if they start to go off track, they can come back and get centered again in what they know they are actually amazing at. It gives them their buyer personas, their psychology behind the buyers, how to set up their sales navigator like it's a comprehensive education as well as a customized execution guide on what you need to do for your personal brand.

Allison: 18:39

It's a great use of AI if you've been following the podcast, you know that we talk a lot about personal branding and people have a hard time seeing how powerful and potent their one-liner can be because they're not accustomed to speaking like that. Of course, use AI to say, here are a bunch of things that people say about me. Give me some one-liners. But what you're saying is you put all of those questions and guidance into one app that then you don't have to come up with the prompt. You're saying, you have all of that under one hood.

Dr. Angela: 19:18

The next thing that we have is the content machine as well. You can drop in an idea. It has the information from your playbook and it writes articles on your behalf that sound exactly like you. They leverage your opinions, your intellectual property. It writes polls, it writes carousels. What I did was try to remove the barrier so that really smart people who are afraid to put themselves out there, aren't afraid to put themselves out there anymore. And they have the tool, the content machine, to actually get it out there on mass so that they can actually get seen. Because it takes a lot more content now than it used to actually get seen for the first time. Like it takes 11 pieces of content before someone realizes they've actually seen you once.

Allison: 19:56

I want to challenge something you just said. You said people are afraid to develop content. I think people are too busy. The people I work with, they're like, I don't have time to do that. Nobody has time to become an expert in that as well.

Dr. Angela: 20:11

if you want to actually create that impact, you will make time for this. The content machine makes it so that it is on point, so you don't have the arguments with your copywriters. It's writing the way that you speak, so it makes it really easy for them to get it out there. But even with the machine people still, until they start getting some traction and getting some feedback from LinkedIn or whatever platform they're on. The first 90 days can be crickets. Then again, people have started to see your content and they're like, oh, this person keeps showing up. And they seem to be bringing fresh ideas. Maybe it's time to start actually watching their stuff or reading their stuff. And the content machine helps to amplify and speed up the ability for people to recognize that you actually exist.

Allison: 20:51

I agree that you can devote time to what you think is important. However, I think that people who are running research for a university, it's not wise for them to devote time to become an expert content creator. It is wise for them to find a way to download their mind into something that is protected. And I think that's the thing that's scary about AI is because we know from the anthropic lawsuit that your intellectual property, AI is leaky. And how can they trust that they're going to put their content, their voice into anything, even a custom GPT, not yours. How does that work really? how do you do that in a way that protects you?

Dr. Angela: 21:47

I think people need to stop worrying about being protected and instead start getting their information out there because we know it's not really protected.

Allison: 21:54

Yeah.

Dr. Angela: 21:55

And if you have someone else who has the same idea and they put themselves out there and you had the same idea in yours is the better version of it, but you don't put yourself out there, who's going to get the recognition? I've had people almost completely copying my brand. what can I do about it? There's nothing I can do about it. But when people go and ask people questions about the material that they're putting out, that is a copy of mine, they get Swiss cheesed on their knowledge because they don't have the same experience. They don't have the same skills. They haven't lived what I've lived that has made my brain the way that it is, my knowledge, the way that it is with all the dimensions that it has. you need to worry about you. You need to worry about what you are a genius at. Focus on that. Get it out there. Be willing to put yourself and be vulnerable,

Allison: 22:35

I do think that people feel a responsibility, especially experts in their field. They feel a responsibility to share what they know. And then, they think now I have to become this expert marketer no, you don't. You just need a tool and a methodology that makes it easier to grab everything that you know and disseminate it while you get to continue doing the thing that you're meant to do.

Dr. Angela: 23:02

If the people who build the most successful businesses and empires aren't doing it all themselves, they stick to their genius and then they hire geniuses around them that can help them. That allows you to move light years ahead, time collapse results massively because you are not trying to do all things. So, you have an expert in a tool or you need to bring in human experts who can be that filter for you as well.

Allison: 23:25

And make it so much easier. Yes. You really don't have to do everything. You need a couple trusted resources. You have this podcast now. You've got Angela Mulrooney who can help you build content. What one tip or step should people take today when they want to make their brilliance go bigger?

Dr. Angela: 23:46

If they want to make it easy, do the playbook. If they want to do it on their own. Honestly, the sticky note exercise is a great one. Once you realize it though, you got to take action. do something with it. Cause you're brilliant at what you do. Actually go and do something about it.

Allison: 24:03

So do the sticky note exercise. Choose your three things and try it out. Angela, where can people find you?

Dr. Angela: 24:12

LinkedIn is the best way. So look up Dr. Angela Mulrooney with two O's on there.

Allison: 24:18

Links in the show notes, as well as my resource Seven Shifts to Build Real Authority. That's at lanelit.com/authority. I'm so glad we did this, and I'm so glad that people are realizing that they can expand the ripple effect that they have in the world and keep doing the thing that you're passionate about. We need your words and your wisdom.