The Upskailed Experience

Video transcript: Before taking the upscale program, I was a little bit hesitant to try AI because I didn't quite understand it and I didn't know how to use it. And so I thought it was going to be a bit complex and it was probably going to be overwhelming. And it's really meant for people who are super techie, but it wasn't really something that I would want to use or that it would benefit me. After going through the program, I was surprised to see how easy it is to use and how fun it is to collaborate with with AI as you would with a team member. It's really increased my efficiency, it's improved my workflow, and it's given me so many hours back that I can now spend doing the tasks that I enjoy doing more. If you're on the fence about taking this course, I suggest you just jump right in and see what it's all about. This is the perfect introductory course. And Jonathan is a really great teacher. He explains everything and walks you through the process step by step. And you also get to hang out with a really cool group of people who are on the journey with you and who are troubleshooting and experimenting with AI at the same time. So my recommendation is you try it and see what you get out of it. And I pretty much can promise you that you're going to come away with a lot of learnings from this program and you're going to certainly get a lot of hours back and a lot of efficiency in your work and in your company if you try this program. Good luck and have fun.

Video transcript: Before upscaled, I thought of AI as a glorified search engine, a place I went to search and get answers to the menial questions of the day and save as much time as I possibly could using those agentic tools. After the upscaled cohort that Jonathan led for me and a group of eight, I now know it to be the most powerful copilot I could have imagined. It is now a place where I strategically plan my tasks, my workflows, and get answers to some of the more critical questions in ideation for most of our project plans. It is also a place where me and my team collaborate even better. The augmentation that we get as a team in combination with the support we get for our solo work makes this one of the most beneficial learnings that I've ever had in my career. The advice that I would give to my former self or anyone new on this journey is to really dig deep on a self learning path that you combine with an investment in the platform and domain experts like Jonathan Bloomfield and upskilled because it is far and away one of the best investments I've ever made in my professional career, personally and even more professionally because of the acceleration that it's provided to myself and my team. I save on average 8 to 10 hours per week, conservatively that I would have invested in a past life trying to get the same level of productivity through manual workflows that were not supported by AI. So all I can do is express extreme gratitude to Jonathan and the investments that he's made in our first cohort and the continuous ROI that we have have experience week in and week out, leveraging the learnings and compounding them with our own dedicated path. Again, thank you Jonathan. Thank you Upscale team. Looking forward to this continued journey. Take care.

Video transcript: Hello, my name is Beverly Scoon and I joined Upscale for their workshop. And in doing so, I was so nervous because I was not very confident with AI. I didn't know much about it. And I said to myself, oh, I have to learn this and true Jonathan's direction. I learned so much. I learned about agents. I learned how different tools can do different, are great in different areas, which one is best for research, for critical thinking. And because of that, I have saved so much time in my work. I have taken off hours off my time. I now can produce my scheduling, I can organize my research, I can send emails quickly so I can respond to my. My workflow much more efficiently. And I am so grateful for Jonathan for that, because you really opened up my eyes, Jonathan. And I wish I could have said to myself, you know, probably years ago that, you know what, don't be afraid, don't be afraid. These AI tools are here to help you to make your business more efficient and also that it allows you to spend more time with your family. So, Jonathan, thank you so much for providing me more time to spend with my family and to be more productive at work with all of the tools that you have given me during your course. Thank you so very much. And I recommend upscale 100% because Jonathan is a passionate, knowledgeable leader. And I thank you again. Have a great day.

Video transcript: As the former Executive Director of Marketing and Communications for Scouts Canada, I was managing a team of 10. We were tasked with writing a lot of communications, building a lot of marketing materials, and creating a lot of different campaigns for the charity. The problem was that I had many team members with a lot of different skills. They had different skill levels. So unfortunately the materials we were producing, some of them were great, some of them were not. I myself started using Chat GPT in late 2024 and the more I used it, the more I thought it might be helpful for my team. So I signed us up for this course. I signed up four of us and it was absolutely fantastic. Three of the things that I learned from this course which were invaluable 1. LLMs can act as Personas and you get the best usage out of an LLM when you tell it your use case and ask it to act as a certain Persona, such as a business Persona, HR Persona, a marketing Persona, strategies, etc. I use a business advisor a lot and it seems to work really well. For instance, the other thing that I found is that different LLMs each have their own unique strengths. For instance, I find that Chat GPT is great for everyday task email marketing and deep research. But I use Claude AI to build in depth proposals, marketing strategies, ROI calculators, which has already won me some business and I'm using it now to produce artwork like editable SVGs which I can create infographics and charts with and reformat word files to branded word files. And I've even created this week branded PowerPoints which save huge amounts of time. The biggest and the third takeaway for me is that AI is not scary. I'm not worried about losing a job to AI anymore. If anything, it's making my skills much more powerful and helping me to do more, do it well, do it better and in less time. For me, LLMs are like having a whole company, a whole agency in my pocket. I am absolutely blown away by the advances in the tech. I liken it to the period of time in our human history when cars replaced the horse and buggy. We really are an inflection point in our evolution as humans. These tools have and will continue to enhance my personal and professional life. I'm grateful to this course for setting me on the right path and I'm excited to see what happens next.

Video transcript: Hey, my name is Tony. I knew Jonathan for a few months, almost a year before taking Upscaled, and I already knew him as the AI guy. I think what changed for me between day one of the program and where I am now is just the understanding of, like, every single workflow, every single tool that I do, there's a 98% chance that AI can make it more effective. Even if there's not, then it's at least worth exploring. I think before you. When I look at the adoption curve, I guess I thought I was someone that was maybe further along, but I actually think I'm pretty behind the adoption curve of like, trying new things, testing new things, seeing what breaks. I was. I wasn't really doing that. And I think, Jonathan, every single time that I'm like, I'm doing this thing, he's like, have you tried this? Have you thought about this? Using AI to like, using AI to teach yourself about AI of like, here's my problem. How could I use AI to help you? It'll give you the steps and it'll outline it for you. And I think just figuring out, like, everything is a testing process. And the people that like something that he. I forget how it came up, but something that he spoke about was the fact that it's less that people are smarter than people, than you. They're able to do more volume. Are they able to use the tools more effectively? And I think the tools have given. Have kind of leveled the playing field, but only if you use it. If you don't use the tools, the playing field is actually increased because people are now using it and getting ahead faster and further than you. So I think even if you don't think you're as smart or you get it as much, learning how to use the tools is not that hard and it can only help you. So my advice on the. I was kind of going back. Even now I'm trying to set time aside and I need to do a better job of it of like, spending time working, experimenting with AI. And I think Jonathan is someone that can really break it down and teach you in a very easy to understand way.

Video transcript: Hi, before I'd like to give my testimony. I'm Annette McLeod and I had a great opportunity to take upscale workshops. And before Upscale Workshop, I didn't know the true importance of prompting and how clarity and asking questions to an AI assistant can be so efficient in our workflow. I discovered that having Personas, making Personas through Jonathan's explanation of having Personas that creating them can help in the workflow. And then my new reality is that understanding that different tools such as Claude Chat, GPT and the paid version and how the intelligence of it makes a great difference on the output of the information that we are working on in my in our business. So for me, these were really great takeaways. And what I could say to my past self is that I pretty much that if I thought prompting was just it and doing the small bits of work with my ChatGPT, I would have said to my past self that spend a time, spend the time in getting to know the tool that you have. And so I was greatly appreciated when this came along, that upscale came along, that I was able to have more clarity on the tools, more clarity on prompting, and also the importance of creating a Persona for your AI assistants and the workflow that can be achieved at a greater level. So that was my takeaway. Thank you, Jonathan.

Video transcript: Hi, I'm Janielle from Halton Black Voices. We just did the upscales AI training with Jonathan. It was an easy 10 out of 10. No fluff in plain English. Jonathan showed us how to use AI for the work we're already doing. Emails, grants, social media posts, meeting notes. We use the tools we already have Google Doc, Canva and he covered the important stuff too, like privacy bias and when not to use AI. The impact is real across the HBV collective, from governance to event volunteers, we are saving hours, our workflows are smoother and the prompts live in a shared folder we all have access to. Being a part of the Circle Community app has also been great. It keeps us connected to Jonathan and each other and up to date on the latest news and AI opinions. So the learning does keep. The learning does continue after the workshop. Whether you're an entrepreneur or a not for profit leader or just an educator and you want to see results, not theory. Go with upscale. I don't hand out perfect schools often, but this one is earned 10 out of 10.

Video transcript: Hey guys, thank you so much for listening to actually a very great opportunity to actually support a program that I initially thought that may not be very valuable given the fact that I used to use AI myself. And I thought that, you know, the way I was using AI, the way that I would look at different advice online and LinkedIn would was good enough. However, I was big time wrong. This course that I took with Jonathan through Upscale was awesome. So one of the first things that kind of myth that was defunct was the way I was using AI was almost like I was using it in a very rudimentary basic way. Jonathan really took the time to explain how AI, LLMs and the various different types of services out there can really be utilized to create your build like a build like a team or life around you. So I own my own business and, and I like most business owners, come on to problems of you know, doing my own research to find about markets, having like admin work done, running up emails, having a quick deal, deep research into different topics that my clients are looking to get into. Those add up a lot of time, add up a lot of weekends, weeknights. And even though I was using AI to do them, they really weren't that great. So I think one of the main takeaways that I really loved using Upscale course is that using AI to really help you generate not even prompted, right? So we all think about one shot prompts, but the class actually taught me how to think through my prompt so that I can actually use AI to generate prompts. Use AI as a thinking buddy, use AI as a sounding board. Set up your systems, set up your AI softwares, your LLMs, whatever you use so that it works for you versus you having to always open up the website and keep, keep kind of like doing this one shot queries, whereas setting it up so that there's systems built around your life, around your business so that they work for you. And I think that's where Upscale really shines is that it gives you that free framework that thinking of how to reframe, how to use AI. And the best thing I love about it is that he's consistently on top of things. So you're always getting updates in terms of the best performances, the best ways to revisit what you've done already. Because AI is always changing as with tech and to consistently improve. So my advice that I think that anybody's gone and this is that true, you could go and learn it yourself. But this course really brings in all the best of what you can find and compresses it into four. Four weeks of teachings that really bring out the knowledge that you need to take control of AI and be the one in the driver's seat. So you will. You will definitely. You will definitely look back and be like, wow, why didn't I do this earlier? So I strongly recommend to use Jump On. Use the services. You're gonna love it. And. And, yeah, Jonathan is a great instructor. You're going to be amongst your peers. And thank you.

Video transcript: Hi, this is Olu from Black Entrepreneurship Alliance. Just want to say, before Upscaled, I was spending hours every week on the administrative side. We were drowning. Upscaled gave us practical AI systems that automated those repetitive tasks, saving our team invaluable time. We shifted from low value admin work to high impact strategy for our entrepreneurs and our broader community. It's essential program for any non for profit leader trying to break the mold.