Adviser of the Month: Ellen Bishop

Congratulations to our Adviser of the Month for April, Ellen Bishop, founder of Alcea Consulting.

Communication consultant Ellen launched her content and copywriting business in 2017, working with the likes of Sky, Virgin Media and National Grid until late 2022. She explains:

“I was like a lot of creatives who were both excited and worried about this new tool, ChatGPT. Everyone thought robots were coming for more manual-based work and then AI came for the intellectualised, thought-process work.

“I had this momentary panic but then decided I'm going to make it work until I can break it.”

Ellen didn’t necessarily break ChatGPT but started to experiment with all the language models that were on offer, slowly introducing a new way of working in her business. “I started to refine my prompts and although the outputs were generic, it was a starting point,” she adds.

In the space of 18 months, Ellen's output doubled, which allowed her to take on more clients, yet the amount of time she worked stayed the same.

Since then, Ellen has become a massive convert. Rather than resisting or fearing AI, she has embraced it as the future. Her business, Alcea Consulting, has pivoted from a communications consultancy to an artificial intelligence one that helps organisations adopt AI in line with their business objectives.

What should business owners be thinking about when it comes to AI adoption? 

Growth is a difficult challenge in a positive sense because if your company is trying to grow, you have to have new processes, new systems and find new people.

If there's a technological assistant that can help and enhance the value of your current employees whilst enabling you to solve problems and seize new opportunities, then that is a good thing.

I view AI as a technological assistant. It's not here to necessarily replace work but to change the way we work. That's a big mental shift for a lot of people. I've been on that journey and come out the other side excited about AI.

I know a lot of people haven't even begun and I want to be able to help them do that.

When thinking about using AI in your business, you need to be very clear on the problem you're trying to solve and keep it small.

AI is this confluence of IT meets people meets change meets project management. It's all those things together with an emerging technology that itself is shifting.

To introduce AI successfully, you need a few quick wins and be clear and specific on what you're trying to do. It is not the time for scope creep, which makes it harder to track and measure the success of the AI tool.

This is where people come in. People are genuinely concerned that AI is coming for their jobs. To overcome that resistance and fear, you need to bring your people with you.

How has Enterprise Nation helped in your business journey?

I came across Enterprise Nation a few months ago. It's a recent thing for me. I was looking for networking events and a support network within businesses to help me as a start-up.

I'm finding there's a real challenge to go from being a freelancer to a founder. I've been running a business for nearly seven years, but it's probably only in the last year that I have shifted to having people working with me.

I'm managing people and hiring freelancers and it’s a much bigger ecosystem than me directly working with a client. I was looking for networks and organisations that can help support that journey.

Enterprise Nation is helping me on my mission as it highlights how many other people there are starting businesses, the variety of businesses and how people are going through their business journey.

Becoming an Enterprise Nation adviser

I didn't just want to be an Enterprise Nation member but an adviser because I was keen to share more about AI and noticed that there wasn't necessarily that much that other advisers were doing about it. I wanted to be able to give back and keep this message going that AI doesn't have to be something to be feared. 

Not yet an adviser member? You can join here or upgrade via your dashboard.