Before you buy the bot, get the foundation.

That's the message I wish someone had told me - and the one I now tell every business owner and team I train.

I’ve worked since I was 12 - across family business, hospitality, and multiple reinventions.

I spent 30 years in hospitality. Front of house, back of house, events, digital marketing. I taught myself AI at 47 -  not because I'm technical (I'm not), but because I was drowning in admin and needed a better way.

Now I train two groups:
→ Hospitality teams who've been told to "do something with AI" but have no strategy, no policy, and no foundation.
→ Female founders who are overwhelmed by AI options, frustrated by robotic outputs, and done with courses that teach theory but not application.

I don't teach AI as hype or productivity theatre.

I teach it in a way that feels calm, practical, and immediately usable - especially for people who don't want to code, automate everything, or chase every shiny tool.

After working with me, people say:
→ "I stopped winging it and started trusting my own judgement."
→ "A computer sounds more like me than a business coach did."
→ "I nearly threw my laptop out the window. Three weeks later, I'm saving 10 hours a month."

What I offer:
✓ AI Foundations - 3-session group training (individuals or teams)
✓ Custom GPT Builds - AI assistants trained on your voice and business
✓ Implementation Days - hands-on, done-with-you support
✓ Team Training - get everyone from marketing to ops on the same page
✓ AI Policy Development - so your team knows what's allowed

As seen in: BBC, ITV, The Times
Awards: AI Visionary Award 2025

I'm proudly neurodivergent. I teach AI with empathy, creativity, and patience - because different brains learn differently.

→ DM me "FOUNDATION" to learn about training for yourself or your team.

Penelope Silver

The Seven Principles of Hospitality - Applied to AI

I spent 30 years in hospitality. Front of house. Back of house. Events. Marketing.

The best hospitality professionals don't follow scripts. They read the room. They anticipate needs. They make people feel seen.

Now I teach AI. And I've realised:
The people who are best at AI think like great hoteliers. Not techies. People who understand that AI,  like hospitality,  is about people.

1. Self-Awareness 
Hospitality: Know your strengths, limits, mood. 
AI: Know what you're asking for. 
If you're unclear, your output will be too.

2. Guest Awareness 
Hospitality: Read the guest. Adjust accordingly. 
AI: Know your audience. 
The best prompts include context about the reader.

3. Connection 
Hospitality: Use their name. Remember the little things. 
AI: Teach it your voice. 
A Custom GPT trained on your tone beats a generic prompt.

4. Authenticity 
Hospitality: Guests smell fake from across the lobby. 
AI: If it doesn't sound like you, don't publish it. 
Human at the beginning. AI in the middle. Human at the end.

5. Anticipation 
Hospitality: The best service happens before the guest asks. 
AI: Build templates. Create systems. 
15 minutes of setup saves 10 hours a month.

6. Alignment 
Hospitality: Every team member delivers the same experience. 
AI: If marketing uses AI and operations doesn't, you have a problem. 
Before you buy the bot, train the team.

7. Presence 
Hospitality: Be here, now. 
AI: Don't outsource your thinking entirely. 
The goal is leverage, not laziness.

AI isn't a technology problem. It's a people problem.

The companies getting it right understand that AI, like hospitality, is about serving humans better.

I train hospitality teams and female founders on AI foundations. 
DM me if your team needs the foundation.

AI Trainer for Hospitality Teams & Female Founders | “Before you buy the bot, get the foundation” | AI Visionary Award Winner 2025 | BBC, ITV, The Times

I didn’t start in hospitality.
I didn’t start in tech.

I started at twelve years old, helping on reception in my dad’s dental practice.

There were no computers in the surgery then (not until a few years later!). Everything was paper. Appointment books. Records. Notes. If you didn’t keep things straight, everything fell apart. 

Patients got missed. Money went missing. Trust broke down.
That’s where I learned how systems really work. (I had a great teacher - my mum).

Not software systems - human ones.

I learned how to manage multiple schedules at once.
How to spot patterns quickly.
How to cross-sell without pressure.

How to deal with nervous, phobic people who were already overwhelmed before they even walked through the door.

At seventeen, I moved into hospitality, and I loved it straight away.

Fast pace. Long days. Real people. No room for fluff. If something didn’t work, you felt it immediately.

Over the years, I did everything.

Bar work. Cleaning toilets. Business development. Events. Digital marketing. Project management. Insurance sales. Renewals. KPIs.
AFDs.

And every month, those KPI meetings I used to dread. Being measured against systems that never quite matched how real humans actually work.

Somewhere along the way, I picked up a belief that stuck.
I was “not techy.”

An operations director once told me that even if I went on an Excel course every year for the next twenty years, I still wouldn’t get it. I believed him.

I’m neurospicy. I’m intuitive. I read people, patterns, and undercurrents quickly - but I was taught that didn’t count as intelligence. So I learned to work around systems instead of trusting myself with them.

Before lockdown, I ran a Reiki and healing business.
Fully booked. Three-month waiting list.
Then lockdown hit - and it disappeared overnight.

I had to learn how to take a business online, fast. When restrictions lifted, I went back in person, convinced everyone would be stressed and desperate for it again.

They weren’t.

The world had changed.

So I adapted again. I kept that work to one day a week and poured everything else into digital marketing. I upskilled. I rebuilt.

During a digital marketing diploma, we were told to learn to code in one day.

I nearly didn’t try. That old belief was loud.

By the end of the session, I’d built a full webpage.

That’s when it cracked.

I wasn’t bad at tech.

I’d just never been taught in a way that made sense to how I think.

When AI appeared shortly after, I didn’t see a shortcut.
I saw a translator.

A way for capable people to work with systems without being crushed by them.

That’s when everything aligned.

Female founders. Hospitality teams. Neurodivergent brains. People under pressure.

Different rooms. Same problem.

Tools being bought before understanding was built.

That’s why I say what I say now:
Before you buy the bot, get the foundation.

Because AI doesn’t need smarter people.

It needs clearer thinking.

Smiling young girl in a school uniform sitting in a dental chair inside a dental practice.

Something I’ve noticed recently, and it’s honestly shocked me.

More and more coaches and businesses are paying for Custom GPTs built on their IP:
their frameworks, language, and thinking.

These GPTs are being used as:
• lead magnets
• client support tools
• sometimes even published to the GPT store

And here’s the concerning part:
Many of them have been built without proper boundaries.

Not because the coaches didn’t think to ask.
But because the people building them didn’t include this as standard.

If you’re paying someone to build a client-facing Custom GPT, you should be getting more than “it works”.

You should be getting:
• clear limits on what it can and can’t explain
• protection around paid frameworks and depth
• instructions for how it handles probing or edge-case questions

That isn’t a nice-to-have.
That’s part of doing the job properly.

Without it, coaches think they’re buying a polished, professional asset -
when in reality, they’re being handed something unfinished.

So it’s worth asking:
Is your Custom GPT actually built to protect your work - or just to produce outputs?

I’ve been sitting with this for a while, and I’m finally opening it up.

I’m offering a small number of Calm AI Setup Sessions for business owners who feel overwhelmed by AI and want clarity before trying to do more with it.

This is a 90-minute private session where we:
 – get properly oriented with ChatGPT
 – set clear boundaries so it feels safe and manageable
 – identify one genuinely useful way AI can support your business

This is not about hacks, coding, or doing everything at once.

It’s about clarity - knowing what to use, what to ignore, and how to move forward calmly.

You’ll leave feeling clearer, more confident, and with something practical you can actually use.

£247. Limited spots.

 Message me if you’d like one.

I’ve just finished reading the State of AI in Marketing 2026 report.

And honestly?
Nothing in it surprised me.

Not because it wasn’t thorough - it was.

But because it confirmed what I’m already seeing every day.

Most businesses aren’t struggling with whether to use AI anymore.

They’re struggling with how to use it without creating more noise, inconsistency, or risk.

The report talks a lot about:
– adoption increasing
– tools multiplying
– pressure to “move faster”

What it doesn’t really solve is this part:
👉 When everything is possible, decision-making gets harder, not easier.

That’s where teams start:
• bolting AI onto broken workflows
• copying prompts without context
• rolling tools out without shared standards
• expecting outputs to fix thinking problems

And that’s when AI becomes exhausting instead of helpful.

The companies getting real value right now aren’t the ones chasing features.

They’re the ones slowing down first to get the foundations right:
– clear use cases
– shared language
– boundaries around what AI should and shouldn’t do
– confidence in human judgement, not blind trust in outputs

That’s the gap I see most often.

And it’s the part no report can fix for you.

Tools don’t create clarity.

Foundations do.

I’ve been spending time recently with hospitality leadership teams, and one pattern keeps coming up.

Most organisations still think about AI in terms of visible outputs - menus, marketing, social content.

That’s not wrong.

It’s just very early.

What’s less visible is what’s happening behind the scenes:
– individuals experimenting on their own
– no shared standards
– no agreed boundaries
– responsibility scattered across teams

Usually with good intentions.

The real risk with AI isn’t people being replaced.

It’s confident individuals making decisions without shared understanding.

Because AI doesn’t fail loudly.

It sounds confident, looks polished, and is often almost right.

This is where leadership matters.

Before tools.
Before software.
Before “AI projects”.

The most useful question right now isn’t “what can AI do?”

It’s “do we all understand what we’re doing here?”

Especially in hospitality.

You didn't ask to become the "AI person."

But somehow it's landed on your desk anyway.

Your team's probably already using ChatGPT, on personal accounts, no guidelines, copying and pasting god-knows-what into god-knows-where.

Maybe a vendor's pitched you something expensive you couldn't quite evaluate (but you nodded along anyway).

Maybe you've sat in a meeting where someone asked, "What's our AI strategy?" and felt your stomach drop.

Here's what I've noticed working with leadership teams:
Most of you aren't scared of AI.

You're scared of looking like you don't get it.
And that's a very different problem.

There's no shortage of AI training for leaders.

Three-day programmes. £1,500+ price tags. 
Promises of "10x productivity" and "strategic transformation."

But here's what actually happens when you teach strategy before basics:
→ Half the room is still confused about what ChatGPT actually does 
→ People nod along then go back to winging it 
→ Someone makes an expensive tool decision based on a sales pitch 
→ The "AI policy" sits in a folder nobody reads

You don't need a strategy deck.

You need everyone to actually understand what they're doing first.

That's why I built AI Foundations.

Three live sessions for leadership teams who want clarity before chaos.

No jargon. No shame. 
No "let me show you 47 tools."

Just practical training that means your team walks away actually using AI, safely, consistently, and in a way that reflects your standards.

Starting at £997 for teams up to 5.

Because I'd rather your whole leadership team gets it than one person sits through three days of theory alone.

Because it’s cheaper to train your team properly than clean up one avoidable mistake.

If you've been quietly hoping nobody asks about your "AI strategy", you're not behind.

You're just ready for the right starting point.

DM me "FOUNDATIONS" if you want to know more.

I keep seeing the same pattern in hospitality and drinks brands.

A leadership team decides, “We should be doing something with AI.”

But no one actually knows:
 – where to start
 – what good use looks like
 – what’s safe to upload
 – or how AI fits into real business processes

So it gets passed around.

 CEO → MD → FD → Sales → Marketing.

Until it lands with the one person who’s used ChatGPT quite a bit - and suddenly they’re expected to define the entire AI strategy.

That’s not an AI problem.

 It’s a foundational clarity problem.

AI only works well in organisations when everyone is working from the same baseline:
 – leaders understand what’s possible
 – teams know how to use it appropriately
 – decisions about tools and automation are informed, not reactive

That’s why I teach AI from the top down - starting with calm, practical foundations.

This month, I’m running a beginner-safe session for hospitality leaders who want that baseline clarity.

No hype. No jargon. Just a clean starting point everyone can align around.

Live or replay.

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