Exploring the Future: Should I Clone Myself?!

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to Lead On Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now executive coach to global leaders and high performers. Each week I'll publish a solo cast where I'll share my top high performance habits and methodologies to supercharge your life and career. If you enjoy the show, please take a short moment to subscribe and leave a rating and review. I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

To clone or not to clone? That is the question. Well, today we're going to explore something really interesting, something that's been on my mind and something that I am actively exploring. I was approached recently by a company who said, james, are you able to coach everybody who wants to work with you? Well, the answer is no. In the beginning, it was a please, I want to try and find some clients. But that's the beginning of any business. But as it's grown, it gets to the point now where I can only work with 8 to 10 people a year, 1 to 1. So the company posed a very interesting question. James, would you be interested in cloning yourself? First of all, I laughed. Then I started to think, are you serious? And then I started to panic a bit like, whoa, this is weird. Now, I don't know. What are your thoughts on cloning? AI is making some really, really fast movements forward. I want to learn about it, I want to be engaged in it. I don't want to avoid it. I do think AI has a place in society, has a place in our world, but I don't know what that place is just yet. I do believe that we could get left behind if we don't engage with AI. This company is called Delphi and I'm currently exploring what a clone might look like and how it might actually support my clients and my business. Clients first. That's what it has to start with. If this clone doesn't support them, then I don't want to do it. Now, even the Word clone. I don't know about you, but I'm like, wow, that's weird. Like, it doesn't sound like a positive thing at all. Sounds a bit kind of, I know, sci fi, like odd. But essentially all it does is it takes in all of your ip. Now, first kind of red flag for me was, well, if I feed this thing my ip, will I then lose all of my rights to it? Will it leak it out to ChatGPT and everyone will have access? So I got on the phone with one of the founders of this organization to talk about it and I asked all these questions. I learned a lot. So essentially what would happen is if you were a customer and you're like, I'd like to ask James a question around high performance or productivity or leadership or interviewing the world's greatest leaders. If you wanted to ask me a question to help you with your life in any way, like a coaching client would, then you could have access to this digital coach version of me. And I thought, this is interesting, what opportunities might be out there for clients and for myself. And so how does it work? Well, you can input as much data as you want. It uses your voice and replicates it to near perfection. I would say that potentially even my own mother wouldn't know it wasn't me. Now, first question was this from my end was, what happens if that goes out to ChatGPT or gets leaked? So the first thing they suggested was, hey, security is our number one priority. Everything's kept within our system. So that's a good thing. I just have to trust them that that's actually going to happen. That's a lot to ask, right? I don't know about you, would you trust them? So next thing is, okay, how do I get the content up there? I don't want to spend weeks doing this. So it's actually incredible what they've done. So they could import my entire YouTube channel, they can import my entire podcast, they can import my entire LinkedIn feed and real time. So every new solo cast I put up on the podcast, every new post I write on LinkedIn, it would feed straight into it. So this digital coach version of me or clone would then be up to date, real time with my most current thoughts. So I'm finding it quite fascinating at the thought of a tool where people who are maybe working with me want to find one of my frameworks or a productivity tool or a decision making filter, instead of going through, say, the online portal that they have access to or the books that they got at my live events, they go straight to the digital clone and say, hey, James, where can I find this? I need help with this. And the digital coach brings it up straight away or says it to them. Now, there's two ways currently that can work. One, it's a texting back and forth platform. Two, you can call the digital coach version of James and actually chat to him as if it's a real conversation. But it's all based upon the content I have created and it won't stray outside of that if I don't let it. You can use different parameters a bit like, you know, if you want to be more chat, GPT esque and then it can have its own thinking and LLM approach, you can go that direction. But I as a coach would want to keep it more firmly into sticking to my lane. So I'm definitely exploring it. They're about to release the video version as well, where you would be chatting to a video version of Digital coach James. So I'm definitely at a bit of a crossroads. Where do I go there? Do I not? But I truly feel it's something I want to experiment with and explore because I'm going to learn something and if it can help me help my clients and customers, incredible. Let's do it. And at the end of the day, I am not a scalable human. No humans are scalable. And this might be a way for me to help 10 more people by coaching them based on all of the things I talk about, all of the people I've interviewed, or 100 people, or a thousand or a million, who knows? But I think I've got to start somewhere and I want you to think about what you're doing with your AI. Are you using it at all? Are you engaging in AI? If so, what are you doing? What are you using? I would love to know. I am a rookie. I'm in learning mode, deep learning mode. And I'm going to engage with this Delphi AI, this clone company, to see where it leads. And I'm cautious and I'm stepping in with trepidation and I think I should be, and I should be wondering what ifs and asking questions, but also I don't want to be that person that sits on the sideline for seven and a half years wondering and then steps in and maybe missed a lot of opportunities to serve my clients and customers at a much higher level. So watch this space. Certainly something that I'm excited about and yeah, I'll keep you updated as I venture with it, journey with it. In fact, if you would like to help me. If you would like to be one of the testers of this and just engage with it and ask it questions, let me know. Get in touch with me, you know, whether that's on LinkedIn or on Instagram, let me know. Just drop me a message myself or my team will come back to you and let you know if that's possible to be one of the testers so that you can get some free coaching with my digital version of me. And it means that you're getting access to every guest I've ever had because I'll be putting the whole podcast through. So I'll be able to coach you on everything I've learned from every single guest that I've had on, which is prime ministers, presidents, formula one teams, neuroscientists, authors, just great humans in general. So if that's something you'd be interested in helping me with, I might just give you access for free to trying that out. So let me know if that interests you. I'm certainly interested in to see where it takes me to see what I learn and to see if it can actually be a valuable add on. I can see this working really well in real estate. You know, somebody wants to ask a real estate agent what houses are available in the such and such area within this price range that are three bedrooms, two bathrooms, bang. Your clone could tell them and give them all the listing links instantly without you being there. It could set up all of the appointments that you might need. It can send them messages, calls, emails, whatever it might be. I could see this working really well on a website that has some form of customer service where your clone would pop up and answer someone's questions as you the business owner or CEO. I could see this working as a really good training mechanism for your teams. If you're trying to train a department or a team in sales, in marketing, in standard operating procedures, your clone could do that for you one to many rather than you continually have to develop training. I do think there's some really great possibilities with this, but I'm still in cautious mode. So as I say, watch this space. And for those that know, we have got our annual event coming up. Very, very excited. It's not till October, but the doors have been opened. The tickets are flying out the door. In fact, in the first hour I think we sold 40% of the tickets. It was a bit crazy, bit chaos, but amazing. So we've got Sir Wayne Smith, the former All Blacks coach and Black Ferns world champion coach. He just got knighted recently. And was named New Zealander of the Year. So we're having as our special guest, as well as Zion Armstrong, former president of Adidas North America. We've got one more guest to come. Not revealing that just yet, but just thought I'd let you know that if you want to know more about it, you know, go and check it out on the website jjlochlund.com I'll put it in the show notes, a link to where you can learn more about the event. It will sell out. So if you don't get it, we will create another button where you can join the wait list for next year and the cancellation list in case someone can't make it this year. But if there's any tickets left, you head on over there and get them. And I look forward to seeing you guys one day soon. But for now, please get out there and lead your life on purpose. Thanks for tuning in today and investing in your own personal leadership. Please hit that subscribe button and I'd love if you'd leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests lined up for you in the coming weeks and leaders, it's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.