The AI Productivity Playbook: 3 Mental Models for Entrepreneurs with Joe Fier

The key thing here is to layer in your own human creativity and judgment with what the AI is giving you because we don't want to just take it out of the box. It's not that good yet. I'm sure it will be very soon. But for now we want to use our human judgment, the creativity that we do have and have idea sex.

All right, it is Q1 of 2024. That means new goals, more growth and upgrading your day to day workflow. And that's why I want to talk to you today about the HubSpot Sales Hub. This thing is basically an all in one platform to help you get out of that muck of scheduling everything manually, digging through data, tracking down leads, probably not following up with things. Sales Hub will flip everything on its head. This thing's an easy to use suite of powerful tools. It's going to help you convert contacts into customers quicker, accelerate sales with smart sequences, video, manage deals with simple and powerful tools, and help you forecast a lot smarter. It actually uses this new AI powered app called Chat Spot combines Chat GPT with HubSpot Smart CRM. Basically you could ask this thing to create more revenue for you and deliver it as well. So you can ask it to track down contacts, competitors, summarize sales, and actually draft emails for you. So now's the time to close more deals and get on track. Make Q1 your best yet. Explore the new HubSpot Sales Hub and AI tools like Chat Spot@HubSpot.com sales. Hey, do you ever feel like there aren't enough hours in the day and you feel like you're, you know, kind of slugging along, putting out fires or doing the minute tasks that aren't the big picture tasks. The things that you really feel like are going to move the needle for your business. I've been there and sometimes I still go there into the weeds, but I got to catch myself. And there is a better way, of course, to basically take back your hours and take back your work week so you're not working so hard and longer. And there's some really smart tools that are obviously out right now. Artificial Intelligence AI. That's what I want to talk about. And I want to give you some mental models to use to bring back your earnings per hour. James Schramko likes to talk about that. I've had him on the podcast and Dan Martell mentioned him as well. It's all about doing the right tasks and really identifying them, knowing your value and then having a plan on how to do this. So you are in the driver's seat, growing your business, you're delegating, but you're also leveraging smart technology like AI. So this is the first of multiple episodes where I'll be diving into some pretty key topics that business owners have said they want to understand when it comes to using AI. I've actually, we've surveyed hundreds of people. You know, I'm working closely with Mike Koenigs, who was just on the podcast the other day at the time of this recording a release. So definitely check out that podcast with him to get a whole, like deep dive primer. So him and I and Brad Costanza, who's also been on this podcast multiple times, we're all collaborating with a larger team as well to work with tons of entrepreneurs and business owners and also enterprise businesses and all sorts of industries. You know, real estate, you have wealth management, there's a lot of coaches and online companies, creators and also telecom companies. I mean, there's like, it's a big spectrum. And this is where you'll understand is that these mental models apply to everyone. And my idea here is to give you framework frameworks in a series of episodes that will give you the action steps to apply this stuff in your business no matter where you're at. And I'll just shout it out right now. The place where I would suggest you go after this episode, after you like subscribe and share this around, maybe rate and review if you haven't already. It'd be really awesome to see that from you and thank you in advance, is to go to pick up the book that Mike just wrote. And you might have heard it in the episode, but if you haven't got it, it's free, it's brand new, and it's like a playbook for any business owner who wants to become more productive, but also scale their business in very creative ways, leveraging AI and smart workflows and things. It's totally free. The digital copy is. And go to DigitalCafe AI JF. The JF will tell them I sent you, so make sure that's there. So DigitalCafe AI jf. It's actually this cool chatbot window that you'll see and enter some information in there. Of course, entering your name and email or yeah, both of those, you'll get your book, but also you'll start to see some really cool questions about how you can think about your business. And, and it's going to give you a nice custom report on some action steps as well. And I guarantee some light bulb moments will happen. So just calling that out right now. Go to DigitalCafe AI JF. You'll get that book, Mike's free book on. It's basically a playbook on all the stuff AI and scaling your business in time. So without further ado, let's get into the mental models and this time, in this episode, it's all about productivity. It's, it's getting back those hours and scaling your business in smart ways and then using AI tools that aren't super crazy tools. I'm talking about ChatGPT and Claude AI. So mental model number one is called the repetition filter. Let's figure out what are the tasks that you're doing over and over and chances are these are perfect candidates for AI automation. So some examples, customer inquiries like support, inbound contact forms, maybe it's messages from your team or check ins from clients. These are all things that can be automated. Or maybe it's formatting blog posts or show notes, pages or newsletters, social media content, scheduling content, calendars or planning projects out something that's repetitive, that can be templatized. These are all just examples just to kind of get your mind going about the repetition side of things. Now how do you apply it and how do you start going down, you know, using this mental model. Step number one on this whole repetition mental model here is to track what you're doing and do it for a week. You know, track this stuff for a week. Step two is by the end of that week now start to look at that list and you know, just write it down, keep it easy, however you want to track this, but look for patterns. Look for the things where you can identify the repeated tasks, the things that show up all the time, or at least often more than once. Or maybe you just know like that's going to be a weekly task. It's probably worth automating. And step number three is pick one of those tasks, at least one of them, and start brainstorming ways on how you can automate that using AI. And yeah, it's probably not going to be rocket science. Just pick one, one at a time, keep it simple and, and you know, an example like we were talking about is maybe you have some inbound questions from customers or team or whoever. Well, an example you could do is go to ChatGPT or Claude AI and start to generate some frequently asked questions. You probably have those questions already, so you could throw them in there. And then what it can do is start to give you responses. It can generate the responses for you and you can even Tweak them further if you want to and personalize them for specific uses. And again, you can have the AI do this for you just by communicating and prompting through that process. So, key thing is to track, to identify the repeated tasks that are happening by you or your team, whoever, and then start to figure out how to generate responses or start to automate some of that stuff. I'm going to pause this really fast and shout out another podcast that's on the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals. This one's a podcast hosted by someone I've followed for years. I've read his books. His name is Donald Miller and he hosts the podcast called Business Made Simple. The whole premise there with that show is that it helps take the mystery out of growing your business. And one of the recent episodes is one with Alex Hermosi, someone else I followed for years now. And it's all about talking about the uncertainties that we're living in right now in 2024 and beyond, but how we can take our business and shore it up. There's actually four principles Alex shares and Don gets into it as well. So definitely recommend checking that out to go Listen to Business Made simple, hosted by Donald Miller wherever you get your podcast. If you're looking to unlock some more income and time freedom, then I want to tell you about Kartra. It's the ultimate all in one business platform for online success. Now with Kartra, you can create stuff, stunning pages and funnels. You can automate your marketing, launch online courses and a bunch more all in one place for one affordable price. Now Kartra has every tool you need to scale. It's super easy to use. And right now you can snag a free 30 day trial plus a 20% discount on your first payment when you use this URL. It's www.hustleandflowchart.com Kartra Again, that is Hustle and flowchart.com K A R T R A Our mental model number two is one that I'm calling the time to value ratio. So the idea here is that as we all know, some tasks take more time than others. They're not all created equal. And all tasks deliver a different value in terms of a return. You know, like the time input doesn't always get the value output, they're not always aligned. They're kind of like this. So the idea is to figure out where is your time for these tasks and then what's the output? Or maybe it's the other way around, you know, what's the time and what's the output. And you can do this by doing some simple math. So some examples I'll just put in your mind. So it's kind of jogging before I get into the steps is like transcribing, meeting notes, you know, zoom calls or things that you're doing, or even watching videos and transcribing those or trainings. It could be proofreading, it could be editing long form content like blog posts, or even content in General, you know, YouTube videos, podcasts. It could be cleaning up spreadsheets, or analyzing spreadsheets or even sales calls. You know, these are all things that you can automate now. And the value is different. It could be a really high value. But at the same time, if you can automate it, then cool. But some things might need more of your time and then the value is higher and that's cool as well. So step one is to take the task from your to do list. Estimate how much time you think it's going to take or how much it does take for you to complete. That's step number one. Now let's go to step number two, which is start to rate the value of that task. And it's subjective, but also maybe it's not, it's quantitative. You know, if you have some, some data or some value, if you know what the return in dollars will look like for you for your business. Well, now you have a more concrete number. So look at the task and rate it from 1 to 5 and higher the number will be more value, of course, one being the lower, highest five. And step number three, and this is where the math comes in is take the time estimate that you have and you can do it in hours. You could do it in minutes. Really doesn't matter. Take the time and then divide that by the value rating you gave it. So from one to five, divided it by that number and then you're going to get an output. If that number is higher, then it's probably a can, you know, higher than the rest of the tasks that you have. And I would do this for all your tasks. The highest number basically says ding, ding, ding, automate that with AI or do some kind of delegation, send it to your team to maybe automate it with AI or leverage and supplement with AI. You can't automate everything, but at least supplement with AI the lower the number. So again it's taking the the time you are estimating divided by the value. If that number the in number there equals a lower number than the rest, then it's probably more of a valuable task that is worth you or your team doing. That's pretty much it. It's very simple. And you can start running the math, do scenarios for yourself just depending on it. But again, it's. It's time divided by value. Higher the number, delegate or automate or supplement with AI and then lower the number is probably a lot more valuable. Is a lot more valuable. Probably takes more of your attention. Third mental model, this is the last one is a little different. This taps into creativity and calling it the creativity spectrum. And this is taken because there is a spectrum. If you look it up, there's kind of like this, this creativity spectrum from like no creativity to a whole boatload of creativity. And it just depends on where you're at. And we're all different and depends on what we're working on. But the point is here is that we can leverage AI to not just analyze spreadsheets or do these kind of logical tasks, but they can. Or it can basically take the knowledge in all these different ways of thinking and put it into a context that you want it to focus on. And it's. So it's. Augmenting human creativity, but it's. And it can generate different ideas that we probably haven't thought of. And at the same time we can layer it in with our own human, human creativity. So we're kind of like mashing them together. I think it's called Idea sex is what James Altucher calls it. He was on the show years and years ago and he's a big fan of writing down different ideas every single day. I think it's like 10 ideas. Well, now, you know, and I don't know his thoughts are on this. But AI can create a whole bunch of ideas. But imagine when you combine the two together, you know, this is a great way to really go high on the. The creativity spectrum and, and get out of that stuckness, you know, and this is where things like brainstorming concepts for a blog post or for an email or for a podcast or a video, these are all great ways to kind of generate a first draft. You know, it can help you outline chapters to a book. I just wrote a chapter in Mike's book today, the one that you'll be downloading at DigitalCafe. AI JF and I used a Claude to help and with a bunch of prompts to basically give me a structure based off of what I had in my mind. And it helped a lot. I mean, this is a great way to write ad Copy or at least get the structure and the bones of it. Social media posts the same thing. So how do we apply this thing in four simple steps is what I have written down. Here is. Step one is to identify what's the task. What's. What are you trying to accomplish? What's the thing that you feel like you're getting stuck on? So maybe you're just getting stuck on. You just have that blank page syndrome. You can't start writing. You don't know what to talk about in the podcast or shooting the video. So just start with that thing and identify what it is. Step number two is break it down into small steps. And the key to do that is to really identify what are the little bits. Like, break the big thing into little things. So for instance, I was writing this chapter. Well, I had the concept in my mind, but I wanted to break it down into a flow that I had in mind. But then, like from there, okay, break down the bits, the sections of that flow, you know, and I don't remember what the flow is now, but obviously there's a flow to everything. It's same with ad copy, same with a podcast. You know, you have intro and the big idea, and then like, what are you gonna learn? And then what's the meat? And then what's the, you know, all the ending points and everything that comes in between. What you want to do is break it down into specific things that can then turn into prompts. So there's a reason for that. And it turns into questions as well. So that's. Step number two is breaking it down into little identifiable pieces. Step number three is to now go to ChatGPT or Claude and feed what you just figured out. What are those little steps? And turn them into prompts that you can take over there, turn them into questions. And now it will start to generate ideas for you. You can also feed it inspiration. I like to do that where it's like maybe upload a transcript of something that you like to model or just other ideas that you wanted to get inspired from. Or you can put notes or people's names or writers names or a type of theme, whatever it might be to kind of layer in. But the point is to get very specific with that prompt or question and then have it generate ideas for you. And then step number four is to start using those ideas as a starting point. And the key thing here is to layer in your own human creativity and judgment with what the AI is giving you. Because we don't want to just take it out of the box, it's not that good yet. I'm sure it will be very soon. But for now, we want to use our human judgment, the creativity that we do have. And then that's the idea is like now you have creativity mashed up together using AI and then your own kind of human judgment. So those are the models, those are the pieces. So back to, you know, number one was repetition filter. So figure out what are you doing constantly, what are your team members doing all the time, and identify what they are and try to automate those bad boys. Mental Model 2 is the time to value ratio and figure out what's your time to the value and then the output. If the number is higher, go get that thing automated or delegated somehow. Get others on your team to start thinking like this as well, because you want efficient people on your team, not just yourself. Don't hoard this information to yourself. Go share this episode with them. I promise you, they'll like it. And then mental model number three is the creativity spectrum. So you can start thinking more creative about what you're working on right now. So you're not feeling stuck on anything. Because that's the thing. We don't want to get stuck or paralyzed because people and business owners, anyone in this day and age, everything's speeding up and this is the way you got to start thinking. AI, the tools changing all the time, Tools are changing, the technology is growing. But the big thing is if you understand how to think with AI and then you put it all together, that's where things. That's where the magic's gonna happen, and then that's where you can start communicating with your team and thinking more creatively. Elevated. And I mean, this is. It excites me. The next 12 to 18 months is going to be a radical shift in the way of how we all interact with each other. But in business, I mean, the whole thing is AI is not going to take your job. It's not going to take your business. It's the people, it's the business owners and the teams like this who are going to leap. And, you know, they're going to. They're going to take the ring, you know, they're going for it. They're going to leap past others who are not thinking like this or messing around with the tools right now with this kind of way of thinking. So that's what I got for you. I'm going to wrap it up there. I'm just going to remind you there's two things, so make sure to go to DigitalCafe AI JF to get Mike's book, which I am featured in as well. And it's a great playbook. It's a great starting point to really dive deep into more of this thinking, but also get very specific in the doing as well. And so go to Digital Cafe. AI jf, go through the chat prompts. It's. I promise you, it's going to be a light bulb moment. You're going to see the type of technology that we're building as a team. And this is what I've been focusing a lot of my time on outside of this podcast. A lot of people have asked me, what the heck are you doing these days? Well, it's working with Mike, Brad and the crew there because it's exciting. There's this moment in time right now with AI and this whole kind of like wondering, like, what do I do with this technology? How do I arrange the pieces? Well, it's like, this is what we do day in and day out. And it's been. It's awesome. You know, it keeps me up at night and in a good way. So go see what we're doing there. And then the second part is to, you know, obviously, like, subscribe, Pass this episode around to anyone you think that would benefit. I would start with your team members. Think of one person on your team. Pass it over to them. One business partner or someone else that needs to see it. Send it to them. Share with your list. That'd be cool because there's going to be more to come. And the thing is, I want to give away free content. That's what I'm all about here. I've always been. And I want to elevate what you're doing in your life, in your business, and make sure that you're making the most out of it. And AI is such a great opportunity to do it. And I hope you see the light, too. So that's it until next time, next week when I'm back with another one of these theme episodes. It's gonna be good. So bye, PE.