Optimizing with AI — Productivity, Learning, and Fun at Any Budget | Ft. Gregg Hull

Welcome to the Optimizing Beyond podcast. I'm Josh Negron, and this show is all about sharing lessons, ideas, and strategies that sharpen your thinking, strengthen your habits, and push you to grow beyond comfort zones. Let's dive in. Welcome back to the show. Today I have another guest coming back. Greg Hall is joining me again. And today we're going to talk about optimizing with AI. AI is everywhere, so why not talk about it? Something him and I are both passionate about in our different fields. And so we wanted to see if we could talk about ways that we're working on doing this in different ways. And if you're someone that is using AI, how you can try new things. There's a staggering statistic Greg shared with me that only 3% of people pay for AI, meaning everyone else is using free versions or they don't use it at all. And so maybe this will be helpful to you to just take another step and optimize what you're doing with AI. So Greg, welcome back to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me again, Josh. Appreciate it.

Absolutely. Always a joy to have you, sir. So we were talking a little bit off camera about how you are passionate about AI. Like we're both tech guys, we're both nerdy in that way. So we like trying new things, new technology. And I gotta say, from my perspective, I could be criticized for being like too optimistic about AI, but like there's, There's few things I remember in history in my lifetime that are this exciting. There's just so many possibilities that you can interact with it and it just keeps, I feel like every 2 to 4 weeks there's a new version, a new capability, a new connection. And so just trying these different things, sometimes I feel like I get builder's fatigue. I don't know if you're this way where I'm just building all these things and sometimes the utility, I get so excited about building, I actually don't actually use the end product because maybe it doesn't turn out the way I thought it would or whatever. So we were talking about kind of 3 different categories, right? Productivity, learning, and fun. So yeah, just kind of kick us off by sharing how you view this and what got you into it.

Yeah, I mean, you know me, I'm a big nerd, man. Like I have been a technology person for a long time. I have loved Computers, technology, all of that. And AI has been, it's been transformative. But I think unlike you, I am not optimistic in the AI future. I think I'm more, I'm very optimistic for what it can do for us personally. I'm very skeptical of what it will do for us as a society in the future. But as far as what we can do with it, I think it's incredibly useful for anybody. Like we can do so much even now with what it is and it's not even at its final form yet. And And so we have a place where technology can just change little things and make us so much more productive. I think I was telling you, like, one of the ways that I'm looking at implementing it right now is through email. I've got 4 different emails with school, with work, with personal, all of these different things. And I've got 4,500+ unread emails. Some people are gonna, like, hear that number and their, like, soul is gonna destroy inside. I don't care. The Redbubble doesn't bother me. You can't, you can't touch me. Don't me, bro. I want to be able to go through and just have an assistant to be able to filter through some of that stuff, you know, and determine what's worth keeping, what's not, determine like, hey, what needs a response, what I just need to read and file away for later, and then possibly write like a draft email response to the things that are important. So having something like that to be able to just go through on a daily basis and run that. Can be a game changer. I mean, I don't know how much time you spend in your email, but I try and do it as little as possible because of the overwhelming amount that's in there. So.

Yeah, email is definitely, man, it can be such a time suck. I will say I've used AI in a couple different ways when it comes to email. So one of them that I remember the most was one where I was up against a deadline that someone needed something very urgent. And I was driving and I'm, I mean, I can't type an email while I'm driving. And by the time I'd arrive at my destination, yeah, legally, right? So by the time I was gonna arrive to my destination, I had another meeting like right there that I was gonna arrive and not be able to give that deliverable that was due. And so, and I remember it being like really time sensitive for some reason. And so I was like, well, I mean, the only thing I know how to do is something interesting. So I pulled up one of the services, the AI services that I, that I pay for that had voice mode. And, and so I just had it pulled up through the audio of the, the car and I was like, hey, I need your help typing an email. I don't have any time to type it, so I'm gonna need to go back and forth with you. I give you the context of the situation so that you can reply intelligently. I wasn't even concerned about it replying in my voice or, or whatever, 'cause it does, you know, in that chat it doesn't really know. And I was like, I, I don't have any other options. So like, if this doesn't work, then I'll have to figure something else out. It, But I'm driving anyway, so I'm, you know, it's time well spent supposedly. So, and I did, I did the whole, like, it was a 15-minute drive and I did like a whole 12-minute, like, here's the thing. Okay, cool. Back and forth. Ask me questions. That's a very helpful one, especially with the audio version. Have it interview questions one at a time. That's a helpful prompt. Otherwise it just asks you 17 questions all at once and you're like, whoa. Especially audio-wise, you're like, I don't, how am I supposed to remember? And so I did, I went back and forth with it and, and I was like, hey, I'm getting ready to, to pull in. I need you to, to, to draft the It's like, okay, I think I have enough information. And then I literally parked the car and looked at the final email and I was like, dang, that's actually pretty good. Hit the copy button, went to my email service and I popped it in there, send it. It was great. And so I don't do that all the time, but like in just that unique case, it was like, hey, this is really cool.

You mentioned too, like, I think that a lot of people don't understand like how useful it can be because some of those frustrations they get of like, it just asks me over and over again or whatever. Like, it's, it's, it's those moments where you need something to happen and it comes through that, like, that aha, that light bulb comes on.

Yes. Yeah. When I read, when I read the book AI-Driven Leader by Jeff Woods, he talked about that, like, the moment the AI delivers for the first time something really, really impressive. It's that moment where you're like, snap, you know, you called it, aha moment. And then he's like, there's also that, like, He doesn't use the word value despair. That's a James Clear thing. But like you hit a point where you want AI to do something and it totally craps the bed and you're like, okay, well maybe it can't do anything. So, and he's like, you have to push through those crappy moments to then get really proficient with it and learn together. 'Cause obviously context is the biggest thing everyone's trying to solve with AI, right? Like give it access to, you don't wanna say everything 'cause there's some security concerns there, right?

Right.

Like you're giving it, it needs access to as much as you can. willing to give it. But then, you know, you also don't want to give Sam Altman everything because let's be honest, there's some trust there. Like, uh, there was conversations about, uh, that whatever you chat with Claude can be admissible in court. And so, you know, there's people having some really interesting conversations with AI and you're like, hey man, I, I don't know if I'd do that. There's, you know, the differences between a personal account and enterprise ones. Those aren't always used to train the model and those have more security. However, sometimes they require 3, 4, even 5 seats. So you're, you're not just paying one monthly fee, you're paying 3 to 5, which for an individual, you're like, what if I want that security, but I don't wanna pay for 5 of them, right? There's a, there's a product I subscribe to called Superhuman, which is an email overlay. Like it's an email client, right? So it, you just, you just sign into all your, all your different inboxes to that. And it keeps everything in one place in separate inboxes. But there's other services that do this, like Gemini is built into your Gmail and obviously Copilot with Microsoft. And an advantage of having an agent inside a product like that is that naturally it's gonna be automatic for it to write more in your voice. In Superhuman recently, one of their latest advancements last week even, originally it would write in your tone of voice, period, like just overarching. But lie it in your voice to that specific recipient because your tone of voice with that recipient could be potentially different than, you know, compared to maybe someone who's a, who's in your company or whatever. And so I thought that was like really a really cool addition. And you can, you can just click the AI button in a thread of your reply and just say, hey, tell Greg that 12 o'clock sounds fine and ask him a follow-up question about what he was asking earlier. And just hit enter and there's a, a really well-built response. So I've, I've really enjoyed Superhuman from, uh, from that context. But you shared with me earlier how your goal is, cuz you're economical, right? So you're like, how can I build this cheap? I was gonna give you a benefit of the doubt here using better language, power of words, Greg. But yes, thrifty. So you were talking about like, You know, it's, it's, it's super easy in this AI world to like see the new shiny thing and go, well, you know, Claude's super beastie. I wanna try Fable. You're paying for that. Then you see that ChatGPT comes out with 5.6 and you're like, well, that's kind of beaten Fable in some areas. I wanna try that. And so then, but you don't wanna keep changing. Nobody wants to make 3 payments. But you don't wanna keep changing because then the context that you've built up is gone. Yeah. So walk us through some of the ways you wanna do this on the cheap.

Well, and like you said, like it, some Sometimes your professional demeanor is different from your personal demeanor, and you need to keep those— for example, just the email situation. I can't tell you how many times I've written an email using AI because I don't want to say the things I want to say to the parent of the child that is emailing me. So I have to be a little more diplomatic in my response, and AI is great for things like that. But yeah.

Can you rewrite this? Yeah.

Tell me how to say this without calling their child dumb. So, uh, no, but I, I, I think that for 80% of people, there's so much AI can do now on the free or cheap that like we've all been nickel and dimed with subscriptions so much. Like I'm, I'm sick of it. I know like there's a ton of other people who are sick of it. Like I, I, I Don't love the subscription model. I get that as a— from a company standpoint, it's a gold mine. It's like recurring revenue. It's constant. Like, it's, it's, uh, estimatable. Like, you, you know what things are going to look like. So I understand why we've gotten to this point, but as a consumer, I absolutely hate it. And so for me, I, I want to be able to do what I can do on the free or on the cheap and You pay for convenience, obviously, with everything. AI is no different. Your service that you mentioned, I'm sure, is a subscription service of some kind that you probably pay for. But they built that service on what's called an MCP server. Google, several companies have Model Context Protocol servers. They're basically links between their service and the way that AI understands stuff. It's called a markdown file. I don't want to get too technical, but like, they read those files in a certain way. And so these MCP servers are ways that AI can talk to different services and understand it and connect with it. And so Gmail is no different. You can hook a Gmail MCP server up to your AI at home for free and give it as much or as little access as you want and are comfortable with. Because like you said, You know, Sam Altman doesn't need all our information, but at the same time, if you give an AI free rein to do anything, they have tendencies to delete files or share them with people that don't need to be shared with or anything like that. So there's, there's ways that you can give it certain permissions to not do things. So like for me, for example, one of the things that I've done is, is I'm looking at all these emails and I'm going, okay, anything that's been unopened for 6 months or longer, just delete it. Like, I don't even need it. Like, if I haven't looked at it in 6 months, I don't need it. Everything else, like, look at things that I've opened already in from the same sender and keep those in, in a recurring folder so that I know, like, context-wise. Like, if I've got a doctor's appointment coming up and I haven't opened the email, but I've got an email from the doctor from a year ago, they're going to look at that and say, oh hey, this is something that he's opened before. I'm gonna Keep this in a separate folder, and then it can look at things and say, "Hey, this is something that you probably need to respond to." It looks like Josh is asking about lunch on Thursday, and he has a question for you. How do you want to respond? And then it'll ask, "Hey, do you want me to write a draft?" And you can say yes, and it'll write a draft for you, and then you can hit send. You can give it full permission to like write and send the email for you if you really want to. And like if you get it to a point. Where it, you trust its decision-making, you've trained it on your voice and how you talk and how you want to respond. Like you can get to that point. But even then, some of the free models that I would use are not as capable as some of the models that you're going to pay a subscription for. Obviously you're going to, you're going to, on a free model, you're going to get 60 to 80% of what the paid subscription model will do for any basic task. Like emails and things like that. If you're doing more technical things like coding and stuff like that, like you're not going to get anywhere near as close as what the paid subscription models will do. But just to answer questions or write things down, like I was, I was talking to my AI, I like ChatGPT on, on the computer, but I have it on the web, but I have it on my computer. And I asked it who's going to win the World Cup, uh, because I kind of got into the World Cup. A little bit this year. Kind of weird. I'm not really a sports guy, but for whatever reason I was in, I'm, I'm in on this World Cup thing. So, yeah. And it was like, I only have information up to January of 2025 in my context. So you're gonna have to explain some things to me. And like, I'm like, nevermind, let's talk about something else. So it's things like that where if you download and, and you start using your own model, offline, it's easy to just create the chatbot to answer questions like what 90% of people use AI for. And you can even give it access to the internet so it can go and search up things and, and look at things. But to get some of that specialized knowledge, some of that special, those specialized tasks, that's what that paying for that really does for you. And I think that that's where you can actually avoid even still the subscription model and go to like an API. where you only pay for what you use. And you can limit that quite a bit too if you're not a power user, if you're not somebody who's like constantly trying to crank out a bunch of code or something like that. You can do 80% of everything you can do online offline for free, in my opinion.

Yeah, it's getting really interesting. And you mentioned the MCPs earlier. I mean, the amount of software that's able to connect now with AI is an ever-growing thing, you know, like it, it was pretty exciting last— towards the end of last year where different AI services offered these connections with, you know, they called them apps, but it was like, you know, Canva and like all these other— and it was, it's a just this MCP connection, but I, you know, but that's still a big deal that those, that those tools can talk to those other things. Like Claude can now live inside of Excel and Word. So Excel especially is really impressive that instead of uploading your CSV or Excel file into Claude and trying to do some work, or in a Google Sheet. Now you can natively work inside of Excel with Claude, and there's like Claude's inside, similar to Microsoft Co— Cowork, so, or Copilot rather. And so it's been, it's been really interesting to see just the different connection potentials to give AI the access it needs to offer value to you. Because that's, again, context is Kind of the biggest roadblock. Like, how do you give AI that context? And that's why Siri AI has been such an interesting topic in the last, you know, month, even though it's still in beta. And the public beta is expected to be late this month or the beginning of next month. And it's a big deal in that Siri, you know, which has been made fun of for being ridiculously dumb, and they made some crazy promises back in '24 that they did, and they sold There's a class action lawsuit because they sold devices with the premise and then never came out with it. But now, like, the ability to give Siri access to your text messages, which I can do on Claude right now, but I wouldn't dare. Like, it's not turned on, but I can.

Yeah.

But now running the beta on my iPhone, I can— I've been able to ask some really unique questions just to see after she spent freaking 3 weeks indexing. I was— I can just be like, hey, last time, like, find me the text conversation where Greg and I talked about, I don't know, some Lord of the Rings thing. And gosh dang it, she finds it. Whereas sometimes you're like, oh, well, you can just search for that. Yeah, but when you're searching, everyone knows when you search for your text messages, you have to have a general idea of the exact phrase or word, or hopefully exact phrase, because then you have a chance of finding it. If not, it's Armageddon. So you can give it a general idea of like, hey, we talked about something like maybe an actor in a movie, but I don't remember what. Sure enough, like she's, she's popped some stuff up and I'm like, wow. Yeah, I never would've found that. So, so it's, it's been interesting playing around and she's at least at this point going to be free. And that's going to roll out on, on all devices with a few exceptions that I don't think are big deal breakers on the newer iPhones. But even back to iPhone, I think I said iPhone 11. Is gonna be able to run iOS 27. So yeah, super, super interesting to use it as a productivity tool. I know for, for me, I deal with, uh, with reconciling numbers a lot. And I mean, you teach an accounting class. I will tell you, ledger math, credits and debits, is not the same math as other things. And so, man, uh, I've had to have some conversations. I have some Gemini threads where I'm like, hey, I can't make this balance. I need your help. I'm in QuickBooks trying to figure some stuff out. And it has been extremely helpful in being able to go through tons and tons of credits and debits and be like, nope, I found everything that matches. These are the only 3 anomalies and here it is. I'm like, oh yeah. And even that would've taken me hours.

Yeah. Even in Sheets, like when I'm doing stuff in Sheets, the ability to, because you and I are both pretty good in Google Sheets. Sheets, but like writing long formulas, like to do specific things. It's like I need a formula to do this, and having it just spit it out and it work. Like, or if you've got old sheets that like you've been working on for years in your company, and like you've got like formulas that have been not the best, or like they work but they're not ideal, you can literally point AI at it and say, hey, Give me a function, give me a formula that is clean and concise to do this. And it will, it will edit all of your cells if you want it to, to clean up all of those formulas to give you a better functioning sheet. Because if you're anything like me, you know, once you get like 10 tabs going down the line and everything's talking to each other and you're trying to import data from other sheets, like it drags down. And so you have to have clean formulas to be able to constantly get those sheets to function if you're working in Google Sheets. And that was one of the first like aha moments for me with AI was when I was able to point Gemini at it and say, hey, I need a formula to do this. And it looked at this sheet and it said, okay, here's the formula. And I was able to have a chat with it and get the formula that I needed. for the function that I wanted, and it was like, okay, this thing, it's game on, let's go.

Yep. Whereas years ago, uh, you would have to go into a chatbot and say, hey, I'm working in a spreadsheet, this is what I'm trying to do, can you give me a formula? And it's— you're usually describing it in a vague way, and then it gives you a formula, you hop over and paste it into your sheet, and it Probably usually doesn't work the first round. And then you're like, okay. And then you're like, well, this is what it did. And then it was like, so there's this annoying back and forth that you used to have to do. Whereas now, like, like you said, you can chat, you've got the, the sidebar, and then even inside of a cell now it has the little Gemini star and you can click on there and be like, hey, look at this formula. Can you help me clean it up? It's gonna understand what the current formula does and then potentially offer you one that's cleaner, better, whatever. So yeah, it's, it's, there's so many.

Yeah.

There's so many ways that, that it can be useful in, in just accomplishing random things, just depending on your use case.

Yeah. And the more you put it into practice, the more you think about it, the more you're like, hey, I probably could use it for this too. I probably could figure something out over here. Like if I could get it to do, and like the more you can offload the mindless labor task of whatever, going through email, the more you have open to do other things that you actually want to do. Like you, you, you open yourself up to more fun. You open yourself up to more learning. You open yourself up to a whole bunch of different things. So it's, it's been nice to get some of that time back too. Yeah.

I feel like a huge objection from some people that I hear that are, that don't use AI very much or kind of are on the sideline trying to figure out like, I don't even know how I would use it. Is the, some of the things that you described, I feel like someone could be critical and say, well, yeah, but that's like super easy. All you have to do is sort your email. Like for example, you said, uh, deleting anything older than 6 months. You're like, well, that would take me 3 minutes. Like I would go in there, I would sort all my emails, find everything that's between like anything after this date. And then I would just do select all and delete. I'm like, no, I get that. But if you can do a bunch of those things, those mindless things. There's a difference between, quote, going in and doing that, 'cause how many people have things around the house that are super easy to do, but they haven't done them, right? Even if it would take just 30 minutes, you're like, sometimes the fact that it's so easy makes it difficult to do, 'cause you're like, it's easy to put off. You're like, oh, I could do that anytime, right?

Right.

And so when you offload these tiny little things, I know from my experience, it's been huge. Like one of the things Superhuman helps me do, initially it wasn't even an AI function. Like, because it is also an email client. So it'd be like using, like I can use, you can use Microsoft Exchange for a Gmail account. You know what I mean? Like you can function Exchange like an email client. So initially that's what Superhuman was before it had AI. And so one of the functions inside of the app, again, before AI was, they call it reminders. So in a perfect world, when I send you an email asking you something, I've now put the ball in your court. I shouldn't have to set myself a reminder Because you're, you're a, you're a trustworthy guy. You're gonna get back to me and that's gonna be my reminder when you get back to me. Yeah, obviously someone forgets to get back to you, then your boss is like, hey, where are we on this? And you're like, shiz, well, I emailed them. Yeah, but who's responsible?

You are.

So one function that Superhuman has is, and you can configure it to like be hypersensitive, like remind you of every time someone doesn't reply to you. You can also customize it to every unique email. So. I can send something and be like, hey, remind me in 2 days, 3 days, 4 days if Greg hasn't responded. So it automatically shuts off if you answer. Where AI— so that was already a game changer for me. So like very critical things where I'm responsible and I don't wanna trust a vendor who's let me down before, I'm like, yeah, I know you. So I'll set a reminder. But where AI gets in here is one of the functions they've added 6 to 9 months ago was an automatic teed up answer or teed up follow-up message that's written in your, in your voice. So now you get those daily, uh, at 9 o'clock every day, you get the reminders like, hey, these people you need to follow up with. The message is already written. So I go in there, I look at it. I'm like, yeah, it's pretty good. It's like, hey, just following up on this, blah, blah, blah. You know, however you usually sound, boom. And then you just hit enter and it's, it's automatically sent. Huge time saver. One, I don't have to set a to-do, nothing like that. But then the message now is already pre-typed, which over a year ago I would have to do myself. So it's funny, just these small little things. And so I hear you say those things. I feel like some people's inner voices are like, all that stuff is super simple. Like, why would I learn a new way or a new process to do that? Well, some of the pessimism in AI is like, well, AI's gonna replace my job or it's gonna replace me. And there's definite Real fears there that have credit. On that same page though, if you learn to wield and use AI, then what I've heard a lot of entrepreneurs say is someone in your field, you, like an individual in your field is replaceable by someone else who knows how to use AI in their field because they know how to delegate these easy, simple, low to midline tasks to AI. And then they're able to focus on the core difficult multi-layered activities that honestly most people would want a human with judgment, empathy, understanding that right now the computers don't have. And that makes you the asset, right? Like obviously that doesn't apply to all fields, but I think that's super, super important.

Yeah, I mean, even in the job market now, if, I mean, I know your personal to-do list is never done and it's usually multiple pages. So if if you could offload 15% of that list to AI and have 15% more productivity as an employer, you're going to look for somebody who's able to utilize AI in that way, and like they're going to be more productive than somebody who doesn't. Like just from just from a numbers standpoint, if I can be 15% more productive in the things that matter, those two to three minutes on a little task. Every day add up over time. Like, again, 10%, 15% productivity is not a lot, like, in this, in the scheme of things, but in the long term, that compounds over time.

I'll say one, for example, one, one task that actually— it, so it also lets you do things that might be on your wish list. Like, it would be really nice if I could do this, but it's just too, too time-consuming. Not that it's difficult, but it's time-consuming. So for example, like in the show notes, I think it's, it's cool. It would be cool to include links of my previous episodes that maybe you and I discuss and say, hey, yeah, on episode whatever, like linking the episode you and I had together about the power of words is probably going to be in the show notes of this episode. But it takes time and work to look up that link and put it in there. So I have given one of my AI agents all of my previous episodes, their contents and their links. So, and it, I've asked it to create a matrix of all the related like topics and how they overlap. And so it's been really cool in my workflow. Now I just add the transcript and one of its duties is to give me like literally copy and paste format of like episode 17. Link, you know, and it has the title, everything. I don't have to look that up. It's already there. And that's something honestly that if I hadn't offloaded that, it would just be something that wouldn't get done because it, that's just not like, it's not a critical task. So if it takes too long and it's not critical, hey. So I think it brings up your level of deliverables as well to where like you can do something at a higher level. That has value added that you wouldn't have otherwise added because you've built a workflow or a process to do that.

Right. It's not just the bare minimum. It's now you get to add some of those nice-to-haves as well in there. Yeah.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And so, Greg, you've shared with me also, I mean, you're a teacher. And so shout out to my teachers out there. AI, I mean, It's in the, in the teaching space, AI is, man, it's weird because there's things that assignments you, you've, you've could have given students 3, 4 years ago that now you give it to them and you know without a shadow of a doubt it's all going to be AI garbage.

Yep.

So, so walk us through, like, this is so, you know, in the learning aspect, AI can be cool in, in, in, in, in learning something new, like teach me about soccer. You and I, we didn't know, like, what's offsides, you know what I'm saying? Like, so, no, yeah, I think we've got it now. But, but yeah, so, so share with us, kind of like, it's, it's easy as a teacher to just get frustrated with how students are going to cheat using AI. So using— how can you use AI to your advantage as a teacher? Like, share us with your journey. What's that, what's that been for you?

Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, I'm, I'm brand new to this. Like, I just got done with my first year I got into teaching because I wanted to make a difference. I felt passionate about business. I wanted to help. Like, I went to college for youth ministry and then decided not to do that for a minute. And then it was just this whole thing of like a passion for me. And I realized going in, I'm like, this is probably not something that's going to be around in the next 10 or 20 years. Like, our public education system, it may, it may. Like, still be here. But I see AI and learning changing dramatically over the next decade. And maybe that's just my own perspective, but from a teacher in the classroom seeing kids interacting with technology and how it's being used, like, our public education system is ineffective in the current context, in my opinion. Like, there are some really good teachers that still are teaching kids how to learn. But with this new AI landscape, like, kids are throwing stuff in AI and it's producing, you know, all of their assignments for them. It's doing all of the learning for them because they're summarizing material. They're just getting the bare minimum. And the technology in the class, I don't see as being as much of a benefit as it once was, I don't know, 5, 10 years ago.

Hmm.

Which is interesting because you think, well, this new technology, this should be like at the forefront. This should be helping kids like learn. And there's, there's people who are trying. There's things like Magic School AI and things like that where they don't give you the answer, but they help you to like figure it out. But kids don't use that. They want the easy way out. They're human just like the rest of them. Give me the easy way and I'm gonna, I'm gonna go do that, right? So in my own personal experience, one of the things that I've figured out is how to get AI to be a thought partner with me. So how can I use it in a way that will help me to flush out ideas? And there's some really cool tools, there's some really cool techniques for that. But I mean, one of the, one of my, the first interactions I did with this was just I wanted to learn from certain people, like I liked their personality. I liked their thought processes. I liked how they did things. And so just plugging that into a chatbot and saying, hey, pretend to be Warren Buffett, or pretend to be Alex Hormozi, or pretend to be whoever I wanted to learn from, and have a conversation with me about investing, have a conversation with me about whatever. And like, they would take on that persona. They would figure out like what they thought about it and have a conversation to help you think through some of that so you can answer some of those questions. And that was really interesting. I thought, oh, this is kind of cool. Like, I can, I can get some of the ideas and concepts of the people that I admire and look up to and want to, you know, emulate and figure out some of that stuff. Kids today aren't using it that way though. And in the classroom, in school, they don't want to be there just as much as we didn't want to be there when we were kids, you know. The only reason you go to school is to hang out with your friends, right? So using AI or using technology, like some of the ways that I found to help the kids learn is one, teaching them some of the shortfalls of AI, right? Like if you summarize something, you might miss 20% of the key details that are important to the—

To you especially.

Yeah. It might miss something that you thought was valuable, from the material that you would take away as a learning experience. And so that's something that has been interesting. So making AI that thought partner versus having them to just go and do an assignment has been something I've been trying to incorporate in some of my assignments. So like, for example, I have them read through a text, but I have them ask questions before beforehand of like, hey, what do you already know about this topic? Like, before you even jump into it, like, what's something you already know about it? And then if they say nothing, I'm like, okay, cool, give me 3 questions that you want to learn from reading this. And then as they read it, like, hey, what did you find interesting? What was something— what was a new vocabulary word that you learned? Or whatever, whatever, that as they're reading it, they can engage with it. And then, hey, what are some questions you still have after reading it? And just that engagement throughout the process makes it a little bit easier than, hey, write me a book report on this book, and they can just plug that into ChatGPT and have it spit it out for them. So coming up with that thought partner of like, how can you, how can you interact with the text? How can you interact with the material in a way that is more engaging on the learning front rather than just giving you an answer?

Hmm. That thought partner idea was one of the core premises of Jeff Woods's book, AI-Driven Leader. And obviously it was written to leaders, but the concept of having and prompting AI every single time in different techniques that he gives in the book, always trying to get it to help you think, help you brainstorm.

Hmm.

Because one of the concerns with AI is its ability to essentially be an echo chamber for whoever's conversing with it, right? So, so that means that if it becomes an echo chamber, then you have a real danger to not see your blind spots, to essentially magnify those things. We all know that it also has most of the time been programmed, unless you ask it differently, to, I mean, basically agree or over-celebrate everything, right? So you're like, hey, I'm kind of thinking of doing this. Like, oh my gosh, Greg, what an absolutely great idea!

Yes!

You're like, bro, like, I know it's not that good, you know? So yeah, you feel it. You're like, this is so weird. Like, I wouldn't talk to a friend who was like totally like spicing me up for everything constantly, right? So we know that it has those propensities. So unless you're mitigating what you know it's gonna naturally do, then your blind spots stay where they are. You're almost gonna be Talking with a yes man constantly, like, that's a great idea, that's a great idea, you should totally do that. And, you know, to go into the extremes, there were cases obviously that were made famous with people treating AI bots as their therapist, and then some really peculiar things that the AI agent would finally get to. Uh, I mean, just scary stuff, right? So, I mean, most of the time, probably the, the consequences are, are less serious in, in general use. cases, right? But being able to prompt it to be a thought partner has been a huge game changer for me of like, interview me with questions to gain an understanding one at a time, 10 questions. I mean, think about how effective 20 Questions the game is, right? You know, and so, and the, the whole game is like, with enough questions, I can get to the answer of anything, right? And so if you have AI interview you to get an idea, You're building that context that's specific to that situation can be a total game changer in helping you think through stuff. For me, using it to brainstorm has been very effective for me. And, and I, you know, in those prompts you'll say things like, including the interview me, ask me questions one at a time, wait for the answer, adapt your questions to my answers, you know, so that you're getting iteration throughout, but also asking it to challenge you, play devil's advocate. Those are really interesting prompts because then you'll get it to adopt the persona of a contrarian. And individual. And so it's gonna kind of escape its like underpinnings of like, you know, constantly telling you you're amazing. And then also sometimes it's a challenge for me to sometimes get what's in there out or see something that, you know, people are like, how do you feel about that? And I'm like, I don't know, I'm not sure. And so sometimes, sometimes asking it to help me brainstorm, to be that thought partner for me there has been really helpful and For my Harry Potter fans out there, get those memories, those thoughts out there and put them in the Pensieve, right? So I can swirl it around and think through it and see it, see it on paper, you know, or on the screen rather, I guess.

Yeah. And I think, I think that's one huge thing too, that when you are using AI on ChatGPT, Claude, whatever, and you're paying the subscription, you have your chats and it remembers what's in those chats, but it's not, it's not specialized to you. It doesn't hone in on you the way that a personal assistant could, or if you had your own personal AI, it would, right? And so now there are things that you can do with local AI or even like with API stuff if you're using your own like agent or whatever, something that you might want to look into because what you're describing is they recently came out with skills. I don't know if you're familiar with agent skills.

I built one today.

Did you? Fantastic. Love it. So, uh, there's, there's a great skill, a couple of them called Grill Me and Wayfinder. Grill Me is essentially what you are talking about, where your personal agent does this question and answer session where it finds common language. You define terms, so if it doesn't understand a a term, if you use a tier 2 vocabulary term where you have it in a certain context, it will try to define that term and then you can tell it yes or no until it can match and get common language for what that looks like. And it saves that language in a markdown file, in a context file, so that it knows, hey, like in the terms of videos, what I'm talking about is YouTube videos. Like if we're doing TikTok. I'm not talking like that's, that's a different format or whatever. If you're doing content, like it can understand the language that you're using to have a shared language. And it can do that grill me session where it just asks you the questions to help you flesh that out. The other one that I was talking about, Wayfinder, is that thought partner to help you flesh out ideas and things that you haven't really thought about before. Hey, we were thinking about implementing this new program at work. We want to help employees feel like the buy-in from it. Like, what, what can we do? Like, and it'll just— it'll take all of the context that it has of you around work and whatever, and it will start this process of asking questions, pointing out ideas, coming back to— and it's a really great skill to think through some of that stuff. So I think they merged into one, like, skill. The Wayfinder skill the newer one, but it's, it's, it's essentially what you're talking about. I think it's fantastic. But that's one of the benefits of getting to the point with AI that you start to personalize it and make it useful to you in your context with your experiences. You can create your own memory with it to where it has all of the files that are related to you. So it knows your voice, it knows your context, it knows the things that like you want to give it so that when you do have a conversation with it, it doesn't have to go through that process every single time you want to come up with a conversation.

Yeah. And I think if I were to try to simplify it for an application standpoint, like tier 1 for me was building custom bots, right? So for ChatGPT, for the longest time it was custom GPTs. Now I believe it's projects. They've adopted that project language from Claude. And so essentially the idea behind that is, to not get too technical for, for people, is like, we all, if you've used AI on a, on a bottom level for a hot minute, you've realized that there's times where you're prompting the same thing over and over and over in the same chat, maybe even in different chats. And you're like, gosh, I just feel like this is really repetitive. I'm having to say the same thing to get the same result, just with maybe different Situations, so I can't copy and paste, right? And so that's annoying. And so building a custom gem or a project, you can put those custom instructions in there. And then anytime you're like, hey, when I ask this or this and that, you can give it a lot of information, even knowledge documents, those kinds of things. So it's pretty sweet. It's very, very, very specialized, but super helpful for these like tiny tasks that you and I were talking about, like saving yourself, you know, 3, 5, 10, 20, 30 minutes. Where this starts to kind of grow and kind of get into higher level nerdy things is, is I think Claude Cowork is, was the best gateway cuz Claude was difficult cuz it had Claude Chat, which was like what everyone was used to at ChatGPT and like Gemini. And then it had Claude Code. And Claude Code was, Claude Code is scary. Like if you're like, well, I don't know how to code. You're like, well, yeah, but AI's supposed to help you do that. But it still was like the learning curve was intense. It asked questions. You're like, open your terminal. You're, I'm like, what? Uh, and so Cowork was awesome in that it was, you couldn't use it on your phone. It was only on your computer and you, You gave it access to one tiny folder or a bunch of folders and you could put documents in there, have conversations, grow knowledge, and get, actually have it accomplish tasks. My first thing was I keep a folder of invoices in order of date and amount and renaming invoices is like a huge waste of time. But to keep it organized when the accountant asks for them, like, hey, what was this one thing for $345? You're like, I don't know, but if you can just search for that, you know, and so I was like, ooh, I wonder if I can. You can absolutely do that. So I assigned it that folder. It was it's my invoice renaming folder, and and I said, hey, I'm gonna give you invoices. Here's your structure. You need to make it you know year year year year month month date date. Give it the dollar amount. Name it whatever the invoice vendor is, and so give it those custom instructions. Now I just Dump a bunch of new invoices in there. And the only thing I have to say is, hey, I've got you some more, enter. And then it's like, you know, it's actually that sound effect, actually. Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom. Yeah. And if it sees something that it doesn't quite understand, it asks you and it's like, hey, clarification on this one thing, you know, whatever, answer it. And then you can get into even more, you know, tier 3 and coding stuff. But The skill builder is really cool. You can, there's a bunch of skills that Anthropic has that you can just use, like, like Wayfinder, Grill Me, like I'm gonna look those up. But then there's also /skill-builder, which is a skill, and that you can use skill builder to help you build a custom one for you, which is what I did with the, with the invoice renaming tool. And you can just save that and anytime it does anything weird or janky, you're like, you give it an update and you're like, hey, concerning this skill, can you update it to include these things? 'Cause I don't, I don't like how you're doing it. It updates the skill, you save it again, boom, done. And so these kinds of things, like if you're like, man, I just don't know like how I would use some of these things, like with repetitive tasks, with these simple things that you do day in and day out, even if you're using AI, if you're frustrated with how much you're, you're prompting it, repeating yourself, you can do some really cool things if you're like, Man, I'm super uncomfortable giving it access to my computer. You know, Gemini released Spark, which gives it access. You could download it, give it access to your computer. Claude obviously has Claude Code and Claude Cowork, which now is a little bit different and more advanced. ChatGPT had Codex, which was similar to Claude Code. Like, it was still pretty advanced. Now they've got ChatGPT Work, and it's essentially the same thing. You download it on your computer, you give it access to However little, however big you want. I mean, you can have it work in folders and I mean, gosh, like your downloads folder. If it's anything like mine, it's hard to clean because you're just constantly downloading stuff, attaching it places, whatever. I think I probably have like 10 gigs in my download folder, right? And so like manually doing that sorting by size, like finding all the videos, you're like, oh, can I delete that? Whatever. I mean, you can, you can give Claude Cowork access to your downloads folder and you're like, hey, and then just start giving it parameters, organize it, put it in folders, whatever. Anyway, it's just, it's endless, the ideas and things that you can do with this. But we're running up on an hour. We could talk about this all day. And so another episode maybe. But we talked about, you know, this is with productivity, learning, some of that's fun. It's not super fun always. So what are some fun things that you use AI for? Like they're just, they're just really exciting things you create, things you, things you get really jazzed up because You're not as optimistic as I am, but how do you have fun with AI?

It's interesting to do things you don't know how to do. Like, I don't know how to code. Like, I've learned enough to know what an array is, what an integer is. Like, I know some of the language, but I don't know how to code. I'm gonna tell you right now, everything I've done, 100% vibe coding. But the idea that you can Have something in your head, and I don't know if you're an artist, like I've never been great at drawing, but like the, the thought of like, I have a picture in my head and I physically do not have the capability to put it into the universe, like in the physical realm on paper, because I don't have the skill. And now it's like having an artist, professional artist, in your brain hole, like that you have a conversation with. And they can put the picture down on paper. So like the fun part for me is like coming up with code or new ideas or things that I'm like, hey, I would, I want to build this app. Like I think it would be cool if there was a coach for call centers that if you put the transcript into AI, it would be able to coach all of your people and tell them what they did well on the call, what they didn't do well, what they can improve on. Like, and so I built that app and I just, I just coded it. With AI, and it was awesome to be able to get this idea that I had into the real world without having the skills to do it. Right now, I've— I'm a big gamer. Again, guys, I'm a nerd, just telling you. But I love video games. I love, uh, RPGs. I love storytelling. And so I want to build video games, but I have zero skill. I know what a good game is when I play it. And so I, I don't have the skill to translate, and I know that that takes years, and there are people who, like, it takes teams and solo developers, like, do it, and sometimes it takes forever. Like, I get that. But to be able to talk to AI— and Unreal Engine is like a game engine that, like, does graphics and things like that— they just recently put out an MCP server for their engine. So you can hook an AI up to it, and now it has all of the tools and access to their coding software to be able to do things in the engine by just typing in a prompt. You can type in, hey, can you add a landscape with mountains and a lake and a river running up to the lake? And it will totally generate in the system, in the, the engine, All of what you just typed, and it's awesome. Is it perfect? No, absolutely not. Is it buggy? Yes, incredibly buggy. But it gives you that sense of like I can do this now with some of the tools that are available where I never could have before. You know, I didn't grow. I didn't grow up watching Bob Ross, but I imagine it's kind of like somebody who watched Bob Ross back in the day. And they're like following along to watching him do the thing. And you're like, oh, I can paint. Like, I can do this. Like, you know, like that's the feeling that you get when you start to use AI for some of those fun things that you couldn't do before.

Yeah, I, I totally agree. I, I've built a couple apps, some really, really simple, some, some got really complex, you know, because you think, ooh, I can add this and I can add that. And admittedly, sometimes Without it, it seems like without enough forethought, some of the things I've built have been like something really neat with a bunch of weird things duct taped to it in a bunch of weird ways. So it's been, it's been an interesting journey vibe coding, I'll say. But I never before remember— the art analogy is really good because it's like, I feel like I can, I can write decently, but I can't at all draw or paint or anything like that, right? So if I magically had something that allowed me to, yeah, what you described, get what's in here and put that in an art form, that's crazy, right? So to think about like, man, I just wish there was something that could do X. I mean, that's the makings of a prompt. You know, that it's crazy. And for something like a video game, that's Man, that like, that's like world building, you know what I mean? Like, you're— imagine if Tolkien had AI, you know what I mean? Like, would— how many more Lord of the Rings books would there be? Like, I don't know, it's crazy.

The guy would spend 5 pages describing a stairway. So, you know, it's—

Yeah, a leaf in a forest.

Yes.

Yeah.

Uh, one of the other ways that I've used it, and this was, this was how I became a superhero to my wife, is being able to take a picture of something and And like ask it, hey, how can we change our garden bed? Like what, what kind of landscaping could we do here? And like having it generate a picture of like the possibility of what could be, you know? And that whole idea of like, hey, here's my front porch. What are some ways that we could decorate this? You know?

Mm-hmm.

And like just showing that to her and opening that, like, 'cause she's not a techie person. She's not I'm not an AI person, like, but opening that up to her and like having it be like, oh, this is cool. And like, she starts playing with it. Or in the garden, you know, it's like, hey, I've got these holes in my leaves. Like, what's going on here? And you could be, you could do that with Google for a long time, but like, that's the, that's the kind of stuff where it's like, it just becomes fun to do in the hobby stuff that you enjoy already in your day-to-day life. Like, and now you can do more with it, or you can do things that you never thought possible.

Yeah, I think along those lines, the ability to talk to someone, you know, they like, they like to say that AI now is like a PhD level in almost anything. That might be a little too, like, too positive. But if you could talk to somebody who's like a decent expert at almost anything, like, for example, you mentioned landscaping, Perfect example. Like something weird with your grass, right? Like we all, I mean, I don't think anybody would, any of us would mind if we had a nicer looking lawn, right? Like, how do I get rid of this weed? Like whatever. And just a few simple questions gets you access to the same as you approaching the neighbor with the nicest lawn in your neighborhood and be like, hey man, what do you do? And he's like, well, I plant the fescue in the winter and then I do this seeding over here. And then that's how the Bermuda gets all. You know what I mean? You're like, I— okay, cool. You can now do that in the comfort of your living room with your cell phone, whatever. Um, and so it's, it's, it's super funny how, how you can do that. My wife loves planning travel, and so now she would never want AI to take away that joy from her. However, it helps her sometimes getting through some of the logistical things that are more like annoying than anything else, or To generate additional possibilities or things for her to brainstorm of like, hey, I'm going to be in this city. Give me, you know, give me the top 10 things that people love to do in this city. Chances are because she's so travel-oriented, she probably knows about 8 of them. However, there have been a few times where it suggests something and we're like, we never would've thought about that or never would've done it or never would've known. And so It's super cool. We talk about, you know, our second thing was learning. It's so fun to— the fun aspect of learning is when maybe it's something that you're genuinely interested in. How can it add a different layer? Because it knows from a broad perspective, knows more than us on almost anything. And so having the excitement, the humility, and just the wherewithal to just be like, hey, what about this? I use it for research. Like, I love, like, when I'm gonna buy something, I want to buy it once, right? You're like me in that aspect, right? So before, I enjoy the process of researching same way she enjoys travel, but sometimes it's like, man, I don't know when I'm going to find the time to research the best one. So then like you almost procrastinate. You're like, I'm just not going to get it right now because I don't have time to research. Now you can be like, hey, I'm looking to get this. Like what, you know, what are the things I need to consider? These are the criteria, you know, vacuums, for example. You know, it's gonna, it's gonna ask you, uh, do you have primarily hardwood? Do you have 2 floors? That's important cuz they're not like one of those auto vacuums, you know, they can't make it. And so it's really, do you have a pet? I was having a conversation recently on vacuums specifically and it was like, oh, well my top recommendation automatically gets disqualified cuz it does horrible with pet hair. I'm like, nice. Like how many, uh, how many descriptions and reviews would you have, would you have had to read to get to that answer, and you were there in less than 5 minutes, right?

Yep. Yeah, I— it's been, it's been an absolute game changer for me. I am absolutely optimistic on what it can do for the individual. I, I think that everybody should be figuring out ways to optimize their life with it, have it be a tool, have it be a partner to help you think through some of those things and utilize that. And like I said, I try and do it on the free and cheap But I think everybody needs to figure out how they can incorporate it because the reality is it's not going anywhere and it is going to drastically change our lifestyle in the next decade. And so if you're not using it, you're behind. And I feel like I'm already behind. Like I, I, because I'm in the space, I'm watching, I'm researching, I'm, I'm following. The reality is like you and I are probably more advanced than 90% of people who are using it. And I tell my kids at school all the time, I'm like, guys, don't use AI on this assignment. I promise you I will know. I use it more than you do.

And they never believe me.

I always— there's always one, right? But, but it always feels like, oh, I'm already too far behind. Well, the reality is you're not. Like, if you start now, you can start to get some of that implemented. Like, download LM Studio and look for your first Like chatbot on your computer, it'll tell you which ones are the best options that would fit on your machine. And it's basically an AI that you can talk to that you don't give any of your data to any of the big companies. Like it's just there on your machine and you can talk to it all on your own. And there's limitations, but at the same time, it's easy, it's free, and it's a first step that everybody can can look at doing. If if you want more, we can. talk about that another time. But yeah, we're, uh, we're both kind of big into the space. I think everybody needs to jump on board because it's not going anywhere.

It is not. It is not. Yeah. And if you're concerned about which one to use and like if, if you want to use a commercial product, obviously like we talked about, there are advantages to paying a subscription. I don't, I don't recommend you pay for more than one. Just pick one and, and go with it. I think honestly right now there's no, there's no clear winner. They keep, uh, you know, leapfrogging each other, uh, per se. And like every 2 to 4 weeks someone else comes out with another model that's, uh, that's a little saucier. And so just, uh, just pick one, use it, and if you want to pay for it, you know, I, I don't think it's, it's a bad thing for you to, you know, can you give up one of your streaming services to have an AI service that has strong capability? That's a good question for you to ask yourself, you know, if you're like, well, I don't want to download one on my computer and do that. Which is totally, you can do that. I have a couple models on my phone that are, that are local models. And so yeah, you can, there's so many options, but pick, pick one and start using it. There's, Glenn Lundy said on, on the episode that I have, he has a phrase of, if you do 18 minutes a day daily, you will be an expert in whatever you've been doing daily in just 1 year. So if you're worried about AI taking your job, well, Scoot and boogie on using AI because I think you could make yourself, transform yourself into an incredible asset in your field. If you're somebody like, for example, accountants, people are like, oh my gosh, accountants are gonna totally— no, they're not. Like if you've ever messed with a ledger with AI, it can help you. Like I said earlier, it can help you, but it's pretty stupid in some other ways. You don't want just a single AI to do your taxes. You want somebody who's is like licensed, knows what they're doing. Use— I don't have a problem with them using AI. Yeah. So same thing. So an accountant that knows how to use AI is completely going to replace an accountant that refuses to get into it. And I think that's, that's what I want to leave you guys with, that, that if you're not using it today, I— we both highly encourage you find a way. There's free ways that are awesome. There's also paid ways that are great. So just pick a way, pick a lane, And start using it and build that habit. 18 minutes a day, play around with it, ask it questions and build, like get through that novelty. Start realizing how it can help you get to those aha moments, which are pretty addicting and exciting. And then when it's dumb, push through it because it will disappoint you greatly. You're like, oh man, I have super high hopes. It's going to be trash.

So write me this game and then it produces slop. Like, You have to be very specific with it, but at the same time, it's incredible once you get used to it.

Yes. If you, in the same way, and I think, I think people know, like, there's a specific way to Google something to get a more useful answer. And so those of us who got into using Google before it was around, when it came around, there's ways you can ask Google a question and get a useful answer. And there's ways that you don't. And when you use it enough, You know how to ask those to get to trigger those long and short tail keywords to get the answer that you're looking for quicker without asking a second question. So AI prompting's in the exact same way. So if you start prompting every single day, your engineering is gonna get better. Even if you don't watch YouTube videos to tell you how to prompt, like, I'm gonna give you 10 amazing prompts to, you know, whatever. It's whatever. So just build that skill. Like we say daily, anything changes everything. Use AI, guys. So, Reg, thank you so much for your time today.

Absolutely.

Love your perspective and how you use things. So I don't think this will be the last time we have you on, right?

I hope not. I hope not. It's summer vacation, so maybe I'll have some more time now.

I don't know. Yeah, yeah. I mean, teachers, man, I love it. So good. Well, awesome, guys. Thanks for listening to the Optimizing Beyond podcast. Remember, growth happens when you take action. So Subscribe to an AI service. Just kidding. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and most importantly, put what you learned into practice because until next time, daily anything changes everything.