The AI Secrets Behind Today’s Biggest Creators (Lewis Howes, Gabby Bernstein + More) with Jim Carter

Hello, my love, and welcome to Seen, the podcast that helps you to stop hiding, claim your worth, and build the most vibrant version of your life possible. Thank you so much for being here. Hey, Jim, thank you so much for being here.

Absolutely, Kady. I'm so happy to be here with you. Congratulations on the new podcast. I'm privileged to be in— what is this, the single digits, the double digits of recordings? We're pretty early on, aren't we?

You're still in the singles. You're still in the singles.

All right.

Exactly.

All right. I made the vintage edition. I love it. You did. Happy to be here. It's going to be fun.

And I am so lucky, and the listeners are so lucky to have you in their ears right now because Jim Carnie III is one of the most sought-after AI strategists in the world, known for building the biggest AI-driven digital twin experiences on the internet. You've taught me so much. You have been a tech founder yourself, a Fortune 15 consultant. You've got 25 years of experience, and you work with some of the leading names in the space— Lewis Howes, Matthew Hussey, Jay Abraham. And I mean, yeah, it's just incredible the insight that you would have gleaned from being under the hood of these big names alone. So I just feel like you are an absolute mine of gold, and I can't wait to just like get some, you know, some great goodness from you today. And I just am so grateful and thankful that you're here, and you've always been someone that's so supportive. And I think I even did a post about this when we met in LA, like you really are so thoughtful. Like, even you brought me, um, Glossier, and like, I just feel like that has contributed so much. Like, you've got all this credibility and all this expertise, which is amazing, but I think also what makes you really special is the fact that you are so generous with your time, with your knowledge, and really are just such a thoughtful person as well.

I appreciate you. I mean, it's, it's so easy to get caught up in every option for a relationship, every connect, every business mastermind, but really it's— you find the people that you want to latch on to and you want to build deeper relationships with. And you've always— just to send that right back to you— you've always offered that back. You've never shown up pissed off for an event. You've always had a joy, a spark, you know, and you always dress to impress. You're always just kind of owning the moment. And I really appreciate that in you. And I just wanted to honor that too.

Oh, thank you so much, Jim. And I'm so excited today to kind of blend those two things, like talk about the tactics, like the AI and the things that we can be doing, but also with that, like energetic, so to speak, of like what makes people successful. And you know, what makes people, because that's the thing. It's like, you, you think of people, yes, because of their skill, but also you're like, oh, he's such a nice guy. Like, I want to, I think, you know, you think of them for an opportunity type of thing. So you work with all of these big, big names. I would love to even just hear from your perspective, like what you think makes them successful, even outside of like their skill set, right? Like, do you think they have a commonality in terms of personality traits and the way their mind works?

You know, I'm really glad you— I'm glad you asked that question. When we were together at the last mastermind event, we were having dinner that night, and I think it was Jordan that actually asked me a very similar question. We were all sitting around having dinner and it kind of caught me off guard. Because I started to think of like a really— I was trying to think of like a really data-driven, really complicated answer. And then it sort of just hit me that the common thing that I see in some of these biggest creators, household names, everything, is that at one point or another, I got the feeling from all of them that at one point in their life, they just decided they were enough. This is what they were doing. This is what they were the best in the world at. And they were just going to keep doing more of it and they were just going to own it. And it's different for everybody. But what I've found is that the more that I talk to them, there's little to no hesitation. They're able to make decisions quickly. They believe in themselves. They're willing to be a little brave. They're willing to try some things. And some of those really common things, you, you can't help but not have that rub off on you. You know, you start to pick up on these things. And I've thought a lot about it actually since that evening when we were talking about it and one of the common things is a lot of them are stepping into this, doing the digital clone, not because it's a novelty, but because they have a big enough audience that they can't personally serve everybody in that audience. Now, that might sound like a very privileged kind of a thing. It's very factual. But at the same time, think of, well, what could happen if you got into that early, if you're destined to be at that place, or even if you're a fraction of it. What would it be like if you were ahead of the game rather than feeling like you were behind trying to catch up? So, a little bit of like a— I kind of felt that commonality between all of them. But all of them also are very excited for this technology. And they see how AI is going to really, really support their businesses moving forward.

I can't wait to dive into that with you. Because for anyone that's listening that doesn't know what like a digital twin is or an AI clone, it's essentially using AI, training it on all of like, say, your past coaching materials, all of your frameworks, all of your IP, and then essentially having a clone of you that you can give to your clients to be able to serve them like as close to one-on-one as you can kind of get, really. The thing that I find fascinating is obviously with AI and with these digital clones and things like that, it is a bit of a balance, right? Because you do need like you need to kind of have the personal brand to maximize things like digital clones because, you know, if you're Tony Robbins, of course everyone wants your clone. Whereas if you were just like, you know, someone that no one knows, they've never heard of, no one's going to pay to get your digital clone no matter how good it is. So in my opinion, it's like there's never been a more important time to build your personal brand so that you can leverage things like digital clones and people want your clone because they like see the value that you bring. So can you speak to that a little bit with the people that you work with?

Yeah, I do work now with people who do have very established personal brands because we're, we're doing things and we're launching them in a big way. But I've also worked with people, you know, I have 4,000 followers. I'm, I'm not— there's no commas in my follower accounts. I don't just post one story and immediately make a bunch of sales. Like I would say I'm your standard issue in terms of audience size and everything else entrepreneur. But one thing that I have learned is that the more that I do lean in and trust technology to just let it do its thing and I bake in systems behind the scenes and things that make my life a little easier, I can just trust that I'm treating it more as an asset. So it's growing with me and it doesn't feel like a liability. It doesn't feel like something I'm on my credit card statement that I have to deal with. So I don't mind anybody who feels like they don't have a big enough audience that they could take advantage of this. You have a substantially larger audience than I do. You still set up one of these clones. I have people who have a couple hundred followers and they're still setting them up and they find value in different utility. You know, we can talk about how there's value in our customers or the people that follow us being able to use something like this. But you could have no followers, you could have no Instagram, you could have no social media footprint whatsoever, and you could still get value in this because it doesn't only matter about external, it also matters about internal. My EA will get cold emails that come into my inbox. And she'll take the questions, put it through my digital clone, be like, what would Jim say? And she'll take the answer and she'll be able to help me send it back out. And a lot of times people come back and like, that's great, thank you. That's what I was looking for. If you have a small team, a large team, if you're the CEO of a $10 million company and you don't have a social media account, doesn't matter. Think of the value that your employees would get if they're able to ask the CEO anything, if they're able to understand how the person they're chatting with would actually handle questions. So really what it comes down to is, is there value in you having a digital brain for internal, external, any mix of the two? We can go even more tech and we can say what would happen if that was part of processes? And it's almost like I could ask Katie, what would she say as part of a flow You know, if somebody's filling out a form, what would Kady say about that? So there's, there's lots of ways that we can get creative and we can think about it. That creativity is up to us, not the AI. AI is just going to do what we ask it to do. But for us, it's a beautiful thing. You know, how would you handle this? How would I handle this? How would a mentor handle this? How would Lewis Howes handle this? How would Matthew Hussey? It's, it really opens up this, this new territory we haven't been to yet.

Yeah, I love that because what you're saying, it's like you don't have to be Tony Robbins. And I guess I'm looking at it more when I was saying that as like revenue generating, right? Because you're talking about the back end too, which is time saving, it's team building. So there's amazing ways you can still, even if you have no following, you can still leverage it to save time in your business. And no, not everyone is Tony Robbins. I mean, I've only got 7,000 or so on my social media, so it's not like I'm huge by any means. But it's like, I think it's a worthwhile pursuit is to build that trust and build that audience so that you can use it also as a revenue generating thing where people are wanting to actually have your, um, have you, your kind of brain essentially. But I guess a good distinction to make too, because you mentioned, you know, I've got a small audience and people still come to me, and people do because you're an expert. So I think also for anyone listening, it's not about just having vanity metrics of like, you know, a million followers. It's not about that. It's really more about like you having your IP, something that you're known for and that you're seen as an expert in, that people are like, okay, like, you know, I— even if you have 100 followers, I don't care like know that you're incredible at what you do. So it's like you want to hire someone that's incredible at what they do. And if you've got a digital, like a digital clone, it's like, great, I still want to get that intelligence and that IP. So it's probably like, it shouldn't be disheartening for anyone listening to think, oh my God, I'll never get to Tony Robbins stage. It's not about that. But it's just about continuing to get your message out there and become known that you're great at what you do within your audience and build that trust, whether it's 5,000 people or 500,000 people, because that will give you the leverage to like sell the AI as like a revenue-generating thing. But as you said, even without the IP and without the kind of like brand, it can still be leveraged for time-saving and informing your team and all those things that you said, which it buys you back time, which is another very worthwhile pursuit with AI.

Yeah, completely. And you said it very well, as it comes down to the expertise. If you have nothing to say, you probably have no work that you've put out there. You don't have a podcast, you don't have courses, you don't have books because you've chosen that you have nothing to say, nothing unique, nothing specific. But like you, like me, who have podcasts, have courses, have websites, have newsletters, have, have work that they're willing to put out into the world, that means that you have decided to carve a chunk out into the universe of who you are and what you stand for. We're both parents. I love the fact that if I forget to look one way before I cross the street and the unthinkable happens, there's something special about the fact that my daughters could actually carry on a form of a conversation with their dad that understands their values, and it has my emotional range, and it, it understands those things. You can't put a price on that. But what you can do is you can use that as your sort of like your motivation to be like, well, what would I want to be known for? And then you just build your audience along the way. I know it sounds easier than it actually is, but the fact is Tony Robbins started with zero followers too.

Yeah.

And this isn't like some profound statement. It's just factual. He just happened to put in more work than most other humans on the planet, take bigger risks, make bigger investments, do bigger joint ventures. And he got to where he is. So yes, audience does solve revenue problems. Absolutely. Throw an extra zero, throw an extra comma on your follower count, you're going to make more money. But it still has to be something worth people wanting to spend money on. Right? So in my world, people come to me for AI advice, coaching, strategy. I don't have to have a lot of followers. I still make a good chunk of money. Same for you. I know you're doing just fine without having 100,000 followers, but it's about what you're great at. So if this gives you that ability to be able to scale, to augment, to do things a little bit differently, and you don't have to show up on Zoom, on Meet, recording, doing all these things, again, it goes back to buying back your time. You can be a better mom. You, you can be a better leader of your business and you can make bigger investments and you can get closer to that outcome. So it is a full circle moment of previously status quo meant if you didn't have the time, you didn't have the outcome. Now AI is allowing us to do that in such a different way that it really changes the game. And, um, I'm here for that game. I'm here for it.

Yes. And, and I hope that's really incentivizing anyone listening to really start to build their IP because as you said, you don't have to be Tony Robbins, but you can kind of work towards being someone that has IP and that has trust within your specific niche. And even a year ago, I didn't really have IP. Like, I, I was— I've been in business for almost a decade, but I was trading time for money, doing services, doing work personally for everyone. And yes, I had a team, but I didn't really have IP. And it's only in the past year that now I have an entire program. I've got hours, I've got a whole year, hours and hours and hours of coaching calls. Now I've got the podcast. So it does— like, you know, I don't want anyone to think as well that like, oh, it's easy for you, you've been doing this for years, whatever. I have, but I haven't actually been doing it in this way. And now that I am doing it in this way, I feel like I got lucky that I did it at the time that all this like stuff has been happening with clones and stuff. So when this digital twin stuff came out, I was like, great, I've got a year of like all this, you know, IP that happened by accident for me. But anyone listening could start this now. It's just about building out what that IP is and then you're able to— because that's most people's problem is they're trading time for money and they don't want to be doing that. And as you're saying, it's like because even for me personally now with my program, I give everyone tailored advice and feedback each day. I'm training my twin as I do it. So I'm using that to save me time. I still review it and tweak all the feedback, but it's saving me so much time.

That's great to hear. And again, that's what it's all about, is finding how to use the right tool for the right job. A lot of times you can hear something like this and it feels like a novelty. It's like, oh, that sounds fun, but how would I actually use it? This is how we use it. It's to be able to reach a bigger audience. If nothing else, if somebody has a question at 2 a.m., you're not awake, you're asleep. You know, there's the logical usage of it, but then there's also the, oh, how can I help me get more creative along the way? So I love all of this. It's all, it's all true. And the beautiful thing is the industry is evolving so quick. There could be a new use case tomorrow and I'm here for it like that. That's the fun of it is we're, we're in an industry that is changing by the day. If not by the hour. So while that could strike fear in your soul, I, I think like us, it actually fires us up. Says, cool, well, what am I going to wake up to tomorrow? Not how do I get overwhelmed by it, but what am I going to wake up to and what's going to be possible for me? That's exciting to me.

It's so exciting. And as you said earlier, it's like we're still the creators and the creative people, and AI helps us. And so if we can start building our brand and creating IP, then AI just like supercharges that, you know, versus us just getting scared of AI and letting everyone else do it, and you're just buying into it, but you're not creating your own version of it, right? So I love that. So how have you seen— because you work with some of the biggest names— like, how have you seen them, like, you know, say the likes of Matthew Hussey or Lewis Howes, like, how have you seen anyone that you work with monetize it really well or just use it really strategically within their business?

Yeah, a couple, a couple ways that let's talk about strategy and then let's talk about monetization and maybe, maybe some tricks of the trade that I'm seeing for your listeners. So starting with Lewis, by the way, which is awesome that you were in town for his event and I'm so glad we got to go to his Summit of Greatness together and you got to experience that at the Dolby. Wasn't that fun? That was, that was just so much fun and it just worked out perfect that you were in town for For Lewis, his business is his podcast, right? If you, if you know Lewis's name, if you've heard of the School of Greatness, everything comes down to the podcast. Um, he has lots of other things going on, but at the end of the day, that's the business. So like any tool in business, you want it to support the biggest pillar or the biggest pillars. So when we set it up for him, it wasn't about making a lot of money. He could do things to make money. But for this, it was about supporting people to get them to the best podcast that they could listen to, whether it's the most recent one or the one that they need to hear. So for example, with Louis's, the way we have it hooked up is over SMS and WhatsApp. So you can SMS text or you can WhatsApp message Louis AI on your phone and you can say, hey, Louis, I'm feeling a little down today. I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed. I have a lot going on. Can you give me something to listen to that'll get me motivated but with a business twist? And Louis AI understands it. It understands the objective. It understands how I'm feeling. It has every podcast he's ever recorded from number 1 all the way to the current, and it will help pick the best podcast to serve. In fact, I asked it something like that a couple of weeks ago, and it gave me like a Leila Hormozi podcast about the thing. And at first I was like, hmm, interesting. And after I finished, I was like, that's exactly what I needed to hear. Like, it's great when the system comes together and it works. So for Lewis, it wasn't about making a bunch of money. It was about the impact. His brand is all about helping those with aspiration and big dreams and cheering them on and getting somebody to feel their greatness. So that's a very— I want to say unique way of implementing it. It may actually not be super unique. It's just, it's intentional. Then if we go a layer deeper, I think the, the next most common thing that I see the biggest creators doing is they're allowing people to simply try it, no questions asked. Just give it a shot. Just, just see what this is like. It won't be for everybody. There, there are plenty of people who are in these creators' audiences that all they want is that one person. But then there's those, that subset of people, turns out it's a pretty large subset of people that are actually willing to give it a shot because they believe in that personal brand. They, they've bought into that personal brand for a reason. So if that creator stands up and says, I really believe in this, try this, a lot of the audience says, okay, which is the joy of personal branding, which you know better than, definitely better than me. And the great thing about that is once somebody tries it, it's either for them or it's not for them, but it gives them this really unique way of building this relationship with that personal brand in a way that they've never had before. So there are people that are texting all the time with Louis AI or texting once in a while or just forget about it and then realize they have it available. All those are great use cases. Same with some of these other big, big brands is you try it, you decide whether or not it's for you, and then they can make money on it. So we're seeing people do everything from have 3 to 5 to 25 free messages or minutes to be able to have a text-based conversation or even have an audio conversation where you hear that person's voice and you hear that emotional range and the pausing. And then creators are doing everything from as low as about $6 all the way up to $250 per month. I've seen quite the range, and a lot of times the higher range is on the business end. But anything that is serving that person kind of just depends on whatever it is. And a lot of the times the winning flow that I see at the highest level is you allow that personal brand to really show the power of it. For example, Gabby Bernstein, she just had her 11:11 event yesterday, and part of her big event was she wanted to show everybody that Gabby AI is now available when you join her app, Gabby, Dear Gabby. And we worked with her. I've had wonderful calls with her. Her team is fantastic. And we got it integrated really beautifully. And she was able to go live and hold her phone up and Gabby AI was coaching her and she was able to have this really fun back and forth session. So there's no sales in that. That's just you being you. That's, that's you using a utility. And people are seeing that and they're like, oh, that could be me. I could be having that relationship with, with that AI. I could be communicating with it, leaning on it, asking it questions. And when you see the personal brand use it, it does some weird stuff to your brain chemistry. And that's something that I haven't quite anything on yet. But I think you know where I'm going with this, which is you're seeing the results of the effort, right? The effort is there, but the result is you have this feeling that's hard to pinpoint and it's fascinating. But when that personal brand actually uses it themselves, it kind of— it feels very magical. So yeah, we've— I've seen, you know, I can't share private numbers, of course, but let's just say that I've seen multiple 7-figure outcomes for some of the biggest names using this platform and doing it well and offering it up. And it's still a product. It still needs marketing. It still needs customer support. But man, how great is it that we live in a time where we can take the best asset that we have, which is our mind, and we can actually productize it? It's crazy to think about, but it's working and it's working so well. This is one of my biggest focuses right now and why I'm so excited about it.

I love that you said that because I think we're really living in like a time where there's such a trust deficiency and that try before you buy type of thing. Like they get, you know, 3 days or however many messages like interacting with the brand or even if you're an expert, you don't have to be Lewis Howes, even if you're just an expert, they get to interact and feel what it's like working with you, what it's like to get your feedback and your advice. And how much more comfortable is someone going to be to then invest in one of your programs or sign up to work with you?

You know, very comfortable. As we're seeing, it's such a, dare I say, easy first thing for somebody to experiment with. Like, think about, think about someone like Lewis, a couple million followers on Instagram, 2-3 million subs on YouTube. I can't remember all the current numbers, but a vast amount of people that are there to consume, that are continually growing with the personal brand and have probably never bought a thing. They've never taken a credit card out. They maybe have never even put their email in. But you, you fall in love with the process. You, you know, we all have brands that we love. So if there's an opportunity to pick that brand, that personal brand's brain to build some kind of relationship and understand how they would think I've had fun asking some of these digital clones, like, what's the book that you haven't written yet that you would write? And I'm like, oh, I really want that person to write that book now. Like, you start thinking differently and you almost— again, I'll use that word relationship. You're building a deeper bond with the person that you admire. You're spending time hearing their voice and it's personal, it's custom. It's almost like you're hiring them to coach you. Fascinating. So it's almost priceless. It's almost priceless. But like any good marketer, we can put a price on anything.

Of course. And add tax. And add tax. Yeah, absolutely. No, it's absolutely fascinating. And you really blew me away when you were presenting in LA in the mastermind because it really opened my eyes to just the potential. I think so many people think you know, AI is just ChatGPT and it's like, no, guys, like it is not just ChatGPT, you know, like just seeing, yes, how you can monetize and how you can build relationships and build trust like we've just talked about, but how you can also nurture your existing audience. Because I arrived to that mastermind thinking the next logical step for me in my business is maybe bringing in like some sort of client success person, someone to help with onboarding, make sure everyone's happy, make sure everyone's like looked after, like just that extra admin support. And you really opened my eyes that I could, as part of having this clone, like they could even text my clients once a week to see like, where are you up to in the program? Are you getting stuck anywhere? And the, the clone could actually like identify, okay, this is where you need to be now. This is what to focus on next. And that just blew me away that I could integrate that in such a great way. And then also the fact that on the back end of the digital twin, you can see the most common questions that people are asking. So kind of like you just mentioned asking about the book title, but you can see what are the things that are people, people are asking again and again. And that then informs you as creator and as a brand what to make content on, what your next course should be, what your next book should be, because you're literally, you're having this like symbiotic relationship with your audience in like just such a deeper, more powerful way than has ever been possible.

Yeah, it's, it's fascinating. The, the term that I keep coming back to as I research this and I look more is, um, as humans we're building more of a parasocial relationship with technology. So there's admiration that in ways we kind of feel that it's real enough. But at the same time, we're not catfishing people and saying like, this is actually me. You're calling me, you're texting with me. Like, no, it clearly isn't. And I don't want to have anything to do with anybody who is trying to do that because I feel like that's the wrong usage of the technology. But for me, I don't have a large personal brand, but I go by JC3 as just Jim Carter III. I've always just used that as like my— I don't know what the term is, but just the the short phrase of my name. So for me, my digital clone is deployed at askjc3.com, and everything that I do, I keep coming back to, like, just go ask JC3. It's not Jim. If you want me, you can coach with me, you know, sure, here's a payment link, because I value my time just like you value your time, just like I'm sure your listeners value their time. But Nobody really wants their brain picked. It's— that sounds painful. You know, if we think about them like, no, why would I want that? That doesn't— that doesn't add any value to me. I can be generous, but I can also be valuable for what I know and the years of work that I put into this industry. But you know what you can pick the brain of is my digital mind 24 hours a day, as much as you want. Go for it. Go wild. And the best thing is that sometimes those answers are actually more comprehensive than what I could come up with. You know why? Because we're human. You know, like, I have things to do. You have things to do. You have mom things on your mind. I have dad things on my mind. We mentioned right before we started recording, I have a renovation project happening at my house. My lizard brain is all over the place right now. And as much as I'm doing my very best to serve my clients at the highest level. I'm human, but AI isn't human. It's technology, and it has everything I've ever written, spoken, when I ran my mastermind, all those sessions, those teachings, every newsletter I've ever written, every AI tool I've ever reviewed. It can probably give you a more comprehensive and better answer that much faster, and it won't drain me. So there's also this, this fascinating way of thinking about it, which is, why wouldn't I want to have that? Why wouldn't I want to be able to give that to people? Why wouldn't I want to be able to bring people along for the ride and give them the best answer? And then I can be there for the most valuable conversations, for the personal conversations, for the in-person things. Like, yes, this is wonderful. We're recording on the podcast, but you and I connected as friends way deeper over dinner than we ever could over a screen versus a podcast. So in a world where we're hyper-connected and technology is wonderful, I still want to value in-person real relationships, real helping people, like teaching, showing up at the mastermind, being part of the group, and allow for technology to fill in, fill in the blanks. Um, it's just, it's a different way of perceiving the same, if not better, value output.

I love that you said that because I think, I don't know if you've felt this, but having been in business myself for almost a decade, um, and with my previous iteration of business, I got to the point that I was just so jaded. And, you know, trading time for money and just doing all this manual work, just feeling so jaded. And I've really changed everything now with my current business. I only work 20 hours a week, so I have to be so diligent with my time. But what I've loved the most about creating my own IP and using AI is kind of like you said, it's like all the basics are covered within my frameworks, within my program. You can ask my digital twin. So I still love interacting with my clients. Like I interact with them every single day. I review everything they ask me, all that. But the questions they now ask me are juicier. You know, they're not asking me like how to set up a boring whatever, blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, the basics. And I'm just like, oh my God, this is the 759th time I've explained this. I'm going to like, you know what I mean? I'm going to go crazy. I enjoy the questions the questions they're asking me are like nuanced and they're challenges. And I love it. I love, I love problem solving. And it's like, oh, give me a juicy question. Yes, let's dive right in. And so it's made my work more enjoyable as well.

Right. And you know who the absolute best customer service manager will ever be for your business? You. Me. Right. So rather than going and hiring that person, which you've done is you've actually found opportunities to be able to buy back your time, to be able to live freer, have less stress, be able to offset so much of the grunt work and all that mess to technology and allow that to work for you so you can do what matters, which is have those relationships. Like, I love— right now I'm reserving pretty much every Thursday is my no-meeting Thursday. I don't, I don't touch it. Now, that doesn't mean I will never take a meeting. It just means I'm reserving that time for either deep work or for like an in-person opportunity to meet with a client or something else. And I can't tell you how many times, Kady, that like the right opportunity happened to present itself and they were like, what are you doing Thursday? I'm like, I'm free, let's go. And it, it's so freeing to be able to realize I don't have to pack my calendar just one day a week. I just keep it blocked off and I never know what's gonna happen. And some of the best relationships in my more recent months have just been because I happen to be free on Thursday and I offered it and I'm willing to drive, or they're willing to drive to me. And if I didn't employ this technology, I wouldn't be able to do it. I make good money, but I would have to charge less, or I'd, I'd have to, I'd have to take less work in order to free up more time to be as equal productive. But instead, I'm able to continue to find these opportunities to inject this kind of stuff to bring me more space so I can do more things like that. I love that you're at 20 hours. I think I'm more at about like 30, 32. But I also, I'm loving what I'm doing right now. And I've told myself I don't want to get to 40. I will not go to 45. There's no way in hell I'm going to get to 50. Because it's not about how big can I grow, how much work can I do. It's, I'm enjoying being a dad. I know you're enjoying being a mom, you know, and that, that is what it's all about. Up.

100%. And you can't get that time back. And I think it's so great to have constraints.

That's time that you can't buy back. You're absolutely right.

Yes. Yeah. And it's like constraints can be a good thing. It can be a challenge to think outside the box rather than seeing it as like, oh, there's no way I can scale my business as a mom of 2 under 3. There's no way I can do that. I've only 20 hours. Like, the questions I ask myself is, how can I? How can I leverage AI? How can I leverage technology? How can I make this work with the constraints and the realities that I That's it.

Same here. Mornings, I'm up at about 5:30 every morning. It's a little quiet time for my lizard brain to just like be calm and like get ready for the day. Do, do the dad stuff, get the kids to school, all that. And I am pretty much done every day about 2 o'clock because that's when I have to switch to being a dad and going and doing pickups. Like right before we started recording, I was getting one daughter at school when we're done. One, going to go grab the other from high school. Um, but rather than being like stressed and all that, I'm like, no, I, I get to find the right pockets to do these things. And the old me was really stressed when I had to think of those kind of constraints. I'm like, man, I have all these things to do and I can't. And now I'm like, oh, what do I do in that 5 hours, that like sacred 5 to 6 hour range that I can just be really productive? And The big unlock for me, it's not all about AI, but it's just, it's the, it's the mindset and the habit shift to more often than not turn to an AI tool to see if I can just get that thing done quicker. So an example, this is actually a great example. I recently, I added another person onto like my wealth management team. He's a dear friend from a mastermind and I'm excited to work with him. Like any new hire, any new contractor, like they need to get to know you. So he's like, all right, man, I need your estate stuff. I need your business stuff. I need P&Ls, balance sheets. Give me this access. I'm like, okay, yeah, I got to get all that stuff to you. Otherwise you can't advise me. I understand. So he had a list in a Google Doc that he sent to me and I was like, okay, I got to get through all this. Rather than like either sending it to my EA or copying and pasting and doing all that stuff, I use what's called an agentic web browser. So if for everybody listening, if you've heard of this concept of agents in AI, the concept of an agent is where you just have AI doing things for you. It has an outcome, it's trying to get there. So browsing is very much turning into agentic browsing now. Where AI can almost control your browser and work with you. So just to get everybody thinking about these like little workflow improvements, rather than asking my EA to do it, her, her time is valuable. I didn't want to do it. I opened the sidebar. I said, scan this whole document and outline every task that I need to do in text form and group it by priority. And it gave me a text blob and then I went ahead and copied that. And I put it into Claude because Claude has a connector with Asana. And I said, go into my, go into my Asana, find this project, find this column, the swim lane, make me a task for all the things to do, and then add every single one of these as a subtask, assign it to me and set the dates relative to the like blah, blah, blah. I just kind of made it up, hit go. Another 20 seconds later, I had an Asana task fully assigned. Everything was in there. It was ready for me. and by that evening, my EA was asking if I needed any help with the tasks that were in there. This is table stakes now, right? If we want it to be. So in a world where we could have almost anything with technology, the question is like, what are we creating both for our own productivity, for our clients? And I didn't write a single line of code to accomplish that. I just used the tools that were in front of me and I got used to leaning into AI first. I'm trying, I'm thinking in systems, and you don't have to be a technical person to think in systems. You just have to ask yourself, well, if I was going to do this myself, what would I do and in what order?

Cool.

This is in a Google Doc. Google just told me that Gemini is available in Google Docs. Maybe I can chat with the document.

Done.

Anthropic with Claude. I like Claude. I saw that they had an Asana button. I click the button, I connected Asana, and it can now control Asana. So what if I pop it in here, tell it what I want, and let it do it? That was it. Just typing got the job done. So that's really what I wanted to share, Kady, is like, the digital clones is great. The mindset anchor is great, but it's what we do with it that matters. If all we do is tell ourself one day we'll start playing with it, that doesn't do anything. That doesn't buy back any time. If anything, that just gives you more stress. But if we find those opportunities to start adjusting and start adding into our day rather than taking more away and feeling like we, we have more and more and more piling up. That's where it starts to get really interesting.

100%. And just do one thing. Just focus on one thing to start, you know. So what, what are the biggest mistakes that you're seeing with business owners using AI?

The single biggest mistake is people getting overwhelmed and being in inaction, just not doing anything because they think they're uninformed or they're going to waste time or blow all this effort. It's just not going to turn into anything. But the fact is, you can do so much with even just a simple free ChatGPT account now. It's wild. So the fix to the mistake is just try it. It may crash and burn and you may hate it, but guess what? You can throw that away and you could do it again and you didn't harm anything. You didn't hurt anybody's feelings. You didn't pay for anybody's time on your team. Nobody has to know. It's kind of like you ever search for something on Google and not find what you're looking for and you search again and the world kept spinning. It's the same with AI. Like, if you don't like it, just try something different. I know that sounds so simple, but it really is simple. AI is meant to make our life simple because it's thinking for us, and with the feedback we give it, it just gets better and better. So that was the first one. The second is not taking a little bit more time to learn a little bit more. So a lot of times with technology and things, we just— we don't read manuals, we just start using it, right? So we get a brand new phone, we take it out of the bag, we turn it on, it connects to our provider, we connect it to Wi-Fi, we install Instagram, we make a text message. But these things are so powerful, and if we just learn that much more It's like, oh wow, I can do that much more with it. And it's the same with anything else. You know, I've got this remote for my split on my desk and there's all these extra buttons and I haven't read a damn thing on the manual, but I'm actually like, I've messed with it more trying to figure it out than if I just took the time and I learned it. I'm a product of my own effort here. So I've seen that at scale now. Where people get really excited, they try something, they handle that first one, but then they just don't go that next level. For me, guess what I need to do? I need to figure out what this is so that way I can properly control the temperature in my room. But if, if we, if we learn just a little bit more and this goes hand in hand with the other training that I gave when we were all together, it's like creating a project inside of ChatGPT or Claude and training it and putting in the boundaries and giving it data your output's going to be so much better. And in fact, I'd love to offer this just for your podcast listeners. I'll give you this link and put it in the show notes. I gave this training for you and it makes, it makes a wonder of a difference. So for anybody who wants to take it that much further, I recorded a step-by-step for how to really tune ChatGPT and Claude. And the differences are wild. And I'll give that to you so you can hook it into the show notes for everybody.

Amazing. Don't sleep on this. Anyone listening, it is game-changing. It is absolutely invaluable. And I love what you said there because I really have that philosophy just across the board with business is just going deeper on one thing than trying to do 500 things. Like a lot of clients come to me and the biggest mistake that I see business owners doing is they're trying to do 500 things really like half-assed versus like 1 or 2 really well. And so for anyone listening, rather than trying to overwhelm yourself yourself knowing every single AI tool because there's a new one on the market every day. Go deeper on one or two and really like understand it and go deeper and make it really work in multiple facets of the business. I think that's so important. So I love that you said that. What would you say to someone like me who's like, okay, I'm using AI, you know, I'm sure I could be using it 10 times better, but I'm using AI. I want to grow my business. Like ultimate goal is like, you know, really grow my business without working more than 20 hours a week and without having a big team right now? Like, I'm using— I'm doing all the ChatGPT stuff, like the projects. I'm using ChatGPT relatively well. I'm— I've got my clone happening. Like, what would you say? And it doesn't have to be AI, but as someone that is just like scales 7-figure businesses yourself, worked with all these big names, and for people that are listening that might be similar to me, like they're wanting to grow their business What would you think is the biggest leverage things that I should focus on next or that I can put in place to make that happen?

It's going to be different for every business because we all have different agendas. I know you kind of talked about you're in this 20-hour bucket, so it's not necessarily about doing more with the time you already have. You've already kind of maximized that. It, it might not necessarily be even like taking more clients, so it may not be about marketing So if we were to workshop it a little bit, I would, I would want to ask you what's either the one thing that's taking too long, one thing that costs too much, or the thing that you're doing right now that if you didn't have to work anything more for it, you didn't spend any more, you could have more of. Is there one thing in one of those three buckets that stands out to you?

I think that the biggest leverage thing that would make a huge impact in my business is probably increasing, like, like the sales pipeline, right? Like increasing how many people show up to calls, how many people close on calls, like just all of those things, even if they're increased by 1%, and I've already got pretty good metrics, but 1% even better can make like a massive impact. So it's probably in that like sales funnel, I would say.

Okay, perfect. So this is where the creative mind meets the AI brain, right? You can either take that awareness now that we just came up with, which is my objective for Q1 of 2026 is to get 1% better every week with my sales pipeline. So what does that mean? It's getting more people in, it's having the right show rates, it's answering questions quicker. Like if, if I'm about to buy and I have a question and it takes you longer than a couple hours to get back to me, I've lost interest. So how do you just get back to me right away or you prioritize? So what I would do if I were in your shoes now is I would go to your project that you created inside of Chat or Claude that knows everything about your business, what your customers are looking for, all the things that you've already not just tried it, not just taken that additional step to learn it better, but now you're actively using it, you come up with this awareness and you put that in there and you say, give me actionable steps to help me optimize these systems. And here's everything you need to know about my systems and the current ones I have and everything else. And let it start to recommend some things for you. Let it be a thinking partner and support you as a little bit of a coach, because it's not about tech, it's not about marketing. It's actually about all of them. It's about putting it all together. So it's not even about specialty yet. It's about actually just understanding where is the unlock, what can you do? And once you know what those are, then you can prioritize them by what you actually care to do and you can roll them out one by one. It sounds too simple, but it's honestly just wonderful. It's just having that complement to it. But you start general and we figure it out and then we go narrow and we chop it up and we say, this is marketing. This is tech, this is sales. And then, for example, the tech things, you could go more detailed and you could throw them into my digital clone and say, Jim, how would you approach this? And because I've spent so many years talking about tech and thinking in first principles and talking about those things, AI is going to lean into giving you more tactical advice. Then you could go to more of a marketing one, you could go to more of a systems one, whatever that is. So that's the way that I like to help really break it apart. And that may feel like a lot of work, but if you really think about the work you're doing, it's having conversations. It's no different than if we were all sitting around the dinner table. You had me there, you had a marketing expert, you had a sales expert, you had all these people, and you're like, hey guys, I need your help. I need to do this. What would you all do? And we would all jump in and we would contribute. We're your board of advisors. So use AI as your board of advisors that you don't have to pay for. Use it as this, this privileged position to be able to pick brains and to do this kind of stuff. And you can challenge it and be like, I don't think that's enough. Here's why. And see what it has to say about it. And you can ask AI, what's a question I'm not asking myself yet? What haven't I brought up? And be like, oh, what about this? There's so many ways that you can use it to get really tactical. And then it's up to you to just choose what you want to, what you want to implement.

Yeah, I love that because we all have our blind spots, of course. And it's like, okay, by doing something like that, we know at least even just who we need to go to get help from next. Like, you know, so if I put in all the things in my funnel and this is like my bread and butter, but there's always going to be something I might not think of or a question I'm not asking myself. And then it's like, okay, cool, this is going to be the thing that will unlock the biggest lever. So I'm definitely going to do that. And thank you for saying that. And I just want to encourage everyone to also like just jump on your newsletter and really like, I'm not sure, can anyone get like, I'll put in the show notes the link to your AI so people can take a look at that because there's so many great resources out there. And I think that's where it's really good to be strategic too. Like starting with ChatGPT, as you said, is more of like a broader view, but that's where going into something more Strategic and personalized can be better. For example, if you see that like there's something in AI or technology that you could do better going into something like your AI, do you know what I mean? Because that has all that experience in it. So start broad and general ChatGPT, but you don't want to be getting really specific advice from ChatGPT all the time as well when it doesn't necessarily, you know, it can be a bit too broad. Like it's good to start there and then go deeper.

Like anything, start with what you have, right? If all you have is one size hammer and you need to put some stuff in, you can't be picky. But the minute that you've got a couple of different ones, you have the, you have the freedom of choice. So I don't want to overwhelm people with saying there's a rule. You can only do this here. Now you can do whatever you need, but there is some value in saying, okay, great. Now I want to ramp it up. Now I want to get really specialized So I, I have another thinking partner that works like this. That's when you can find something like mine or anybody else's. And that's the beauty of it, is these things are just more accessible than ever and they're more fun than ever because you're— again, we're going back to that. You're building a relationship. So if you already, if you already trust Kady and her word and the way that she works, why wouldn't you want to pick her digital brain anytime you want when you have a question. If you already trust Jim, you understand that he, he gets the technical challenges and he can work through it. Well, why wouldn't you want a version of his brain that actually knows all the AI tools? It remembers everything that he said, and he's not going to be a tired dad when he's answering you. That's the perspective shift, right? Is we can offer these kind of things to people at a higher rate. Start with chat, chop it up, grab the link that I'm going to send you in the show notes. It's going to be at jimcarter.me/chatgptprojects. We'll put it in the show notes so you can run through that as a whole video of how I set it up and follow along to that. And guess what? You're now in the fraction of a single percent of humans that are actually doing this at a level that is comparable to if you were to hire someone like me to coach you through it all the way. Congratulations, you have the— you just went from hammer to nail gun to put the roof on your house, right? Like, it's like you have this, you have this new superpower ability for your business and your personal life, and now we get to choose how we want to use it.

Yeah, I love it. And I actually love that idea of like an AI digital board of directors. Like, I seriously think that's like a great idea. And yet the projects thing that Jim is talking about, it'll be linked in the show notes. But it's so good. I've even done a project on like health. I've uploaded all my like blood tests, lab results, like everything like that. So if I ever want to, you know, do like check into what foods I should be eating or anything like that, it's so knowledgeable. And even when I go to a GP, sometimes they give like very like broad advice. It's hard to know exactly what they mean and it explains it to me then in that project. So there's just so many areas we can use this and I just love everything you've shared with us today, Jim. So I can't thank you enough for just giving us your time.

Of course. Happy to. Happy to chat it up with you. Always.

It's been incredible. It's been incredible. So thank you so much.

You're so welcome.

Where can everyone find you, Jim? Where, where is the best place to connect?

Jimcarter.me is the personal site. I've got AI tools. My newsletter is there. I've been running it for over 2 years now. I love writing about AI every single week. You can find me on the social media networks, Jim Carter the Third. And then if you want to pick my digital brain, askjc3.com. You can go there, you can check it out. I'm actually working on an iOS app for myself where you can kind of carry me around in your pocket or your purse. And just as a friend, I haven't told this to anybody yet, but something that I'm doing with that is I'm actually integrating my digital mind into the iOS app and I'm building out one level deeper where as we talk through something, it'll actually take that and it'll build out an entire action plan for how you can implement the thing we're talking about in your business. Similar to what we talked about here with having an expertise and then taking it a step further and implementing. I've had enough people ask me— today was a beautiful reminder that it matters. So that's something I'm working on. It's not available yet, but it will be soon. And I'll announce it to the email list once I get it. But that's, that's where I live. I'm having a blast. Come along for the ride and happy to support everybody on their AI journey.

Amazing. Thank you so much again, Jim. This has been incredible and I can't wait to dive into everything that you've shared today. So thanks again for your time and your wisdom.