Creators Interview Iggy Odighizuwa; Get around people doing big things

Hey, hey, you're listening to the Level Up Creators Podcast. Amanda Northcutt here, founder and CEO. We help creators and digital thought leaders like you turn your knowledge and experience into rock-solid recurring revenue, and we are so glad you're here. Welcome. Today, my special guest is Iggy Odigizuwa. Iggy is the founder of Charlie AI, a thought leader in the AI and digital marketing space, host of the Boardroom Podcast, serial founder and speaker. As the founder of Charlie AI, he revolutionized how businesses handle inbound leads by creating an innovative AI solution that seamlessly manages lead lead qualifying while maintaining authentic human connection. That's a very tricky thing to do, and I can't wait to get into that. Iggy's deep expertise in business systemization and automation has informed his unique approach to combining human touch with AI capabilities and has helped numerous businesses scale their operations efficiently. Welcome, Iggy.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I love the, uh, the intro. I'm like, as I'm, as I'm having this conversation with you, My team is taking notes on what we can do better in preparation for our podcast sessions. So already getting benefits from just proximity with you has been, has been good.

Oh, the feeling is mutual. And I'm super pumped about having this conversation with you today because you are so knowledgeable about AI use cases for digital marketers and are so committed, committed to leveraging AI while, again, like I said in the intro, maintaining that human element throughout the customer journey, which is so imperative, and I really want to double-click on that. Um, but first, so our listeners have a little bit of context, you and I met through an accelerator program this past fall. We're recording this in November of 2024, and I was just immediately drawn to your business model and your business acumen and, and you. I mean, you have so much knowledge to drop, and you show up and you're so authentic. You yourself are such an authentic human, and so I believe that your technology is an absolute reflection of that, uh, of you as the founder. And golly, you're like such a successful entrepreneur. You've been through multiple exits already, and I like assume we're about the same age, and so that's super impressive. Uh, and just keep raising the bar for yourself in terms of professional accomplishments. So, let's start, if you're cool with it, uh, walk us through your career and help us understand kind of like the path that you took to get to where you are today.

Yeah, for me it's been, um, I started as a personal trainer, but before I even got into that, I was actually like a youth minister for a while. And that's where a lot of like my leadership training, my communication development, interpersonal communication skills, all those things, as I've reflected on my entrepreneurship and some of the principles that I have, that I run my businesses with, it all came from that experience as the foundation for who I am and how I treat people. Because there's nothing harder than getting people who are volunteering their time to commit to projects and give you their all. Because it's not like you can say, hey, you're going to get fired if you're not doing this. They're volunteering. No. So the way you have to motivate them is very different. And so when I transitioned from doing that and building my business and running a team, it became very clear. I was like, wow, it's much easier to motivate people when you're paying them. So it's been a fun experience. So that's where I kind of started in business. I was an in-person trainer and was really struggling to get that off the ground. And then I found somebody in a separate state. I was in New York at the time. Found somebody in New Jersey who was doing like $350,000 a year as an in-person trainer. And I just could not believe that that was even possible. I thought you had to be a, uh, I thought you had to be a celebrity trainer to do that. And the fact that somebody was doing that, just training regular people, I was like, I have to meet this guy. So I ended up having lunch with him. He showed me his book of business and I pulled the Wolf of Wall Street before I saw the movie. I was like, dude, I need to work with you. Like, can I work for you? Um, I'll legit come every single morning. Like, I will work for free. So I moved into his garage and I legitimately worked for him for free for like 60 days.

Wow.

And then, um, after that, day by month 3, I was doing 40 one-on-one sessions per week. And that had just grown organically, just modeling him. And then 4 months into it, I was doing 100 sessions per week and on pace to do like $250,000 as an in-person trainer. So that was like my first experience going through breaking out on my own. I was like, I need mentorship. I need to be around the right people.

Yeah.

Yes. And then from there, I Saw an ad with a gal and she was like, I'm making $45,000 a month in my online fitness business and I don't know anything about fitness. And that ruined my week for like a— it ruined my entire week, right? I was like, how is she doing those kind of numbers? And I'm sitting there working like a dog. Yeah.

Okay, we're gonna pause it. Hold on just a second. You said 100 sessions per week. How is that possible within the confines of a 24-hour day?

So the way that you'd run it is you have to have your sessions really well organized. I— this dude had a beautiful system that I just maxed out. So essentially clients would come in and I'd give them a warm-up routine that they would take themselves through. That was about 10 minutes. And I'd give them a cool-down routine that they would take themselves through. So I'm only training the client for like 15 minutes in 15 to 30 minutes in a 1-hour block. Right. So then I would stack it up to where I'm training. My actual training times were about 30 minutes, and I would stack them back to back. Clients would come in, I had the system, they come in, they take themselves through the warmup routine together, and then they take themselves through the cooldown routine, and then I'm just calling them in and out as they're doing it.

Yeah.

And it was, uh, it was crazy. It was a very efficient system, um, but it was very tiring and required me to To still be the one doing the work.

Mm-hmm. Okay. Continue. Sorry. $45,000 a month fitness lady that didn't know anything about fitness and that wrecked you for a little bit, but then—

Yeah. 'Cause I was a, I'm, for me, I'm a, I don't know how to do anything in half measures. So if I go in, I'm going all in, right? If I'm going to be training people, I'm learning about the science. I'm learning about nutrition. I'm learning about exercise, how to move, human movements and things like that. And so I was studying really, really hard to get really good at my craft, and I was getting phenomenal results for my clients. And so for this gal to be making as much as I am on a beach, bragging about having no knowledge of this craft, was sickening.

Yeah.

I was like, she's clearly not better than me, but she knows something I don't know, so I'm doing something wrong. Uh, and so I started doing some digging and trying to find like, okay, who, who else is doing this online thing and how can I get into this game? Because I'm clearly running the business the wrong way. Uh, so I found a group, a mastermind group, joined that, um, gave up my practice and essentially ended up selling my client roster, like in person, moved in and started living with my mom, right? So I can kind of eliminate my overhead and focus on just learning.

Mm-hmm.

And then had to rebuild the business from the ground up. So that's kind of like how I made that transition online. And it was just a matter of just finding people who were doing what I wanted to do, learning from them and implementing it. And then as I learned new things, I just achieved new levels, right? Yeah. That's really how it happened. It was just knowledge and proximity, just getting around the right people, getting the right information. And for me, when I see somebody who's really, really successful, My mindset is like, well, they're not— they're human, right? So I'm like, I don't think they're that much smarter than me.

Uh,

I don't think they're working harder than me. So, but they are doing something different than I'm doing. And I just got to figure out what that difference is, bridge that gap, and then I'm going to be able to achieve the same thing. And that's been my mindset when it came to that.

I love that.

Uh, and it served me very well.

No kidding. Okay, give us some timelines here. Like, what years were you a youth pastor? Where were you? And then where did you— where's the guy's garage that you lived in as you were learning how to do— like, take— give us a little more personal color and context.

Um, I was in youth ministry from like 2012 to 2015, 2016. All right, I was actually— youth was 2012 to like 2013.

Okay.

In 2013, I was on a mission trip to Nigeria, and I was there for 3 and a half years. So from 2013 to like towards the end of like 2017.

All

right, and then when I came back, right, I came back and stayed with my brother in New York. Or slash New Jersey. And then from 2017, uh, is when I met that guy, stayed in his garage for— I think I was in his garage for like 3 months and then started making enough money to get my own place. And it was, it was awesome. And then towards the end of 2017, I saw that ad from that girl. It completely changed my life. And I was like, all right, I'm doing this wrong. Gave up my clientele. Moved from New Jersey to, uh, Washington, uh, to stay with my mom. And so I could figure out this online game and rebuild the business in a way that gave me more leverage.

Gotcha.

Um, and then from 2018 to 2020, I was building my online fitness business. We were able to grow that to, um, like $1.3 million or something like that. And then 2020 to end of '21, we launched our first B2B coaching mastermind and grew that to $2.6 million in that timeframe. Ended up exiting that business. Wow. And then we were still running, my partners were still running our online fitness businesses, ended up selling that. I think it was 2023. 2022 is when we sold that. And then 2023 launched Charlie, and I've been running that and focusing on that since then.

Got it. All right. So online fitness business to AI-led, I mean, lead qualification business. That's a little bit more than like a hop, skip, and a jump. That's a leap. So how did you get from There in 2022 to here in 2024 with Charlie AI?

I've been in using software for— I love software. I've loved software for a long time. I've been a closet nerd for a very long time, and that's how I built my online business. You know, I built a fulfillment system inside of a fitness app that was fully automated, and I was able to grow that business quickly because the fulfillment was complete. Completely automated to the point where somebody had signed up and I wouldn't see or hear from them again for like 16 weeks. And they would just be leaving me reviews on Google and submitting transformations. And they're like, this is the most support I've ever gotten. I'm like, we haven't talked. So like, but that's how the app was designed. It was designed so in a way where they go through it, they'd submit their check-ins, they get emails, they get text messages, they get reminders. Yeah. Uh, and it was very well thought out to the point where people were going through it without ever talking to me, and they were just blown away by the quality and the results that they were getting. Right. And then that was my first experience really seeing the power of leveraging technology.

Uh,

and I've taken that everywhere. Right. So then I was like, all right, well, how do I leverage technology in our lead generation? Right. And then built an automated client acquisition system that allowed us to generate leads, nurture them, And get them to a point where they're ready to buy. So software and technology has been an essential part of everything that I've done online. And then the biggest gap for a while was like, how do we automate like that lead nurturing and qualifying? Mm-hmm. And so I built an extremely complex and robust set of automations that kept breaking because there was no intelligence.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, and then discovered AI back in November of 2021 is actually when I first saw, uh, discovered like what AI could do and that AI was even really a thing. And then so I started doing a deep dive into that, um, and then figured out how to eliminate our need for anybody to manage our leads and built an AI lead management system that eventually turned into what now is Charlie, right? So that's where that kind of came from is like all of 2021, we're building that towards the end of 2021, we're building that 2022, I kind of like perfected it. And then people were like, hey, how are you doing this? And then I just put out a few feelers. I was like, hey, if I could, if I had a system that could automate like all your messaging or all your qualifying, all those things, would you be interested in it? And the amount of people were like, hell yes, take my money.

That's a hard, hard proposition to say no to. I mean, come on.

Okay, so there's— I could— if I can spend a little bit more time figuring out like how— what the go-to-market strategy is going to be for this, then it might be viable. And around that time, I was, uh, getting ready to exit a, um, contract that I was in that was going to be worth a decent amount of money.

The

person I was in doing business with at the time just became very clear it wasn't— wasn't going to be a good fit. So I was like, I'd rather focus on this. So you keep everything. Don't pay me whatever you owe me. I do not care. I don't want the money. I'd rather not deal with it. I'd rather be able to focus on this. And then we launched it and then it's been really wild ride since then. It's been, it's been crazy, but in a good way.

Yeah, I can imagine so. I mean, you're still doing it. Y'all are successful. You built a team and we were talking a little bit about teams before. We hit record on the call today, and I'm curious if you wouldn't mind sharing kind of how you went about building your team with Charlie AI. I know a lot of the creators who are listening, uh, don't yet have their first employee or maybe have their first VA, but don't have like a true operator that can really take a lot of the administrative and I just, just stuff that the CEO doesn't need to be doing. So how do you think about that? How did you go about that with Charlie AI?

Yeah, I mean, it's the same process that I used to kind of build our other business or businesses is, for me, anything that I'm doing, I have to document, right? And the ministry, when we're training up leaders and building churches and all these different things, is you have to have your documentations on how you do every single thing. within the organization. So it's the same thing. It's like my mentor used to tell me, if you don't write it down, it never actually happened, right? Because what happens when you die? Nobody knows what, what was between your ears because it wasn't documented, right? So it vanishes into the ethos and nobody gets a benefit from that. So, um, and it would use religious literature as an example, like There, anytime something was written and it's powerful, it's remembered forever. So he always beat that into me, like anything that you're doing that you're seeing results from, you have to document it so that you can pass it off to the next person and they can continue the work. All right. So, uh, within the business, first thing that I do is I document everything that needs to be done, right? What are the things that I'm doing day to day? Yeah. Uh, what are the tasks that I'm handling that are low level? What are the tasks that I'm handling that are high level? I'm documenting every single thing that we're doing top to bottom and then deciding which tasks are giving me the lowest return on my time.

Mm-hmm.

Right. And then I'm taking those tasks and going, okay, who can I train to take this off my plate? Right. And then once I get them on, then I'm starting to train them on that. And building out new documentation on how I'm training this person to do that work.

Yep.

Right. So once I complete that entire process, then I'm like, okay, this task is fully delegated. Not only do I have the documentation on how to do it, but now I have the documentation on how to train the person to do the thing.

Yep.

Right. So I like to close that loop. And then I need to have processes in place to measure, are the results that the person, are the outputs that they're generating similar to the outputs that I want? Or do I need to adjust my expectations based on having somebody else in that role?

Nice. Man, uh, at least in the way we think about business and hiring and process documentation and systemization and delegation, accountability, like we are cut from a very similar cloth. I could Like, that is also on point. So, okay, how do you find these amazing people to delegate to? What's your process for locating the right talent?

I'll use— I keep my head on a swivel, right? So I'm constantly looking, um, but I'll, I'll, I'll pitch my, my, my email list. I'll post on Facebook groups and then I'll run ads. Something that not a lot of people actually do is I'll run ads on Facebook.

Mm-hmm.

Looking for certain positions. And then, uh, one of the things that I'll do is I'll have them record videos of, uh, themselves, just get to know them a little bit. I want to see how they communicate. I want to know some of their core values. And then I'll give them often a test project to kind of complete to see, uh, if they're going to be a good fit. But I'll get talent from everywhere. I mean, I'll ask people if they know people I'll look for Facebook groups to join and I'll look for job boards to post on. And then, um, when I find somebody who's a decent fit, I always make sure I have like my core values mapped out as far as like what makes this group unique or what kind of culture do I want the team to have? Like, what's our identity?

Yeah.

Um, it's funny enough, I even have like a 5-step checklist for Identifying who's going to be a good fit for our team.

Like you.

Um, so once I map that out, like, what's our identity? Um, what are the expectations that need to be set? What are the processes, decision-making frameworks, and how am I going to be supporting them? Once I have those things kind of mapped out, then I'll start to hire to see if they're going to be a good fit for whatever team I'm building out. And then I want to know their personality a little bit. Right? Are they a little audacious? Are they inquisitive? Uh, what does a role, what kind of role, um, what does the role demand of them in the early stages? Uh, and I try to match people based on like what the business needs at that time.

Nice. That's a great process. Obviously it's been, you know, very, very effective for you. So thank you for sharing that. I always love like peeling back the curtain because especially on hiring and delegating and accountability and things like that, because that is It's a very smoke and mirrors, mysterious process to the vast majority of the population, right? And, you know, with coaches and content creators, subject matter experts, typically the folks that we're working with do not have the business background through no fault of their own. They just haven't taken that path, like the operations background to know how marketing, sales, customer success and product development and HR and all that kind of stuff. works. And most people also just really suck at hiring, just so, so very terrible. I mean, I'm sure, you know, that's one of the most, um, this is one of the biggest cost centers in any organization in the world.

Hiring the wrong people is like one of the fastest ways you can destroy momentum in a business.

Yes. Kill the culture.

And hanging onto them for too long as well is also like equally as bad. And I've made a lot of terrible hires and I've hung onto people much longer than I should have. Right. Right. And so now, I mean, this year is, we've been, we'll bring people on and if they, if we find out very quickly that they interviewed just really well, but, and even they might have the right talent, but they weren't a good culture fit, we'll let them go very quickly. Right. And then eventually now we have a culture of team that if somebody comes on and they're not a good fit, the team will chew them up and spit them out.

Hmm.

All right, we had that happen recently where somebody came on, interviewed very well, completed, did a great job with the test project. And then when it came time to actually doing the work, they were very, very slow and pretty lazy, right? Um, they wanted 30 days to do things that should have taken like 3 days, right? And I didn't even, I didn't even weed them out. The team was like, when they first submitted their estimate for when a project was going to be completed, the team was like, no chance. You're saying that this thing is going to take you 160 hours to complete, 40 hours a week to work on this thing. Not a chance.

Yeah.

Try it again.

How many, how many full-time jobs are you working also?

Um, exactly. So they called it out and then, um, and then I'm meeting with them and he ended up quitting because he was like, I just, I don't know if this is going to be a good fit. I'm like, thank you for saving us weeks. Cause you were, you were on your way out anyways. I started to see the sign. He saw the writing on the door. So he essentially let himself go before we had a chance to do it.

But yep.

It's, uh, it's really important to have those guiding principles because it allows the team to be its own immune system.

That's exactly right. I love, um, I've never heard that phrase before. I love that. But yeah, having company values and understanding what your culture is and having that well-defined. And then, I mean, for hiring and defining a job, I mean, I'm imagining you, if you put all of your, you know, digital SOPs, standard operating procedures, in front of you, and then you're probably grouping those according to job function, and then, you know, developing job descriptions based on that. And then, you know, first and foremost, we're looking for values alignment, plus ideally demonstrative track record of success in the job that needs to be done based on this sort of like group of SOPs and responsibilities you've put together. And the second best thing is values and cultural fit, and then the core competencies required to fulfill the job role, plus being coachable. Because you can bring somebody up, you know, if they've got like the core competencies of a project manager, for instance, and they've demonstrated that in a previous role, but not necessarily that exact role, you can still find a fit there if you have the capacity to coach and like bring someone along. Yeah. Uh, yeah, I think That's so good. Such good points. We think very similarly along those lines. So that's very, that's great. That's so encouraging.

Yeah. Um, if we, if we don't, I also want to think through like my time, how much time do I have to actually train this person?

Yep.

So right now, I mean, this season of our business, we are drafting free agents. We're not drafting any rookies. So, cause I just don't have the bandwidth or the time to try and develop you as a rookie and turn you into a star. So I'm like, I need a free agent who's already done who's already doing this.

Yep. You got to have that track record.

Come in and, and start putting points on the board immediately. And that's made a massive difference. Um, once we kind of shift that and realize, okay, well, this type of business requires higher skilled individuals to come in who are already developed. Whereas my previous businesses with my online fitness business, even our mentorship program, Uh, I was doing a lot of those trainings, right? I was developing the people because I knew every single aspect of the business very, very well. I would develop like a coaching department training program, messaging training program, sales training program. Like every single part of the business had a training program that I can put them through.

Wow.

And for this, I was like, well, we— I just don't have the bandwidth to do that. It's too technical. It's just Too technical and requires too technically, uh, high-impact skills that I just don't have the bandwidth to put together that kind of robust training program to develop rookies. Right. So that's what we kind of made the shift and was like, okay, we need to start finding free agents so we can draft and plug them in. And it's gotta be more plug and play.

Yep. And that's right. And that's great to have that self-awareness, right? Because you know that if you have a lower budget to hire someone, you do hire the rookie with the core competencies and the value alignment. You're not going to get the demonstrable track record of success. Unless you have the higher budget, but you can trade your time for getting a rookie instead of, you know, a 10-year veteran of a task, then you put more money on the table and you buy your time back. So those are both valid options. But yeah, I respect that, you know, where you're at and are playing ball at that level. So that's cool. We gotta talk about the functionality of Charlie AI and how you help. I know that your customer persona is wider than just content creators and coaches, but let's talk, you know, specifically since that's our audience listening to this podcast. Yeah. How do you help those folks?

Yeah, so Charlie's designed to selfishly solve the problem that I hated about scaling a business, which was managing a big team of SDRs and appointment setters and DM setters and people to manage leads and have conversations with leads. And so as you're scaling a creator or expert business, You're going to need— you're going to get to a point where you're generating a high volume of inbound leads, right? And you need those leads to be nurtured and converted, but you don't really have the bandwidth to be the one doing it, right? But then you also don't want to have to train somebody to do it or build a massive team of people to do this. And that's where Charlie comes in as your sales agent, where you train it once. Our team does a setup for for our clients. We'll build it out, we'll train it on the sales process, we'll train it on their messaging scripts, on their personas and things like that. And then they role-play with it a few times. And then once it's deployed, they're just looking at the chats 5 to 10 minutes a day for 14 days to give it feedback. After that, the work is done and it's, and it's good to go, right? So it effectively allows them to have leverage as they're starting to grow their business. Um, and allows them to be able to work on the business and not have to worry about working in the business if they don't have the skill set they need to really train somebody to manage their leads.

So it effectively replaces the SDR, sales development rep position. Is that accurate?

Yeah. If you're— and it depends on the size of your business and your sales process, but it can Either replace it initially or augment it. So let's say you have some really good SDRs. Yeah. But the thought of having to hire more of them is keeping you up at night and you want the ability to train an SDR. But then how awesome would it be if you could just take all the work that you put into training this, this person, clone their brain and then download it into a new SDR and be ready to go? And that's what you That's what you get with Charlie. You train it once and then if you want another one, you just click clone and now you have 2 fully trained SDRs ready to go. And that's what I love about it. Uh, we had a team of like 40, uh, DM setters and SDRs for my other brand. We were able to bring that down to zero, uh, with Charlie, right?

Goodness gracious.

Being able to repurpose a lot of those team members, they're great people, but it just didn't make sense. So we Repurposed them, turned them into lead getters. They're making more money. Those businesses are making more money, and it just overall it became a win-win for everyone involved.

Cool. I mean, that's a great use case for technology, right? And so new, so so so new. Okay. So basically, if you have a business that's bringing in MQLs, marketing qualified lead, they kind of fit the ICP, they fit the problem set, and they are positioned to. purchase the solution that, you know, whatever's first on your product ladder. So that's when Charlie AI comes in and further qualifies the lead and kind of takes it from a marketing qualified lead to a sales qualified lead. And then does it take it through to purchase or to setting an appointment or either?

It can do both, but the purchase depends on like the, the price. So we have people using it to drive people to purchase.

Okay.

Anything less than like $500. Right. Then they can drive them to purchase. So oftentimes the clients that we have that are experts, they have 2 kind of pricing models. So they have their premium high-end and then they have like their lower to mid-ticket. So anyone who doesn't qualify for their high-end gets downsold into like their low-ticket monthly recurring or subscription packages or whatever it is. Anyone who qualifies for their more premium packages, then Charlie will conversationally book them into Their Sales Teams calendar for consult. Right. And that's how I was able to kind of filter between the two. And you can give it several different conversation tracks based on, uh, the criteria that you set.

Yeah, I'm sure there's a pretty significant if this, then this branching to take it all the way, handling objections. I mean, all those things, right?

Yeah. And even then it's not even like that big of an if this and this is just user is financially qualified, user expresses financial distress. Right. If they say they're struggling financially, just offer them this, right? So you can say it in a very natural language, just like you, like you would tell your SDRs. Like, hey, if somebody's struggling with, they're not qualified financially, and you can kind of tell based on how they're saying certain things, or money's a little tight, whatever it is. And it's like, if they say anything that flags they're not quite there financially or they're too early,

Yeah.

Just offer them this. If they don't, or they meet the criteria, offer them this. All right.

Nice.

So we set it up so it's not super technical. They could just tell it.

Yeah.

In, in very natural language.

Yeah. I mean, the setup process sounds really dialed in and on point and, uh, the setup that y'all do, you know, sounds like there's a significant bit of handholding to get everyone up and running, which is, I'm sure, really, really helpful, especially since AI is still new and in this like Rapid iteration improvement, you know, cycle for— that's just gonna keep on going for I don't know how long. We don't know how far this is gonna go, but, uh, that's awesome. And so is this like, does it function as a chatbot on customers' websites? Is it in DMs on certain social platforms? Like where is Charlie AI happening?

Yeah, so it's omnichannel, right? So it could be DM right now on Instagram or Facebook. page. We're working on supporting LinkedIn and other, uh, social media platforms, um, but it can live as a, as a live chat or a chat widget, uh, SMS, email, and voice. So it can talk to people over the phone, it can talk to them via DM, and then it can qualify them and get them onto your team's calendar.

Wow. All right, awesome. Thank you. And how are your, say, most tech-savvy Charlie AI clients leveraging AI, you know, other tools in other areas of their business to really buy their time back, become more efficient and effective in their pipeline?

I mean, we find any way to use AI. So some of our clients are using it in their content creation. Uh, how we use it internally, every single person on our team, because I like building and training AI models just for fun because I'm, uh, weird in that way. I gift everyone on our team with a genie, right?

Okay.

So, uh, we have a script genie for all our script builders. We have a product genie for our product manager. He absolutely loves it. We have a content genie for our content team.

No.

Right. They absolutely love it and they use it for everything. So everywhere in the business where we can, I can gift somebody on our team with an AI genie for, to help them in whatever they're doing, I want to because the team's output, it is just tremendous.

Yeah.

I'm like, how can I get more out of my team without making them feel like I'm working them to the bone?

Yeah.

Yeah. By giving them an AI genie that they can work to the bone. And I'm like, I don't care if it takes you— what used to take the team 14 days, they can do in 10 minutes now.

Wow. All

right. So it used to take them 14 days to get some of these scripts built out for a client. They can do it in 10 minutes. All right. So I'm like, so long as you're getting the damn thing done, I don't care how long it takes you. Like, I just want you to get it done.

Right.

Um, and enjoy your life as you're doing it. So for me, I like creating leverage for people and And giving them tools to make their work a little bit easier. Um, and we're gonna probably start rolling out some of these tools that I'm building for our team internally. Uh, I'll be getting pressure to make some of them public, so we'll, we'll see if we end up doing that. But, um, there's a lot of interest in that.

I mean, expansion revenue, anyone? Horizontal business model. You have MRR with an entire product suite. Like, That's pretty appealing, Iggy. Not gonna lie. That's, uh, nice to have that demand.

Yeah, there's a, um, yeah, and I enjoy doing it. So, I mean, I wasn't even thinking about it. I was just thinking like, okay, how can I just make our team's life a little bit easier? Um, and I just love kind of figuring out, okay, what does this role demand and what are like the written outputs of this role that can be done using AI? And, um, I think that's the future. Like a lot of companies are gonna be Using it not to replace their team members, but to keep their team lean where they don't need a big staff to, to generate massive outputs.

Yeah. Like you're saying, leverage is the name of the game. I've been using this term exponential lever. Like, what is the exponential lever to be had in this situation? It's like there's infinite opportunities in front of us. Some of them are easy to not take and like, okay, no, we should not do that. But of what is in front of us, you know, we have our team of about 10, 12, and we have, you know, a bench of a roster of contractors that we bring in to help at times. And my God, we are so productive. It is unbelievable. And so we're constantly, constantly hunting for that exponential lever and pulling it as hard as we can get the like most juice from the squeeze and then do that over and over and over. So, oh my gosh, I mean, it sounds like you have an opportunity. I'm sure there's lots of considerations there in terms of like staffing up to manage additional product lines, but that's a very natural extension, sounds like. And I hope you're hearing yourself say this, Charlie AI started because you were solving your own business's problem, right? And so—

100%. 100%. So I know like the demand is there, cuz I mean, if I'm having the problem and I know a lot of successful entrepreneurs and people who are trying to cross that chasm, they're gonna face those same roadblocks. I was like, It's designed to help them do that. Now, just exactly, you nailed it on the head, is the bandwidth, uh, and the consideration needed to actually service those things. Right now it's easy because every— it's just internal. Yeah. Right. But turning some of those tools that I'm building external, then it's like, okay, well, great. We're going to need to create documentations and support and all these things. Um, and am I I don't think we're— I'm ready to take on, uh, those responsibilities quite yet because I'm still the only person who knows how to do that.

Oh gosh. Okay. Okay.

That process hasn't been fully documented. Um, bots are done. And that's the thing I love about AI so much. I do the work once, and even if nobody else knows how to replicate that work, the AI is able to continue to do the output till the end of time until it It's, uh, it's destroyed, right? So that's how I've been kind of justifying building all these random models without really documenting how I'm doing it. So once it's built, it's— so long as it doesn't break, it's fine.

Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. Okay. Well, it sounds like you guys have found a lot of points of leveraging your own business for AI usage, but looking ahead, you know, we're recording this in November of 2024 again, like When, uh, fast forward a year from now, how do you envision your business using AI in ways that you are not yet using it for? What's the next, the next frontier?

Um, I mean, what we're building right now, it's the vision for what we're trying to build is we want the AI to be going through a process of self-optimization.

Mm-hmm.

Right. So what we're— right now we're currently building what we're calling Cerebral, and it's a model that essentially will gather, process information, analyze the data, and takes it to run our optimization engine and start recommending tweaks and adjustments to be made to your, to your sales process based on all the information it's gathering. And then all you have to do is just Click execute, and then it will implement those adjustments, right?

Yep.

So the vision is going to be like eventually AI will be a true copilot in doing things autonomously, right? The vision is for it to be autonomously managing your lead, autonomously optimizing campaigns and processes and all that stuff. So that's what I want. Um, and that's what we're trying to build, right? So that's the vision for a year from now. Ideally, all that is done and the platform's actually doing all of that. All right. And I, and I think more people want to, the way different models are getting innovated, we're eventually going to get to that, that place.

Man, that's so crazy to think about. I mean, you're absolutely right, but wowza. Um, okay, well, let's look at the other side of that coin. What are the biggest risks and dangers associated with AI usage in business? Broadly, and then more specifically for coaches and creators?

Broadly is going to be giving the AI too much freedom, autonomy without any guardrails. All right. So, and that's where a lot of people want to treat AI like, like software, but they have to treat it like employees. You don't just onboard an employee into your business and give them access to everything. Uh, with no training whatsoever, right? So AI is the same way. A lot of people want to just plug it into the business and be like, it should just automagically do everything. Like, no, that's not how it works.

That would be cool, but—

You know, you have to actually train it and do a lot of QA and QC, right? Um, and so that's the main thing is people just being lazy with how they're implementing it into their business and then it causing some damage to their reputation and ultimately doing things that could put them out of business. Right. Okay. So we're very intentional with how we are structuring the platform to have those guardrails in place. But yeah, that'd be the most destructive side. And even with content creators, it'd be the same thing. Misrepresenting their brand, misrepresenting their values, and misrepresenting like what they're, what they stand for.

Oh, that's a great answer. And then next to last question here, and this is a little bit off topic, but I'm very curious to hear your thoughts. So we're sitting here having this whole show pretty much about like AI replacing a whole lot of jobs that exist now. And I know that lots of new jobs are being Sort of birthed out of AI, you know, right now and will continue to. But how do you keep your job? How do you, uh, protect your job if you're working in a corporate environment and not get replaced by AI?

You learn how to use the tool, right? That's it. Um, case in point, I mean, a great example is, uh, recently we— not recently, like this year we let a few people go from our team.

Mm-hmm.

And I was trying to encourage them to learn how to use the tools and learn how to delegate. And they were becoming the bottleneck in the business, right? They were slowing things down because they were too afraid to innovate and adopt the new tools that were being built because they were afraid of it replacing and taking their job. Lo and behold, they ended up losing their job because they just became the bottleneck, right? And so you have to get ahead of it, start learning how to utilize the tools to make yourself more valuable to the organization, right? People are not going to lose their job if they are, if they have a way, if they figure out how to align what they're doing with revenue-driving activities for the business and align what they're doing in a way that creates more value for the business than they're extracting from it. Mm-hmm. Right. Um, you're only gonna have to be worried about it when it becomes very clear that the business could extract more value, if not the same kind of value, for a fraction of the cost.

Yeah.

Right.

And you know, yeah, yeah.

So you have to figure out how to make yourself as valuable as possible, and that's how you keep your job. All right. And those who aren't willing to do that, they're going to be the ones that lose the job.

Yeah. So, really engendering that growth mindset and insatiable curiosity, going out and proactively getting training, buy a course, get the certification, do whatever you need to do, experiment widely, I think is so important. Like, go pay for your own $20, you know, subscription for Claude or ChatGPT or whatever the case may be, and just keep pushing forward what, you know, the capabilities of AI can do within your purview. And I love the, lens through which you should view your job because your boss is looking at it this way. Uh, I hope your boss is also seeing you as a human, but ultimately, like, you are there to contribute to the bottom line of the organization. And so, figuring out how you can be more efficient and effective by leveraging technology, and right now specifically AI in your role, it's going to be just absolutely hella important and the ultimate kind of defense mechanism. It's kind of defense and offense in a way, uh, for, for job. Yeah. Insurance. So don't be afraid of it. You gotta go do it at this point. Like,

yeah. And then if you're not, if you don't know how what you're doing is impacting the bottom line of the business, if you're listening to this and you're working within an organization, go find out.

Yes. Ask.

Find out. Ask the question, how can I, how's what I'm doing making the business more money?

Mm-hmm.

And is there anything that I'm not doing that I should be doing that will help the business make more money? When my team asks me those questions, I'm like, give me a kiss. Like, I just want to give you the biggest— I'm like, I love you. I love those kind of questions because our greed is in alignment, right? So if you're sitting here, if you're a part of a team and you're asking, how can I contribute more to the business and to the team? Nobody's going to want to get rid of you.

Yep.

Right? It's only when you're— when you've kind of tapped out and you're just coasting and you're no longer contributing in a way that's meaningful. That's the only time when people start looking for ways to do it more efficiently. If you don't know, go ask. And if you're running an organization and trying to build an organization, you got to be able to tell your team how what they're doing is Adding to the bottom line and give them an opportunity to contribute more meaningfully. So everyone on our team, I communicate to them, hey, this is how what you're doing impacts the business.

Yep.

Right. If they care about the growth of the business, they're going to do more of the things that impact the business and less of the things that don't have any kind of meaningful impact. And that's going to ensure that they have a long tenure within our organization. Right?

Yes. Like my favorite management framework, um, it's like a riff off of a, um, Jim Collins one, but it's M-A-A-P-P: mastery, autonomy, appreciation, purpose, and pay. And so, if you're empowering your employees to understand how they are doing work that is meaningful and purposeful and contributes not only financially, but to the betterment of your customers' lives, and you're giving them the opportunity to achieve mastery in their field, you're giving appropriate appreciation and freaking pay people. By the way, if you're like looking to hire people, Um, money is just the table stakes piece of it. Like, if you're not paying people well, they are always going to be looking for a new job. And so, I hope that that is a nugget that everyone takes away is like, don't cheap out on humans. Just find capable humans, follow the process that Iggy and I have talked about ad nauseam at this point, and, um, create an environment for success. So, final question. If listeners remember just one thing from this interview, what should it be, Iggy?

If they remember one thing— That's a good— that's a very— that's a very good question. Um, I think, I mean, if they're in the bucket of building their business and they want leverage, they need to be documenting everything that they're doing and, um, figuring out Who they need to get around to get to that next level. That'd be the biggest thing, right? The 2 things that can put undefeated forces on your side, which is time and randomness, is knowledge and proximity. Get around people doing big shit and learn from people who are doing big shit. And time is going to be on your side because you're taking— borrowing from their years of experiencing and collapsing that. And then random things are going to happen when you get around people who are doing cool things.

Yeah.

Right. So that'd be it. So if you're going to take anything away, knowledge and proximity, right? Who knows the things that you don't know and who's doing the things that you want to be doing and have been there, done that? Get around those people. If you're a creator, get into Amanda's group. It's 2 things that will give you return on your investment, unlike anything else on this planet.

Hmm. Mic drop. Boom. There it is. Uh, yeah, I frequently cite this statistic that Harvard came up with that 95% of your success in life professionally across the board is determined by the 5 people in your inner circle. So I love what you're saying about like, get people in that inner circle who have already gone to the next level and are going to bring you up with them as opposed to people who are playing small and are going to pull you down. You will never be successful if you're in a group that does not believe in you, uh, and is going to support you and help you get, you know, leveled up all the way. So, oh man, you're such a wise person, Iggy. I'm really, uh, grateful for this conversation. I appreciate it. And I cannot let you go without us, uh, without you telling us where we can find more about you and Charlie AI.

Yeah, if you want to find, if you want to connect with me personally, you can follow me on, on Instagram. Iggy, if you just type in I-G-G-Y-O-D-I, you'll be hard pressed to find anybody else that pops up. I should be the first, the first one that pops up at the top of that search. Uh, or if you're interested in learning more about Charlie, go to charliai.io. We have a lot of great resources, industry use cases, uh, and lots of great articles and playbooks that we're publishing on that site to help you utilize AI more effectively inside your business.

Nice. Thank you. And we will drop all of those links into the show notes and the show description on YouTube. And Iggy, we're also happy to provide any of your free resources in that same area so that we can make sure that people have ready access to it.

Okay.

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