Build a lean business with AI agents 🤖 Carly Meyers

One of the most powerful questions, I think, when I'm talking to people and I hear them ask this question, this lights up my soul, 'cause I think you're gonna be all fine. You've got it. And it's when they say, "I wonder if AI can do this." And all that means is they're in the mindset of being curious, being playful, and saying, "Let me just try this. I wonder if we could do this." It starts with, "I wonder." Exactly. This thing that I'm doing right now is boring, it's monotonous, it's repetitive. I don't really like doing it, or I'm not— this isn't really my zone of genius. I wonder if AI could help me with this. If you always have that at the forefront of your mind, then you are gonna be absolutely fine in this AI space. It's the ones that are really resistant and holding back and saying, AI can't do this, or AI will never do this like a human does it. If you're in that place of looking at all the reasons why AI won't do something as well as you, you're going to really struggle. It's going to be a really rough couple of years if you're in that place.

This week's Millennial Master is AI growth expert Carly Myers. Carly's story starts far from tech. She began her career performing in some of London's biggest West End musicals. But one bad landing ended it all, and overnight her career was gone. Since then, she's rebuilt her life from scratch more than once. Waitressing, sewing clothes for pennies, reinventing herself in tech, and now using AI to run a lean, high-output business while raising two kids. In this episode, we talk about why automation intelligence must come before artificial intelligence, how to build your first useful AI agents without being too techie, plus the cost of hustling through burnout and what to protect at all costs. Millennial Masters is brought to you by Jolt, fast, reliable web hosting built for founders. Whether you're launching a WordPress site or scaling an app, Jolt gives your project a rock-solid home starting from just £3.95 a month. You'll get 99.99% uptime, support in under 30 seconds, and flexible payment options including Bitcoin and Amex, so you can rack up those points while you build. Get your first 3 months free at jolt.co.uk. Smart hosting for people building what's next. Carly, welcome to Millennial Masters. How are you today?

I'm so good, thank you. Thank you for having me.

I'm excited to have you on because we're going to talk a lot about AI today. But before that, let's start with the start, because I know you were living your dream on stage and then it vanished overnight. So I'm wondering, what did that moment really do to you?

Yeah, so it's always funny when I talk about my background because it feels like a completely different life. And what I do now, no one would ever expect that that's how I started. It doesn't really make a lot of sense, but yeah, I started as a West End theatre performer. It's all I'd ever known. That was only the, that was the whole plan. There was no other plan, definitely not starting an AI company. And I was in the height of my career, so I was performing in Wicked. I was in, I did the final 10 shows with Monty Python at the O2 Arena, got streamed live all around the world, and I really was at the height of my career. And then one day I went to an audition Did a split leap in some heels, went over on my ankle, tore all the ligaments, and that was it. The end of that. So it was a real kind of like brutal thing. The interesting thing is though, is that leading up to that point, I'd started to think, I think this, I think I want more. I think there's, I want to do more and there's something more in me. And I feel like it was kind of the universe. If you're into the woo, I'm not major woo, but I do think in that moment I was being guided somewhere.. And I, yeah. And I feel like it was a real nudge to say, okay, Carly, let's, let's try something else here. So it was a really interesting time because I had always really heavily relied on my identity as a dancer. You know, when you go to a bar or you meet someone and they say, what do you do? And you say, I'm a West End theatre performer. I'm in Wicked. That is a great opener. You know, people are so interested and I really loved I loved owning that identity and I felt like, you know, I was, had this like interesting aspect to me. And then when I lost that, I thought, I have no idea who I am outside of that. I have no idea what I'm meant to do. I've never, I always wondered about the people that had to go to college and choose a subject and they had to say, oh, I'm just going to do history because I think I should. I never understood that feeling of having to choose it because dancing had just been my entire passion since I was 3, I always knew that I wanted to be a dancer. So suddenly I was at this point where I was trying to figure out, what am I meant to do? Who am I? Who am I? What is my passion? What is, what is it that I want to be? And, um, it was an ugly process, I'm not gonna lie to you. It was that there was— I was a little lost soul at that time. And it's only through— whenever I kind of meet people and they're in a similar situation now where they're trying to find their passion and try and find and figure out what to do, I always say, just say yes to things. You know, if an opportunity comes up, if something is put in your path, if something piques a little bit of interest, just say yes and try it and see how you go. And you are going to know whether that's the right thing for you or not. I think the worst thing you can do when something like that happens is try and think your way into it. And I tried that for a long time. I was sitting and writing lists about my passions and what I might want to do. And ultimately the only way to really find what you're meant to be doing is by leaning into things and seeing how it feels.

So yeah, it was a few things before you landed on where you are now. So I'm curious about that in-between journey as well, that discovery part of your life, or rediscovery, as you said.

Yeah, I mean, it was a wild time. I tried many, many things. The first thing I tried was, I mean, as the first thing I did was started waitressing. So I was like, I need to get some money in and just have that balance. Then I started my own company called, uh, I say company, it was me and a sewing machine, and I called it Carly Could Make That. And the idea it was that someone would say, does anyone know where I can— have you seen this white skirt? And someone would say, Carly can make that. And so I taught myself how to sew and I would make all of these clothes. At that time, I had no idea about how to price yourself, profit margins, everything like that. So I would work like 12-hour days making these clothes. And at the end of the day, I'd make like £2.40. And I was thinking, this isn't right. I've done some maths wrong here. Um, and realized that this really wasn't a scalable thing for me. So I stopped doing that after about a year, and then I actually started working for Apple. So I was working in the Apple Store first of all, and I'd be showing them all the products and—

in the temple of technology.

Exactly. I would be resetting some 60-year-old's Apple ID password for the 17th time. That's— I feel like that was literally what most of my day was spent doing. Kind of like really learn at that time. It's only, it's funny, isn't it? When you look back, you realize how these random jobs that you had or random experiences really play a part 10 years later. And at the time, none of it makes sense. At the time, I thought I was just wasting my time. But at that time, I really learnt the skill of simplifying tech or complex language and making it super simple. Because most of the time, the people coming to that store were, you know, older people or people that didn't really understand tech. You know, they were wanting to be shown.

Wouldn't Google it before they came to See, exactly.

They wanted someone to walk through it. And I really learned a skill in that time of taking something that they didn't understand and was perhaps scary and making it much simpler. So I was doing that for a while. Then I started working on their business team and was then working with their business clients and selling the products to them and, you know, helping with them, them with their solutions. And then I started a network marketing company by accident. Again, it was never the plan. I was just dabbling around with it, trying to make some extra money. At this point, you know, I was, as a dancer, you don't earn any money anyway. So it wasn't like I was sitting on this pile of cash that could, you know, help me through this time. So I was really just scrambling for money at this point. And I started this network marketing company, was dabbling around with it. And then something just clicked with the idea of the concept of trading time for money.. And like, you know, when you feel like light comes on and there's this ta-da sound. And I was like, I've been trading my time for money this whole time. As a dancer, you're literally trading your body for money. If you can't move, you can't get paid.

And that was the realization that pushed you in this direction.

Yeah. And I just really thought I can build something, build an asset as such, create this team of people, leverage off all the work that they're doing, including myself as well, and sell all these products. The products weren't mine, I didn't have to create the products, and, and I could have this kind of leverageable income stream. I actually did build that very, very big, so I ended up being one of the biggest, um, network marketing leaders in the UK. We were doing around £250K a month at the time, and it really grew big. Although I look back now and it's not the business model for me now, I think there's easier ways to build a business and smarter ways to build a business now. I'm super grateful for that time because it was like a crash course in personal development. You know, as a dancer, there is no personal development, there is no mental training at all, even though it's one of the toughest industries you can be in. But in that time, it was a real crash course in personal development. I learned a lot about, you know, my mindset, how to manage my mind, how to set a goal, how to go for it, how to become a leader, how to inspire other people that didn't work for me. You know, I wasn't paying them. I had to inspire them to, to work for their own businesses. And again, that was a huge, huge learning. I'm grateful for that time now, um, because I learned a lot. And then, um, the pandemic hit and all sorts of things happened to that company and that business and all of that. And again, almost overnight, my business fell apart. So I felt like it was kind of this cycle. I was like, I get to the height of where I want to be and then it all falls, and then I go again and then it all falls. And it was a story that I started to tell myself. But then I realized that this time around I was different, you know. I've done this before, I'm resilient now, I can go again, I can start again., and I actually decided to— I'm going off on one. I hope that's okay. I'm like telling you—

no, no, it's all, it's all good. I want to hear the story.

Once you get me going, Daniel, I can— I'll just keep going. So then I actually decided to— since dancing, I hadn't got into fitness and working out, and I just couldn't figure out that part of my life anymore. You know, being healthy, it was attributed to being a dancer. That carried quite a lot of pain if I think back to that time now. And I kind of attributed, you know, health and working out and things like that with that time. So I really had, you know, kind of let myself go in that sense. And I was getting really fed up of every Monday morning saying to myself, Monday morning, I'm going to get on it. I'm going to be going to the gym all the time. I'm going to be eating really healthy. And it was just this thing all the time. I'd, I'd last about 4 days and then I was back. Doing eating cakes and just being an idiot. And then I'd have to start again the next Monday. And what I realized over time was that not only was this not good for my body and my fitness goals, it was ruining my mindset. Because I noticed over time, self-belief really started to drop. And I started, when I set those goals in my head of anything that I wanted to do, I could really start to hear that voice in the background saying, you're not going to do that. 'You said you're gonna go to the gym, but you didn't do it. You're not going to do that goal.' And I started to have this really strong, you know, self-doubt. And I realized that I had to do something about it. I had to, you know, switch this up and take some action to try and shift this voice in my head that was telling me that I don't stick to my own promises. So then I actually enrolled— I'm quite an all-or-nothing kind of person— so I enrolled in a bodybuilding competition. Literally went from nothing to that. Trained for 8 months, went all out, did this competition, and it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. But again, it taught me a really valuable skill. And the interesting thing, Ted, telling this story, my story, is I can really see all the pinpoints at every point. That's where you learned that. That's where you learned that. That's where you learned that. And that was—

Now that you look back, you can see the moments it happened.

Of course it all makes sense, you know, you can connect the dots when you look back. But now I really see that the person I am today is a culmination of all these little moments that taught me a really valuable part that has now become my character. And I did the bodybuilding competition, and what that really taught me at that time is that I can do anything I set my mind to, and if I say I'm going to do something, I will do it. And that became a really strong foundation of shaped, you know, my character and who I am today. And I think it's why I'm very, very strong-minded now. And even though I'm now in a, some would say, quite a male-dominated industry, I, it just doesn't faze me because I just know that if I want to do something, I'm going to do it. It doesn't matter, you know, the background or the fact that I was kicking my legs around 10 years ago. I say 10 years ago, I think it was actually about 12 years ago. Makes me feel so old.

Well, one or two years here and there.

I know. A little bit of wiggle room. So yeah, and then I got— there's so many parts of the story, I'm going to skip some bits. But basically what happened after that is I decided to start my own business and I decided to coach. I'd been coaching all of these people in my network marketing business for years and just wasn't getting paid for it. So I just started— I started coaching, set up my coaching business, then realized that I was trying to teach them how to do these things. And I would— I was teaching them how to create courses. How to turn their skills and knowledge into digital products. And there were so many people that had so many amazing things that they could share. And I was saying, you could do it like this. You could do this product. You could do this kind of membership, whatever. And they would get to a point, but then get stuck at the tech. And every time that I'd be saying, right, okay. So you just need to do a lead magnet, or you just need to do this email sequence to get it out there. And they kept getting stuck and it was frustrating for me because I was like, I know you've got a great product. I can't do the tech for you, but I really want to help you here. And then that's when I came across, uh, HighLevel, which is the software. Came across GoHighLevel, realized that with HighLevel, you can actually white label the software. So you could have it as your own software, but you could also create a snapshot. So I could give them all of my templates, all my funnels, all my email sequences, everything that I've built up over the last 12 years, I could give that to them and it would all be done in their, in their account. So I started that and that kind of threw me into the world of tech, realized that I absolutely love this space. I really love when I can help someone get through that block, you know, and I can help them get what it is that they want and get it out into the world in the easiest and simplest way. Or if I can help them get that unlock when they're like, I thought this was like another language and suddenly I'm starting to understand it. So that's really where this whole journey started. It kind of became a bit of obsession with helping people, just seeing that light go in someone when they're like, I get it. And then obviously, you know, with AI coming about.

I was about to ask, when was the first time you used AI in the form and shape we know today?

The first.

Did anything hit at that moment? And you were like, yeah, this is gonna be the next big thing. I need to be in this space.

Yeah. I think the first time I used AI was, it was in my content creation and I came across an app called Opus Pro. I still use it now. A lot of people I'm sure use it. And I had all these, I've had, I've created loads of long-form trainings over the years. I've got hours and hours and hours of it. And I came across this and then I uploaded it. Clicked a button and suddenly it was broken down into, you know, 20 short-form videos. And I thought that was so quick. They're so good. And that was really the kind of first moment where I thought, this is, I see how this is going to save so much time. I see how this is going to impact. I think the thing with AI, everyone's talking about it on a massive scale, how it's going to impact the world. But what I really like to look at is how it is impacting each individual person every day. Because that's really the impact that we're going to feel. And so I really started to see how it was starting to change my life and how I do things. And that's when I started to get excited about what it could do for all of my students, but also all the other people that I could teach. And you'll learn about me. I, I have two kids, I have a 6-year-old and a 4-year-old, but I am super ambitious. My, my drive and my ambition kind of accelerated once I had kids. And it's a really interesting thing to happen because my drive was up here. But my time had just fallen to the floor. And so that's why I was so interested in AI, because I was like, this is a way that I can still do everything that I want to do and still be a present mum and still, you know, be there for all the school pickups and all of that. And that's why it was so exciting for me. So a lot of the things that I do now, a lot of the decisions that I make, a lot of the things that I'm building within my business are all time-focused, you know, how can I save as much time as possible? How can I be the most efficient as possible without a huge team? I really do believe that huge companies are gonna be built now with teams of 1, 2, or 3. Um, and that's what really excites me. Cause it means that even someone like myself, who's got 2 young kids, can still play the game with everyone else.

So that's the inspiration then, getting time back. In productivity and things that can be done by AI for yourself, as well as growing your business without hiring extra human.

Yeah, I think, you know, I've struggled with hiring humans, to be honest. I think I can be a bit of a control freak and I'm like, I just, if it's not being done quick enough, I work really fast. That happens when you have kids, you start to be like, super fast. So I work super fast, and if things aren't being done quick enough, I find it quite, quite frustrating. I know that's actually not the right way to think, because I do need to invest time in people, and you know, that will, that will help. But I actually, I'm a big introvert. I actually really love working by myself with a few other, you know, people that I will lean on for inspiration and advice and things like that. But I personally really love building something myself with my little team of AI agents. So yeah, for me, the goal is not really to build a big team. The goal is see how far I can go with a super lean team.

So you discovered Opus or one of the AI video editing tools, and it allowed you to cut your clips into little viral ones, and that was the start of you getting a taste of AI. So you embraced it fully afterwards.

Yeah, so after that, obviously I came across ChatGPT. Became completely obsessed with that straight away. I remember when I first showed it to my partner, he owns a hair salon and he was having trouble with people parking outside or things like that. And he had to write to the council. That is such a boring task, isn't it? Going back and forth with the council, writing letters, talking about parking. I mean, no one wants to spend their time doing that. Anyway, so I showed him ChatGPT and I said, oh, look, you can, let's write a letter on here. Let's see what we can do. And wrote this letter and he was blown away by it. He was like, this is, this is amazing. This makes me sound so smart. Anyway, so we sent it off to the council. He won it, ended up getting what he wanted, but it's all started with little things like that. You know, I didn't really, I think the biggest mistake people are making right now is they're thinking that they need to know, they need to know AI before they start playing with AI. And that playing word is the most important word. It's just playing around. You can't really go wrong with it. It's just being curious, asking it questions, you know, jumping into ChatGPT and saying, I'm thinking about doing this. What do you think about this? And the most interesting thing about ChatGPT or these LLMs is that they will actually guide you through a journey of getting to where you want to get to. So all you need to do is ask that first question. Ask that first question, it's going to give you a response, and then it's going to suggest the next step that you take. It says, would you like me to now do this for you? Sure. Okay. I didn't think about that, but that sounds good. And then it will do that for you. And then it says, would you like me to now turn this into a document for you so you can share it? Sure. Yeah. I'd really like to do that. And I think it's just that first bit. One of the most powerful questions, I think, you know, when I'm talking to people and I hear them ask this question, this lights up my soul. Cause I think you're going to be all fine. You've got it. And it's when they say. I wonder if AI can do this. And all that means is they're in the mindset of being curious, being playful, and saying, let me just try this. I wonder if we could do this.

It starts with, I wonder.

Exactly. This thing that I'm doing right now is boring. It's monotonous. It's repetitive. I don't really like doing it, or I'm not, this isn't really my zone of genius. I wonder if AI could help me with this. If you always have that at the forefront of your mind, then you are gonna be absolutely fine in this AI space. It's the ones that are really resistant and holding back and saying, "AI can't do this," or "AI will never do this like a human does it," or "It will sound robotic if AI does this." If you're in that place of looking at all the reasons why AI won't do something as well as you, you're gonna really struggle. It's gonna be a really rough couple of years if you're in that place. So I really always recommend people kind of shift into that mindset of just asking themselves, "I wonder if AI could do this?" And then allowing themselves the opportunity to just go and explore it and just see what comes from it. Because I guarantee you're going to go, go through that process and, you know, be totally blown away by what comes up.

I understand that a lot of people can feel intimidated by a little empty box where there's a cursor and you just have to type, but the world of options is so infinite that you don't know what to do next. So, it's no wonder that a lot of older people who use ChatGPT or AI use it as Google, because that's what they, that's how they know to use an empty text box in which you type a question or a few words.

Yeah. Yeah, of course. And that's where it starts, right? You know, that's where it started for all of us. It's where it started for me. And then once I started to get more confident with it, that's when I started to really challenge it and say, I wonder if it could do this. Then obviously we get into the world of agentic AI, and there's so much that we can do there where we do actually start piecing together, you know, lots of different tools together and creating an entire, an entire journey, entire workflow. So that's where it gets really exciting. But I think the first step for everyone is just starting, you know, with being curious and ultimately it all starts with a mindset shift. You know, this, how you sail through this next few years. And I say a few years because I couldn't possibly tell you what's going to happen after the next 2 to 3 years. No one could. So how you kind of move through this next season of time all depends on your mindset. All depends on whether you decide that you're going to at least try and try and figure this out and play with it and just get in the ring and be part of the movement, or whether you're going to sit back and resist it and ultimately be wiped out.

And you tried it, you loved it, but I'm wondering, Carly, at what point, or was there a particular tool or system you used that blew your mind in terms of AI to make you think, yeah, I'm going all in on this? What was the point?

Well, there's many, many now, but I would say in the, one of those first points, I mean, creating custom GPTs and creating those kind of real trained agents on ChatGPT was a real big part for me. So as I said, I'm a team of, I do have two other people, but they're, I wanted more, you know, I wanted more leverage. I wanted more, say manpower, but I wanted more, you know, going into my business, but I didn't want to hire them. So I started creating custom GPTs and I created an entire team of them. So I created a sales and marketing agent and I trained this on Alex Hormozi and Sabri Suby and all the people that I really respected in the industry. I then—

okay, let's break it down because a lot of people love the idea of a sales agent. So maybe give us a bit of insight. What sort of tool have you used to create the agent and what can it do and what it can't do at the moment?

Of course. Yeah. So I've actually got a whole training on this, by the way. It's like a 2-hour thing on my YouTube.

So make sure I link your YouTube channel and your website. People You will find all the details in the show notes.

Yeah, it's a good one. It's, it's real step by step. But what I did, so if you go to ChatGPT, at the top it will say My GPTs. And if you click that, you can actually start to train your own GPT. Now, a GPT or a custom GPT is, think of it like one person. Think of it like you've just hired someone. Say, for example, you just hired a sales and marketing person. They've walked into your office for the first time. You're going to sit them down and say, right, this is what I want you to do. And you're going to start teaching that person exactly what you want them to do. So you're going to say, I want you to be creating social media posts for me. I want you to give me strategy. I want you to be challenging the ideas that I have around sales and marketing. I want you to help me with my landing page copy, you know, and you're going to tell that, that person who's sitting in your office what you want them to do. Then you're going to give them some guidance on, you know, your brand voice, who you are, what your company values are, you know, what you stand for. Then you're going to teach them about your offer. And you're going to say, okay, so this is what we sell. This is who we're selling it to. You know, these are the ways that we typically sell it. So imagine this custom GPT is an actual person that's sitting in your office and you're going to be spending a whole day. It actually doesn't take a day, but imagine you're going to be sitting and training this person all of these things so that when they walk out of that office, they know everything that they need to do in order to go and be your sales and marketing manager. Now, the great thing about this is that for many, many startups, or not even startups, even Further down the line, hiring a full dedicated sales and marketing manager isn't really an option. You don't really have the budget for it, but what you can actually do is you can start to train it on a very senior role. So for example, I could go to Alex Hormozi's YouTube channel. I could get all the transcriptions of his videos, copy and paste all of that and put that into the knowledge base of my custom GPT. And so now I'm starting to—

John Daddwell with his book.

With his books. Yeah. The only thing I have actually done that with my book, with his books as well. But then later it came out that there was a lot of copyright issues and actually a lot of authors weren't particularly happy that their books were being used to train these things. So I do still do it a little bit, but I feel like I'm being a bit naughty when I do it. When I do it, that's why I didn't want to say it, but you can do it. But another way of doing it is getting all the transcriptions of his videos.

Hey, it transpired reportedly. Through multiple media outlets, reputable, in the last year that practically all the LLMs, when they scraped the internet for all the content without anybody's approval, they also reportedly scraped all the dark corners of the web where millions of pirated books, magazines, etc., were also there. So if you ask your LLM about a book, it will typically say that it knows it and its content. You'd be surprised.

Yeah, 100%. It knows everything, to be honest. But I think the more specific you can get with this custom GPT and the more you can say, I want you to be like this, you can put, so you can put all of those transcriptions in and start to train it like Alex or Mozi. One of the biggest things I would say, one of the biggest mistakes that people make when it comes to prompting is they just go straight in there and ask for what they want. But one of the best things you can do is tell that GPT or even tell your normal chat in ChatGPT what role you want them to play. So for example, I, whenever I'm doing, I want any copywriting for email, I really love Perry Belcher's copywriting style. So I will say, you are expert copywriter Perry Belcher. Can you write me this? So I'm always going to say, this is who you are. I will say, you are an HR expert. 'You are a financial expert,' you know, whatever it is, just take a moment to tell it the role that you want it to play, and you're going to get a much better output from that. Yes, so I would be adding all of these things.

But not every single time, you maintain that chat or that window, and you keep adding to it, and different roles in different chats. Am I right?

Exactly, yeah. So with these custom GPTs, the reason why they're so good is that you start to get really highly trained. Specialist skills within that one chat. You know, it's really starting to get better and better every single time. And then if you are chopping and changing between what you want from it, i.e., I want you to do some copywriting, but now I want you to do, give me some sales strategy. It's, it reacts much better because it's been much more highly trained. So my Sales and Marketing GPT, for example, I'm asking it to do everything. It's writing my copy for my funnel pages. It's writing my emails for my email sequences. A very interesting one that I did, I actually created a Dan Martell GPT. When I was on holiday, I was reading his book Buy Back Your Time, which is a brilliant book. And I just loved his, you know, his philosophy and his framework. And I loved what he was about. So I remember being away on holiday and my brain was racing. Does that ever happen to you? You know, when you go away on holiday and you're trying to chill and then suddenly every idea comes up.

Many people have told me that, and it happens to me as well, is the moment you relax your brain, that's when you start becoming creative, inquisitive, and have ideas. So it's actually a response of you relaxing. It's not trying to drive you into work. It's making you more open and creative.

Yeah. I mean, it creates the space for creativity to come through, doesn't it? And so I was on holiday and all of these ideas were coming to me. And I was laying on the sun lounger thinking, I wanna do this, I wanna do this, I wanna do this. And my brain was just, I was like, I need to stop. So I remember going back to my room and I trained a Dan Martell custom GPT and I trained it to be my executive coach. So then I went and spoke to Dan Martell GPT, my Dan Martell agent, and I said, this is what I'm doing. I'm on holiday at the moment. This is my business currently. These are the ideas that I've had. These are my goals. What do you think about this? And I just dumped that in and it came back and it said, you know, these are all great ideas, but based on the goal that you said that you want to do in 5 years' time, this particular one doesn't really work towards that. So I'd probably think about putting that on the back burner, but this one, I think this is a good idea. And it really helped me organize my thoughts and to see, I see how this makes sense. So I actually use ChatGPT and my custom GPTs a lot for organizing my own thoughts. You know, I just sometimes go and brain dump into it and I say, this is, this is what's going on. And because the memory is so good, it remembers that 6 months ago, it's certainly improved.

It's certainly improved.

It's remembered, but it's also better in a custom GPT though. I find in the main chats it's not as good, but in a custom GPT it remembers a lot more because it's only really remembering one thing. Um, and I find that, yeah, and it will say, you know, 6 months ago you said that this was your focus. This doesn't really align with that. Sometimes it can be quite brutal and it will call me out on my habits and my BS. And it will say, you're going off track here. One time, actually, I did, I did give it an idea that I was thinking about. And it said, to be honest with you, Carly, this sounds like an ego play. And I was like, oh, that is brutal, but it's exactly what I needed to hear. And it was really good. And again, you can tell it the role that you want to play. If you want to have a hard, you know, hard-nosed business coach that's going to put you in your place and that's what you respond well to, then give it that identity and say, this is what I want from you. If you want someone to cheer you on and give you pats on the back and, you know, be your cheerleader, then you could say that as well.

So yeah, you don't recommend that?

What's that?

You don't recommend that?

I don't recommend that. I mean, I'm quite straight talking anyway, so I like someone to be straight talking back to me. And if I You know, the reason why you pay a coach really is to call you out on your behavior and tell you when you're kind of going down a path that you don't want to. So I actually recommend, yeah, tend to be quite brutal with you, but everyone's different.

Okay. So you have your sales and marketing agent. What other agents have you created to assist you through growing your business?

So I also have a financial agent. The financial agent is like an advisor, basically. So it reads all of my P&Ls every single month. It looks at all of my spending, but the most use I get out of this is it's kind of like a sounding board for me. So I'm a bit of a spender. I love spending money and not always in the best— I don't always make the best decisions. So this has really, really helped me because when I'm thinking of a big investment, maybe it's joining a coaching program, or maybe it's I was looking recently at hiring a space so that I could create like a YouTube video, a YouTube studio. I really wanted to kind of set it all out. And I, you know, put the lease in there and I showed my financial advisor and I said, this is what I'm thinking of doing. What do you think? And it was really talked me through the whole process, you know, the pros and cons of it. Could I afford it? Could it, was it the right thing to do? And it just really helped me not make an emotional decision and not just think, well, I really, really want to do it. It really talked me through. You know, what this actually looks like in my business. So that's been super, super valuable. Also, I have a legal one. Now, with the legal one, I don't actually get it to create my contracts. I might do for something like a disclaimer or something like that, but the biggest thing where this helps me is that any contract that I do get sent, I will put it into there. I don't always understand legal language. The idea of reading through an entire document of legal language is nobody wants to do that. I have no idea how these lawyers do it. I can't think of anything worse.

Well, they charge a lot per hour to do so.

They do, but honestly, you couldn't, you couldn't pay me to do it. I just start reading a little bit and then I'm like, I can't even, I don't even know what I'm reading anymore. So what I would do then is put the contract in there and I would say, can you show me any red flags? Is there anything that I need to be aware of here? And it will just break it down and really show me, you know, pick out the things that I need. So that really helps as well.

Used it for that too. It is, it is very useful, especially as well to ask it about details. Does it mention about this? Does it mention about that? Or what happens if I cancel, for example, etc.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So the legal one has been really, really helpful for me as well. And as I said, I don't recommend creating entire contracts from this because they're, they're not as thorough as they need to be, but absolutely can still really, really help you. So I've got a lot of other employees like this. I've got a virtual assistant. I've got, you know, lots of, lots of—

How do you use the virtual assistant? That's, that's interesting. So these ones are basically chat-based. You go into ChatGPT, you have your custom ChatGPTs, and you talk to those experts/employees agents about your needs. So that's, that's still you initiating action.

Exactly. Yeah. So these are more like, they're less like actual agents. They're more like employees. So I would say these are my employees.

You book them and then you ask them, but now we're going into this other role of PA or a VA. How does that work?

Yeah. So my virtual assistant will actually go through all of my emails and it will move all of my emails into a certain box. It will respond to them in my, my voice exactly as I've trained it to. So I've got my virtual assistant to do all of my emails.

What system do you use for that? Do you use this? What, what tool do you use for this?

We use NA10 for that. The interesting thing is though, is this is why it's always quite difficult to talk about AI because today I could say something, which is the best solution, but next week there could be a completely different solution. So NA10 is what we built it on. However, ChatGPT have now bought our agent kit, which is kind of like a much simpler version of NA10. If anyone's ever tried NA10, it's where you can actually piece together lots of other tools in an entire workflow. It's very, very cool. Quite hard to get your head around if you're not particularly techie, you're going to go in there and think, I have no idea what this is, what is going on here.

But I use Na10 and also it has an AI assistant to it in the sidebar, which is pretty good. If you want to tell it what you're trying to achieve, it will guide you how to do it.

Yeah, for sure. It does. It is definitely good like that. I find the user experience still a little bit clunky for me.

It's not for everybody.

It's not for everyone. So actually the ChatGPT Agent Kit is really good for something like that. So you can actually just set up a very small workflow. Ultimately, it still starts with training that custom GPT because you're going to set a trigger to say, when an email comes in, I want you to put it through this custom GPT so that you know how to respond as me. And then it's going to put it into whatever, whatever format it is. So the custom GPT, this is why I always get people to start there because a lot of the time, once you get into the agentic and once you start building out those agents, you're still going to have to run it through a very well-trained custom GPT. So yeah, Agent Kit is brilliant for that now, but we actually built ours in Na'vi. So that is where we do it. But also again, my virtual assistant, I will brain dump onto her. So I'll say, this is what I need to do. It will then go and read my calendar and it will look at everything that I've got and it will say, okay, Carly, this thing that you said you need to do, you can do that at 10:30 on Thursday. But it also knows all of my goals as well. So it will prioritise the tasks that I need to do in the order that I need to do them. So that's really helped because typically if you've got a to-do list, you will start working on the thing that you want to work on and not really what you should be working on.

And leave everything.

Exactly.

Story of my life.

If I say to it, yeah. So if I say to it, this is what I really need to get done. I'm speaking at an event next week. I need to write my training for this. Can you fit this into my calendar? It will also start to learn, do I like to work in 45-minute blocks? Do I like to work in 15-minute blocks? You know, how am I getting the most out of my productivity? And it will start to break it down like that. So that's a really great way where the virtual assistant can help you. It's just organising again, your thoughts and all things like that. But then also, you know, drawing on Claude and Claude is great, by the way. I really like Claude for documentation things. So if there's a spreadsheet that needs updating or there's a document that needs updating, Claude can now just update it directly inside the LLM. So the virtual assistant would just send a spreadsheet in there. It will say, update this with the latest. Details that we need, and then it will, and then it'll bring it out. So Claude, I switch between ChatGPT and Claude. Claude is very smart. I like Claude a lot, especially for creating landing pages, for creating quizzes, things like that. It's a very, very good platform. You've played around with Claude?

I've played around with Claude, but because I've used GPT from day one, I've spent all my time, energy, and Brain working that one out.

Yeah.

And then I tried Gemini, which I'm not a fan of. I think—

I'm not either.

Its output is not great at all, though some people rave about it. And because I tried Gemini, I haven't really dabbled with Claude because I thought if there's such a big difference between what OpenAI and Google came up with, I'm not really sure what this other company came up with. Yeah.

I mean, Anthropic, who is, uh, who created Claude, they're doing some really incredible things. And I would say ChatGPT for things like custom GPTs is brilliant. Anything kind of any analysis, strategy, letter writing, things like that. It's really, really good. Anytime I'm looking to plan something out. So if I'm saying I want to put together a 3-month marketing plan, or I want to put together a business plan, I would go to ChatGPT. I love Claude for the copywriting. I find it has a little bit of a deeper level of emotional intelligence, the how it writes things. It seems to pick up on the way that I speak much better, the little quirky words that I would say. I find it picks up a lot better, but actually creating like branded emails and landing pages and things like that, it's really, really good. So you can ask it to write it. It's gonna create it for you fully designed. And then you just copy and paste that HTML code and put it into your email builder or your website builder, and you've got it good to go. So yeah, I think Claude is also very, very good.

And you mentioned you speak to it as well as write. I tend to do that as well. I use the tips somebody gave a long time ago that if you use the voice dictation feature in the ChatGPT app, you end up, instead of spending 30 minutes giving a prompt, you end up talking for 2 minutes, but it gets so much context and so much better understanding of what you're trying to achieve without you trying to condense all that wording. Practically, you can ramble at it and then it gets you.

Exactly. When you're on a dog walk and you're just absolutely rambling away, you're going to get really good output from that, but also it feels much more of a collaborative experience like that. You know, it feels like you are actually talking to someone. I mean, genuinely, I feel like my partner is in a relationship with his ChatGPT. Talks to it all the time, you know. And there, there's— I think it's a really powerful way of doing it. But then I also talk to— this is an interesting one, this probably slightly more advanced use case, but I created an AI dashboard in Lovable. So I vibe coded it. For anyone who doesn't know, vibe coding is very similar to ChatGPT in the sense agents where you log on, there's a little text box, and you write in what you want. Except with live coding with Lovable or Replit, you can actually create apps or software tools. So you might say, I use this to create an ROI calculator. So I wanted to show my clients how much ROI they would get if they were using AI agents instead of human employees. And I really couldn't figure out how to show this. So I went to Lovable. I said, can you create me an ROI calculator, which shows and the impact of using a virtual assistant AI or a human virtual assistant. And it created the whole thing for me. It looks beautiful and it's all Vibe-coded. And Vibe-coded means that you can just, instead of actually writing in code, you're using your words. So you would talk as if you're talking to a developer.

I do instruct a GPT to do something.

Exactly.

You tell it, I would like an app that does this, except—

Exactly. Yeah. So I actually created a really cool AI dashboard. I really wanted to get all of my data consolidated into one place. So it was coming from my, you know, my CRM and my social media and things like that. And I wanted to get it in one place. And then I actually built a RAG agent in the bottom, which means that it talks to me. So this person, this little robot in the bottom of my dashboard is trained on sales and marketing. And I will talk to it and it will read the data that it's seeing on the dashboard. And I'll say, hey, you know where my lead dropped at that time, why did that happen? Or if I wanted to increase my show-up rate there, what do you think I should do? And we had a really good interactive chat about the data that I was looking at on the screen. That's also amazing. I didn't have to keep typing it in and it really breaks the flow of how you're working. So that's how I love to talk to it as well.

And there's a clear difference here though, when you mentioned AI agents versus Agentic AI. It's not really quite the same thing there, is it? Because one can work autonomously to your instructions without your constant input or you requesting from it, while the other traditional or old style AI agents are the ones you go and just query and ask them different things. And I think that's where people get confused thinking that I will make an AI agent do everything for me.

Yeah. And this is where, this is the differential where I say, so one is an employee and one is an agent. That's kind of in my head, that's how I split the two up. An agent is someone who's going to go off and do the work for you. So they are going to run to all different parts of your business, bring in different things, and they're going to do an entire journey from start to finish. An employee is really, I call my employees like my board of directors. These are the people that I'm sitting down and I'm chatting with and I'm going back and forth with. This is why I kind of use the example of someone coming into your room, sitting down in your office and having that conversation with them. If you were to actually have employees, this is the kind of interactions you'd have. They would go away, they would write that email for you, and then they'd come back and they'd show you. So I would say the employees, the custom GPTs, things like that, that's the employees. Think of it like your board of directors. The agents are exactly as you say, they're the ones going off and doing an entire front-to-end workflow, you know, they are doing, they are taking something right from the beginning to the end without any intervention.

And that's the next big step, isn't it? That's where things are going to push us in a direction where we're going to have a one-man band billion-dollar company, or even million would be good in that aspect. And what needs to happen? What's in order to be able to do that? Because you're leveraging it yourself, you're creating two types of agents, you're obviously sharing this knowledge and information with others. But I'm curious then, how has it pushed your business forward and where do you see it evolving next?

Yeah, so for example, I'll give you an example of one of the agents that we use in our business. So I have an agent, um, we built it inside Any10, and I have an agent where the agent will first of all scour the whole of YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, all of that. And it will scour all of my competitors or anyone who's in my niche, all of their content. It will analyze all of their content and then it will drop that into a spreadsheet and rank it into this was the highest performing content. This is the comments that were underneath it. Cause I want to know if there's a video that's done really well, I want to see the comments that people were asking. I want to know the questions that they were asking, because that's a really great piece of content for me to create. Cause it's something that was missing. So it will put that into a spreadsheet, organizes it all out into these were hooks that really worked. These were comments that people were asking and analyzes all of that. Then that will be automatically pushed through. My custom GPT that will then start creating all of that content for me. And it's got directions of how many posts I want. Do I want carousels? Do I want them to do 1-minute video scripts or whatever it is? Then the next step is that all of those scripts then get put into a Slack channel. So in my Slack channel, I get these pings and I'll say, here's your post for tomorrow. Here's your post for tomorrow. And then I can look at it. And if I like it, I can click the button and say, happy. And then that's going to schedule that out into all of my social media posts. So that's quite a kind of, there's only a few steps in that, but it gives you an idea of how an agent is jumping between platforms, between tools. It's going to YouTube, then putting into a spreadsheet, then going to a custom GPT, then into Slack, then into onto your social media channels. You could do this for—

Slack is the way that you have these automated agents communicating with you and telling you that stuff is happening in the background.

Exactly. It means that I don't need to be sitting, looking at my custom, you know, sitting in ChatGPT and just waiting for things to happen. It means that I can be going on about my day. It will come back to me and then I can say, yeah, I'm happy with that. You don't even have to have that step. If you were, if you get it to the point where, you know, every post is going out and you really like it, then you don't even have to come in, you know, have it coming back into Slack. But that's the kind of example of how Agentic AI can start to be happening in the background while you're doing something else. That means I can be over here creating content, doing the bit which is my zone of genius. I don't want to be spending time actually going through all YouTube videos and seeing what was good and seeing what wasn't. So it means then everyone can be moved back into the positions that they're meant to be. So we actually do AI audits for companies. So we will go into businesses, I'll do a full audit of their business, and I will show them where they can implement AI and automation and give them a whole roadmap to do it. And one of the main things that we're doing here is seeing how we can move their current team members back into the boxes that they're meant to be. Because typically what happens is someone gets hired, they get hired for a specific role, and then as the business grows, their role starts to expand as well, and they end up doing things that maybe is not really their skill set, but they just, you know, that they're doing it and people are starting to—

Pile on. Yeah.

Yeah. People are doing loads of things that they weren't really hired to do, nor are they actually very good at, and they definitely don't enjoy. So part of this is actually moving people back into the boxes where everyone is doing the bit that they're best at and the AI is filling the gaps and doing all the other stuff, which is how you then kind of get that full movement. So it's a really interesting experience when you do it and yeah, it can have a massive impact.

So in your experience so far then, Carly, what's the biggest misconception entrepreneurs have about AI right now versus— because I'm assuming you're working again with a range of businesses and people.

So the biggest misconception at the moment is that business owners think they just need AI in some way, shape, or form. They're like, they're feeling that fear of if I don't get on this AI thing, I'm going to miss out. So what's actually happening is that they are just adding in all of these AI tools. They're like, well, that does that. And they're signing up to all of these subscriptions and saying, well, that does that, that does that. It's normally the sexy things that people want to do. It's like, oh, that would be so cool if it could do that. And that would be so cool if they could do that. Then they're kind of starting at that top level and just throwing stuff in. And it's the wrong way of doing it. How the best way of implementing AI is not adding in any subscriptions first. The first thing you want to do is simplify your tech. So the first thing that I do when I go into a business is see how we can get rid of some of their subscriptions and rid of some of their tech. We want it super, super simple, consolidating as much of it as we can. Then we want to look at automating as many of their initial processes that are working as possible. So there is no point in throwing all these AI tools in because AI is going to amplify your business. And if your business is chaotic, you are amplifying the chaos. So the first piece, I always say that automation intelligence comes before artificial intelligence. And first, we need to automate the foundations. We need to look, is there a really clear customer journey? Is there a really— the main things we're looking at is acquisition, customer service, and delivery. Those are the 3 things that we really want to look at automating first. So we make sure that those are all working like clockwork. We kind of build that machine that the business runs on. And then once we have that, then we're looking at adding in AI. And we're looking at adding in AI, we're starting with the 5-minute tasks. Because if every single person, if I can save every person in a team 5 minutes, 10 times a day, multiplied over your team, you are getting months back over the year. Genuinely, the impact of it is huge. We're not looking at making these massive, you know, building these massive AI infrastructures. The biggest impacts that business owners are seeing is when we we can get the entire team to be saving an hour a day, you know what I mean? That's 7 hours a week, and that quickly compounds across teams and time. Exactly. And actually, it means that it's not this huge daunting transition. I think the reason why a lot of business owners are resisting this is they're thinking, I need to overhaul my whole business, and this just feels like a huge task. This is really what I get from a lot of people. It feels like this big task, and it doesn't need to start with that, you know.

We can start because AI is the hype of AI promising that it would be able to do everything to a certain extent. And then somebody comes into your business and you expect it to take over dozens of processes.

Yeah, there is so much hype, you know, and I think it's partly valid, partly hype. I think the reason why there's so much hype is that it is a genuine thing that people do need to get on with this. There is an entire middle section of businesses that are going to get wiped out if they don't start to adapt. So the hype is valid and the urgency, I would say, is real. But the only way you're going to get these big changes is just by starting small and you stack and stack and stack. I always say, you know, we're going to start with a very small automation or a very small tool or something like that. And then we're going to get that working and then we're going to stack the next one and then we're going to stack the next one and then we're going to stack the next one. And that's the process that you have to go through. I think what I'm seeing a lot is that businesses are actually spending a lot of money trying to implement these AI infrastructures and they're not actually seeing the ROI. And I think it's because they're coming from the top and they need to start at the bottom.

Speaking of ROI on AI, this brought up something from a conference I attended earlier this year, which was actually around the ROI of AI. One of the things that came up, and I was, I'm interested to hear what's your take on it, is that a lot of A lot of businesses still have data spread out and unstructured in different silos.

Mm-hmm.

And they are finding it hard to give access to it for AI in order for AI to be able to make something of it in order to be productive. So starting to structure your data in such a way that it can be used, analyzed, and/or worked with Buy AI is as important. Does that sound like something you've experienced as well?

Definitely. I mean, you know, I work with a lot of businesses and the biggest problem for all of them is that they don't have enough insight into their numbers. They don't have enough overall picture. They've got a bit over here and a bit over there, but they can't see how this is all working together. This is why a lot of the time we end up building AI dashboards for them. So they've got that kind of one central point point. It has to start there. And I think this is, again, this is why I always believe in, you know, simplifying your tech and seeing how we consolidate as much as we can. But yeah, you can get amazing insights from it, but you do need to have that one central point for it all to really see how it's working together. Because it's fine if the, if you're, if the AI is going to say that your leads are dropping and things like that, but there's an entire situation happening on over here, which is impacting that, which it doesn't have insight to. You know, it has no idea why that conversion is actually going like that. So that's why it's really important to have the convert, the, that centralized data point.

And when you've been doing all this, Carly, was there anything you had to unlearn to then relearn in a different way?

Oh, it is a good question. What have I had to unlearn? I don't know if I've had to unlearn anything, but obviously I've had to learn a whole new way of thinking. You know, I think I really noticed recently that I was trying to figure out the answer to something, or I was thinking about something and thinking, oh, I wonder what that was. And I noticed very, very quickly, I asked the question in my head like a prompt. And that was a really interesting switch because normally I would just ask the questions, but instantly my brain has started to be trained to know how to prompt this. And yeah, I think I've definitely had to learn how to ask a question in a prompt style that is gonna get the output that I want and not just naturally in the question that I, you know, how I would phrase it normally. I think I've also had to, I've always been very open-minded to things anyway. You know, if I'm, I'm not very scared of trying things, I'm not scared of failing. I would say for a lot of people that would be something that they would need to unlearn. Is that feeling of fear of getting it wrong. But yeah, I think the problem—

fearing failure. Yes, it's something that hits everybody. How did you overcome fear of failure?

I learned really early on. I mean, as a dancer, you know, it is a tough industry, and I would do audition after audition after audition, be told that I wasn't doing that because I'm too fat, too tall, too whatever, you know, all of these sorts of things. So I got very used to rejection very early on. Again, something that I'm super, super grateful for. And I, I really learned that, as I said, when you look backwards, you see how all the dots piece together. You see that something that which felt like such a challenge and felt like everything was going against you, you then use that in the future to propel you forward into something else. So I've actually become quite addicted to failure. I fail really fast, you know. I have an idea, I implement it quickly, I fail fast, I move on to the next one. And I think the reason why I've been able to achieve what I've achieved is because I've probably failed 5 times before most people have even got out the gate. Um, and I think it's really, really served me. So the reason why I've got over that fear of failure is that I know it's actually genuinely a blessing. It really, really is. The lessons you can learn in that period of failure are going to propel you even further than you could ever imagine. Super valuable.

So people who haven't failed is because they are afraid of failing or haven't done something, or because that, that can stop you starting something, the fear.

I think there's many reasons. I think there's many reasons why people don't start. I think people don't start because of the fear of failure. You know, will I look like an idiot if I get this wrong? What will people think of me? I think people also overthink a lot, and you know, that, that kind of perfectionism— they feel like they need to get everything perfect before they go. I'm a big fan of messy action because I think you only really learn what you need to do when you're doing it. You can sit and learn and read all the books, but once you actually get out there into the ring, that's only when you realize, you know, what skills you actually need. So I think there's many reasons why people don't start, but I think fear of failure is probably the biggest one. And the only way I can get around that, and kind of only advice I can give, is that it's like a muscle. And the more you do it, the easier it gets and the stronger that you get. And it's a really— it's such a good muscle to build. You are unstoppable if you figure out how to keep going when you get knocked back. And you build that resilience and you, your bounce back rate is quick. You know, my bounce back rate is so quick now. I used to take a month to get over something. Now it take— then it takes a week, then it takes a couple of days, then an hour, then a couple of minutes. When you can get to the point where your bounce back rate is within a couple of minutes and you've just, you know, brushed it off and you're good to go again, you are unstoppable at that point. And I think that's what I do The secret to doing that is honestly doing more of it. You know, I, I would love to give you a really insightful answer to make this easier, but it's not. The only way to build resilience is to get knocked down and get back up way more times you got knocked down. That is the only way to do it. It's messy, it's painful, and there is no easy way around it. You've just got to go through it, and you've just got to throw yourself in, um, and that's the only way that you're get, build that resilience and build up, you know, get over that fear of failure. You've gotta fail more times. But yeah, I would love to give you an easier route, but I don't think there is one.

Now, Carly, you mentioned you're a, you're a mum, you have two children, and your business is growing in a field that is moving exponentially fast every day. So what are you protecting at all costs these days?

My time at all costs. My time and my mental freedom, I would say. I— time. I used to think that you just hustled your way to financial freedom. I used to think that, you know, if you just work, work, work— I've got no problem with working hard, and I've always really prided myself on my work ethic. And I used to think, if I just work as hard as possible, I will get everything that I want. And after doing that, I realized that even though on paper I got everything that I want, I felt empty, you know, I felt nothing. So now I protect my time at all costs, to the point where, um, I don't take Zoom calls before 11 o'clock. That morning bit is really important to me so I can ease into it. On Fridays, that's my creative day, so I block out Fridays so that I can be creative, so that I can play, so that I can, you know, I'm only an AI expert for as long as I keep learning about AI. I can't afford to say, well, I learned, I did a course once and then now I know everything because 3 weeks later, you know nothing. So, on that Friday, I now, you know, research and learn and I play with the tools and I build the agents and I'm really in there doing it, which is something that I love.

Experimenting and learning days, your Friday.

Yeah. I love it. And just whatever, I wake up that day and there's stuff that I want to play with, you know, during the week. Week, I'll see something pop up. And, you know, when ChatGPT brought out the new agent kit, I just wanted to dive in there and start playing around with it, but I had other stuff that I needed to do. So then I put that in my creative day, and I know that on Friday I can just, you know, tinkle around, do whatever I want, see where it gets me. And that's what I do for that. And then the weekends are obviously all with the kids. I'm there for, you know, every school drop-off, every pickup, everything, you know. I think it has to start with the life that you want to live day to day. This has probably been the biggest shift for me. I used to always try and build my 5-year dream life, and now I just build my, my tomorrow. Like, what do I want tomorrow to look like? How can I structure my day and my business and everything like that to make sure that each day is exactly how I want to live it? And then again, you start stacking up those days, and eventually you get to that 5-year dream life.

So, taking it day by day is important because you can look at your 5-year aim and feel like it's too far or you're too far from it and it could discourage you, but you have to build your life day by day.

Yeah, exactly. Otherwise, you know, for so long I worked and I thought, I'll be happy when, and it can be such a long time, you know, it can be, a year, 2 years, 3 years until you get to that point. So what, you're going to be unhappy for 364 days so you can be happy one day? Because actually, when you have that, that— we all know that the day after you reach that thing that you want, you're all set on to the next 1-year goal or 2-year goal, and you actually never live those days. It's not like you tick it off and then you're good to go. Um, and that's what I really learned, you know. I kind of got what I wanted and a day later I was all set back to zero and ready to go.

Sadly, it resonates with me as well. I've lived that experience, which is why I can do things differently now, but possibly until you go through it, you, or you experience it, you wouldn't do it because you're just so easily tempted to do it.

Well, you just think that you genuinely will be happy, but it doesn't.

And you learn the hard way. So with that in mind, Carly, I'm wondering what's a lesson you wish you learned a decade earlier, back to your West End days?

The lesson that I wish I learned earlier is a really easy one. I wish I'd learned to enjoy the journey more. You know, there were times when I was, when I was, uh, 18, I moved to America and I was, and then I was living in Germany and I was I was playing on the West End and I was at the O2 Arena, and I can't tell you that I really took in any of it, you know. I can look back on it now and think how proud I am, but I always had that mindset of, well, I'll be happy when I'm playing a lead role, I'll be happy when that— and I really wish I knew that those were the days, you know. And I wish that I really appreciated at the time what I was doing, how cool life was. Yes, I was wasn't that next step that I wanted to be, but what I was doing in that moment was very, very cool. And, uh, yeah, that's probably the lesson that I think I wish I knew back then.

While we're at self-reflection, Carly, something that I like to ask everybody as a wrap-up is, you've done a lot, even though, especially now when you think about it and you look back at it, but what's the biggest sacrifice you had to make to be where you are today?

I would say two sacrifices. One, I've definitely sacrificed my health. I've worked to the point of burnout and, you know, not looking after myself, and my body's been screaming at me, telling me to stop, but I just thought the only way out of it was to hustle harder. So I've definitely sacrificed my health, um, which I'm turning around now. And I, I sacrificed the early days with my kids. I never had a maternity leave. I never took that time to just be a mum. And although I'm really proud of, you know, I'm just naturally always going to be working. I really love that. But I do wish that I kind of took a bit more time in that time to just savor the moments. I was kind of constantly straight onto like, right now I need to provide all the, all these things, and I need to achieve all these things for my kids. And I think actually what I probably needed to do in that time was just be a mum. So that That's probably what I've sacrificed.

Here's a little side question around that. I don't have children, so you're going to have to break that one, this one down for me, but I've been reading recently and I know from my own experience, you don't really remember anything until you're 3 years old onwards. So when people say those early days there with my child, instead of building something that would allow me to spend more time with my child later on, which is what you've done.

Mm-hmm.

Isn't that a better route, especially if the child will not remember those early days? You will feel guilty maybe because you weren't there, but the child will never remember that.

It is, and that's what I always thought, but I actually realised it's what I needed. You know, my kids are growing so fast now and I can't believe how quickly that time passed. You know, when they're just so tiny and they're on my chest and we're cuddling. And, you know, I look back at those pictures now and I think it all feels like a blur. And I think it's, for me, I wish that I savoured that time more because they're only that little for so long. But it's taught me to savour more of it now.

And to wrap up, while we're talking about kids, Carly, what do you want your kids to understand about ambition? Because I think that's one of the key threads throughout your story?

I want my kids to understand about ambition, that you can do anything that you set your mind to. I know it sounds so cliché, but genuinely, I've always been taught by my parents that if you want to do something, there is a way to figure out how to do it. You just have to figure out that way. I want them to understand that ultimately the person you are in the pursuit of your goals is more important than what you achieve. The biggest thing that I try and teach my kids is how to be kind. Kind, because I think if you are kind— two, two traits I always teach them: kindness and gratitude. I think if you lead your life in kindness and in being truly grateful for what you have around you, then I think that's the best path to go. But I, I can't imagine they're not going to be ambitious, growing up with myself and my partner, two very strong-minded entrepreneurs. So I don't worry about them not having an ambition, um, but I think ultimately they need to— the main thing I'm focused on is who they are as people.

Well, that's a great parting thought to wrap up our conversation today, Carly. I loved your approach on that. And thank you for breaking some of the myths for me as well. And I'm sure we're gonna pick up this convo soon enough because AI is moving so fast. So thank you for coming on Millennial Masters and sharing your story so far, Carly.

You're so welcome. Welcome. Thank you for having me.

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