Unlocking AI's Potential: Practical Strategies for Entrepreneurs

Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Business Lunch. Ryan, you and I have had such a hard time getting together. It's nice to see you and get to chat here. I actually miss you.

I actually, I actually, I wouldn't have expected it, but here you are. Yeah, no, man.

Against all odds, I'm like, you know, hey, where's Ryan?

Here we are. Yeah, no, it's been a crazy season, man. I mean, I'll tell you, anybody with young kids, who, you got very young kids, you got toddlers, babies and stuff like that. You know, I get it. They're busy times. They really, really are having to wake up in the middle of the night, feeding, all that other stuff. I'm not minimizing it. I'm just telling you, if you think, oh, it's going to get better when they get older, it's not.

And how old are your kids now? Tell everybody how old your kids are.

14, 16, 18, and 20.

Yeah, mine are 29 and 35, and it's still not better, and I don't see it in sight.

So the stakes just get higher. The things you need to go to get further away and more complicated.

The things they want go from the little, you know, $5 toy to, you know, the million dollar house.

I mean, right. Houses and cars and college educations and, you know, yeah. My daughter just graduated from high school, which is, which is great, but just all the stuff around it's just been nuts. So yes. Good to see you too.

Against all odds.

Against all odds, we did it.

So, um, you have, uh, created, uh, a content surfacer kind of app type thing. Is it, did you build an app? Did you build a project? Uh, just a prompt? What, what, uh, not just a prompt, but a prompt. What, um, what are you using to surface the content other than your brain and the things that you run into in life? Just for people that are out there thinking, how do they come up with this crazy stuff?

Yeah, no, I built this thing just to help us come up with topics and to figure out, you know, we've got people that will sometimes help surface ideas and things like that, that we can chat about, but it takes a lot of work. And so much of this is just, well, you go out there and you research and you Google a bunch of things. You look at Reddit threads and you see what people out there in our world, our listeners are talking about. And I was like, well, this is something that AI is just built to do. And so now, I mean, I literally went into Claude and I opened up the skill creator and I said, I, I, I need to build a skill around a content producer because that's what somebody would do, a content producer for our podcast. And here's our target audience. And these are some of the places that we would go to look for topic ideas, but I'm sure there are others. And I just said like, interview me and tell me what you need from me to build this content producer. And it did, it was probably a 20, 30-minute back and forth. And then when it was done, it was, You know, do you want me to create an automation for this? Like, yep.

Let's twice a week.

Thank you. Go out there and do all the things.

Crunch.

Run and then surface the ideas. Give me, and I asked and I said, give me 15 ideas. Um, and then based on the ones that you feel like are the top 5, create a brief for it. So yeah, that's, that's what we did. And, and what's cool is I didn't know how to do it before I did it. And I think a lot of people, I know this isn't necessarily the topic of today's conversation. I get these be, but, um, the, so many of the things with AI and I had, I don't know how to build that. Yeah, I don't either. The nice thing is, is it does. And so I just said, this is, this is what I want. This is the output that I want. I have a general sense of how to, how I would like it to be, but ask me questions until we get to where we want it to be. Yeah.

It's kind of amazing. It's, it's, if you just, if you guys out there that haven't tried it, I just read a stat that surprised me. Um, because in our world, it feels like everyone is there and doing something. And yet, um, I just read a stat that 20%, this is a brand new stat. I think it might've been Gartner. Um, 20%, only 20% of businesses have any AI deployment use, you know, at all. Only 20%. So 80% of the businesses out there don't. So the cool thing is, is if you're part of the 20%, if you'll just kind of open your mind to this can, you know, this can be possible, um, you're going to just immediately have this ridiculous advantage. Um, which is probably something—

I saw just, just, sorry, real quick on that. I saw this, this thing and it was a, it was a graphic and it said pre-AI, um, you know, the number of people with ideas. Um, and it was, you know, it was a lot, like a lot of people with, with ideas and it's like the number of people executed. And it was, you know, a much smaller grouping. And the next to it, post-AI, the number of people with ideas, and it was just like exploded, you know, like it was gigantic. And then the number of people who, you know, are executing was even smaller. And I think that's the case. I think even in a lot of companies and a lot of people who consider themselves to be, you know, AI power users, they're using it for ideation and they're using it to kind of produce. I don't know, reports and memos and they're using it to like do, I would argue, fake work because it's nothing that's actually executable. It's nothing that actually gets put out there into the, you know, out there in the real world and generates a result. And so, yeah, I would encourage you just make sure, one, that you're using AI and two, that when you're using it, you're asking how is this ultimately going to get put to use because with this content producer, it is now put to use, not just something that I use once, but it's a scheduled task that just runs on its own. So make sure you're building those kinds of things.

Yeah. And I actually, uh, if, if you're cool with it, I wanna hijack and pivot this to talking about that because, uh, we've talked about it for a few minutes and I think there's more to talk about and then we can talk about the thing that the content, uh, engine generated for us to talk about, um, on a separate podcast. Is that cool?

Yeah, and I think that's a good lesson, which is sometimes, um, you know, make sure that you're also not just, uh, doing whatever the heck the AI tells you to do, that you, uh, also impose your own will upon it. You're in charge, daggone it. Damn it.

Yeah. Yeah.

I like that. I'll unplug you.

So, um, so let's talk about it. Um, I, I think it's, uh, one thing that was interesting. I did a post, uh, on Instagram last night. Uh, I, I was just reorganizing my screen, you know, as I do from time to time of my apps, you know, what's on the front page of of the iPad and I posted, um, I, I did it and then I took a screenshot of it and I was like, this would be kind of interesting to talk about. And then I was like, but it's changed so much even in the past 5 years. Uh, I mean, we're in the 2020s and, uh, and it's changed significantly. And, um, and the iPad is a relatively old bit of tech at this point in the App Store and everything. So, um, I, I thought it would be kind of interesting. And so. What was on the current one was, uh, was, well, actually I'll just pull it up. Uh, what's on the current front page for me is, uh, an entire row of AI stuff and one more on top of that. So I've got, uh, ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Gemini, Perplexity, and NotebookLM are the 6 apps that are on an entire line. Of my front page, and I use all of them regularly. And I thought it might be interesting for us to talk a little bit about how we're using it, um, too. And, uh, and then in addition to that, I have, um, I'm looking to see what else do I have that is solid AI. Um, I have, uh, I create music. I've got an app called Suno that lets you create music using AI and rather like you can be as broad, and this goes to how, how we use it that I kind of wanted to get into. That app can be as broad as, hey Suno, write me a country song about trains and mama and, uh, and, uh, beer. And it'll come up with something, or you can write the lyrics yourself, paste them in and have it generate that. Or you can take out the, what they call stems, the individual, uh, tracks and use it as really like a producer. Yeah. And, and so it can be an, a full abnegation of all responsibility for creative thought, or it can be an insanely helpful assistant and tool for allowing you to realize the creative vision that you've got. And I feel like that's really what the highest and best use of AI is. And so if you're, if you're not using it at all, To open it and just start playing with it. You know, we, we were on it the second that ChatGPT came out. We were all, all up in, uh, everything. We created trainings on how to do it. We were doing it ourselves. We used it, you know, to create money. We, you know, it's kind of showing all the things you could do and went through that kind of, uh, oh my gosh, look at all the things it can do. And now it's evolved so much that, um, that it's actually writing apps and programs. And so, I'm, I'm gonna let, just start with, I kind of mentioned what I'm using. What are you, what are you using, uh, from the AI stack? Not like dev, just the, the chats right now. Which, which ones are you using and why and when?

Uh, Claude and specifically Cowork is my primary go-to. Um, if it's, if, if I'm just doing a basic search, for something, if I want to just kind of gather some quick information, or if I want to create an image, um, it is, I'm going to go to both Gemini and, uh, ChatGPT, and I literally just post the exact same thing in both of those places. And I will then take the, if it's a search or if it's some research or something like that, I'll take it from, you know, Gemini and I'll give it into ChatGPT and I'll be like, well, my, um, other. employee said this, because I think about them as employees, you know, what do you think? What's your feedback on that? And I'll do that. And I'll sort of let them argue with each other without realizing they're arguing with each other. And sometimes, you know, and I look for like, where are they starting to come to agreement and consensus while also bringing in my own ideas, but I'm very, I try really, really hard to not allow any of my own bias to go in because I've just found it'll default to just agreeing with me no matter what. And I've tested this, by the way, even when I knew that what I was saying was stupid and wrong. Yeah. I was like, you know what? I'm kind of thinking along these lines. Like, that's a really great idea. Yeah. Like, it's not, it's not a good idea. It's a stupid idea. Yeah.

Right. So it does behave kind of like the typical employee, right? Yep.

Boss. That's exactly, exactly. It's why I have to say, like, I, when I'm talking, please don't take any of this as a definitive or a mandate. I'm genuinely asking questions because I don't know the answer, but yeah, that, that's how, so that's primarily, I think my, uh, Kind of my zone, the scope of tools that I use is a lot more limited than yours. You know, you get out there and they're playing out on the skinny branches and I don't even really, I haven't gone so far at this point as to even building out my own custom apps. I found that everything I've wanted, I've been able to build as a, you know, project and an automation inside of Cowork.

Mm-hmm.

And what's nice about that is I can just test it and I can play with it a lot more easily. And then I know I can take everything that I've got from that and I can, you know, export it, move it over into code and have it actually start to build out an app if I want. But I really like working, um, within the tools themselves for as long as, you know, for as long as it makes sense.

Also, you're not a developer. You're, you're not trying to build apps. You're trying to get answers that like, I think it's outcome-based. I don't think you should feel like you have to build an app. Because you want an answer to a question, you know?

Yeah, exactly. And there hasn't been a need when, when the currently the only use case has been me wanting to do something.

Yeah.

I can get it all done right then and there. What I know is, uh, and there's even ways inside of, you know, Cowork where if we build a project and you share it, um, and you've got a shared folder. Yeah, exactly. But there will come a day when some of the stuff that we want to do, and we've already talked about it on the content front, where we're gonna want to create separate standalone apps that we use internally. And, and we may or may not make some of these available to clients and, and whatnot. But we're gonna want these cuz we, I want the entire team to be able to get in there and to collaborate on it. And I still don't think the individual tools, even though they now have a bit more of a team, that's still not what they're really natively built for. So that's how I'm using it.

Yeah. Okay. And, um, do you, is there a reason that you choose ChatGPT, oh no, excuse me, you should say Claude, Claude and, and or Gemini. Is there, is there a reason for choosing that combination or did it just kind of default based on what you were using or?

Well, so my having Claude and Cowork as, as my primary is because so much of the work that I do, uh, when I'm like doing work and producing stuff is content based. And I've just found that Claude has been better at producing content that more closely matches my voice. And frankly, just when they came out with Cowork, that was such a, a, just such a step function up from what anything that ChatGPT had at the time. But I didn't have to go all the way to, you know, Claude Code or any of that stuff. It just, that, that UI made a lot of sense. And so I've just built a lot of my own folders and a lot of my own internal training and knowledge around that. And so it's not that I'll never leave it, but it now has a lock-in. Where there's a pain of disconnect if I were to leave. And so I mostly use ChatGPT and Gemini for initial, um, chats, right? For conversation, for, for, and I like to play those two off of one another. Uh, and it's just because I found that Gemini is really, really good at going out there and doing real-time research because wait for it, it's owned by Google.

Yeah.

Um, but ChatGPT also does some things phenomenally well, you know, too. And so I like taking the export—

When you say Chat, you mean Claude?

No, I mean Chat, ChatGPT.

ChatGPT. Okay. So you are using that as well.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

So my, my, my chat—

I just heard Claude and like for chat and Cowork and Gemini and I didn't hear anything about ChatGPT until just now.

Sorry, I'm abbreviating ChatGPT like the kids do. Um, and I'm just calling it Chat. Okay. Cool. Yeah. So when you hear me say chat, that's, so I'm, but I'm, so I'm, I'm using those three. I'm not really using Perplexity. I haven't had need to yet. I've heard good things about it, but I just don't need another tool in my life. Those, those are the three where I'm primarily living. Okay.

Yeah. So for, for me, it's ChatGPT was, you know, kind of the first of the, of the group. So that was where I started and I still, I, I'd say I'm probably am 40% ChatGPT. Um, the, the graphics creation engine is insane now. All those graphics I sent you over the weekend were ChatGPT straight from the chat. Yeah.

Um, I should say I get Claude to give me the image prompts and I put the image prompt from Claude into both, um, Gemini and ChatGPT. And you're right, ChatGPT is kicking the crap out of, um, Nanobanana.

Yeah. And I, I haven't even had to do that. I mean, I, I, I was doing that and then, um, you know, I will occasionally just try and my goodness, it's just like, especially if you can give it an example or, you know, like a description of, you know, I want a line art thing or a cinematic or, um, uh, cartoon art, you know, it, it's just spot on. All, but, but all of them are doing pretty amazing now. Um, so I, uh, I think. ChatGPT for me was the first, and then I got into custom instructions and projects and, you know, all of the other different things you can do with it now. But when it came to coding, I started with Lovable, which, which I don't think they have an app or the app is just not that good. So it's, I generally do it on, if I, if I use it, but I don't use Lovable that much anymore, but, but, I used ChatGPT and Claude Code very extensively when I was doing the AI version of our operating system and some of the other things I've done. And as I got more into coding, Claude Code just blows everything else away. It's just, to me, head and shoulders above. So, so that got me into Claude Code and I couldn't do, and it really annoys me that I can't on my iPad get what I can on the computer because of the apps not being available there. And I can do it using, uh, Claude Remote, but that's its own additional set of challenges. So, um, so what I basically end up doing is if I'm going to create an app, um, and I want all the context of everything, because you and I have so much, we have extensive bodies of work of our own. We have lots of ideas. We have, um, Yeah. Huge histories from all the things we've done. We've got portfolio companies, and then we've got work that we share because the IP of Scalable, for example, there's a lot of your IP that's in there, and I want to be referencing that and have that in context. So, um, I couldn't do that with anything until I started using Obsidian as my basically local data carrier or database. And, um, what's nice about that is that frees me from— Yeah., you know, being chained to any of the others. So I don't know if you realize, but like you said, you were kind of stuck with, uh, with Claude because you've got so much in there, but you can export everything out of there. So I export everything out of ChatGPT, uh, because I'm still using ChatGPT. I'm still using Claude. I'm still using, you know, the others. So I'll export everything out of there into Obsidian, uh, on a regular basis. And then all of my current chats end up there because I just can't get myself to use the horribly ugly interface that is terminal with Obsidian and Claude Code. Um, so that's kind of, then I have everything available. Like I'm re— I'm updating the book that I wrote, Exit Ready, with the new things that we've come up with, like the Rule of 100 and founder identity and, you know, all that kind of stuff. Um, it wasn't in there. That would take me forever because when I was— Yeah. Doing it originally, I had to do it like partial chapter by partial chapter in ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini. I was using them all and then pasting into a Google Doc and then coming back and, you know, 'cause they, they weren't writing, they're helping me organize and think and research. And it just took forever. So now think about like, if I've got 7 new concepts that I wanna put into a 150-page book, I've gotta find all the right places and not have inconsistent references and everything. So if I go into Obsidian, like if I go terminal Obsidian, uh, Claude Code, now I can basically say, here's all my new stuff. Here are my presentations. Here's the transcripts. Tell me, I want to thread that into the book. Do that for me. And it just does it. That's insanely helpful. And I, you can't do that with, you know, with anything short of Claude Code that, you know, in a, in any way that makes sense. And you can't even do it in Claude Code. effectively to me if you're not using Obsidian, because Obsidian has this vault that has all the connectivity. Yeah.

Tell me, take a step back. What, what is Obsidian?

Like, I mean, I've used it.

It's basically just a database.

It's just a vault with all your data in it that gives you effectively an unlimited context window. And it, it draws, like, it has this, um, not org chart, but like, uh, you know, like starburst constell— constellation would be the best way to do it. It's got this constellation of all the data points, like, you know, Ryan's, uh, scalable operating system and, you know, Roland's 5 evolutions and, you know, something else, you know, Richard's, uh, agents and, um, and this portfolio company. And it draws lines from all of them that have any connectivity to any of the others of them. So it's like this brain, right? That has neural pathways that connect all the related things and never forgets and has them always on. so there's no need to provide any context when you get started. And the context is unlimited, unlike it is, even though it's big in the chats, uh, you know, in the chat versions, uh, it's just so much broader and so much more detailed and so much more accurate and always on. And so that, that's good.

But— And transferable.

Say again?

And transferable.

Local. Um, 'cause—

Local.

Yeah. Yeah.

All my, all my stuff right now is, is in folders. Right. I mean, so I've got a, I've got a, you know, folder structure.

And that's how, that's how Obsidian works too. It's same, same thing basically.

Right. Yeah. And, and it, it's folder structure and the folders are hosted in a Dropbox folder. So I mean, I, I can work across, um, I, I can work across different ones, but I know it lacks a, a level of sophistication.

You, you might ask Jonathan or, uh, or Ryan or Matt to, to Obsidianify you. It, it is, like I said, just a,— heinously ugly user interface.

So you won't—

because you're an aesthetic person, uh, even more than me, um, you won't probably want to work there all the time. Um, but, but for doing things that are like big projects like that, it's really helpful. And if you're doing code, it's definitely super, super helpful.

Yeah. My— so John, my 20-year-old who's, um, a computer science major, just finished his sophomore year. Um, he, uh, I was asking him about it and, you know, how he's using stuff and cloud. I was like, so what are you using? Cloud Code? He's like, folders. He's like, he's like, no dummy, I'm using Obsidian. Um, and so, yeah. And so I was like, all right, dude, you gotta get that set up for me. So he doesn't know it yet, but he's gonna have, um, an unpaid internship this, uh, this summer where he's—

He's like, hey, why don't you come over and stay for a few days?

Well, hey, I mean, the beautiful thing is he's back home now cuz it's, you know, it's summer as we record this, so. Yeah, he's, it's like, hey dude, get in here and knock this out. But I was encouraged by that because he does a really good job from a coding perspective of staying on the cutting edge.

Yeah.

You know, and at school they actually do encourage AI in coding. Like, but I think that there's something to, this is by the way is why I don't think computer science people and developers are gonna go away. I think they're just gonna exist every single company because what everybody's bad at. And they were bad at it before. It's why people who are bad at using AI, my guess is they probably weren't that great of managers to begin with.

They don't ask good questions.

Generally, they don't ask good questions. They don't even know what they want.

Yeah.

Like, that's, that's the thing that you and I have dealt with very often with, with clients when we're talking to them. We're like, oh, we should just build some, some apps to get this thing knocked out. Like, what's the problem? They can't even tell you what the damn problem is. And so So much of this stuff, everybody gets focused on, on the tools and the technology. We did a session for, Richard and I did a session for some clients and some prospective clients on kind of how we're using AI. And, you know, two-thirds of the people were like, oh my God, this is amazing. Some, you know, another chunk was like generally overwhelmed. They're like, I just don't get it. I'm out. I'm gonna continue burying my head in the sand. And then there was this like small minority that's like, this is too basic. I, my setup is, is way more. And I looked at these people and I went to their sites and none of these were clients, by the way. And none of them really even had businesses of any scale whatsoever. And I'm like, you call it basic, but what we're doing actually turns into money.

Yeah.

Like it actually turns into productivity. And there's so many people who are so focused on always being on the cutting edge So I'm glad we're talking about this. And I think it's fun to find out about like your Obsidian setup and how I need to do that on my own. But what I hope people are hearing right now is that you don't have to be on the cutting edge and doing the most quote unquote advanced setup or having the most advanced—

I would argue that that's, that's counterproductive. Um, so, cause even I will wait to like, I'm, I'm curious, but there's so many things that come and go and, and get immediately eradicated. Like, uh, like, uh, ClaudeBot. So it was a MoltBot that became, uh, OpenClaw. OpenClaw that became ClaudeBot, I think.

Um, the sequencing could be different, but yes.

And yeah, and, and it's like, it's like everybody's like that. And then they're like, no, you know, use Hermes and, you know, use this. And I want to know, like, as long as it's doing what I need, I'm going to have a curious ear tilted. To hear what's going on, but unless I see adoption and productivity, I'm staying away from it because you could spend 100% of your time just listening to AI news and the people that deliver it generally don't use it. They're like finger, they're, you know, finger dabblers, you know, they're like, you know, Yeah. Look at this and this and this, and I've set this all up and they can tell you about this, this crazy setup. And I, I mean, there's plenty of people that are using this, but also just like you have ChatGPT and Gemini and Claude and, you know, Perplexity and everything, um, you only need one. You really only need one. I think you do get more if you can dive into more, like you said, having the conversations, 'cause I, I use them, you know, very much that way as well. But like you, when you and I were talking, it's like you are getting all the outcomes that you want without having to go into Claude code and build.

And so why would you?

unless it's going to do something that you need that you're not getting from what you're getting right now. So I think that's the, the mindset is what are my desired outcomes and what's the least effort and complexity to get them? Not how do I set up the most banging system that has the most fail points and has the longest learning curve?

Yeah. Every, every time I've added something new, it's because I wanted to do something that my current setup couldn't do.

Yeah.

And so I let the desired outputs determine what my setup is going to be.

Yeah.

And that's what you should be doing too, talking to listeners. I know that's what you're doing as well. And the reason that you have a more advanced output is you're doing more and different things than what I'm doing.

Yeah.

And so that makes all the sense in the world.

I didn't really, I didn't do coding until I got to until I got to like, I want this function and it doesn't exist in the world. And so I know I'm going to have to build it. And I believe based on what I've seen, text-to-code has come to the point where I can do that. And I played with Replit and I played with, um, ah, there's one other one that I can't think of. I played with Replit and a couple of the others and, uh, Cursor, Cursor and Replit. And, um, then I saw Lovable and I'm like, well, the user interfaces that Lovable generates are just insane. So that was where I started, but then relatively quickly after about 5 or 6 apps, um, I actually, it was, it was really when I built the one for Scalables, you know, AI version, um, that I was like, okay, I gotta go to Claude Code because number one, I believe Lovable uses Claude Code. And so like, I don't, it's kind of like Lovable is to Claude Code as Cowork is to Claude Code. It's kind of the, the light version., you know, and more friendly. And, um, and so then I just kind of went straight to the source and, and I know why I put it off was because I hate the, I hate the terminal interface, but, um, but ultimately, yeah, I mean, you know, and, and, uh, Lovable is nice because it, it does everything for you. So you don't have to, like, you know, you, if you're doing cloud code, you really need, you know, a GitHub account to, you know, which is basically Google Docs for code., and you need a Vercel, which is basically, uh, YouTube for, uh, websites, you know, and you need to know a little bit about Supabase, which is kind of baked in. It's just Supabase is the database thing. Uh, but that's kind of baked in also to Lovable. So like, it's, you, you, you kind of flirt with those things when you're in Lovable, but when you go to Cloud Code, you really, you're going to get into all that other stuff. And it's, it, you know, when you start thinking about the analogies and say, you know, oh, that's YouTube for websites, and that's Google Docs for code, then it becomes pretty easy because it's like, oh, okay, this isn't that different from my everyday life in other things that I do. And, uh, but it does help me solve these outcomes. So I think that's a, an interesting way to look at it. I wanted to, um, also move into the whys and see if, if you had thoughts on this. So like for me, Perplexity, um, I think it used to be amazing at research. I do not find, I find that generally the deepest research that gets me the connections I want, um, that are missed by the others comes from Claude, uh, Claude's chat. Uh, which I, you know, I still use all the chats because I like to do it on my iPad. Most of what I live on is my iPad.

Yeah.

If, if fricking Apple will ever come out with a touchscreen interface for the Mac or stop making us use iOS and give us the full macOS on the iPad, My life will be complete.

But, um, but they want you to buy both. So I know, I know.

Well, I'll just do it. Let me just charge more, charge the iPad price for the Mac that has it in it. I'll pay that.

Happy to do it.

But, um, but, but I do find, so, so perplexity for me, you know, and I think a lot of this is just what, you know, which one feels good to you and which one did you get more experience at? But, um, but the reason I use Gemini is I frequently have lots of other stuff going on in the other ones that I'm waiting for. And so I can't run it again without another account or computer or something. So, so my quick answer, uh, is Gemini because of Google. Um, also anytime that I'm doing anything that has connectivity to the Google sphere, like if I'm doing research on YouTube videos, I don't think any of the others have access to YouTube like Gemini does. And, you know, and even to Gmail, you know, I, I think the deepest integration is there. And so anytime I'm using, uh, Google Docs, Google Drive, YouTube, uh, you know, any of that kind of stuff, Gmail, I'm generally doing it in the, the nepotistic. Frontrunner, you know, let's say.

Yeah.

Same thing because access to X, which I find to have a ridiculous amount of amazing information and smart people, I use Grok and it's worth the subscription to Grok just for that access that's so much deeper there. It does have different perspectives. It definitely can't access a lot of things out and is very frank about telling you, which I also like. It's like, you should run that in Gemini 'cause I don't have access to that. I'm like, okay, great. Yeah.

And then Claude because of the, the Claude code component, and I find it currently to be the deepest research.

And then ChatGPT, probably, probably like if it was, if the world was new and I did, I didn't have all of the experience I have with it and all the integrations connected and everything. Maybe I wouldn't use it, but I do find I get different perspectives and I will generally play Gemini, Grok, Claude, and ChatGPT against one another. Like you're talking about when I'm researching and I, I don't do it quite the way you do. I like that you're like, an employee told me, I say someone, I say, I say some other research I did showed this or somebody else gave me this. And then, uh, cause I'm afraid that it might be biased, you know, like, you, you know, and, and do something if it knows it came from, uh, from one of the specific AIs.

So I don't ever refer to it. Yeah, I don't see, I, I say another team member told me this.

And then, um, and then NotebookLM is kind of like a dark horse because of its, the, the way that it works and the ability for it to generate usable end content products like a podcast discussion with two people., who you can change the voices of to yours if you want and things like that. So like I'm using NotebookLM to do the AI version of Business Lunch that comes out talking about AI topics that I'm researching, um, once a week. Right? So, so basically whatever I'm playing with in AI that's kind of new and interesting, or whatever experiment I'm running, I basically paste that into NotebookLM. NotebookLM creates the Business Lunch AI podcast. and then that's, it's not AI generated in that it's doing the research. It's AI generated in that it digests the research that I give it and then, you know, prints it effectively. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and I, and unlike most AI, you know, unlike AI slop out there, it's actually based on your original ideas and research. Yeah.

I won't let AI do anything slop-wise.

Yeah. And I, and I, I think I think what we're going to see, this is a prediction, I might be wrong, but I do believe that we're going to see a rejection of a lot of the AI slop. You've already seen like YouTube start to shut down like all AI channels, uh, AI video channels and things like that.

Isn't, isn't that just the same thing as the slop that was coming from content agencies with listicles and things that didn't tell you anything? Like all, almost all of Inc Magazine to me, any article that I saw that came from Inc or Forbes, it was like, it's all garbage. It's going to be like the 5 key things you need to blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the 5 key things are not going to be helpful at all. They're going to be like, you know, think bigger, be great, build a team.

You know, oh my God. It was always bad. It's now being bad as being done at a scale the likes of which we could have never imagined. And it's why I think a lot of the platforms would have been maybe turned a blind eye a little bit to it because it was still making it some money. You know, they were still able to monetize it in different ways. Now it's just becoming so overwhelming. It's drowning out good stuff. They're losing, you know, users become because of it. They're getting lots of like complaints on scales that they haven't seen before that I believe they're going to have to start taking action. Also, I think it's easier for these platforms to tell what's AI generated versus what's human generated.

Yeah.

I just think AI is pretty good at finding other AI and the, it is a, it is a problem when it's, I think I saw this, um, thing like now officially, um, more than half of the internet is bot traffic.

Oh yeah.

Right? And so—

I think a fair amount more.

I, I, yeah, that, that's now what's the official report. I think it's more.

Yeah.

And, um, and so when all you have is everything being produced by AI and then it's being validated from a visibility, ooh, look at everybody's watching this perspective by other AI. This is when I think you're gonna start to see a real diversion in brands and the brands that choose to say, you know what, we're gonna stay human in terms of our ideas and who we're talking to. We're gonna make sure we know our people so fricking well that we can say the types of things that's gonna make them resonate, even if it doesn't get the metrics-based oomph because it didn't get all the bots. Yeah, but it got the people that we wanted to get. Now, will AI still be a part of that creative process? Yeah, of course. If it's not, you're, you're stupid if you don't. Um, it's a, it's a team member. It's a tool, but it should not be the origin of the idea, nor should it be the last stopping point. It's, it's 10-80-10. And even in that 80% where you're having AI do it, it should be heavily influenced by the training that you personally and, and your brand has given it.

Yeah. Yeah. And then I'm guessing, just to kind of cap, um, I'm guessing that the way that you are interacting with AI is not, um, well, I'll, I'll, I'll ask a question. So do you have a collection of prompts that you have, like in a vault that you pull to, to run, um, that maybe you've collected from lots of different people and stuff like that?

I mean, do I have those somewhere? Yeah. I mean, I, I probably collected them over the years.

Do you use a collection like that?

No. Yeah.

No, I don't think anybody does.

No, the days of prompting or, you know, you can just say, this is kind of what I'm looking to do. Ask me questions. Um, and let it interview you, let it talk about, uh, you know, get kind of give, give her different ideas and come up with its own, you know, quote unquote prompts.

Mine is, mine is now, uh, everything the, the, what I paste is, um, is along the lines of. Assign yourself the optimal role and create the optimal prompt to advise me with respect to, and then I'll either upload attachments or, you know, state my case or whatever. So what I'm doing is I used to assign it the role. I'm like, I should give it the context and let it pick the role, which it does brilliantly. And it's usually multiple roles. It's like this composite creature that it creates. Yeah. And then the prompt too, rather than me engineering the prompt, I'm gonna let the, thing that is best at engineering the prompt, engineer the prompt around the role with the context. And then number one, it saves me a ridiculous amount of time with prompting. Number two, it designs something I think far more extensive, like the prompts that come back are multiple pages, right? And, uh, and when I read them, because I do read them, they're amazing. Like they're way beyond anything that I would have taken the time to do. And if I had taken it, it would probably take me an hour or two to have created it. So. That I find that gets me what I want. And then I say run it and then it does it. And then I say grade it. And, um, sometimes I will say ask me questions, but frequently it will just ask me questions. Like especially Claude and ChatGPT will pull up like a, a box with multiple choice, you know, and you just—

Yeah. Ask user question.

Yeah.

Um, box.

Yeah.

Yeah.

One tool, by the way, I forgot to mention that is to me the most important tool in terms of making all the AI tools work for me, at least in my workflow, is Whisperflow.

Yeah.

I think by talking, you know this, you've been there. And, and, uh, and until I, I usually don't know what I think until I hear myself say it. And I think there's lots of people who, you know, think by writing. And I think they're great. I think by writing. Yeah, I know. Yeah, you're, you're a writer and so it benefits you really well. I struggled a lot early on with AI because everything was, was written. I'm trying to have to think out, okay, what do I think? Now that I just can turn on Whisperflow, I can hold down on the, you know, the hotkey, I can talk and I can just, and that's what I'll say is like, I'm just gonna riff on what I'm thinking.

Mm-hmm.

And then I need you to unpack it and ask me follow-up questions. Let's see if we can. And I can just vomit out nothing. Like, God, like, God knows what I mean. And sometimes it goes into all these different directions, and it's way better at distilling my own thoughts and ideas than I am. I'm like, okay, cool, let's take this one and run with it. Let's backburner this one for another thing.

Yeah.

And so it gives me this kind of talking partner and this editing partner where I used to just have to grab poor humans off the streets and be like, just stand there. Smile on your face. I don't actually, and by the way, don't talk. I just need to get this out. And so Whisperflow, I'm telling you, if you don't, um, if you struggle with typing, if you're, if you're a— Or you're dyslexic. I think by talking, it's powerful. And one of the best things I did is I, uh, I went and I said, I want, uh, I want you to interview me about my, I forget the entire kind of prompt, but basically it's like, I want you to interview me about my unique perspectives, my point of view on these things, my take on all this stuff. And just, I want you to ask me no less than 50 questions and no less than 100, including asking follow-up questions. And I had it do an extensive interview with me. And every question I answered using Whisperflow and it went in and I, and based on that, I had it create my voice profile.

Yeah.

That is now a Markdown file that goes into anything that I, that I produce. And now that's the way that AI is able to produce stuff. Again, it's not 100% like me, but it's 80, 90% me. Whereas instead of it sounding like AI.

Yeah. I did the same thing with content, basically uploaded like the context in Obsidian of every presentation I've given, you know, all the transcripts, all the videos, everything, you know, it's, it's this massive, you know, millions and millions of words database of how I think, how I talk, you know, and it, it's kind of fun to say, you know, 'cause it keeps coming back and saying, you know, well, this is a very Roland-like answer, you know, or something like that. It's, it's, you know, that's what you want. And then same thing, like for the podcast, having it have your frameworks and your things allows me to think about things for this, you know, for the podcast that will be good for both of our voices, which is kind of fun. So I think that's kind of it. I, I felt like it would be kind of cool to share how we're using it right now because I think we're doing a lot of cool things with it. I think we have some very advanced things, but I also think we have some simple things. And I think we have some, you know, maybe some thoughts that are like, you know, you should, you definitely should be using it. It doesn't matter what you use. Once you get into it, you'll probably find that you use more than one. But if you're just using it like Google, it'll still be better than Google, right? It'll get you your answer faster than the optimized version of Google. It'll be interesting to see with paid ads now coming into ChatGPT and, um, and, uh, answer engine optimization or AEO becoming more prevalent, if AI will be able to hold the ethic and the quality of answers that it gives, or if it will become the spam machine that Google eventually did. But, Um, but I think it probably will, you know, hold relatively well and, um, and, you know, be more trusted and trustworthy than Google was, but we shall see.

We shall see. If you guys, uh, honestly, just real quick, sorry, last thing. If you're CEOs, founders, this is, this is worthy of your time. Like, I mean, we spent obviously however long talking about how we're using it. I've seen a lot of CEOs and founders decide that like, oh, well, that's this technology thing. That's. That's not for me. I'm going to focus on the core business. I absolutely think that, that learning, diving into AI, learning the stuff, learning the tools, if you plan on being in business and still running your company 5, 10 years from now, this is not an optional extra. This is just becoming a part of the job. It's sort of like saying I'm a business owner, but I refuse to use email and computers and the internet. So, and I say that because we had one of our clients say that they didn't. You know, they're like, oh, I wanna, I wanna dive into AI. I just don't feel like I'm supposed to. I don't feel like it's a good use of my time. And we were there like, no, no, this, this is a phenomenal use of your time as business owners. So much of our job is to get the business out of our brains and into a format, into an asset, into an artifact that can be transferable. And AI is the mechanism that's going to make that possible. So I just wanted to kind of say that because it has come up now multiple times. With our clients.

I like it. So if you guys found this to be helpful, then we would appreciate it if you would share it and share it with other people and say, hey, this was a good podcast. We'd love to have more people listening. If you've got feedback, comments, you're using AI in a different way, you think we're stupid with what we're doing, we're missing the boat or something like that, then we kind of want to hear that too. And if you just wanna tell us about the super cool setup you had, just keep that to yourself. So, um, that's, uh, that's—

5-star review, then tell us why we suck though. Still give us a 5-star review and then the comment, tell us why we suck.

You suck. Yeah, exactly.

I love it.

All right guys, we'll see you next time on Business Lunch.

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