Adapt or Die: The Truth About AI in Business with Mike Koenigs

Founders need to embrace AI and lead from the top. You can't just dictate and say, if you don't use AI, you're not going to have a job. You need to know what's possible and what's a reasonable ask and an unreasonable ask. That's the first one is the culture of AI and the mindset. The second one is I think the world belongs to generalists, not specialists. Traditional focused white collar PhD thinking, AI can do it better. But being a generalist and being able to prototype in real time and then iterate at the speed of customer feedback, It's innovate, iterate, monetize.

Welcome to the Speakeasy Mastermind Podcast, where the real conversations happen behind closed doors with the boldest entrepreneurs, creators, and growth minds in the game. No fluff, no filters, just the raw strategies, personal stories, and mental models that move the needle. I'm Eric Berman. Now let's get into it. In today's episode, big question of the day. Am I going to lose relevance? That's a question that was posed to my good friend Mike Keenings, who's going to share what he went through, ups and downs of somebody who we've seen such a positive of, but there's some stories behind the scenes that are quite scary when Mike was in the middle of anxiety and panic attacks and how we sort of turned this all around. He's going to share some big words of wisdom he got from Dan Sullivan that basically saved his life, he thinks, as well as many of his other entrepreneurs and what he's up to today. And of course, from the amazing prognosticator, we're going to learn from Mike what are the biggest trends he sees in the world of AI. So excited to bring on stage my good friend, Mike Koenigs. All right. Welcome to another installment of Inside the Speakeasy Podcast. And I am so pumped today to have, really, when I say a good friend, this is generally a good friend that I've known for shit, Mike, how many years now? 15, 20 years now?

Yeah, we're going on 20 years.

Yeah. You say good friends when you have somebody actually that goes to your wedding in Mexico, then you know, they're a good friend. So thanks for coming, by the way. That was a fun trip.

Just sticks it out in the good times and the bad.

That's right. And speaking of Mexico, we're out live in what, Todos Santos, Mexico? Where are you at? Your second home?

Yeah, we've been living here now. This is 6 months, our 6th month, and I'll be coming back the end of this month, living in San Diego again. And then we just got word, I just got videos 3 days ago, our place in Malaga is finished. So we'll be between 3 different countries.

Damn. All right. So if anybody wants knowledge on Todos Santos, living out there, what it's like to get residency or just get a house out in Mexico. Not the main focus today. That's, we'll call that a bonus for today. But when we talk Speakeasy, the original Speakeasy, if we're going to talk in some backgrounds and some history, was really formed and the original, one of the original OG OGs was Meister Mike Keenings right here. So welcome Mike Keenings to the show. When we started our Mastermind with you and John Assaraf and Darren Hardy and a couple others, that was the beginning.

So it was good times. And think of all the cycles that we've gone through. In a lot of ways, it's when the internet was really monetizing. And now we're sitting at the edge of what is interestingly, I heard Gary Vee say the tractor moment. So it wasn't too long ago and close to 90% of the entire population of the planet was involved in food production in some sort. And now, you know, it's gone to single digit or below a single digit. And this is the tractor moment for humanity with all technology, and that is what AI is doing. And think about, there's going to be a lot of jobs that are going to be replaced and obsolete. But in the meantime, historically speaking, technology always creates a lot more jobs and opportunities, even though, you know, everyone thinks it's the end of the world. So we're living in interesting times.

Well, I want to get into that a lot because for those that don't know, you've been nicknamed the ultimate disruptosaurus with some ideas and/or the great prognosticator. I had a hard time saying that word a few times, but, um, just because we're so into, you know, you talk about early adopters and what I've always loved about you other than the amazing things you've taught me in my world and been such a great mentor and teacher is, you know, you're the guy I go to when it's like, hey, what's next or what's coming up and we got to watch what you're doing. So I got to imagine you're just like, wake up so excited every day these days, like just like excited, scared, nervous, what's going to go on, like getting ahead of everything. And I want to get into all that because I know you got so much to share on what you're thinking. But before we do that, let's just take a few minutes just going all the way back because so many people in our community, when they hear you're part of Speakeasy Mastermind, they love that. They've heard of you. They've gone to your event. They've read your books. Let's go to the beginning. Like I know you were what, but from Minnesota? I think you're out humble beginnings out in Minnesota and all the way to like, how'd you get to where you are today?

Yeah. I grew up in a little town called Eagle Lake, Minnesota. My dad's a barber. He's passed now. Oldest of 4 kids. I started working full-time the day I turned 16, but when I was 14, a neighbor loaned me an Apple II computer. So we didn't have the money to buy a computer, but I did everything I could to go up to the University of Minnesota and spend time in a computer lab. And I taught myself BASIC with the goal of writing video games someday. So if you fast forward, I started consulting and building computers, IBM PCs. I sold them. Then I started consulting and then I got a full-time job writing code for a company that basically wrote vehicle simulation software for General Motors and Freightliner, Kenworth, like trucking and cars. And then I wound up taking a job writing video games. I ended up working for one of the very first Mac game companies.

Wow.

And from there got exposed to the agency world and started a company called Digital Cafe in 1989. And we were one of the very first digital marketing agencies. Mind you, that's before or there was an internet. So I was advertising and marketing on CompuServe, Prodigy, AppleLink. The Murdochs had a platform even, they became clients, but we got known for creating video games, one of which was a CD-ROM-based game called Chex Quest that shipped in 6 million boxes of breakfast cereal sponsored by AOL.

Wow. All right.

So we sold that company in '99 to the Interpublic Group. They're a big publicly traded company. and at the time, the largest ad agency, one of the largest in the world, it was called Campbell Mathew Nestea. They're about a billion a year in billings.

Okay.

And then that was my first real exit. And then I studied copywriting and product creation and went to one of the first events called by Armand Moran called Big Seminar. That's where I met folks like Alex Mandossian, Jeff Walker, some of the original OGs.

Yep.

Started creating products.

Yep.

And, and fast forward a couple years, I started Traffic Geyser Instant Customer, had a couple partners, sold that to an investment bank.

And when did Traffic Geyser Instant Customer, that probably is what the first probably in our world that we kind of plan. That was one of your first big babies, right? That you got known for.

Yeah, it was one of the very first platforms that did content distribution and automated it. So at the time it was push button SEO. And what we got known for really got made by Frank Kern. He and I became friends when we moved to San Diego and I was working with him on some stuff. He wasn't doing video at the time, so I was doing a ton of video and I helped him with a couple of his launches. And then he said, show me Traffic Geyser. We made a mini documentary and while we were on camera, I showed him how to, we made a video. Without him having to be on camera, pushed a submit button with Traffic Geyser. It got distributed to a ton of websites and we had top 10 SEO in less than 20 minutes.

Wow.

And that became a viral video that really launched Traffic Geyser to the online marketing world. And from there it turned into multimillion-dollar launches and lots of things just blew up.

Yeah, no, I remember that. Really, I feel like, 'cause I've known you for so long, you almost became you know, for better or for worse, we'll talk about some, maybe some learns along the way. I mean, you became really addicted to creating another SaaS, another product and going through that cycle. So, I mean, share a little bit, you know, goods and bads. A few of us, you know, a lot of us in the community building products and SaaSes and yeah, what can you share?

Yeah, well, I'll tell you the ugly stuff. So right around the time, let's say at the 2008, 2009 period of time, even really 2006, 2007, that's when The Frank Kern moment happened. We really blew up and we went from making probably $75,000 to $100,000 a month in recurring revenue to we had a $9 million launch. It was really Andy Jenkins who powered that thing. I met with Andy. I had spoken at the time, uh, event called StomperNet a bunch of times. We were always one of the highest selling partners. So I'd go there and speak from the platform and 50, 60, 70% of the room would convert into buyers on a $2,000 product. Those were the days when millions of dollars were just moving all over the place. And they used to call the gang of big online marketers, the syndicate. We all kind of promoting each other. And you remember those days.

Yeah.

So here's the ugly side of that is I was putting, or we were putting, most of our money back into the company because we had to grow so fast. And what happened is this oscillation would happen where we'd create a product, do a product launch, and this is happening 3 times, sometimes 4 times a year. And back then, you'd give 50% of your revenues to your affiliate partners, right? Well, if you're financing the launch and doing product bonuses, and then we had a phone sales team. We had a lot of overhead, a lot of developers. At one point we had about 50 employees. We had to launch to survive.

Right.

And you were only as good as the last launch. And back then you had a lot of people who were in chasing shiny objects and they'd buy a product and then there'd be a heavy refund cycle and then you'd do an event to make more money. And so I'm doing an event every quarter. And, you know, anywhere from 300 to 800 people in a room, which is expensive. It's a lot of risk. It's a lot of liability, but more importantly, it's a ton of burn on your body.

Yep.

And, you know, only so many people can put up with that for years and years at a time. And so in 2008, when we had the Main Street Marketing Machines launch, it was the largest launch in online history at $9.1 million. We made $3 million in a day. Day broadcasting a show. Yeah, it was a 14-hour, like, telethon, right? And again, we were the first to do it at scale, and we had huge overhead. And then in 2012, I was diagnosed with stage 3 colorectal cancer, and it was sort of all of the lifestyle, all that stress coming to roost.

And you think a lot of that, that stress, what you felt led to a big part of that.

And then Vivian and I were going through a cycle, not getting along. And it was because I just wasn't present. I wasn't around. I was constantly stressed. I was an a-hole. You know, that happened about the same time. So, you know, put gasoline on the fire. And then around then, our first partner, there were a variety of things going on and he wanted to get paid. So the cost of dividing an equal partnership, which again was a big mistake. You know, everyone has a story when it comes to partnerships and disillusion, but it cost us millions of dollars in cash, which of course meant we didn't have cash to build and grow that business. And then if you fast forward a couple years later, my second partner wanted to exit and leave as well. And by then I was weary, tired. We had to go through, like any kind of software product, you reach a stress level and the platform starts to break. Technology wasn't working the way it used to because all the search engines started changing their algorithms so fast we couldn't keep up with it. It just, it pretty much broke me physically and mentally. And of course I have to put on the smiley face. At least that's the belief I had that everything's okay. And it wasn't okay.

Well, Mike, just to cut you off there, I mean, there's so much woven in that story and thanks for sharing because I don't think people see this side. You know, everybody see, like you said, people see the happy face and things are great. But so many times I've seen in talking to entrepreneurs and people running businesses that it's the big pissing match of, hey, we did a $9 million, we did this all. And people just think they're going to make it and they're going to crush it. But you just nailed so many things. I mean, there's A, the mental stress, the family, the, you know, when you're selling that product that you think, and I'm just recapping what you said. I mean, there's the cogs of putting together. And then if the stick rate isn't necessary there and people like aren't, especially when customers think they're going to use it and they don't use it, then they want to refund it. Like you said, you got to constantly go back to the well, make more millions. You're just chasing that down. And so the glory, it's almost like just be really careful if you're going to go down that world of building SaaS on truly, I mean, the biggest lessons I've seen from McGinnis is really watching your overhead. And too many times I see people like, oh, I'm going to make it. It was so easy. I'm just, let's just go spend the money. And they don't realize how much of a nut they have and all the problems that can come down the pipeline.

Well, I remember, 'cause it was one of the original Speakeasy Masterminds and it was Darren Hardy, John Assaraf, Bob Sterling, you, yep, Stephen, and probably a couple other guys. And we're all sitting around and you were, other than telling my parents, you were the second group I, I said, I've got cancer and I'm about to get, I'm gonna have surgery. And the advice from everyone is shut down your company. And I was at the time, I'm like, you have no idea what an unbelievable crap show that would be. 'Cause, 'cause when you've got a machine like that, yeah, the liability, the risk, you know, we pre-sold products, we've got fulfillment obligations, financial obligations, jobs. You know, if I shut it off, it'd cost millions of dollars to keep it going, cost millions of dollars. I'm between a rock and a hard place. And fortunately, Ed Rush, who is also in the Mastermind, said, I'll come in. Thank God for Ed Rush because like he kept the wheels on the bus. And Paul Colligan's another one, couple other people on the team. And during that time, there was something else that was happening from a market perspective. Amazon had come out and they were about to release what became KDP. So their self-publishing model, which disrupted publishing. So while I had cancer and I'm away for surgery, chemo, radiation, that's when I wrote my first book. And that turned into what became Publish and Profit, another product. So in a way, it was God raising his mighty hand saying things can't be the same way. and I was lucky enough to spot a market shift and not lose all the momentum that we had gained.

Right.

And, right.

Right.

It's complicated.

So you're there, you come up, so you saw, again, once again, one of your biggest skills is your ability to identify market opportunities, especially in the tech and software. And you found an opportunity. I mean, I mean, this is how crazy you are. We love you, but we're just like, Mike, what are you doing? You're there trying to take care of yourself and yet you're coming up with another product. And thank God you're well, obviously we should say that. We We're just there. I mean, we were all praying for you all the time. That was such a heavy, I mean, it's hard. I mean, you're one of the close friends I had. You hear the stories, but shit, I mean, a friend this close that actually have it. I'm so glad we made through that. And I know you went through a big battle. And again, another topic, if anybody has questions on that or has a loved one that's going through cancer, please reach out to Mike. He's written a book on it. He's talked about it a lot.

Yeah. Grab Cancer Entrepreneur. Read it before you have it or someone you love does. And I didn't have any resources as a business owner, entrepreneur, I had no one to talk to who had gone through it, who could give me good advice on how to run a business, not let your marriage fall apart, your relationship with your kids, and the mental prep and the marathon, because you lose a year and a half of your life.

Crazy. Wow. Thank you for sharing that. And that just goes to show what kind of great guy Mike is. I mean, even there, he's there trying to take care of himself. He's out there saying, Well, how am I going to serve others now that are going through the same thing I am? Because this is crap. This is shit that I'm going through here and it's not, what can I do about it? So thank you for that. Productize cancer. That's what, productize cancer. Yeah.

Yeah.

So we get through that and I want to get fairly soon to get into the world of the world today. I mean, we get through cancer, obviously you get in product launch formula. It was amazing. You crushed it on that. So you come out of cancer, you get this new product out there and you had some big success with that for a while. And I know you ran with that for a while and sold that too. Right?

Yep. That's right. You Everywhere Now was that business and we had a private buyer. And then somewhere in between we did another business called Make Market Launch It with Pam Hendrickson and Chris, who she had worked with Tony for years. And there was a period of time when she actually left the Robbins organization and just needed a break.

Yep.

Because, you know, working for a giant personality and during that time I created a couple products with Tony. And, you know, Business Mastery launched. We created a product called The New Money Masters, and that's really payback for, you know, we introduced Russell Brunson, Brendon Burchard, Jeff Walker, Janek Silver, Dean Jackson. Some of the legends participated in that product as well. And, but the point I was getting at is, you know, anytime you're around a nuke, celebrity energy, all the benefits that it has, which are profound, there's also a physical and a mental cost of just being in that energy sphere for an extended period of time and recognizing when you need a break and knowing that our greatest fear, I think, as founders is, am I going to lose relevance? It is hard to spin up that wheel. When you lose momentum and having done it a few times, having had a couple exits and realizing one day when you sell your business, you might get a check, but you've basically sold your team, a bit of your legacy, your identity, but also your momentum. And it is unbelievably hard to get your legs under you again after doing that.

That's interesting. God, we can go down that whole rabbit hole for a while. Just the mental side of selling it and what's next and all that. And as you say, you know, your next act is one of your other things you're working on. I mean, that really, I mean, you did that next. I mean, you talked about what your next act, we get into that. And then I really want to, and then digging into this wave of AI that just came and immediately I'm like, oh my God, Mike's going nuts when this is happening. I know he's so excited. So talk about your next act because you had your next act and you're doing that.

Yeah. So here's what happened with your next act. When I sold You Everywhere Now, what I don't share with a lot of people was I, on paper, life should have looked great. Inside, I was a depressed, anxious mess. I couldn't sleep. I was having anxiety and panic attacks. And some of it was at the time, it was right before I sold You Everywhere Now, the model broke and all of our paid ads quit working. I was burning a couple hundred grand a month and suddenly I had a big hole and what everything broke all at once. And I couldn't, in my heart of hearts, I didn't want to do another damned event. And you remember that time. I mean, we were working together during that time and it was rough for both of us. You know, I got to give you a ton of credit and the Branditize team for just bearing with me during the just miserably difficult times. It was like so up and down. And I just realized I wanted something to kill me. That's how depressed and sad I got. It was definitely, I'm not a suicidal guy, but I was in a dark place. And so I was in Strategic Coach and I asked Dan, what do you think I should do next? And he gave me some advice and his advice was meet with 10 founders and talk to them. And after you listen to them, you'll know exactly what you should do next. And interestingly, what I found after talking to a bunch of founders was the fear of being able to reinvent themselves after they have an exit. Or feeling completely stuck and unable to have this kind of conversation with them, which is, I am afraid I'm not going to be able to reinvent and reinnovate my way out of this, struggling with either aging teams or those who can't keep up with them and either marketing or advertising agencies that aren't getting it. And they're like, we got to do something different. So I wrote the book, Your Next Act. Which is This Is It. And the subtitle is The 6 Growth Accelerators for Creating a Business You'll Love for the Rest of Your Life. But it really spoke to founders who sold and want to do their next thing, or they're stuck and want to move on, or they realize that having a strong personal brand will multiply everything they touch for the rest of their lives.

By the way, that advice was incredible advice there. I mean, that really just turned you from being depressed into finding your next app, which ultimately is Funny, and that's the name of what you're selling there. Yeah.

And it, it was really running people through what's known as the Dan Sullivan question, which is a future-paced question. You know, Eric, if you and I were meeting here 3 years from today, what needs to happen personally and professionally for you to be happy with your progress? And magic comes out of people's mouths. It's really a deep question. And then what he calls the DOS, which is dangerous opportunities and strengths or superpowers. So. What dangers prevent you from getting there? What opportunities would you like to take advantage of? And then the third is, you know, if, if you know what your, what he calls your unique ability, I call your superpower or your zone of genius, what is it? And how do you spend most of your time there? But from there, I wrote the book and started reinventing founder entrepreneurs. And that's really what is now the Superpower Accelerator and about 80% of what I do.

Right, right. And I've heard, I mean, everybody I've talked to who's been through your program and just absolutely raves about it. Like, just like almost watch them in tears when I talk to your customers today about what you've done, which is, I mean, it's funny because as you share your story again, there's so much of your story that's interwoven into this. Again, just you having that mental, what the hell am I going to do? And it's interesting as you bring it up, that, that word, I wrote it down, you know, just, you know, am I going to lose relevance? Those other CEOs that are going through that saying, what the hell am I going to do next? I've been doing the same thing for over and over. People see me in this light being the man. Man or the woman doing this thing? You know, am I going to be bored? I can't sit around and do nothing. Where's my money coming from? All that stuff. So that's amazing. And to watch and to talk to some of your customers that have gone through that and see how excited— ultimately, almost every one of them is more excited about this than what they've been on anyway, because they've just been so— they're so over what they're at, and they're just like so excited about this thing that's inside of them they couldn't do forever. Now they finally have clarity and a coach and somebody to walk them through that path.

It's probably the most healing work I've done. And it's healing for the people going through it. And it certainly is for me every time. And we're great at it now, you know, after 7 years, we're really good. And I'm excited to say, not only did we add a new integrator who just started 2 weeks ago, who is a rock star. Your guidance when mine left, you know, you and I chatted, I called, you were the first person I said, I have a high-quality problem here. That gave me some advice and I put my want ad in front of you and then I got a good referral. And then we just hired our next person. So I have a number 2 that started today. So we have 2 integrators now. And good God, having a great COO integrator is the greatest gift a founder can ever give themselves. And it is so hard to hold yourself to a high standard to hire someone who will put you in your place and keep track of stuff. And it's expensive and it's a big risk and worth every penny.

Yep. Well, you just said the magic words there is I think we're all surrounded, especially a lot of us with the kind of personalities that often we have as entrepreneurs is the yes men, yes men and women around us. And I learned that lesson early on. I gotta give credit to, to my first big company I did. And I remember the founder CEO said, he goes, the best people want around me are the people that tell me I'm full of shit. He actually used to, I remember he used to motivate us, reward us. He literally would take out $100 bills and he says, the first person to call my shit, $100. And to say something that's not popular. And he would mentally train us to all like get rewarded. And it was really cool because I kind of learned that early on. I'm like, yes, that's what I want. That's great. You're right. And so they're going to hold you to it and I love it. So, okay. So that's a lot of what you're up to today. Plus, of course, you know, wave of AI stuff. What are you seeing today? What do you, you're also teaching it too, in addition to, to Superpower Accelerator. What else are you teaching the AI world and why, and what are you excited about?

Well, so again, I'll give you a little story because I gotta give Brad Costanzo credit for this. It was November 20th, 2022. I get a text and I had been watching, I knew OpenAI had made their launch and I was busy all day and he texts me and he goes, dude, have you tried out ChatGPT yet? And I'm like, no. And he goes, get on Zoom with me right now. Let me show you something. And he just showed me something in the interface. Cause my first impression was the same. The first time I saw text messaging on a mobile phone, when it, you had to use T9, you know, your one button, three times to get A or B or C or whatever. And I was like, text chat is stupid. And, you know, the iPhone, or it was really the BlackBerry. Is what made texting incredible and incredibly efficient. And if you had a mobile phone, you could run a company from your mobile phone from anywhere in the world because the BlackBerry network was so damn good.

Yep.

You didn't have to have voice, but if you had T9, if you have that little alphanumeric keyboard, everything changed. And so I looked at that chat window and I got the download from God and I dug into it. And literally 2 days or 3 days later, I had already built a whole presentation and I was doing a podcast episode, Capability Amplifier with Dan Sullivan. I showed Dan what I was doing and 2 days later, Peter Diamandis called me up and said, Dan told me you're doing stuff with ChatGPT. Do you think you could teach my Abundance 360 patrons generative AI? And I'm like, I sure can. You know, just, and he said, well, when can we meet? And it turned out I was going to be up in LA the next day meeting Dave Asprey for some meeting. I said, I'm actually coming up tomorrow to meet Dave. And he goes, well, why don't we meet in the afternoon? So I go up to LA, I meet with Peter, and I had put together a presentation deck with about 10 use cases. And he said, you got enough you could teach him tomorrow? And I'm like, yeah, I think I could. And he goes, well, you got 2 months, put something together really great. So That started something. And then right after I finished teaching at A360, I got a buzz from Tony's office and I had a chance to go to Tony's to teach AI to his Platinum Lions. And so that snowballed into MIT and YPO and EO and just like stacks of speaking gigs. And then we created products. We had 7 products made in 5 months. Big mistake. Big mistake. Such a moron, man. I can't help it. Oh. And, you know, started a software development thing, the training, but now it's basically speaking, the AI Accelerator course, and advice consulting. We've rolled it into all of our products. But development, I wouldn't touch AI development as a company right now, at least making products, because I think you're young will be eaten so fast. You know, you build this cool product and the next version of ChatGPT is gonna make that product obsolete, you know?

That's right. So scary.

Yeah, it's crazy. But I genuinely, the most exciting time to be alive. And I think what's happening right now with the latest generation of agents, you know, 2 weeks ago I spoke in Mexico in front of a bunch of family offices and investors and that training, like this weekend I spoke at Your Best Life with Dean Innes and that team. And I rewrote 60% of my presentation less than one week apart because that's how much changed in a week. That's how good the tools got. And I hadn't had a chance to experiment with some of them. So the curve right now, the hockey stick is happening at such an insane pace that, you know, the struggle I think we all have, every business owner is, it's my opinion that 18 to 36 months is the time you have before, now it's a race to whoever uses it and incorporates AI first in their organization.

Because it's so hard to make predictions right now because as you said, everything's obsolete in, you know, 3, 4 months and maybe 18 months. Maybe we have to do more generalizations. I mean, let's go way into the future. I mean, what are some of your predictions here?

Yeah. So here's the first prediction is more of a mindset, which is founders need to embrace AI and lead from the top. You can't just dictate and say, if you don't use AI, you're not going to have a job. You need to know what's possible and what's a reasonable ask and an unreasonable ask. That's the first one. It's the culture of AI and the mindset. The second one is, I think the world belongs to generalists, not specialists. Traditional focused white collar PhD thinking, AI can do it better. But being a generalist and being able to, first of all, prototype in real time and then iterate at the speed of customer feedback is— so it's innovate, iterate, monetize. And this is a game of first to market, realizing that, thank God we've got IP protection, but man, you've gotta have You have gotta use AI to collapse the speed of trust. Yep. And build a following of trust. The brand matters now more than ever before.

Oh, interesting.

And digital orchestration, that sounds like such a generalist statement. I gotta come up with a catchier way of framing it. But I know now, like, we've got our AI Accelerator event that we're doing as of right now in a couple weeks. And our promise, you know, I've thought a lot about like what matters most, what should you be focusing on? So there's 4 things we call them the 4 quadrants. The first one is AI is your superpower accelerator and your capability amplifier. And that just means how quickly can you use AI to get your time back? Because AI used properly is a time machine.

That's right.

And we can, you know, you think about it through the lens of I can grab a whole bunch of data and information and produce something meaningful. In a matter of seconds or minutes, faster than I could communicate a vision or delegate it to a human.

That's right. That's right.

So that is a time machine.

I'm just telling people like that I see, and, you know, two notes off that is, you know, I'm nowhere near the world of you are as a tech early, but to me, I'm just sort of, you know, I see things and I just start acting on it like that. And just, I'm just like, just start, just start thinking, start making a habit of like, can I use AI for this? Can I, like, just ask that question. And get in the habit. I always say, if nothing else, start with personal shit. Just start with your own research, things you're doing. Like, if you can't think of business, like, like whatever it is, you'll start to get in the habit of it. Um, and what I did with my company recently, because we sort of said, all right, let's use today to share what you're using. I said, more importantly, if you feel like you're not running efficient, bring up what you're doing as a workflow. And I bet somebody else on the team can help you because there's always going to be people at different levels in your company. And all of a sudden you're going to have this little level of people that might have been that, you know, maybe not at the higher level of pay are going to help the others out. And it's going to be really interesting where those that step up and learn are going to be really valuable, but keep going on number 2.

Yeah. So, just one little thumb note, you know, it wasn't too long ago you'd say, well, just Google it or look it up and learn how to do it on YouTube. Now resourcefulness and grit are more important than ever before. Unresourceful people have no place in any position in any business any longer because you can learn how to do anything and refine your thinking with the help of AI. You know what was standing in the way of getting my great integrator? I didn't know how to write a great ad for a great integrator. So I had ChatGPT do it. I had a draft in about 10 minutes and I just described everything that I wish I had and what I wanted and needed, and it made a really good ad and the headline that it gave it was searching for a unicorn. Now, both people who are now have jobs, both said, I'm the unicorn you're looking for. So that's number one. Number two is your one-person marketing team. Now, I don't necessarily mean that literally, but here's what it does mean is you can ask ChatGPT, you can basically, you know, a command, it'll be as simple as I want you to study my websites and all my content, do deep research. And create a style guide that I can give to ChatGPT to write in my voice. Boom.

Right.

Do the same thing with your brand. Then you can go out and have it search for your ICP, your ideal customer profile. And then you can go and say, now write copy. Now give me, you know, look at my top 10 competitors and tell me what they're doing with their copy and content on their websites. And then review my website and tell me how I can improve it and write updated copy in my voice for my ideal customer profile. It's compound prompt. GenSpark or Manus can do that for you with one compound prompt and be done in 10 to 20 minutes.

Right.

So, and I think where AI has its place right now, it still can't polish a turd and it still produces a lot of turds. Humans need to decide what's good, but at least your one-person marketing team can come up with 4 or 5 really good ideas that you can synthesize. And instead of going back and forth with the creative team over a period of 3 weeks, You can go back and forth once in 3 hours or 3 days.

That's right.

That is where, that's the state of things at this moment. The third quadrant is in increasing, I call it your category of one, but it's making your brand the best, the only, and the most expensive. So it's finding higher quality customers who pay you more and elevating the status and authority of your product or service. It's packaging, positioning, messaging. So as an example, we used it recently to create several marketing campaigns that have been the best and most lucrative campaigns in our history. One was a special report that Bob Sterling gave me. So it's based on some of his content and it's the customer focused.

This is the one he shared at your house that one time? That, that, wow. That's great. Yeah.

So Bob shared this report.

Use the AI Knowledge Hub to search Bob Serling in the AI Knowledge Base to figure out what we're talking about here.

Customer-Driven Framework. That's what it is. He gave me the report and I looked at that and I'm like, man, I'd love to write this report, but it's 3 weeks of labor. It would suck. So what I did, and I did this with Bob's acknowledgment, you know, I get full credit and as I always do. And I took a webinar that we had done that converted really well. And it was using another campaign we had created called the $1,000 Cup of Coffee. So, you know, when you get someone who says, hey Eric, can I pick your brain? I'll be like, well, you spend a lot of time picking your brain and if you don't pay, you don't pay attention. And you want people to value the time and also come with an outcome, a goal, and a result. So now if they've got $1,000 invested to spend 30 minutes with you, they sure as hell want to get value out of that conversation. You're going to just talk and they're not going to take notes and they're not going to execute. So, and I got that idea from an interview that Joe Polish did with Ron Lynch. So I took that interview and I basically said, my name is Mike Koenigs. Here's what I'm selling. Make a $1,000 cup of coffee for me. And that became the first iteration in about 20 minutes. My copywriter polished it, we launched it, produced a whole bunch of clients right away, and that led into 6-figure conversions with one call. So then I made a webinar out of that and I applied the customer-driven framework to it to build a $37 guide, self-liquidating offer. Boom, turn that around. Again, AI didn't do all of it, but it lifted the first 65%. So the point of this is how do you elevate your status, your authority while you use it? Use AI to do that, and you wanna be focused on your top 2% of your best customers and get more like them.

Right.

Or something that's 3 to 10 times more money. All right. And then the last state is using agents to scale without adding more people. So more money, less people. Okay. And at this moment that we're speaking, Manus.im, GenSpark, Blackbox.ai are 3 of the best agentic technologies. And you know, right behind that are all the other big 800-pound gorillas trying to figure this out as well. But I think being agnostic to the tools is the other secret.

Yep. You just have to be able to, whatever tool it is, whatever you see out there, whatever you hear, you just gotta, yeah, exactly. As long as it does the output. It's insane. I mean, the level of productivity, I'm just thinking for you, especially with all these ideas in your head, this has just gotta be just candy store for you right now. The things you could do and create. At the speed and quality? You know, what are you afraid of? I guess, again, what's your fear right now?

Yeah. Well, there's some existential threats I see right now. So if you look at what happened with phones and kids, and then you mix the lockdown with that, Vivian right now is working on a platform called the Bad Mom Podcast and Project Grit with her foundation. That's her latest thing, and she's really just exploring mental health with young people. So in the past, she's been there doing her humanitarian work with just like my child foundation on the ground in Uganda and India, to some degree in the U.S. But she's like, there's a global epidemic right now with not just young people, but anyone who's been made anxious as a result of putting heroin in the hands of our children in the form of an iPhone. Compare myself to someone else, getting in an echo chamber's multiplication of things that aren't true. It's dangerous. So I think AI has the potential to multiply stupid at an epidemic level and multiply a lack of resourcefulness. And also in this moment right now that we live in, when it's like, I don't know if there's going to be a job for me. I don't know, like, where do I have a place here? Where do I have, value. And it's hard to see that if you're a young person, especially if you're wounded with mental health issues already. Now, to those who are resourceful, who have grit, this is the greatest moment ever when you've not only have a time machine, but you've got a tool that can teach you anything, make you faster at everything, know everything, and make something. Without time, capability, money, or geolocation, you know, it doesn't matter what color you are, what language you speak, you can speak everything.

Right.

But to live in a world of abundance, I think is hard for humans when you're in a state of shock by something so infinite. Yeah. And so I think that's the existential concern I have isn't for me, but for the next generation to see this as the tractor moment when a lot of people are worried that they're not going to have jobs because they can't work in fields doing inhumane work in inhumane conditions, you know, wearing out their joints and their eyes and dust and chemicals and whatever else. And it's like, this is really abundant. Yet where do I fit? So that's my long-winded short answer, but I spent a lot of time thinking about it and talking to a lot of parents and adults about this topic. So.

No, you're dead on. I think about this with my two little ones too. It's, it is the biggest fear I think about too, is just how, you know, and is there going to turn into laziness for certain people who just depend on the machine to go talk to it and getting, I mean, are they going to be able to have, is the society just, you know, getting out of the house and talking to people versus your robot? I mean, all these things are just, who the hell knows where it's going to go. But thank you for sharing all that and a lot more. I know we're a little bit over time. One thing I wanted to talk to you and I took a lot of your time, I should say, going all day with you, but I want to be respectful. I want to have a, how we could serve you. You got a lot going on right now. The community loves you. They hear about you. What's the biggest thing? Like if somebody wanted to, you know, work with you, I know you have a couple options, one, you know, real high ticket for the one we talked about, another one more on the AI side. What's the kind of the easiest way or?

I'll start with some giveaways first because the easiest way to digest this and get in the mindset is with some of my content. So I'll share my screen, but I'll also give you a couple of goodies. Okay. One of them is my book, AI Accelerator, for anyone who doesn't have it. It's just at aiaccelerator.com/free. So that's the book, the downloadable book. And my son Zach actually took the book and made an AI Mike version of the book, which you can get at mikekoenigs.com/ai-podcast. So we took the book, turned it into an audiobook, and it's a podcast. So you don't even have to go on Audible to get it. And then Your Next Act, which you can get at, really it's just mikekainigs.com/free. But if you're watching this, you can scan the QR code. That's just the book book. And then the audiobook of Your Next Act is at mikekainigs.com/YNAPC, which is Your Next Act Podcast is what that stands for. Beyond that, if someone wants to learn more and, work together, what I do is head over to superpoweraccelerator.com. There's a little 11-minute video that talks about working together. It describes what we produce. It's basically, I always say it's 3 hours, 3 days, 3 months, but we spend 3 days in person together creating your next act based around your superpower and building the pitch, the offer, all the content, the videos. We've had people walk away and close $1 million worth of business that weekend.

And they get to go either to San Diego or are you doing those in Mexico now?

In Mexico now. Yeah. San Diego, Mexico, and soon Málaga, Spain. We'll meet there, spend 3 days in person manufacturing whatever your better future self needs to be or can be or should be.

I love it. I love it. Well, anything, any last words of wisdom for the audience today? I mean, we've covered a lot, so appreciate all that.

Yeah. Resourceful children with grit, man, cut them off fast and like learn history. I think history and journalism. I look forward to if college is going to continue, it should be dedicated to civics, civility, and the liberal arts and learn how to play a damned real instrument and a DJ. A DJ deck is not an instrument. Pianos have been like, no one wants a piano anymore. They're being disposed of, dismantled, just abandoned. As soon as there are very few of them, it's going to make a comeback. And I guarantee you the next kids, like your kids' generation, are going to be enthralled in real drums and have a real audience with no phones, no technology, no AI. And I love AI music. You know, I like, I don't mind EDM, But it's not real music.

And our good friend, when you and I had a dinner about a month ago over our good friend Roland Frazier's house, all those keyboards he has that I like, oh my gosh, I mean, the values of that's going to go up and down.

Synthesizer collection I know of is Roland Frazier, a man with a beautiful addiction.

It was cool. It was cool. And on that note, Mike, thank you so much for your time and always a pleasure and, and love you, brother. Thank you so much.

Same. Love you too. Thanks.

And that's a wrap from the Speakeasy Mastermind Mastermind Podcast. If something sparked for you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it, review it, and pass it to the one person who needs to hear this right now. Want in on the real mastermind? Tap the link in the show notes to apply. Until next time, keep scaling, stay sharp, and don't be the smartest one in the room.