How to Survive and Thrive in The AI Era

So I built an AI using Delphi. So I built one that has got like 3 million of my words, so it knows me really well. So I can go to it and I can say, list all my blind spots as an entrepreneur and all my toxic traits that are keeping me from succeeding. And I've programmed it to talk to me as the idealized version of me, let's say 5 years in the future, who's overcome everything. I achieved all this stuff. And when it talks to me, it says, oh, Brad, well, here's the things that are keeping you from becoming me right now. And then I say, now, great. Now, can you give me some strategies to overcome those? And it's like, yep, here, do this. And it actually becomes my own personal personal coach. So I'm thinking first, like, I don't have to figure this out. Like, let it be my mentor, then let it be my assistant. And then the other part is let it be the critic.

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.

Hello.

In today's episode, I am so pumped to bring on a good friend of over 10+ years. He also is in the San Diego Mastermind group with me. His name is Brad Costanzo, definitely a big AI guru and consultant. And we're going to talk a little bit today about, for those of you that are struggling with how to prioritize this madness of AI, what's going on out there. And Brad's going to share today his 5 buckets framework. To really help you figure out what to do in any situation within the AI world. It's really exciting. He's going to talk about his productivity paradox. I asked him to get a little bit into some of the trends that he's seeing. He's studying AI all the time and he's also on stages quite a bit doing a lot of high-end consulting. And I want— and I dug in a little bit into what are the top things that his clients are asking him? Where do they need the help right now these days? What should we all be looking for? And then we ended with Brad dropping some of his favorite tools. So I'm so excited today to bring you Welcome Brad Costanzo. All right. I'm so excited to bring on as one of our first early guests to the Speakeasy Mastermind podcast, Mr. Brad Costanzo. First of all, I'm glad to bring on somebody who I've known for so long because this is one of our early podcasts. And as I make fools of myself and try to figure this podcast world out as a host, you'll be hopefully a little bit kind to me. For those that aren't watching, we already had our first technical hiccup in that we forgot to record in the first call. So I should probably not admit that, but I'm admitting it. And Sammy, our producer backstage, is probably laughing at me for saying that. He may or may not cut this out. We'll see it. But anyway, back onto the podcast and while we're here, you know, I think, you know, it's appropriate as we lean into the podcast world. And I was thinking about once again, bringing on somebody who will be somewhat kind to me, but also somebody that I feel will have some great stuff to talk about. You know, we're all right now dealing in the world of AI, cutting edge. And, you know, you've always been that guy I've gone to when it comes to rolling up your sleeves, you know, down and dirty entrepreneur, which is really what we're trying to attract in the community, right? Is that entrepreneur that's still excited, still hungry to learn the latest and greatest. They're in the tools, they're in the trenches still. And that reminds me so much of you. And, you know, I want to talk a little bit today as we, you know, get through this of, you know, you're seeing so much, you are the early adopter. You know, for those that don't know Brad, I've known him for God, 15 plus years. You know, brought him in, he's a hired gun that I bring in to help me out, uh, some of my clients when, We just need to get to the latest and greatest and high-level thinking and strategy and do things effectively and efficiently. Brad's kind of that cutting edge and he'll share a little bit of that as well. But as we get into today, like, you know, you and I were even talking at our San Diego Mastermind that we had last week about just some of the— I look at you, I'm like, oh my God, the FOMO and the things going on so fast. And how do you stay focused? And you kind of looked at me like those eyes, like, Eric, I'm still struggling like every day. Like that's one of the biggest challenges. And I think we're all probably going through that. And you know, I think certainly today, even half the stuff you talk about, you know, if we get too tactical is going to be obsolete, obviously. So, you know, I'd love for you to share a little bit today as we get into it about even some takeaways that's more general, high level that, you know, frameworks like people can kind of go through the things that you're doing right now today to help you even realize like, you know, how do you stay focused knowing that this trend you just looked at today might be gone? Yeah. Share some of those techniques, but yeah, don't mind, take a minute just to, you know, introduce yourself, give a little of your background and let's jump into it.

Yeah, you bet. And thanks for having me on here. This is great. Like you said, you know, we've known each other for so long. A lot of times, you know, a host and a co-host, they're asking questions 'cause they're trying to get to know the person. But you and I have been friends and colleagues for a long time. But you know, for those who don't know me, you know, I'm an AI guy now, but I became an accidental expert, I think, because I'm a, I love to tinker and I'm ADD and I love the shiny objects. I'll get into not only, you know, what I'm doing in the world of AI and what I'm seeing, but I'll also share a really great framework that I think will help simplify some of the overwhelm and what I call toolphoria for a lot of folks. Just stay with me. But I think it's important to know that, you know, where I come from and, you know, for the past, I'd say 20 years, I've been really a serial entrepreneur and started businesses very much in the digital marketing and publishing space. You know, built a couple, had a couple of small exits, not anything where I created FU money and, uh, not doing this on a yacht, not yet. But so, you know, in my background, I'm a, I very much am a quick start and I'm one of those, I guess, visionary entrepreneurs. My weakness is probably follow-through and organization, and that entrepreneurial ADD has oftentimes been a weakness of mine, and it's kind of kept me unfocused. But interestingly, when AI exploded, like, I've been using AI tools in marketing for a while, but then when it exploded, I was actually, you know, embedded at Branditize. We're really working with Branditize agency and clients and whatnot. And when it created all of these opportunities to start use it, You know, it was this shiny object that you couldn't afford to ignore. And luckily we had so many clients I could start to apply it and get real tactical immediate benefits right away. And by doing that, I just started to solve problems and I did it with, you know, I'm not a tech guy. I'm looking at outcomes and like, how do we just create something? I don't care what tool we use. Does it move the needle and does it do it quickly? And as you know, we started to have a lot of success. One thing led to the next clients. Saw work that I was doing. They referred me to other people. Pretty soon I'm on stages and talking about AI. And that, I guess, that entrepreneurial ADD or the shiny object syndrome chasing, I was now chasing those objects you can't afford to ignore and learning it quickly. The beautiful part about AI, as everybody who started to play with it understands, is you start, you understand it quickly if you start to play with it and eff around and figure it out. It starts to come quickly. It's not like learning a new language.

And I agree with you on that because even myself, I'm not a, I observe and see what's going on, but I'm not, uh, I mean, we were even joking about me hitting, forgetting to hit the record button of this podcast the first time around, but just getting in there and tinkering and getting a habit. I think it always works with a habit, like just forcing yourself to just start playing and then you can get to the level you're playing. That's a whole different world. But yeah, I mean, totally agree.

Play is the key here. I mean, I am an AI expert and it's only because I play more with it than other people do. And I've focused that, but I've also found in working now with, you know, dozens of clients and hundreds of students in my coaching program on there. But in my background is I do run a coaching program for AI, but I also do one-on-one implementation consulting and I get my hands dirty. And you know, one of the biggest problems that I've seen that every single entrepreneur has, especially if you're an entrepreneur and you're running the business and you don't have time to be the tinkerer and the doer, is they know they have to do it. They know it's not optional. They have to reinvent the way they're working and the things they're doing. but what I mentioned this before, it's overwhelming in how many areas it feels like AI can help. And there's so many tools and 10 new tools a day. I call it toolphoria. You get really excited about what it can be done, and then you could go down chasing this rabbit, but then you realize you're hunting a rabbit that's not gonna put food on your table. Like there's a lot of noise and a little bit of signal. And in working with people, it took me about a year to create this, but I realized that AI only does 5 things, 5 areas. I call 'em buckets. And these are buckets of your business that once you realize what they do, it allows you to kind of slow down and go, Okay, well, which of these areas do I need the most help with?

And before you go into your buckets, I was just gonna say I relate to what you said because, you know, being the not as sophisticated as early adopter of the AI, you know, I'm sitting literally and I was in a conversation with my team today and we were sitting there saying, we gotta have periodic meetings. We're all there, whether it's sharing AI or digging in to each other's areas and figuring out how to coach them because we tend to assume everybody's just gonna figure it on their own. But they don't know how Brad's on their team leading each department. So the reality is if you just let it go on its own, it's not going to happen. And so like, I'm like, no, we got to set a time, you know, a couple hours. I don't care once a month or, you know, versus like you want to go once a quarter. Like, no, it's too late. You know, once a month, let's just get together. And if we're putting all our brains on one department just to help them focus, you know, it's going to help improve. Everything's going to be improved. But as you said, it comes from the fear I'm running of running that, knowing that I'm saying, I'm watching the world doing all these things, yet I don't have confidence my own team is going out there doing the most optimal. It's almost like, should I hire AI consultant to come into my company and do the things? Like, well, let's try it first. But that's kind of the thoughts going through our head.

Absolutely. I'll actually bring up something. Remind me if I want to get to these 5 buckets, but then remind me if I don't bring up the productivity paradox, because that's really important, especially for somebody like you or anybody who has a lot of employees.

Let's get in the bucket. So I want to hear that because as we said, that's something that everybody can use no matter No matter, you know, whatever the trend is, we can still get into that.

Yeah. And great. And then the way I'll preface it with the way you use this is how you find the needle-moving projects and filter out the signal from the noise. So AI only does 5 things that it helps you think, create, communicate, analyze, or automate. And I'll go into all of those. So the first bucket and the second bucket is where 90% of the people are playing right now. Thinking, well, what is thinking? It's researching, ideating, brainstorming, coming up with new ideas, you're just like, let me think about this. Like instead of going to somebody else, also learning, you can learn almost any skill right now using AI. And I don't wanna belabor this, but you know, you can create entire strategies. And that's what I think, like strategy and thinking, that's the thinking bucket. The next bucket is creating. Now it can create a heck of a lot of things, but those things it creates all are either text, images, audios, videos, or combinations of them. You can create an entire video from images with text and subcaptions and you name it. So you can create combinations of those things or derivatives of them. For instance, after this show goes live, your producer will most likely drop this audio into a tool which will analyze it, create all the show notes of it, maybe some clips and do all this where it used to take him probably hundreds or thousands of dollars for every episode and now do it in a matter of fraction of money in a matter of minutes. So thinking and creating. Those are where most people play, but then the next 3 buckets are really important. And I think where a lot of the outcome comes communicating, well, who do we wanna communicate with? We wanna communicate with leads and we wanna communicate with customers and do customer service and stakeholders and shareholders and employees. Well, how do you use AI to communicate? Well, there's phone agents, like phone AI. It's like a 24/7 virtual assistant. I build these for some of my clients where it's always on. It can make inbound outbound calls. It can take information, it can qualify leads, it can, send it to your CRM and even live transfer to a person. Or it can be a chatbot on your website, giving information, taking leads, or SMS. Like, I love using text messages for reactivating past clients or creating what we call speed to lead. The minute a lead comes in, start texting with them and get them into action right away. The communication bucket to me is the closest to the cash register. So I love working with people who want to start talking to our people right away. The next bucket is analyzing.

I can relate to what you said. I think and create, but I feel like I get stalled at the communicate part. It's almost like this scary thing of, okay, now AI is going to be actually communicating in my voice to my customers and I lose control of that. And I don't know, like, as you're consulting, we'll get back to the buckets, but when you consult, do you sense a lot of that or is AI alone in feeling that pain right there?

No, no. And it's a lot of apprehension because it has to be, if you're going to be talking to your leads and prospects and clients, like AI can have a brain of its own and hallucinates and you have to be really careful because it needs to be brand representative. You don't want it to do any damage. So I always start simple, like you're giving them basic information about this stuff and you're trying to get them to book an appointment with a human. Those are some of the best ways, like answer questions, qualify leads, book appointments. And the nice part is that people are used to dealing with some version of AI. I mean, we've had with the phone, you know, you call to make a reservation, airline reservation. It's like, press 1 for this, press 2 for that. It's a dumb bot. We're used to dealing with those. This is just a smart version of it. And the more that we use it, the more forgiveness we give. But I love working with AI agents 'cause it just gets me what I want and I don't have to deal with an idiot. And we all deal with idiots all the time, right? That analyzing bucket is important because you can do quantitative analysis like spreadsheets and data. You can be a data scientist, upload a whole bunch of stuff and then find stories in the data without spending thousands of dollars for actual data scientist and run all types of analysis. Once more, I'll put up like contracts with clients and say, hey, well find the holes in this or find what I need to understand. But then there's the qualitative analysis. So I'll, have it analyze, for instance, sales copy or, you know, and find areas that are confusing and unbelievable or boring and find ways to correct it. Or we'll take transcripts from salespeople and upload those and find the patterns that they're doing really well and then create almost like training materials from what the best salespeople are naturally doing.

Nice.

Then the last bucket is maybe the widest, which is automating, or sometimes we call this agentic. That's the big word in AI is an agent. How do we string together a list of like a trigger and then multiple actions? Automations. Most entrepreneurs are used to using Zapier or Make to just create automation, but now you can make these really smart. So, and for instance, I have a client, you know, when people opt in or apply to work with them, they answer a handful of questions. Well, once they answer those, it gets sent to, in essence, an OpenAI prompt that analyzes what they said and it analyzes them based on the criteria of their ideal client. And then it updates the CRM with the lead score. On a scale of like 1 to 100, and it gives you rationale why. So now when those people are coming in, you know, it even does background research.

It's really, really cool.

So the way you use this is number 1, look at where you're spending the most time, which bucket takes your most time, money, and bandwidth. Are you spending a lot of time ideating and strategizing or creating content? Most people are. Are your salespeople spending a lot of time talking to dead leads or unqualified leads? And you just gotta audit like, What's the biggest bottleneck? And that brings me to the next big overarching piece of advice is don't chase the novelty, new fun stuff first. Solve the existing problems. Everybody wants to do the fun stuff, but get things off your plate so that you can do the fun stuff. I have to tell my clients this all the time because they're like, oh, I saw I can do this and this. I'm like, yeah, what's the biggest headache right now? And they tell me something else. Like, well, let's solve that first.

So you got me thinking here. So as you go through this and I want to ask you a question on this, basically I talk about the genius matrix a lot with various entrepreneurs. Stay in the first quadrant, the things that you absolutely love to do you're good at and get the stuff in the other quadrant, the fourth, which is stuff that you're not good at that you hate to do. Yet everything should be delegated. So like, there's two lines of thinking. Like, I'm starting to use AI a little bit on that quadrant 4, the shit that I hate to do that I just like, I notice is on my to-do list every day for like 3 weeks straight. I'm like, oh, okay. Now, and then as soon as I remember, like, oh, let me try to go AI for this. It's like, wow, magic. And I got all this energy because I'm like, shit, this task I would never want to do and I keep putting off all of a sudden got there. Now, do you recommend A, you know, that, but also would you sort of say, well, go to your quadrant 1, the stuff that you love to do and try to go faster because you know you're doing a prompting, or would you say start the shit that you hate to do?

I say start the shit you hate to do because that stuff you hate to do, like you, I always say, if you have to do it and hate to do it, get it off your plate because that hate to do it, that brings down your creative juices for everything else.

Totally.

This brings up like a general concept, like, you know, we say double down on your strengths, don't, you know, outsource your weaknesses, but there's also the saying that You know, you're only as strong as your weakest link. So if you can fix that weak link or strengthen it or something else, it frees up the bandwidth for the other things, especially now when it becomes easier and easier. Yeah. And if you do not know how to get that off of your plate with AI, you can, you know, hire somebody like myself to come in and try to do it. Or you can also go to AI and have it be your mentor and say, look, these are the things I'm dealing with. Can you gimme some strategies to get this off my plate? How can I use AI? You know, use AI as your mentor first and then use it as your assistant.

You make it, damn you, you make it sound so simple. I wish I did that. It's like some of the simplest questions and prompts. And that's what I love about YouTube, Brad, is some of the prompts you have are brilliant, uh, that I've seen out there. And it's just like, you hear them and just want to bang your head against the wall. I'm like, why didn't I think about that? Yeah. Just ask the basic question, but it's going back to just playing, you know, getting in there and playing around and just, and go AI first.

Like the first question is like ask, Could AI help me with this? And I do it all the time. Like I'm sitting there racking my brain going, how the hell do I do this? I go, wait a minute, why don't I just ask AI? And then, so I've built myself, like my best coach right now is me in the future. So I've built an AI using Delphi, which you're familiar with. So I built one that has got like 3 million of my words and some other stuff that, so it knows me really well. So I can go to it and I can say, list all my blind spots as an entrepreneur and all my toxic traits that are keeping me from succeeding. and I've programmed it to talk to me as the idealized version of me, let's say 5 years in the future, who's overcome everything. I achieved all this stuff. And when it talks to me, it says, oh, Brad, well, here's the things that are keeping you from becoming me right now. And then I say, now, great. Now can you give me some strategies to overcome those? And it's like, yep, here, do this. And it actually becomes my own personal coach. So I'm thinking first, like, I don't have to figure this out. Like, let it be my mentor, then let it be my assistant. and then the other part is let it be the critic. So for instance, teach me how to write a viral blog post. Like what are all the elements? And it's like, well, you have to have the hook and the intro and this. I go, great, now write it for me as my assistant. And then once it's done, I say, go great. Now critique that and tell me what you missed and how to make it better. I call this the Magma Method.

Seems a little scary. It's like a little vulnerable to yourself to actually stare at the mirror and ask your future self what's wrong with you. Do all these things. I mean, how did that feel when you did that?

It actually nailed it. So it felt kind of good. But like I asked, what are my biggest blind spots and limiting beliefs holding me back from realizing my true potential? I'll rattle off a couple. It says, you know, the illusion of control. You have a deep belief if you just push harder, think smarter, and control every variable, you can bend reality to your will. But it's a trap. It binds you to the power of surrender, letting go, avoidance of discomfort, the lone wolf syndrome, the fear of being truly seen, perfectionism in disguise. Underestimating the power of structure, the need for validation, the belief that you're not ready yet. And it gives me like 10 more. And then I said, yeah, so can you give me some ways to get over that? And it said, sure. So here's an example. The lone wolf syndrome. It says strategy, build a who, not how mindset. I started, and it goes, I started asking myself, who can help me achieve this faster or better than I can alone? And then it gave me another tip. Now that's pretty self-explanatory, but it's a good reminder. And when it's you talking to yourself, you're kind of like, oh, this is maybe good advice.

Let me turn, first of all, I have 2 more of the things I wanna talk about. And then one did you say, don't remind you about the product—

Productivity paradox.

Productivity paradox. Yeah.

Cool. This is specifically for people who have employees and you're trying to create a culture of innovation. So if you reward, if you enable your employees to get a lot more done with AI, which is as an entrepreneur, that's what we want. I want my copywriter to be able to write 10 times more copy, 10 times quicker. Cool. And if I give him those tools and then he does that and I reward him like 10 times more projects, they're gonna revolt. They're gonna sandbag it. And they're, even though they're gonna get it done, quicker, they're gonna act like they didn't. And because they don't just want to be like Lucille Ball on the, uh, chocolate. I may be dating myself on that. You remember that scene in from I Love Lucy and she's just like shoving chocolate in her mouth and it's coming faster and like, this sucks. Right. So you have to reward employees with better, deeper, or more creative work that they enjoy as opposed to just saying, I know you're able to get this done 10 times quicker. Here's 10 times more work. Like, no, get it done quicker. And then that free time, work on something you think that will really benefit the company, etc., because they will. And I've seen it happen and I've actually done this with other clients in the past where I was like, man, I was able to get this done way too quick. I'm not going to tell them. I'm just going to stretch this out a little bit because I don't want them to just give me more.

Yeah.

So, but we don't think about that is like identify, sit down with your team and say, what would— if you didn't have this stuff on your plate that you have to do, but you could work on some stuff at the company that would be really impactful, what would you do? You know, what would you bring to the table? They may have some great ideas.

Oh, I love that. Not only that, I think what you're reminding me, well, two things I like about that is, right, it's easy for us entrepreneurs running companies saying efficiency. All right. We got like 10x production.

Go baby.

Let's just keep going. Let's keep going. And I think you're right. They're going to, you know, it's interesting the resentment you might feel, but I think in that message you're also getting to is that it's more important now you have these employees that are like, all of a sudden, they're maybe your mid-level or low-level employee that happens to be this AI superstar. And you give them the opportunity to shine and quote, rise up in the ranks by teaching and coaching other people, especially these younger people that are living in this world. I mean, what a cool opportunity to get somebody to become a hero. Yes. And just, you know, help the whole company out.

Well, and you've always been great. Like I watch you, you're a great culture builder at the company and you like pay a lot of attention to the people and making sure that everybody feels appreciated and is empowered, et cetera. And I think that's something that, you know, could really help you. It just, and, but also remember just 'cause they can get it done faster and cheaper and less expensive. Don't incentivize them with more work because it's exhausting. Like, just because I can doesn't mean I want to. Like, cool. Like, I've just got this off my plate. Now let me eat some dessert. That ends up working when I'm working with larger companies. Like, I make sure I bring that up. Like, don't just get your people more stuff.

So speaking of working with other companies, you know, I got a couple more things I want to ask you. One is, you know, I'm curious, what is a commonality you're seeing? I mean, you're doing a lot of consulting. You're talking to a lot of companies. You might be on a stage and people come talking to you and they say, hey, can you help me with this? What would you say the top 1 or 2 things that you're finding out there that most companies who may not be as cutting edge, or even if they're basic in the game, what are you seeing out there and how are you helping them the most?

So number 1 is prioritizing projects, cuz they realize that there's a lot of things they can do.

Okay.

So we go, all right, well, let's find the needle movers and ignore everything else. And something you're familiar with is, you know, ICE framework, which is take all the ideas and then score them.

Impact, confidence, and effort is I feel.

Exactly. And then, you know, you're quantitatively scoring them and then you're going through and you're saying, all right, well, these are the ones I should do first. So that removes a little bit of pressure and they go, okay, cool. That's not the number one thing. Cause they realize there's a lot they can do. The communication bucket and the creating bucket are probably the two biggest. Everybody wants to create more content, better content, sales copy, et cetera. But then also communicating with their clients. They want to make it more efficient. They realize they need, you know, speed to lead and they need to talk to people in a more efficient way. I think those are the two biggest needs, but more than anything, it's still so new. They just want to know what's possible. What can I do and what should I do? What will move the needle? And then they also want to future-proof themselves. They don't want to get so far behind, so they need to have a good understanding and a way to kind of understand what's possible. And that's really half the battle. You have to know what's possible first to go, okay, well, maybe I can do this now. Like, I didn't even know ChatGPT could do XYZ now. Yeah. Every week there's a new capability.

So let's talk about two more questions and then, uh, we wrap. And we have some, definitely a lot of listeners and other entrepreneurs in our community who are experts and maybe they don't get a lot of stage time. So I wanna just kind of pivot a little bit. How was your emotion? Were you scared to get on the stages? How do you feel when you're up there in a, I, I've seen you in a couple big crowds, huge events. How do you get through that?

I'm weird. I like the attention and validation. Like I actually, I get nervous about public speaking because I get anxious, like excited. Like I like to get up and talk. I'm good at it and it's Like, I don't get performance anxiety, I get excitement.

Does your future self say you're good at it?

Yeah, he does. I mean, I also studied, you know, or you remember Sean Stephenson, one of the best public speakers on the planet. He was a close friend and my speaking mentor. Funny enough, you know, he passed away in 2019. Every time I get on stage, I look down and I see Sean, like, in his wheelchair there looking up at me, like, give me a thumbs up. And it kind of inspires me to get up. But it's also one of the things, like, I've gotten more nervous in the past when I've spoken, not about AI, but I like AI so much, it feels like I'm getting up and giving a giant game of show and tell. I get to razzle dazzle and show people what's possible, and I bring an entertaining vibe to it. So if anybody out there needs a public speaker, I'm available.

Yeah.

But I really enjoy that thing. And I watch, I love watching people's eyes go like, wow, I didn't know it could do that. It still surprises me because I'm in it every day and I'm looking up at the people who are doing things that I haven't had a chance to do, and I'm feeling FOMO. So I feel like, Yeah, I'm an imposter. Everybody knows the stuff I do. And I realized, no, they don't.

It's got to be the most hardest thing. Every time I talk to somebody, there's so many levels of people are like, do I share this? Is this too simple? Does it not? Like, yeah, this is weirdness that's going on even in our masterminds and others. And I'm like, just share it. Like, no matter what, because even if you're here for the third time, sometimes it's just a different flavor of it that just makes it and you just never know. So to wrap, I want to kind of be, give me a two-part question. What do you see as you're such a, I've seen some of your posts and all that. And what are you seeing as the future trends? I know we can't even go back. You know, it's not in years, but what are you seeing as future trends? What should we be looking out for? What scares you right now?

If you're not a lot scared, you're not paying attention at all. I mean, we are all outrunning obsoletion very, very quickly. And my motivation to get into this space is definitely scared of being obsolete. But like they say, if you and a friend are outrunning a bear in the forest, you just gotta outrun your friend. So I figure if I can just be a little faster than him, but skill sets are being commoditized. We are now entering the age of the generalist, the problem solver, the person who can connect disparate dots because, you know, writing copy, doing design, doing all of these things, all of these things that we thought were insulated are not insulated anymore. The best people are gonna get dangerously good. The people who are just starting out or who are not willing to learn and go deep, they're gonna be casualties. And it is very real. Agents are gonna be taking over. We are already seeing these, and these are agents that can do, there's already one I've been playing with right now where let's say you, you want to give it a software idea, you give it to the lead agent, and then that lead agent passes it off to the person who writes the program requirement documentation, and that sends it to an architect and an engineer, and you see it all happening. So you're seeing like entire companies being able to be run on it and an agent, and it just does everything for you. You know, you can create a one-man marketing agency right now, quite literally. And that is, that's dangerous for a lot of people who don't have the skill sets. As I said, you cannot afford to ignore this. Agents are the big thing though, right now. That's where everything is going towards. But I also think that it's very tempting to AI-ify and automate everything, such as videos and conversations and, you know, the communication bucket. I believe you should start by automating everything that doesn't touch the client. And then so you can focus on human interaction where it matters, right? That's in sales and everything else, because it will become, as everybody else, you know, tries to automate themselves away, the people who don't are still gonna be the ones who build the relationships with the people who write the checks, because the agents aren't writing the checks, at least not yet. And people wanna connect, they wanna be human. And I think that even in marketing, unpolished, real human create, you know, with errors and mistakes and et cetera, is gonna be rewarded because they're gonna like, oh, that's human. That's not perfectly polished. I think that's gonna get better. So I'm trying to focus on how can I use AI to do all this stuff in the backend so that I can be more front-facing and real when it counts. Because we're gonna get really sick of robots.

Yeah.

Like dealing with them. Ain't nobody got it figured out.

Nobody got, yep. A lot of companies.

I sure don't, but I'm having a lot of fun trying it. And I also think that for the first time, you know, we are really democratizing access to opportunity. The moats around the big companies are melting away, even like software companies. Like I think SaaS is gonna, software as a service model is almost, is gonna be dead within a few years. I think it's gonna be—

I'm hearing that. Everybody keeps talking about that. Yeah.

Yeah. And we're gonna go back to the way it was, in my opinion, where somebody spins up a software, maybe they use AI to do it, they sell it for a one-time fee. Let's just say it's $200, $1,000, doesn't matter. And then you will be able to use AI to add new features to it. They'll give you the open source code base, et cetera. You'll add new features to it, et cetera. But The days of like spending $100 or more every single month for this, like, I'll just code this myself. You can do that. So the big moats are disappearing, but the opportunities for small people to just get out there and add value to the world are, the reins are off.

My bonus question is two-parter as you're thinking about it is what's your favorite AI tool that you're kind of talking to every day out of the whole lot of them? And then what is the, and then the second part of that, and I can put you on the spot here, is what's your favorite, maybe a tool that people haven't heard of so much. It'll probably be obsolete by the time this comes out, but you never know. So gimme a, gimme two that people might wanna take away. So which one are you, which one are you playing in the most between the Groqs and the ChatGPTs and the Clauds and the Perplexities and the—

Yeah, so I probably still use ChatGPT more than anything else. Love what it does. I play with all of them. Google Gemini is getting really, really good and their AI Studio is really amazing. And it's delphiclone.com is the site. That's where you can build a second version of you. So I use this to chat with my clients. I use it to create some marketing material and copy and ideas for myself, but I also use it as my own personal coach. Love Delphi. You know, there's another tool I absolutely love. I discovered it and it's called FounderPal, F-O-U-N-D-E-R-P-A-L. And I don't remember if it's like founderpal.ai or something. I'll send you a link when we're done. But FounderPal is a really amazing tool to get all, a lot of your marketing strategy and a lot of content and ideas done. And it's, that one scared me 'cause I realized like I was charging, you know, a lot of money to do this stuff that this thing does for cheap. And those are some of my favorites right now. But, New one every day.

Well, and on that note, we made it through. Appreciate it. You not beat me up too much and that was great. Thanks for chatting. I'm always, uh, learn so much when I talk to you. I know you got to put the jogging pants on so you can run ahead of the competition in the AI world because I know you're scared what's coming after you. So I'll let you go hit that beautiful beach, uh, spa you have down in San Diego, run the boardwalk there. I'll get to hit the sunset sand today.

Yeah.

Well, I'm great. Thank you so much for your time and appreciate you.

My pleasure. And by the way, if anybody wants to read what I'm doing, I named my company. Accelerated intelligence, cuz I think artificial intelligence is just a tool. Accelerated intelligence is the outcome. And I'm trying to talk a lot more about there on my newsletter about, you know, the outcomes, not just the tools and stuff. So because I think that that's the tools are gonna be a dime a dozen pretty soon. Saying I work in AI is gonna be like, oh, I work with the internet. So come join me.

Love it. And that's a wrap from the Speakeasy 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.