The Twin Room Episode 5: Your Digital Twin Is Already Forming

Do you realize that I unlocked your phone with my face? Oh, I mean, your, your phone thinks that, that I'm you and I got in your banking app too. But think about that for a minute that, you know, the phone doesn't know that we're different people. It thinks we're the same. And for a minute, like, I was you. Lucky. I know, right?

But here's the thing. It's not a trend problem. It's, it's, it's happening to, it's happening to everyone now.

Yeah.

And the companies too.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the mistaken identity and the ability to mimic someone's visuality and their identity in a second.

What do you mean by visuality?

Visuality, like how you're seen, like what people see when they see you. I think for us, it's been, you know, we're twins. We know we look exactly the same or very similar. I think that this is something that most people haven't ever thought about. You know, they haven't really thought about, well, what happens if I'm mistaken for someone else? Or what happens if someone uses my identity to represent themselves.

I know growing up everyone used to always say, oh, your twin. I wish I had a twin. I wish I had a twin. And now everybody does.

Exactly. And now what do you do with that? Digital twin. Well, something that we've been working on for 2 years now and really thinking about what does it mean to have a digital representation of your face? This is something that we have spent our entire life thinking about. And now you're about to go through the same experience yourself. How do you do that? Well, it's a process. We're actually hosting a masterclass in a couple of weeks on how to build a digital twin before it builds you. Because a lot of people out there, especially on the leader side, the leader engine, are using AI to, you know, to, you know, maybe blend their face a bit, or, you know, you know, tighten up some of those wrinkles or look more youthful. Or maybe I've seen people like riding dragons. I don't know what that's about. I miss that. I saw some people in Santa Claus suits too around the holidays. But, you know, they— all of these digital assets are leaving this a digital hairball out there that leaders will have to clean up at some point. Because, you know, I could take an image of anyone right now and create a digital twin, have them say anything I want it to say, and put it online. And how would people know the difference?

I was just listening to the news this morning, and there's someone that is a very popular singer-songwriter.

Yes.

Who's just filed her IP.

Yeah, she has, and she should, to protect herself from AI. I know that there are also some very well-known public figures that have, are in the process of licensing their voice because they're very distinguishing, you know, all right, all right, all right, you know, elements of their voice that they're working on creating some IP behind. I was actually just talking to someone this week about what that means. You know, what does this What does this mean from a legal perspective? I know that we've spent a lot of time working on trademarks of likenesses, which is actually pretty tricky to do. I wonder if I actually got a trademark on my face, would it be your face? That's tricky. I guess with the bangs it'd be different. Anyway, but this idea that whatever we post, whatever we share right now is critical because these are digital assets that people can use and abuse them. And so it's time to clean up your digital footprint, everyone. And be thoughtful about it. Very thoughtful about it. About it. So one of my favorite digital twins that we built is WinnieHart.ai. And what I love about— I'm still not sure if it's an it or a her or a she. What I love about it, maybe, is that you can speak to WinnieHart.ai and ask Winnie Hart AI anything about anything that I've ever done. All the books that I've written, the speeches that I've done, all of the content that I've ever developed is all in that digital twin. And it's actually pretty accurate. You know, so you can have a conversation via text or you can call me and it's, it's getting better. I remember in the beginning when we started doing it, I'm like, ooh, that's so bad. That doesn't sound like me. But I know every week that we work with it, it gets better and improves and learns. And I kind of feel like it knows me in a strange way.

Well, I also think that it's 100% you. Yeah. On the inside because it's all of your content.

Yeah, it's enclosed.

It's not— someone's not writing content for you, right? Right. It's actually just taking what you've provided and creating messaging from that.

And I think I'm about maybe 350,000 words right now. So, I mean, it's taken, you know, a good solid year to work with it because, you know, you create these— by the way, a digital twin is a representation of you. That you can use to represent you when you're not in the room. There's a lot of different versions of what a digital twin is, and they're working on nomenclature on really defining what it is, because you've got clones, you've got agents. And anyway, digital twin, the tool that I— I guess I can mention the tool that Winnie Hart is in is Delphi. And I think it's a really great tool. I know we've worked with a bunch of them, and I think it's really good. What I like about Delphi is that you, you know, you, you launch the twin and then you feed it content and then you engage people to talk to it. And then over time it gives you feedback. So it'll say, well, um, you know, you need to talk more about— someone asked me the other day about my dog and, you know, my dog.

I know.

And I realized I didn't have any content in there about my dog and I never thought to put content about my dog in there, but you should add it. I added it, added some content about that. So you can ask about my dog. But really, it, what it does is it gives you data and reporting on this is, these are the questions that people are asking. These are the gaps that you have in your content. And if you feel like you need to add more content, you can work with it. And it almost like interviews you to bring out that content. And I really actually like this idea of verbal content versus written content, because verbal, just the verbal content that we put in, you know, Winnie Hart is really, it's just more accurate. There's something about it. There's little innuendos, those little isms that you say, how you talk about things. And it also—

personality, personality.

And it also brings in your, your voice and the little things that you say in between sentences and how you pause. So I think it's Working really well.

Interesting that you said we talked about personality because obviously in your digital twin, your personality is there because it is all you.

But what about with AI?

I don't always feel that some things really feel like someone's personality.

Well, Winnie Hart is AI, right? It's a digital twin. But I think what you're talking about is really about like maybe agents or how you're using AI to write content. Exactly. That's yours or even like with HeyGen, how you're using it to create a video of yourself or your voice. Or I think that one thing that we need to think about, that this isn't a novelty. This is not a— these aren't gimmicks. These are real assets that represent our personal selves, and they should be treated with respect. I think that, yeah, I remember the first time, like, I worked in ChatGPT years ago, and I thought, wow, that— what a great email. You know, I didn't even know what an em dash was at the time. But I thought, wow, that really sounds fantastic. But the more I read and the more we're engaged with all of this AI content, everybody's starting to sound the same.

Yeah. And the em dash, I think for me is a giveaway in terms of ChatGPT. But with ChatGPT or a lot of the different platforms, it's so polished. It goes back to what you said on the Audible. Is you can hear the innuendos in your voice, the type of the way you talk. Whereas sometimes with these AI tools, you can't see that.

Yeah, you can't. Well, I think we have to think about it a little differently and really think about like, does that perfect email work? Or is everyone else wondering if AI wrote it or not? You know, I think being you is a massive competitive advantage today, but we can use AI to be more of ourselves. 100%.

It's a, it's a great tool.

I remember when we started working on the book Stand Out as a Thought Leader. And I know we talked about that, but I remember distinctly thinking about like, what is it and how does a thought leader stand out? Like, first of all, what is a thought leader? And it's really anyone who has something that people should hear. And it could be, you know, I think a lot of the challenges that we face when leaders come to us or organizations come to us, whatever engine comes to us is, they don't know what their primary message is. And they're confusing not only their audience, but everyone that is around them and works with them because they're all over the place. They don't have that unified message that really brings people together and helps them get really clear about what they're doing. And that's one thing that I think that Stand Out as a Thought Leader did. And that was really the beginning of really digital twins because I remember writing that book, going to the speaking tours, you know, doing all those workshops and realizing at the end that thought leadership, you know, it's not a one and done thing. You know, it's where people are like, oh, finished. I'm a thought leader. I've got my website. I've got that LinkedIn campaign. But without realizing it's a practice. So then Um, there was the Daily Thought Leader book, and that was about really, you know, 366, um, reflections and actions of what it means to have the discipline of standing out as a thought leader. So did the Daily Thought Leader, which was, um, inspired by Ryan Holiday, Daily Stoic, who's been such an inspiration to, to me and to us and to a lot of the things that we've done. Um, what I loved about that book was, you know, every single day there's a reflection just to get you in the mindset of what thought leadership is really about. Who am I as a thought leader? And it took you through those 8 fundamentals and 8 chapters all the way through the full year. And then I realized, well, I love the book, but it weighs 3 pounds. And so people are like, well, could you do a digital version? Can't get it through the airport. So now we have— oh, I got stopped in the airport a few times. You need something that's in your pocket. So now we have the Daily Thought Leader app, and you can— it's free, you can download it on your phone. I'll make sure it's in the link, and to get a reflection. And then winniehart.ai is actually in the Daily Thought Leader so that you can talk to my digital twin at any time when you're working on those daily reflections. And this is something that's not like, you know, this is a free app to download. This is something that is important because we all need to get very clear about what we stand for, because AI is showing us this sort of like antiseptic way of being ourselves. And we really need to tap into our authenticity and get clear right now on what we stand for, how we show up, because it's not just about those pictures on Dragons that we talked about and people not really thinking through what a digital twin can do. But this is the world we're living in. This is our era. Yeah. And I think there's so much opportunity out there. And the new book, Stand Out, Stay Human, is about, you know, going back to the roots of standing out, but really about what does that mean and how do we stay human in everything that's happening and how do we maintain that connectivity with ourselves?

You mentioned about just being authentic. And I think what I've seen not so much with the clients we work with, but I've seen just examples of leaders just jumping right into ChatGPT or right into Claude or Gemini or whatever app they use. And it just doesn't sound authentic.

So talk a little bit about how do you build that strategy? Well, I think, you know, it has to be a strategy first. I mean, this is not something where you can say, Uh, and we've, many of us here have probably done this where you say, you know, Claude Cowork, build an editorial calendar for me that focuses on this topic. Here's my competitors. This is where I wanna achieve. And gives you a really amazing strategy framework.

Mm-hmm.

But be you, you know, because you are your competitive advantage and that's not something that AI can do yet. You know, to really represent you. I think that, you know, there's a process that I— the one that I think we work with is really, really amazing. And I think that people have been really impressed by how we do that. And it takes time, you know, and it takes a lot of discovery. And one of the things I love about the process is how we understand people. You know, and we interview their clients, we interview their peers, we have a process in which they ask specific questions to people around them so they gain clarity on how they're perceived. I think this is, you know, I'd like everyone to really think about this time, and I don't know if this is like a month, 2 months, a year, 5 years, as a time to experiment. You know, this is the time to really use your imagination to experiment in all of these things, but at the same time knowing that they exist. And if you create something you feel like does not represent you, please don't publish it. One thing I do love about your ability to build the digital twin is you can have a digital twin. You can start actually working on one, like in something like CustomGPT. That's— create one. You can test it, get comfortable with it. You don't have to publish it or tell anyone that it's there. And then once you get really comfortable with what that looks like and how it represents you, and maybe you even use it for like just onboarding your team, maybe use it for just a knowledge portal that includes information that only you have, or maybe you have a particular framework that you wanna share and you can use it. So you can use it for a lot of very specific things or very general things. And then when you're ready, you can move to a platform like Delphi or some of the other ones to really create more of an external twin. And then you can use, again, a tool like, like, you know, some of the ones I mentioned to engage with it, to understand it, to look at the data. You can actually have it be a lead generation tool for you if that's what you're trying to do, where every time it generates a question or someone asks a question, you can get their email, you can answer them in real time, it can send an email to them. There's so many different ways you can build a community using that digital twin too. So it's pretty exciting. A lot of things I think— I often think, actually I think about this every day, the tool that we are going to use, I don't think exists yet.

Probably not.

Because I think it's so rigid right now and so transactional that it's missing those, like what you mentioned, those innuendos of what makes people people.

And I'm excited about the future when like our digital twins can have a relationship too.

You know, like we have such an amazing relationship. And I think that our digital twins can also work as independent engines like we do with— I work with leaders, you work with organizations, and they can work to collaborate to align those brands together. So I think that's some pretty exciting things that we're working on. So stay tuned on that.

And your book, you talk about epigenetics. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Epigenetics, one of my favorite topics. Um, well, when you're an identical twin, you really want to understand what makes me, me, you know, it's something that, that I know that I've been thinking about for as long as I can remember, you know, the Winnie Laurie era and epigenetics. Um, if you think about your genetic, your genetics, right, you think about your DNA. And think about what that looks like. Every experience that you have impacts your genetic code. I call them epigenetic sticky notes because epigenetics is like when, when you have an experience, maybe you're a child, maybe you're a teenager or an adult, there's a sticky note that sits on top of those, that genetic code and really influences your genetic code. And that experience influences and impacts who you are and who you become moving forward. It changes everything moving forward. And when I think about— I think actually epigenetics holds the secret to digital twins. Because if we can build those epigenetic sticky notes in these digital versions of ourselves, they can change and evolve with us. Because one thing that I find with the leaders that I work with is that they think it's, okay, I have my digital twin, it's done. But if you really think about it, a digital twin is something that should live and evolve and be nurtured, and you should parent it. So every time there's an epigenetic episode, your digital twin should evolve too. Well, like we change over—

everybody changes over time.

Everybody changes over time.

It reminds me of when we were growing up.

Mm-hmm.

You know, we were always together. Winnie Laurie.

Yeah.

Always together. And even in school, we enjoyed the same things.

We had the same grades.

We, um, you went to college. We were, I don't want to say we're the same because we're unique, but when you went off to school, when you changed schools, that was a big change. So is that a sticky note?

It is a sticky note. We'll have to talk about that in the next, next twin room. Cause that's a great story. I love that story.

It's a really great story.

The one thing to think about today is think about those epigenetics and think about that there's already a version of you forming out there. You already actually have a digital twin. You just haven't met it yet. And I think if you think about it that way and think about what do I need to do, what do I need to be thinking about, how do I begin to prepare for what's coming, and how can I really use this as an advantage, not only for me as a a leader, but for my organization that I lead. So what a great conversation today. Yeah. And can't wait to see everybody next week.

Yep. Same time next week.

Yep. The Twin Room.