Entrepreneurial AI Pitfalls: Stop Making These 3 AI Mistakes

Summary

Podcast Summary: AI Explored

Episode: Entrepreneurial AI Pitfalls—Stop Making These 3 AI Mistakes

Host: Michael Stelzner (Social Media Examiner)
Guest: Michael Hyatt (Founder of Full Focus, Author, AI Business Lab)
Date: September 23, 2025

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Overview

In this episode of AI Explored, Michael Stelzner sits down with renowned leadership expert and entrepreneur Michael Hyatt to break down the biggest mistakes business owners make with AI adoption—and how to avoid them. The conversation is rich with hands-on advice for entrepreneurs, practical training tips, mindset shifts, and strategies for integrating AI into both individual workflows and company cultures. Hyatt draws on his real-life experience leading AI transformations and managing change within teams of all tech levels, bringing actionable wisdom for business leaders seeking to harness the power of AI without making common pitfalls.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Michael Hyatt’s Journey into AI

• Tech-forward Influence: Hyatt recounts his lifelong love for technology (installing beta iOS, early social media adopter) ([03:25]).
• Sparked by his daughter’s nudge to explore AI further, leading him to experiment deeply, often “jaw dropping once a week” at AI’s progress.
• He settled on ChatGPT as his primary tool, with Gemini Pro 2.5 as backup, advocating focus on a core platform rather than chasing every new tool ([04:45]).

2. Why Entrepreneurs Must Embrace AI

• AI as a Tsunami: “I think there’s a tsunami coming toward us...you can either run and get overrun or grab your surfboard and surf this sucker.” (Michael Hyatt, [06:32])
• Key benefits:
  • Not just saving time, but creating higher-quality output, faster research, and freeing up creativity.
  • AI can be trained to replicate and even enhance one's writing and research style ([06:32], [08:15]).

3. The Importance of Mindset & Addressing Limiting Beliefs

• Limiting Stories: Hyatt reframes “I’m not good with tech” and “I don’t have the time” as self-imposed barriers ([10:33]).
• Key liberating alternatives:
  • "I can learn anything I put my mind to." ([14:14])
  • "I have all the time I need for what matters most." ([13:15])
  • “What gets scheduled gets done.” ([13:15])
• Encourages normalizing confusion as part of learning and prioritizing AI education as an existential business need.

4. AI and Staff: Human + AI, Not Human vs. AI

• Hyatt’s approach at Full Focus: “I am not an AI first company...I think the workforces of the future are going to be AI plus human, or let me say it a different way, human plus AI.” ([15:58])
• Staff should be AI-augmented, not replaced; importance of training everyone to use AI to enhance their work.
• Change management: Start by reassuring staff about what won’t change (mission, values, customer focus) before announcing AI-driven change to ease anxiety ([17:47]).
• Set clear expectations: Staff are expected to use AI where it improves and enhances their work ([19:22]).

5. Handling Resistance & Building Buy-in

• Addressing Concerns Directly: “You’re probably thinking, is this going to replace me?... Right now...it is not going to replace you. Think of all the projects we want to do but never had bandwidth for—AI will make them possible.” (Michael Hyatt, [21:30])
• Example: A resistant graphic designer “saw the light” when enabled to quickly prototype ideas with AI-generated video, expanding her skillset and value ([24:19]).

6. AI as Collaborator & Rethinking Organizational Roles

• “AI is not a tool, it’s a teammate, a collaborator...the org chart of the future will have boxes occupied by humans and some by AI.” (Michael Hyatt, [26:01])
• Delegation skills for AI echo those for humans—be explicit with role, context, assignment, and expected output ([27:17]).

7. Practical Tips for AI Training and Implementation

• Pre-training: Get everyone to a baseline using short, basic videos (Hyatt’s 6-video set, or curated YouTube list) ([29:05]).
• Normalize being a novice: Use surveys or quizzes to assess tech comfort levels ([30:17]).
• Interactive workshops: Have staff perform tasks live, ask “stupid” questions, and alternate between simple and advanced exercises ([33:09]).
• Assign real-world problems: Require staff to use AI to solve actual business challenges and present results to peers ([24:24], [33:09]).
• Ongoing education: Recommend regular refreshers (quarterly/monthly), recording live trainings for onboarding, and keeping materials updated due to rapid AI advancement ([37:33]).

8. Building an AI Knowledge Base

• Organize all relevant AI SOPs, prompts, PDFs, and custom GPTs in a shared drive or folder hierarchy ([38:41]).
• Custom GPTs (e.g., “Write Like Me”) trained on company voice and assets; use centralized knowledge for consistent output ([39:53]).
• Use markup (Markdown, XML) for organizing information for both AIs and humans.

9. Key Pitfalls to Avoid

• Chasing too many tools: "Have a primary tool and don’t get sidetracked...go deep on one tool and get real proficiency.” ([41:50])
• Annual subscriptions: “Resist the temptation to buy the annual subscription for any tool.” Try monthly to avoid sunk costs on rapidly outdated tools ([44:41]).
• Neglecting sandbox time: Experiment—but set time limits (Hyatt’s rule: “not more than an hour” at a stretch, it’s highly addictive) ([46:15]).

10. Cutting-edge Experimentation

• Use communities (e.g., Jonathan Mast’s Facebook group) to stay on top of trends and expand use cases ([45:49]).
• Stay ahead with agents, multimodal tools, and latest AI innovations—but stay focused on immediate value.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Surf the tsunami...I think surfing the tsunami can be awesome." (Hyatt, [06:32])
• "The stuff that AI writes for me today...is better than I write." ([06:32])
• “Leaders go first...You’ve got to get your hands on [AI].” (Hyatt, [09:10])
• "I have all the time I need for what matters most." (Hyatt, [13:15])
• “I said the quiet part out loud: ‘Is this going to replace me?’” ([21:30])
• On staff development: “AI is not a tool, it’s a teammate...think of it just like our other teammates.” (Hyatt, [26:01])
• "The half-life on [AI courses] is about two weeks." (Hyatt, [36:37])
• "If you’re good at human delegation, you’re going to be good at AI delegation." ([27:54])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Intro to Hyatt & his AI story: [03:04]-[06:17]
• Why AI matters for business owners: [06:17]-[10:17]
• Mindset & limiting beliefs: [10:17]-[15:15]
• AI + Staff: Strategy & Change Management: [15:15]-[22:23]
• Dealing with resistance: [23:48]-[26:01]
• AI as teammate (delegation frameworks): [26:01]-[29:05]
• Effective AI staff training: [29:05]-[33:09]
• Building AI knowledge bases: [38:41]-[41:30]
• Three core entrepreneurial AI pitfalls: [41:50]-[46:20]
• Experimentation & staying current: [45:49]-[47:05]

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Actionable Takeaways

• Focus on a core AI tool and master it before dabbling widely.
• Regularly train and upskill staff in AI—make it interactive, normalize being new, and assign relevant projects.
• Reframe fears by communicating openly about change (focus on “what’s not changing”).
• Maintain a living knowledge base of prompts, SOPs, and company materials to upskill AI and team members alike.
• Visit Michael Hyatt’s resources (links available in show notes) for foundational AI education and ready-to-use tools.

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For further details and Hyatt’s curated links (training videos, resources, and social media contacts), visit socialmediaexaminer.com/a72.

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Transcript

[Michael Stelzner]

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[Michael Hyatt]

You put AI to work.

[Michael Stelzner]

And now, here's your host, Michael Stelzner. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the AI Explored podcast brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. This is the podcast for marketers, creators and business owners who want to know how to put AI to work. You're going to notice today that we've got a slightly different opening. And the reason we have a slightly different opening is because we are actually kind of changing up stuff for our YouTube channel. So if it sounds a little different, that is why. And with that, I'm going to transition over to this week's interview and you're going to find out who it is really shortly, helping you simplify your AI journey. Here is this week's expert guide. AI is changing the way we think about hiring and firing. Are you prepared? When it comes to AI, we need to set the right expectations for our staff. In today's episode of the AI Explored podcast, we'll explore the pitfalls and landmines that business owners need to navigate when it comes to AI and and how to overcome them. My special guest is a well known author of many books, including your best Year Ever free to focus and platform. He's also the founder of Full Focus, a business focused on helping people win at work and succeed at life. His latest project is called the AI Business Lab. Michael Hyatt, welcome to the show. How you doing today?

[Michael Hyatt]

Great, Michael, thanks for having me on.

[Michael Stelzner]

I'm super excited that you're here. So let's start with my first question. How the heck did you get into AI? Because to be honest with you, you're the last guy that I expected to kind of like, get AI World. I'd love to hear more.

[Michael Hyatt]

Really? I'm not sure whether to be insulted or not.

[Michael Stelzner]

No, it's just you're so well known for all these other things. I didn't expect you to add something more to your plate.

[Michael Hyatt]

Okay, well, first of all, for people that do know me, I'm very tech forward. In fact, I would say I'm not just on the cutting edge. I typically am on the bleeding edge. Like, I'm the guy that installs the new iOS beta before I should and then regrets it, and this is a true story, and then completely reformats the iPhone and downgrades, but then a few weeks later, can't stand it, so I upgrade again. So I love tech. I was probably one of the first people in my industry at the time to get into social media and build a fairly large platform at the time. So a couple years ago, my daughter, knowing my kind of tech focus and my boredom, she knows I have an attention span of about 2 years and I need to get into something else. She said, dad, you've got to get into this AI thing, because I think it's really going to be a thing. And I'm thinking to her, because I've been studying it on my own, I said, you think so? I now had permission from my boss, my daughter, to really roll up my sleeves and get into it, and I have absolutely loved it. I mean, there have been times when I can't sleep at night, when I can't wake to get up in the morning. And still to this day, this is about two years ago when I started the in depth thing. To this day, Michael, I probably. My jaw drops about once a week.

[Michael Stelzner]

That's crazy. So tell us a little bit more about what your journey's been like into it. Like, you can kind of lead us up to what you're working on now, too.

[Michael Hyatt]

You know, I started with ChatGPT, of course, and this was back, I think, with the 3.5 model, and it was still amazing, you know, kind of blew my mind. And then, like a lot of people, I started getting inundated with on my Facebook feed in particular, but also on X, where I'm really active with all these new AIs. And so it wasn't long before I started experimenting with other AIs, and I started having calls with AI CEOs and developers and people that were doing some really interesting things. But I soon found myself overwhelmed. And I think this is like, one of the big takeaways for me is pick a major platform and just camp on that. And don't get distracted by all the other AI offerings, because these different platforms, particularly the major LLMs, are going to be leapfrogging each other for the next couple years at least. You know, just when you think you've got the best model out there, then some other model leapfrogs it. And if you keep jumping, you never get really proficient at one. So I've chosen kind of my home base as ChatGPT. And sometimes it's the best, sometimes it's not quite the best, and sometimes it's really frustrating when they introduce a new model and everything gets really slow and the thing starts hallucinating and you're like, want to pull your hair out? And that's why I have a backup, which for me is Gemini Pro 2.5. So I use. I primarily stick with those two. I know you love Claude, and I've got actually a contractor working with me that's a big Clyde guy, so I suspect that's going to be part of my future, too.

[Michael Stelzner]

Awesome. So we're talking to business owners today. I own a business, you own a business, and potentially maybe we even both own multiple businesses. But why should entrepreneurs care about adopting AI? What's your take on it from the seat of the business owner?

[Michael Hyatt]

Well, I think it's the future. I think there's a tsunami coming toward us, and maybe we're already in it. But I kind of think you have two choices when you're facing a tsunami. You can either run and try to find shelter with a high likelihood that you're going to get overrun by the tsunami, or you can do. I heard this story probably 20 years ago about a guy that decided he grabbed his surfboard and he said, I'm going to surf this sucker. And so he just swam out to it. And I think surfing the tsunami can be awesome. But I think it's one of those things and one of those moments that if we don't embrace this technology, our companies could likely be a casualty in this revolution. Having said That I think there's enormous, enormous opportunity here, and certainly there's an opportunity to save time to make our teams more productive. But I think the biggest thing, from my perspective, is to create better output, you know, to create stuff that in the past, we could only dream of. I mean, I. I talk to people all the time, you probably do, too, who say, you know, they just don't get good output from ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity or whatever their platform of choice is, and they're frustrated. They say, you know, this is just bad, bad quality. Well, they haven't taken the time to train the AI to write or to speak like them. But once you do that, I mean, I hate to admit this, but literally, the stuff that AI writes for me today in my voice, which I've carefully trained, it is better than I write. It definitely does better research than I do on my own. It does it faster, and it's a whole lot easier for me, which frees me up to produce even more. But it's still my stuff, you know, I still believe in keeping the human in the loot.

[Michael Stelzner]

You know, I love everything you said, and I'll just echo a couple more of my thoughts on here. I, like you, am an entrepreneur who loves to tinker and try new things. But the problem is that I find myself living in the operator role, even though I have a chief operating officer, and I don't get enough time in the sandbox playing with new things. And it's allowed me to now do things that I'm really good at, like writing copy at a level that's higher than I've ever done. I get greater satisfaction because I know that this is the highest, highest quality content I've ever created. But it also allows me to explore new ideas more quickly. And I feel like the idea, you know, in the past, going from, like, experiment, just making time for experiment, first of all, was almost impossible. Now we seem to have more time because of this AI speeding up so many of the tasks that we do, but then also going from idea to execution, I think is also speeding up a lot as well. Do you find that to be true?

[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I'd like to tell people, and I have said, you know, I feel like AI, because of how it increases my productivity, has saved me probably 10 to 15 hours a week. The thing about it is it really hasn't reduced my work time because I take those 10 to 15 hours and reinvest them in AI experimentation, which I think is great, because you're exactly right. You have got to experiment with this stuff. And I really think that if you're a business owner, this is not something you can just delegate. You know, you've got to get your hands on it. You've got to understand it, you've got to lead it. And I've done a lot of work in the area of leadership. I've written on it. I've spoken a lot of leadership conferences and have had a lot of experience in leadership in large companies and small. And one of the things that I know is true for all leaders is that leaders go first. That's, you know, they take initiative. And I think it's really important that you get your hands dirty. You don't have to become an AI expert. You don't ultimately have to lead the AI charge in your company, but you've got to have enough of a working knowledge that you know what's possible and you can hire the right people to make it a reality.

[Michael Stelzner]

Love it. Mindset is a really big thing for you. And I know there's some mindset challenges, some lies that we tell ourselves. I'd love you to talk a little bit about it. Things that might be getting in the way of our ability to actually adopt AI. What are those mindset lies that we're constantly telling ourselves?

[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah, you know, I used to call these limiting beliefs. In my book, your Best year ever, I have a whole section on limiting beliefs, and I think limiting beliefs are huge. But I got to thinking recently. I like the idea of limiting stories better. And here's what I mean by that. So all of us tell ourselves stories about what happened. There's what happens, and then there's the story that we're telling ourselves about what happened. And so I think that it's very easy, for example, if we've had an experience where we got the technology wrong or we just didn't have the tenacity or whatever to persevere and really learn the technology that we start telling ourselves this story that, you know, I'm just not very good with technology. And it literally appears in your brain as a sentence in your head. And I find that it's extremely helpful to write that sentence down because it reduces the potency of the sentence just by writing it down, but then reframing it as a liberating truth. So, for example, if I had this limiting belief for this limiting story that was, I'm not very good with technology, I could start to repeat to myself almost as an affirmation, I can learn anything that I put my mind to and that's really true. It's not because I don't have a formal technology, you know, education. I don't have any experience as a IT professional or anything like that. But I am stinking tenacious and I will sit on something like a dog on a bone until I figure it out. And it's true. Also, part of your mindset is that you're always confused about something right up until you're not. So, you know, welcome the confusion. That's a normal part of the process. But you just got to persevere through that to get that clarity. So I think those are two huge limiting beliefs. There's probably another one too, and that is, I'm too busy to invest in AI education. No, if somebody that reports to us, came to us and said that, we would say, look, it's just a matter of priorities. Right? How important is this to you? Because I believe that if we don't learn to control or learn to use AI, then it could become an existential threat. So if I think something poses an existential threat to my business, and I could literally be out of business in five years or less, then I'm going to take that on. I'm going to get very serious about that and figure out somehow how I'm going to allocate more time to getting educated on AI.

[Michael Stelzner]

So let's go ahead and give each one of these as the limiting belief and then give the liberating in truth the alternative programming that we could put in our brain. The first one is that I'm too technical, and the second one is I don't have any time.

[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah. So but the second one for I don't have any time. I have all the time I need for what matters most. And that literally is an affirmation that I repeat because it's not just AI, it's, you know, time for family, it's time for exercise. It's all the important stuff that so easily get pushed away because often the important stuff is not urgent. And so if we can just say, I've got all the time I need for what matters most. Here's another one, too. It's what gets scheduled, gets done. And if you have to literally put time on your calendar, and I highly advise this, schedule time in what Jason Fried calls the alone zone, and just treat it like any other commitment, like any other appointment. You show up, you honor your commitment, and when somebody else asks if, if they can have that time, could I meet with you at, you know, one o' clock Friday afternoon, You don't have to go to detail. You don't have to say, that's the time I had set aside for AI education. You just say, you know what? I'm committed at that time. Let's see if we can find another time.

[Michael Stelzner]

Love it. Now talk to me about deliberating truth for I'm not technical when it comes to AI.

[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah. Again, I can learn anything I put my mind to.

[Michael Stelzner]

I like that. I love that a lot.

[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah. There could be a lot of other ones, too, but that's just one that comes to mind.

[Michael Stelzner]

Very cool.

[Michael Hyatt]

Okay, can I stop you? There's another one. Oh, I'm too old. Oh. So, you know, as it turns out, I don't know what the average age of entrepreneurs are, but most of the entrepreneurs I work with, and I work almost exclusively with business owners, they're probably in their 50s plus.

[Michael Stelzner]

Yeah, I am.

[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah. Well, I'm 70, and age is not an issue. My dad, who's 91, is using ChatGPT. Now, he's not writing, you know, the. The best prompts, and he's not creating custom GPTs, but he's using it every day. You just got to have an experimental mindset. You can't screw anything up. Just get in there and just start using it. And I promise you, you get lots of ideas, a lot of things you can do, and that becomes sort of the seedbed for more knowledge. Love it.

[Michael Stelzner]

Okay, so we're here talking about AI adoption, and we're talking about it from the perspective of the person at the top, the CEO, the founder of the business, the entrepreneur. And one of the big questions that a lot of us have is, what am I going to do with my staff? Am I going to use AI to eliminate staff? How ought I look at my staff? These are questions that I know my staff is considering, you know, and these are probably questions we're considering, especially when we hear other people on other podcasts, you know, and other, you know, big tech leaders saying that they're an AI First Company and they're not going to hire anybody if AI can do it. I mean, so I'm. I know you've got some soapbox stuff you want to say about this, so unleash.

[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah, well, I have a commitment that I want to keep everybody on my team. I love everybody on my team. I am not an AI first company. You know, my company, Full Focus, we publish the Full Focus Planner. In a world of digital calendars and digital task lists, we have an analog physical planner product. I don't think that AI and humans should be juxtaposed. I think they're in partnership. I think the workforces of the future are going to be AI plus human, or let me say it a different way, human plus AI. So that everybody's going to be AI enabled, AI augmented, AI enhanced. Yeah, exactly. And so I think that to say to my employees, I don't intend to replace any of you. Now, to be honest, I don't know what the future holds and you might get replaced. But I can tell you this, if you don't figure out AI for your particular job function, you will be replaced by somebody who has figured it out. So it behooves you to get into this and study it and learn to be an AI augmented graphic designer or copywriter or, or whatever their particular role is inside the company. But Michael, I think change management, and that's really what we're talking about here, is worthy our consideration as business owners and leaders. And so when I was asked by Megan, our CEO to get into AI, she said, dad, I want you to lead a session with all of our employees and I want it to be a four hour session that I'd like you to give them some homework and then come back two weeks later and do another four hour session. And I said, good, I like that plan. So the very first thing I did, and this is really important for change management. You and I love change. Probably a lot of people listening to this show love change, but our people.

[Michael Stelzner]

Don'T love change, do they?

[Michael Hyatt]

But our people don't love change. And that was hard to get through my sick head initially. I'm like announcing something like, hey guys, everything's changing. Well, that's not really a great announcement. So the way I start now, and I really faced this when I was the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. This was a company that was founded in 1798. I had 750 employees. We were doing about a quarter of a billion dollars a year and we were making some big cultural changes. And so the way I started then, the way I started when I introduced AI in my own small company now, is I said, look, let's start with what's not going to change. And when you can do that, you know, our mission's not changing, our values aren't changing, the people that we serve aren't changing. And you can start saying that, you can just almost feel people exhale and relax into that because it gives them a solid platform on which they can manage the change. I also, by doing that, I try to contextualize it so that When I talk about all the stuff that's not going to change, the change is just a small part of that pie. Like if the pie represents everything we do, then the change, you can put it in perspective. So it's like not everything's changing, but some significant things. How we serve, you know, the quality of the way we serve, all of those things will be impacted by AI, but the main things are still going to be the main things. We're going to keep the main thing, the main thing. And so that's how I started. When I started doing the AI training.

[Michael Stelzner]

I'd love to just add what we did because it's very similar. So I did a 90 minute training with my staff and we had already started this podcast and they kind of knew the direction we were heading. But what I did was I started by talking about all the advantages to all of the staff. So I focused on what's in it for them and I explained how it's going to allow them to get some of the drudgery work that they have to do done more quickly. And, and I just went through all the benefits. But I also set an expectation and I said from this point forward you are expected to use AI to improve your work. So that was the expectation that I set and I went on to explain what that meant. And the idea that I communicated to them is that you are going to be more valuable to this company if you are able to embrace AI and that's only going to allow you to basically assure your future here inside this company. That was at least a part of what I communicated. I don't know if you would agree with that, but it seemed that it did alleviate some of the fears. But I did set the expectation you are to use AI to enhance your work, not replace your work, to enhance your work. And I went on to explain what that meant a hundred percent.

[Michael Hyatt]

No, I agree with that totally. And I think one of the things that you said that is really important and I was about to get to. And that is you've got to talk about what's in it for them. Right, Right. You know, the most listened to FM radio station in the world is wiifm. What's in it for me? And so you gotta approach it from that because if your perspective is as a business owner, well, you know, this is gonna make me more money or this is gonna get us more clients. Nobody cares. I mean, they might give lip service to it, but they're. The first question they're asking is how does it affect me? The other thing too. In those first trainings that I would do is I said the quiet part out loud, you know, so in other words, I tried to. And you know, you do this in copywriting, I do this in copywriting. But what is the person I'm talking to? Thinking. And if I can put language to that so that they think, oh my gosh, he's reading my mind, then that creates trust. And automatically they assume if you could articulate the question, you know the answer.

[Michael Stelzner]

So what was that question?

[Michael Hyatt]

You're probably thinking to yourself, gosh, is this going to replace me?

[Michael Stelzner]

Ah, okay. You went right out and said it. Okay, good.

[Michael Hyatt]

I said it out loud and people just nodded. And what I said was, no, you know, now look, I don't have a hundred percent vision right now. What the future holds, it may replace all of us, including me. But right now, from where I sit, based on the knowledge I have, it is not going to replace you. But think of all the projects in our company. I said this. Think of all the projects that we would love to pursue. We know they would add value, we're passionate about them, but we can never seem to find the bandwidth to get to them. Well, AI suddenly is going to make all that possible. We're going to have greater output, easier to create, and it's going to be so much better than what we've ever produced in the past.

[Michael Stelzner]

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[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah, we have a graphic designer. Her name is Julie, and honest to God, she is the best graphic designer I've ever worked with. I mean, I adore this woman. She's phenomenal at what she does. And she. I just could see her sitting there in the training with her arms crossed. You know, all her body language was resistance and so I suspected that was going to be the case. So I had an example already queued up and so I created an image using, I think it was ideo.

[Michael Stelzner]

Oh yeah, ideo. Yeah, ideo or something like that. Yeah, ideo 2.0 or something like that.

[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah, I'm not using it anymore. But anyway, I used it for her and I said, look, is this a hundred percent no. Well, then I suggested to her, because the assignment was you've got to go back and apply AI to a real world business problem. Then you got to bring it back and it's going to be show and tell and literally everybody on the team is going to show their project. So she came back and she had created some short video clips with our products in them and she was generating those 100% AI. Now, I wouldn't say she was giddy, but she was beginning to see the light. Because in the past that would have meant, you know, a video shoot. It would have been a lot, a much longer time horizon because you got to get the videos edited, get them back, create a comp, get it approved, do all that stuff. Well, at the very least she was able to go from idea to concept. Even if she ended up producing it, you know, the old fashioned way, which she's not doing now. She's using AI, but it was just a much better way to get proof of concept.

[Michael Stelzner]

I love this because she expanded Horizon too. I'm not just a graphic designer, I'm now an art director. Right. And she was able to art direct a video that ultimately you all probably hired someone to create. But maybe in her mind she's not used to doing animation or movement and all that kind of stuff. So she took the talent she had and she applied it to motion, which a lot of graphic designers do not know how to do. I love that. That's so cool. And isn't that the case with almost all of your staff all of a sudden? Now they've got these latent skills that they probably haven't brought to the table that they've been able to tap into because AI makes it easier for them. Have you found this to be true?

[Michael Hyatt]

Absolutely. You know, one of the things I showed the team, I showed them sort of the organization chart of the future. And one of my core beliefs is that AI is not a tool, it's a teammate, it's a thinking partner, it's a collaborator. And the more we think of it, just like we think of our other teammates, the better. It's just that on the org chart of the future, some of those boxes are occupied by humans and some of those boxes are occupied by AI. And that's great. And the delegation skills you need as a business owner or a business leader are identical. We delegate to AI exactly how we delegate to humans. You know, we gotta. First of all, we gotta pick the person that you know is the right role for the job. Second of all, we gotta give them enough context so that they can succeed. Then we've gotta be crystal clear on the assignment, and then we've got to visualize for them what the outlook or the output is gonna look like. Now, if you do those four things in every human delegation, you'll get successful delegations. The same thing is true with AI, you know, if you offer it those four things, the role, the context, the assignment, and then the output. And there's other sections or categories you could use. But that said, it's most simple. You're going to get pretty good output from AI.

[Michael Stelzner]

What I love about this is as we learn to prompt and we learn how to what the AI needs in order to do its job better, it is actually making us better communicators. It's making us now use these frameworks that we're learning for AI prompting. And now we're bringing them to other humans. Hey, here's the ideal audience. Hey, here's what to do. Hey, here's what not to do. Here's some examples of what good looks like. Here's some examples of what not good looks like. Like, we never used to do that before AI. Like, I feel like we're all becoming better communicators as a result of it. What are your thoughts on that?

[Michael Hyatt]

Oh, I think that's so true. But the other thing is with AI, it, you know, it can't read our mind. And so we have to be very explicit and very clear. And the more explicit, the more clear, the more of those things that we provide on the front end, the more likely we're going to get the output on the back end. But for some reason, when it comes to humans, we don't do that. We don't do that. We think they can read our mind and we think, well, I don't have time to explain the thing. Either they get it or they don't. Well, no, you need to take the time to explain it. We do a lot of coaching for business owners, and delegation is one of the things that we often talk about. And so it's been wonderful to have this AI analog to explain how it works, but it works in reverse, too. If you're good at human delegation, you're going to be good at AI delegation.

[Michael Stelzner]

Love it. Okay, so we've talked a little bit about what I'm about to ask you about next, but training, I want to know any tips? You know, we've talked about some of the things like setting expectations and giving assignments and stuff, but I'd love to kind of like unravel a little bit more because there are people listening right now that probably haven't done any formal training with their staff on how to actually employ AI across the company. So let's just kind of dig in on maybe some of the things that, that you've hinted at a little bit so far, but we can unravel a little bit deeper.

[Michael Hyatt]

Well, first of all, I would start at the most basic level, but don't spend too long on it. So, for example, I have an AI mastermind called the AI Business Lab, and we've got business owners from all varieties of life and all different levels of expertise with AI. So I created a short list for that group of six videos where I walk through the real basics, you know, basic prompting, how to get the right security settings, how to think about AI, that kind of stuff. So don't spend a lot of time, but you want to get everybody up to a baseline of information. What I did in the mastermind, if I'd had them back when I was doing the training with the team, I would have done this, too. And that is watch these before you come so that we have a baseline of information that everybody shares, and then we'll build on that together real quick.

[Michael Stelzner]

You could probably find some of that stuff online on YouTube, right? I mean, if you don't want to make it yourself, right. And you could just say, here's a list of YouTube videos that I want you to watch before you come to the table. Don't you think that's an option?

[Michael Hyatt]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[Michael Stelzner]

So keep going. I love it.

[Michael Hyatt]

And you can use ChatGPT, for example, or whatever, your platform of choice. Is to find those videos for you. Right, there you go.

[Michael Stelzner]

Deep research will do that for you. That's so cool. Yeah.

[Michael Hyatt]

And, and in fact, my six videos, I went ahead and put them on YouTube.

[Michael Stelzner]

Oh, perfect.

[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah. And I'll give you the link for the show notes.

[Michael Stelzner]

Okay. Yeah, let's get that for sure. Everybody would love that.

[Michael Hyatt]

Okay. But they're real basic. Now the challenge is that I like to, first of all, I like to find out in the training where everybody's at, so I get everybody to score themselves and I normalize being a novice. So in other words, I don't want to shame people like, oh geez, you know, you're at the very basics. No. And so I gave it a scale of 0 to 5 and the scale was like, you know, I'm making this up now because I can't remember, but it was like I have no experience with AI, haven't even tried it yet to. Yeah, I piddled around with it a little bit all the way up to, you know, I'm writing XML structured prompts and multi agent workflows and all that kind of stuff. Well, we of course on our team we had nobody like that. But in the mastermind we did. Now I see what the scope of expertise is in the audience so I can speak more specifically to them. So then I want to alternate between simple examples and more complex examples just to keep the interest of everybody. But again, I remind people in the session, look, if your eyes start to glaze over or you don't understand this, let me encourage you, hang in there, you will understand it.

[Michael Stelzner]

I love it.

[Michael Hyatt]

And this is what I do in every learning area where I learn. I recently went to a peptide conference. My wife and I were the only two non doctors in the room. And they're talking about all this crazy chemical reaction stuff, these charts like you've never seen these decks that are totally confusing to me. All the doctors got it, but I didn't have the medical background to get it. But I sat in there for eight hours and took copious notes. I think I probably understood 30% of it. So that allowed me a baseline to build on. But I'm just pointing out that you can learn anything if you're tenacious and stay at it. And so I tell people, don't be alarmed when you're confused. You're going to be confused.

[Michael Stelzner]

I love it. Okay, so so far what we've talked about is ideally give some pre training with some videos that are out there and we'll make sure Michael Hyatt's list of six videos is accessible in the show notes and the idea there is just to get everybody to a baseline, right? Watch them before you come to the whatever training we're going to do. Secondly, normalize being a novice by setting up some sort of little quiz where you ask everybody to indicate where they're at from total beginner, never used it to people that are writing code and whatever. And that helps you also understand the diversity of the audience. Right. So that you can throughout the training address that where necessary. Now you kind of mentioned earlier that you've given people assignments and I like the idea because there is this problem when people go through training and I know this because I put on a conference where people, thousands come and sit and get trained and then they walk away with nothing like no notes, nothing so. Or they don't do anything with it. So how do you ensure that knowledge is transferred and somehow echoed back to you? You mentioned assignments and I think it's worth talking about that a little bit.

[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah, so I took a page from Apple's Playbook and I have a son in law that worked for Apple for eight years. He was a trainer for them. And so one of the things that they always told the trainers is don't do the work for the client. So if you ever go into an Apple store to get trained on some piece of software or whatever, they make you actually do the clicks, type in the different, you know, text you need, whatever. So I told everybody, you've got to bring your computer, we've got a group account but you've got to sign in login and all that to chat team edition and we're going to have some bonafide assignments. So I would slow it down enough to say okay, I'm going to walk through step by step how you change the privacy settings so that you're not training the model. And so I'd show them click by click and then I would say okay, now it's your turn, you're going to do this. Now that sounds super simple, super easy but people get stuck and they'd raise their hands and that was okay. And so I would just, I would do that and say okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to do advanced voice mode and we're going to all use our mobile devices and here's how you start. And so I give them some assignment on that. So I would constantly give them assignments to do and sometimes it would be, you know, a five minute thing, sometimes it would be like a 20 minute thing.

[Michael Stelzner]

I like it because you're actually forcing them to do it right there during your training experience. And I would imagine if for those that have remote companies, you could do this over Zoom or Google Meet or whatever, couldn't you? I mean, you could. It doesn't matter for those that don't have a local thing. So you're making them do it in the middle of the training. Is that really what I'm hearing?

[Michael Hyatt]

You say you are. And I would say that this has got to be super interactive so that you share a concept. This is not you standing up and giving a keynote. Forget the keynote. You're going to stand up and you're going to give and hopefully on the screen you're going to be able to show them, but you're going to show them something and then you're going to open it up for questions. Okay, was that clear? Was there anything that I said that was confusing? Okay. And so I don't move on before that. So it's not like, you know, I do 40 minutes of lecture and then I would have a Q and A session. I would do it in real time, back and forth, iterative, give people the freedom to speak up. And one of the things I would encourage people to do in the room is I say, if you have a question and you think it's a stupid question or you're just not smart enough to understand it, I want to invite you to ask that question. Because chances are that somebody else in the room has the same question, but they're afraid to ask it. So be brave and ask the question. And once you do that and demonstrate that you don't make fun of them and you take it seriously, then everybody's very honest about, about what they need.

[Michael Stelzner]

Now, Michael, some people listening right now are like, that doesn't sound scalable. I've got new people coming and going as my business is growing. Maybe do you recommend editing that down into a course that's like a self study course maybe or something like that with boxes that they have to go through. I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that.

[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah, you could do that, I suppose. You know, for example, we have a group coaching program and we do an AI training once a month. And so we started with a half day training that got everybody up to the baseline. But we have new people coming in all the time. So in that case we ask them to watch the half day training if they want to get up to speed or not, you know, they can just come to the, to the big Training, but we do it on a regular basis because there's new stuff that's changing all the time. My problem with the course, and you know, I have a lot of friends in the AI world, maybe even you, Michael, who have a course. The problem is, you know, the half life on that is about two weeks.

[Michael Stelzner]

You're right, I don't have a course. No, we do. We do live training in our membership just like you do. But I like the idea of recording everything when you are doing the training.

[Michael Hyatt]

Yes.

[Michael Stelzner]

Because if you get a new person coming on in the next few weeks, they may as well just watch the recording. Is that right?

[Michael Hyatt]

Right.

[Michael Stelzner]

And they just pause or fast forward through the exercises or the Q and A or whatever. I feel like that's really important because that's one way that at least it'll have a shelf life. And I would imagine you're going to have to go back every once in a while and make sure that that's still relevant. Do you recommend like quarterly retrainings on some of these things or what's your thoughts on that? Because you're right, it's all changing so rapidly and you know, there's new features inside of chat GPT it seems like every month and if you taught people to use it this way and they don't realize that projects came around, you know what I mean? And, or they don't understand custom GPTs because it's different now. I mean, do you recommend maybe having a quarterly or semi annual retraining? I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that.

[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah, absolutely. I think maybe even monthly wouldn't be too much.

[Michael Stelzner]

Okay.

[Michael Hyatt]

Because you want to keep the focus on AI because whenever a change is introduced to any company, the employees get conditioned that, you know, okay, this is the last thing Michael's excited about. You know, give it six weeks and we won't be talking about it anymore. So you got to put into place something that says, no, we're serious about this. This is something that's an ongoing conversation. This is something we're going to be talking about. We have a dedicated Slack channel, for example, where we put our standard operating procedures. Like what I figure out. For example, I have a custom GPT called Write Like Me. And when I want writers on our team to be able to write like themselves or write like somebody else in the company, I'll do a SOP that explains how to do that or how to get, you know, an ebook into a PDF that I can use to train custom GPTs. I've got a very detailed SOP for that so that everybody can benefit from it. But that's in Slack. Can I just say one other thing about organizing a knowledge base?

[Michael Stelzner]

Yeah, I was actually going to go there because I was going to say a lot of us have like all sorts of things that we're finding and it's all over the place. Right. So I would love you to talk about, like, how do we get it all in one place? Because I think there's something there.

[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah. We literally off of our main company drive and we use Google, you know, Google Workspace. So we have a folder called AI. It's a shared folder. And underneath that we have different things like Michael's content or Megan's content or just full focus stuff. So, for example, we have a 30 page document that tells the AI everything it needs to know about our company. We have one that tells them everything it needs to know about me, including all my personality assessments, my employment history, my education, all that stuff so that they can use it and what a lot of people don't understand with custom GPTs. And I won't get too technical here, but you can call these GPTs now inside of projects. So, for example, we have one GPT that's full focus content, that has all 12 of my books. It has the transcript for every podcast I've ever recorded, it has the transcript for every course that I've ever done, all my blog posts, everything. And so that's inside of one custom GPT. So if they're in a project, for example, they're trying to write newsletter copy, then they can invoke that using the AT symbol and call full focus content. It's like asking a colleague into a conversation.

[Michael Stelzner]

Yeah, it's bringing your historian in, right?

[Michael Hyatt]

That's right. It's bringing a guy that knows everything about our content into the conversation. And then we can call additional ones into that conversation as necessary. But I would organize this raw data into PDFs or markdown and put those in a centralized location. So, like, my voice instructions are there. So if somebody wants to write like me, if they load that voice instruction into a conversation they're having or a project, the output is going to sound exactly like me.

[Michael Stelzner]

And for those that are a little technical, Markdown is like code that makes it so the AI can read it a little bit more. And my understanding is you could drop a PDF into ChatGPT and probably ask it to create Markdown, which is a smaller file. Is that generally how that works?

[Michael Hyatt]

Yep, you can do that. I tend to structure my prompts with xml. And again, I don't want to get too technical. You don't have to do this. But like OpenAI recommends this where you have the angle brackets and then the section like opening angle bracket roll and then the closing angle bracket and then you use a slash to end that section. But that makes it crystal clear to the AI you don't need to know anything other anything else about XML other than those section tags. And I even wrote a custom GPT that I call Prompt Genie and I'll, I'll give it to you for the show notes that basically you just do a brain dump. It will interview you and require you to ask four questions and then it will write a beautiful jaw dropping prompt.

[Michael Stelzner]

Love it.

[Michael Hyatt]

That you can just use to train a GPT or just to feed it in as a raw prompt.

[Michael Stelzner]

I love it. Excellent. Okay, there's some pitfalls that I'm sure you've learned along the way and any particular things we need to watch out for when we are as business owners and entrepreneurs beginning to get into this. I know some of this stuff you might have already hinted at at the start of the podcast, but I think there might be some things worth visiting here.

[Michael Hyatt]

I would say first of all, have a primary tool and don't get sidetracked with other tools. You know, set aside a time for experimentation and learning some of the other tools, but go deep on one tool and get real proficiency. And for me, that's ChatGPT. They're the best funded AI out there. You know, arguably Google is at that level too. But my primary tool is ChatGPT. My secondary tool is is Gemini Pro 2.5. So when ChatGPT introduced their version 5 model, everything went haywire for about 48 hours. Arguably, maybe it was like a week. And I was so frustrated, but I just went over to Gemini and I literally was getting better output. I thought, whoa, it's been a while since I've used this. This is amazing what I'm getting. But have a secondary tool that you can use so that work just doesn't come to a standstill. So that'd be my first tip real quick on Gemini.

[Michael Stelzner]

For those that haven't tried it, if you have a workspace account, which means your company or you pay for Google, then you get Gemini for free. Well, you pay for it, but it doesn't cost Anything Extra. It's gemini.google.com and you have models you can select at the top. And as of this recording, 2.5 Pro is their supermodel. And what's amazing about it is it's developed from the ground up to be multimodal, which means you can drop audio files in there, you can drop video files in there. It's really very, very sophisticated. And Michael, I don't know what your thoughts are, but one thing that Google has is a lot of money and a lot of servers and I do feel like they're going to be competing against OpenAI. Even though OpenAI was the first kid on the playground. I feel like Google is definitely not to be discounted. What's your thoughts on that?

[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah, I think absolutely that's the case. What I don't feel like they've created yet is tools for the user, particularly for sharing custom GPTs. Like they have a thing called Gems that's the equivalent of custom GPTs. But at least to my knowledge at this time we're talking and recording this, they're not shareable. Yeah. And they're not as sophisticated. So I wish they would get there and add those kinds of tools. And in fact, all the platforms could do a better job on the user interface. That's why I like. And let me mention another tool that I use with ChatGPT. I use a Chrome extension. First of all, I always use ChatGPT on the web. It's much better than the desktop app, it's much better than the mobile app. It has more features than both. But you can add to it a specific Chrome extension called, and I'll send you a link to this too, called Ultra. And I think if you go to Git, Ultra AI. This is astonishing. It fixes a lot of the interface issues. It has a built in prompt library and the interface looks identical to like if. If it was native to ChatGPT. It looks like that. Yeah.

[Michael Stelzner]

I can confirm that's the right URL. Get Ultra AI. Very fascinating. Okay, so you were about to go on to another pitfall.

[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah, another pitfall, I would say. And you and I didn't talk about this, Michael, but it occurred to me as we were talking a moment ago, resist the temptation to buy the annual subscription for any tool.

[Michael Stelzner]

Oh, I like this a lot.

[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah. So the reason why is I cannot tell you how many tools that I bought. I thought, well, I'll save myself a little money and get the annual subscription and then two weeks later I'm not using it. So this gives you opportunity to experiment. But if it's not something you're going to use on an ongoing basis, why continue to pay for it? So just go ahead and subscribe month by Month. And, you know, if two years from now you're still using it, you know, maybe you consider the annual. But that'll save you a bunch of money.

[Michael Stelzner]

The other thing was, which we've talked about, was this experimental time. How much time do you recommend we should experiment with new tools or not experiment with new tools? And before you answer, I feel like a lot of the experimental playground stuff has to do with video and imagery, you know, because there's limits, obviously, to what these tools can do on that front. I don't know if that's where you find yourself experimenting. Maybe you experiment in other ways. But how much time should we set experimenting and what should we be experimenting with? What kind of concepts or things should we be experimenting with? Because it seems like chat GPT can do it all, it seems, you know.

[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah. And this is where I think it's helpful to join a community like yours or like Jonathan Mast. I know he's been in the show. His AI prompts for entrepreneurs is a phenomenal Facebook group, 450,000 members. And so they're constantly experimenting in there. And so I'm reading that every day. I find that for me, that it's almost a constraint. It's not like I have to, you know, make myself experiment. It's like, I'm not going to do this for more than an hour.

[Michael Stelzner]

Oh, I like that. You're going to limit the amount of time you get to be in the sandbox, so to speak. Right?

[Michael Hyatt]

That's right. Because this is addictive and it's like one of the most powerful drugs I've ever taken. AI and you can spend a ton of time in here. But yes, I would like. One of the areas that you didn't mention is that using agents is something I'm experimenting with. My team, very big.

[Michael Stelzner]

Yeah, that's big.

[Michael Hyatt]

Right now. I really do think that's going to be the future. And my mastermind members are asking about it, which, by the way, that's another cool thing, is that once you get in front of even your employees, then all of a sudden you kind of set yourself up with the leader. And any teacher knows all you got to do is stay about, you know, one session ahead of the class. That's true, but it forces. It forces me to get into some of this stuff because I want to be able to talk about it and people are asking questions about it.

[Michael Stelzner]

Well, Michael, we've just tapped the surface of obviously, the things we could talk about when it comes to entrepreneurs and business owners who want to adopt and AI in a strategic way for their business. And what I want to know is how do people connect with you? Where do you want to send them? If they want to connect on the socials and you're on the socials, where do you want to send them? And if they want to check out your mastermind, where should they go?

[Michael Hyatt]

Yeah, so if you want to check me out, just in general, go to Full Focus Co CEO that's got everything, including our planner, all of our courses, all the stuff I'm doing, everything. The mastermind is Full Focus Co Mastermind. And so that'll give you a whole page on what that mastermind is about. We have a few slots open. You have to apply for it, but we'd love to hear from you. And then on the socials, I would say I'm most active on Facebook, so you can find me on Facebook at Michael Hyatt and also X. And by the way, X is one of the best sources for for getting tech knowledge. And I've got an entire curated list of AI people that I listen to and I can send that to you for the list too. People just click on it and then all of a sudden they have access to all those AI experts.

[Michael Stelzner]

Michael Hyatt, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today.

[Michael Hyatt]

Thanks, Michael. Great to be with you.

[Michael Stelzner]

Well, that was awesome. And I'm sure there was a lot of stuff that Michael mentioned that you want to get access to because as he mentioned, all these great things that are going to be in the show notes and I'm going to tell you right now where to find all that. Simply visit social mediaexaminer.com a72 and be sure to follow this show on your favorite podcasting app. And if you've been a listener for a little while, we would love a review. Also, if you want to let your friends know about it, that would be amazing. And do check out our other shows, the Social Media Marketing Podcast and the Social Media Marketing Talk show. This brings us to the end the of of the AI Explored podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may AI help you become more successful. The AI Explored podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner. This is the year to finally come to Social Media Marketing World 2026. Grab your tickets right now by visiting social media marketing world.info.