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- [00:01]
Michael Stelzner
Hey, Mike Stelzner here. Want to master AI marketing? Social media marketing world 2025 has an entire AI track waiting for you. Join us in San Diego this March. Get your tickets now@socialmediamarketingworld.info and save big by acting now. Welcome to the AI Explored podcast, helping you put AI to work. 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, and this is the podcast for marketers, creators and entrepreneurs who want to know how to use AI. Today I'm going to be joined by Rick Mulready, and we're going to explore a framework to help you intelligently apply AI to your work. If you have been struggling to integrate AI into your everyday work and you kind of forget about it and you know you're not taking full advantage of what it could do to help you with your work, today's episode is definitely going to be for you. Also, be sure to follow this show if you're relatively new, so you don't miss any of our future content. Let's transition now over to this week's interview with Rick Mulready, helping you simplify your AI journey. Here is this week's week's expert guide. Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Rick Mulready. If you don't know who Rick is, he is a coach and AI strategist that helps online businesses increase their efficiency and profitability using AI. His membership is the AI playbook. His YouTube channel is at Rick Mulready. And Rick will be presenting at Social media Marketing World 2025. Rick, welcome back to the show. How you doing today?
- [01:56]
Rick Mulready
Thanks for having me, Mike. I'm doing great. Excited to come back to Social media marketing world.
- [02:01]
Michael Stelzner
Yeah, it's going to be so awes. Awesome. And Rick's going to be talking about AI, and you know, he's been coming for years under a different kind of brand, but it's super exciting.
- [02:10]
Rick Mulready
Yeah.
- [02:11]
Michael Stelzner
So today, Rick and I are going to explore a framework to help marketers and entrepreneurs intelligently apply AI to work. Because the truth of the matter is, a lot of us are not intelligently utilizing AI, and Rick is. Rick has figured it out and I'm really excited. So, Rick, my first question is, why should marketers, entrepreneurs, why should they have a system for applying AI to work? Said another way, if they pay close attention to what we're going to be Talking about today, what is the upside to someone listening today?
- [02:45]
Rick Mulready
This simple answer is, it's going to be a lot faster. So they're going to save time and they're going to save money in the process, because then they're not spending a whole bunch of money for unneeded apps and all that sort of thing. One of the biggest questions I get, and I sort of look at it as people are doing it backwards, is that, you know, they hear about ChatGPT, for example. It's a tool that everybody knows, and they're like, well, what. What can I do with ChatGPT? Rather than, what is the starting with the business problem? Like, what is the problem I want to solve? Or what is the opportunity in the business that I want to make easier? And then once you understand that. Because that's the harder part, I think. I don't know what you think, Mike. I. I think that's the harder part for people because they're like, well, I don't know. Like, I don't know. I just do things in my business. What do you mean? There's workflows in there, but you have to start there, because once you understand that, then you can be like, oh, I need to write my weekly newsletter, or I need to write a script for a podcast. Then it's like, okay, what is the best AI tool that can help solve that? Then you do your research. Whereas, again, most people start with the tool first and then try to, like, fit it into something that's not necessarily a problem.
- [04:05]
Michael Stelzner
Well, I mean, I can speak from my own personal experience as to why I think this is really important. So many marketers and entrepreneurs like you and me, Rick, we've been doing what we do for a long time, and we've got our own kind of, like, procedures and systems in place, and it's become habit, it's become pattern for us. And unless we intentionally say to ourselves, huh, could AI help here? Should AI be involved here? We're not going to use it, right? It's not until we give ourselves. Like, I was just. Recently I had extra time, so I started fiddling, right? And all of a sudden I'm like, whoa, this is amazing. But actually making it be part of what I do every day, that's, I think, the upside, right, to having a really good streamlined system, because otherwise it's just going to be a toy that you're going to forget to pick up. But when you do work the system, like we're going to be talking about today, I feel like there's Massive upside. Would you agree?
- [05:01]
Rick Mulready
Absolutely. I love how you said it's the fiddle time that you want to make sure that you're giving yourself and. And also within that, giving yourself permission to. For it not to work the first five times that you try something. You know, I was talking to somebody earlier today, and they were like, yeah, I spent like a hundred hours trying to figure out GPTs. But I don't love that because I just want to know, like, how this works, and I want to give it the best prompt right away. And I was like, well, you have to be willing to, like, continue to test and iterate what you're trying to accomplish, because there's a lot of different ways that you can accomplish these things.
- [05:42]
Michael Stelzner
Yeah. And this is where I want to spend a minute or two just talking about some of the problems that people face, specifically with making AI a regular part of their work. You have people inside your membership. I have people inside of my membership. What are you seeing as kind of the big challenges that are stopping people from really adopting AI?
- [06:00]
Rick Mulready
I hear all the time, and I'm sure you hear this too, Mike, is that they feel like they're drinking from a fire hose, that there's so much information, there's so many tools, and it's the whole analysis by paralysis. They get all these different things, and then instead of jumping in and fiddling a little bit every day, they don't do anything. And then, unfortunately, we're at a point now where people are just going to fall further and further back. But everybody listening to this show here on a regular basis, you're way ahead of the game. And I just will take one second, and for the mere fact that you are listening to this podcast, you are ahead of so many people, so many people out there that we don't realize it, because we're in this little bubble, right, where we're learning about AI and we're working with it and we're testing it and fiddling around with it. Most people are not doing that and don't have any clue.
- [06:55]
Michael Stelzner
And I want to add something to that, you know, because. Thank you, first of all, because, look, I believe that the best way to overcome the overwhelm, right, which we know is a legit issue, right? Like, it's not just overwhelmed with all the features that are coming out. It's also overwhelmed with just the nature of our work today, Right? Because we are, as entrepreneurs and marketers, dealing with struggles coming at us from every angle, Right. Email's not getting into the inbox. Social posts aren't being seen dot to dot that dot. You know, there's just a lot of challenges that did not exist before. There's economic uncertainty. There's all sorts of stuff going on right now. And the antidote to that is to have a mindset of lifelong learning. Right. And to try to find a place where people simplify it and speak in everyday, plain language, which is what Rick is doing with us today. Right. Because I think that is the big problem is like, AI is not super intuitive, let's be honest. Like, chat GPT's got like six, seven, eight models, right? Oh, one mini zero, one regular four, zero. Right. It's completely confusing as heck. What are the other challenges that, that you see going on beyond the obvious stuff we just talked about?
- [08:10]
Rick Mulready
Yeah. I mean, along with that is they don't know where to start. And so along with that comes with what we're talking about here today is they're like, okay, I do my business, I do my things in the business, but they don't necessarily break it down into the different workflows or steps to accomplish things in the business. And so because of that, they don't know where to start. Or if they do know where to start, they don't know what is the best quote, unquote. Because I say best is like, there's all kinds of different tools out there that will solve problems. It's. Where do I start? With whatever tool or is it an automation or workflow or whatever it is to solve this problem that I've identified that I want to tackle first? So they're not even sure really where to start. They know they need to start, but they're not really sure where to start with it. Yeah.
- [09:03]
Michael Stelzner
And these are the same problems that I've seen when people have started adopting video. Rick, you're into video now, and you know, we've been talking about video at Social Media examiner forever, but in the early days, people didn't know where to start. And a lot of the video experts said, just start. Right. Your worst one is going to be your first one. Right. And that's exactly true with AI. Right. Like, your worst prompt is going to be your first prompt. Like, if you go back and look at your very first prompt in Chat GPT, it's probably going to be, who is Rick Morty? Or who is Michael Stelzner? Right. I mean, yeah, you know, that's it. So the good news is we're here today to overcome these challenges of overwhelm, of not sure which tools to use, not even sure where to apply AI by essentially coming up with a really good system. And Rick is a really great systems guy. He's got a great process and we're going to kind of outline it one step at a time. Is there anything you want to say before we get into that otherwise? If not, we can just start with what's the first part of your process?
- [10:06]
Rick Mulready
Yeah, we can go with the first part of the process, but I will caveat it with, it's the part that nobody likes to do. It's the worst part. And hopefully we were doing this even before AI came along. And that is just doing an audit of your time. So just tracking what you do on a day to day basis. The important thing though is to track your time over, you know, like five to seven days, if you can. But five to seven normal business days, you're not like, oh, today's my call day. So I have eight calls today. Even though that's probably normal. Yeah, I would track it. But also when you're creating content or maybe you're doing coaching, whatever it might be, track the time and what you're doing, how long you're doing it for, and make sure that they're normal, quote, unquote, business days. I also like to include a little bit of an energy rating. What is it doing for me in terms of my energy? Do I hate doing this? Does it drain my energy? Does it lift my energy up? Does it energize? Like, keep track of that too? Because that's all super helpful information when it comes to later down the road figuring out where to start with your AI. So track your time.
- [11:25]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, so let's talk about this a little bit. First of all, let's unravel the why. Why is it important to track our time and our energy level when we're doing certain tasks?
- [11:34]
Rick Mulready
Because so many of us go through our day and we're like, what did I do today?
- [11:39]
Michael Stelzner
I'm having one of those days today.
- [11:41]
Rick Mulready
Yeah, exactly. You're like, wait a minute, it's 3:00 in the afternoon. What have I done today? So that's what makes it harder to answer the question, where do I start incorporating AI? Because it's like, well, I'm not even tracking and fully know what I'm doing from day to day. Now, if you're one of those people who lives and dies by your calendar, everything that you do has a time slot in your calendar. Cool. Like you're doing it and you're somebody who sticks to your time and your boundaries. Awesome. You got it much, much easier. Cause you can just look at your calendar and see what you're doing and see how long you're spending. But you know, that's really the why is like, okay, where is my time going? What am I spending my time on? The other thing too is that we often underestimate how long things take us. You know, if, for example, all right, I'm doing a podcast episode or a YouTube video or what have you, well, you might think, oh, that takes me whatever, two hours a week. But when you really get into it and start tracking the time, of all the steps that go into that, you might be like, holy cow, that took me four and a half hours. And you wouldn't know that unless you're tracking the time. And then from an energy perspective, that is great information and great intel, if you will. Because if something really lights you up and energizes you and you feel like time passes really quickly with it and it's part of your zone of genius, if you will, that's good to know. Because that not necessarily something that you may want to delegate to AI right off the bat.
- [13:19]
Michael Stelzner
Well, you may want to do more of that with the time that might end up being available down the stream, right?
- [13:23]
Rick Mulready
Absolutely. Yep.
- [13:25]
Michael Stelzner
So give us any tips on how you track time, because I know we talked about a cool little tool that you're using.
- [13:30]
Rick Mulready
I use an app called clockify. It's free. There's a desktop version, a mobile version, I believe there is a Chrome extension also there is. And you can just click Start and it'll track for however length of time that you want to do something. Then you can just type in what you are working on and then it starts to learn what you're working on over time. You can categorize it, it makes it super simple. Again, because it's also free. There are paid versions of it if you want to get more into it, but you don't even need it to track your time. But if you're somebody who likes to write things down in a notebook, keep it handy, jot it down, put it in notion, put it in wherever, wherever it is. Just make sure that it's something. The best solution is something that you're going to use.
- [14:14]
Michael Stelzner
I love it.
- [14:14]
Rick Mulready
So as long as you know what the task is, find the best, find the easiest thing to do. Because again, it is a little labor intensive because you have to remember to jot it down. Whatever makes it as easy as possible for you, I would use it.
- [14:28]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, so just to summarize real quick, we're going to audit the tasks that we do over a regular five day working period. And the objective here is to become self aware of where our time is going and that's going to layer into what we're going to ultimately be doing next. But once we become aware of where our time goes, and as Rick said, we're generally not aware when we're in the middle of something. We're just not. And it's not just tracking time, it's also tracking your excitement level about whether you love that kind of work or whether it drains your energy. Energy, right, exactly. So let's say we've been doing that for a week and we've got a nice little spreadsheet or Google Doc or something put together. What's next?
- [15:11]
Rick Mulready
The other thing that I like to do with that, by the way, and this also helps with this next step of I call it prioritizing. So there's, I'm blanking on his, what the original AdWords.
- [15:25]
Michael Stelzner
I'm drawing a blank on his name too. But I know who he is.
- [15:27]
Rick Mulready
But yeah, yeah, he was the first person. He wrote 8020 sales and marketing. Okay, great, great book. And it was the first time I learned about the concept of assigning a value to the tasks. So something like loading your email into your email CRM.
- [15:42]
Michael Stelzner
Perry Marshall.
- [15:43]
Rick Mulready
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Perry Marshall. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Perry Marshall. Thank you. That's a quote, $10 an hour task as opposed to a, you know, if you're strategizing about your business and coming up with strategy for increasing your profit margin, that might be a $10,000 an hour task.
- [16:01]
Michael Stelzner
Ah, okay. So this is another data layer we can add in here, right? Is that what you're saying?
- [16:05]
Rick Mulready
Exactly.
- [16:06]
Michael Stelzner
Okay.
- [16:06]
Rick Mulready
And then he also has a hundred dollar an hour task and $1,000 an hour task. So he would put so for example, like copywriting into $100 an hour task. So that's another layer of. It's helpful data if you want to go to that extent, to start to assign once you have your time audit for those five days, in addition to what is your energy score, if you will, assigning a dollar value. Because then the next step is to look at that and say, okay, what are the priorities that I want to get off of my plate so that I can spend more time on those things that are higher impact for the business and higher energy and sort of those $1,000, $10,000 and our tasks. So the next step in that is start to prioritize that list. And so a lot of people are like, well, I don't even know where to start. Use the data that you got from the time audit and then just start to prioritize that list. Because then as we go along, when we continue talking about this here, we're going to start to be like, all right, I'm going to do one of these at a time.
- [17:18]
Michael Stelzner
When you say do one of these things, you mean, like use AI to enhance these things?
- [17:22]
Rick Mulready
Yes. Yes.
- [17:24]
Michael Stelzner
Okay. So. So just so we're clear, in this second phase, which we're calling the prioritize phase, we are prioritizing the tasks that are the most valuable versus the least valuable. We're kind of rank ordering them. Is that what I'm hearing you say?
- [17:39]
Rick Mulready
Yeah.
- [17:39]
Michael Stelzner
And value is going to be either based on the energy or the monetary value.
- [17:45]
Rick Mulready
Yes.
- [17:45]
Michael Stelzner
Okay.
- [17:46]
Rick Mulready
You also want to be looking at things that are repetitive.
- [17:48]
Michael Stelzner
Okay.
- [17:49]
Rick Mulready
That you're doing repetitively or your team is doing repetitively, maybe week to week or month to month. And also those things that are, especially if they are repetitive and take up a lot of time. And so for me, you're going to laugh at this because you're like, well, Rick, you're. You know, I'm still. I talk about testing early on. I've tested lots of different iterations of this, and I feel like I'm much closer to this now. But I do a weekly newsletter, comes out on Sunday mornings, and it is meaty. I mean, I've had it up as this isn't necessarily bragging because I feel like it's too long, but I've had it up at like 2600 words sometimes. I mean, it's meaty. It's not always that long, but it takes me a long time. And I have my team help in different aspects, but it takes me a long time to do it. So that qualifies as something that I would prioritize because A, it's repetitive, B, it does kind of drain me because it takes a long time. And see, it takes a good five hours to put together. Add that up over a month, a year. That is a lot of time. However, it is high impact because I'm sending that every single week to my email list. And so I would prioritize that task out of my audit that I did in step one.
- [19:11]
Michael Stelzner
You probably already know this, but marketing is changing faster than ever in AI. It's leading the charge. At Social Media Marketing World 2025, we're bringing together the brightest minds in AI marketing to help you stay ahead. We're talking real strategies, proven Workflows and hands on training you won't find anywhere else. Our AI track is designed specifically for marketers just like you. Ready to transform your marketing. Join us in San Diego this March. Head to social mediamarketingworld.info and secure your spot today. Okay, so just so we're clear, it sounds like what I'm hearing you say is we're prioritizing tasks that are candidates for AI automation and or enhancement. Is that what I'm hearing you say?
- [19:59]
Rick Mulready
Yep.
- [19:59]
Michael Stelzner
So tasks that you want off your plate, maybe because they're time consuming, maybe because they're not the best use of your time and you could provide more value in other areas, like maybe, I don't know, who knows what I mean, for me it might be strategizing with my team, you know, instead of creating something in particular. So is there any way that AI can help us with this prioritization?
- [20:22]
Rick Mulready
Totally. I mean, that's a great way to look at it. So what you could do is depending on how you were tracking, like so let's just say that you were tracking in your notebook or what have you. You could take a picture of it with your phone and then upload that into ChatGPT and just explain to ChatGPT what it is that it's looking at. So you could just say this is a time audit of my time over the past five business days. I want to prioritize these tasks or I want to prioritize what you're seeing in these images in terms of what I should begin to see where AI can fit into these things and simplify these things.
- [21:08]
Michael Stelzner
I like that. Because you could actually also potentially take a picture of a spreadsheet, right? Or you could export a CSV file. Believe it or not, a spreadsheet has a CSV file where you've got like along the left column. You could have maybe the days of the week, you know, or across the top and then across the other access could be all the various tasks and the amount of time that they take. Right. And I mean, it gets a little crazy when you have the third variable of energy and value and all that kind of stuff. But AI can kind of look at these kind of tables, right? And they can presumably help you figure it out.
- [21:39]
Rick Mulready
You can get a lot more Ninja too, and use Gemini 2.0 and do the real time talk with it where you screen share. So you pull up either your images or your spreadsheet, whatever however it is that you've tracked your time. And again, you tell the AI model what it is that it's looking at. So in that case there, you'd want to describe what the energy rating means. So it's like, oh, my energy rating of 4 is good. Energy rating of 1. Like, just describe it, give it some context, and then tell it what you want it to do. You know, the same thing I want you to look at. Review what you're seeing on the screen here. And I want you to help me create a prioritized list of where you think I should begin implementing AI based on these tasks that I'm doing on a regular basis.
- [22:24]
Michael Stelzner
Yeah. And for those that don't know Google AI Studio, you choose the model. Gemini 2 Flash, I think it's called. Could you not do this? Also with the advanced voice mode, with the video feature? Have you tried that? Like, if you have chat GPT on your phone and you use the advanced voice mode, there is a video camera and you could turn it on and show it something on your screen, and you could essentially accomplish the same thing.
- [22:45]
Rick Mulready
You can do that. I personally like the interaction. How Gemini 2.0 works.
- [22:53]
Michael Stelzner
Can you do it all from a desktop where you don't have to hold up your phone?
- [22:56]
Rick Mulready
Yeah.
- [22:56]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, that's advantageous. Okay, so so far, what we're talking about here is we've done an audit, we've got some data, and we're trying to prioritize certain tasks that are ideal candidates for AI to assist us. And if you're not very good at prioritization, we talked about how you could just get that data somehow. Screenshot, text, live interaction, depending on the tools that you're using into AI and ask it to help you to identify candidates that AI can essentially assist you in. Okay, so what are we doing with this data that's coming out of this prioritization side of things? You know, where are we storing this and what exactly are we doing with this prioritization list?
- [23:39]
Rick Mulready
Yeah, the storing it part, wherever you want. I mean, again, I think it really depends to. On how you collected that data. Like, how did you track it? Like, if you tracked it in your notebook, for example. Cool. It's fine to leave in the notebook. I think it's really interesting, too. And this doesn't necessarily. I mean, yes, it's AI related, but, like, it would be really interesting. So that this is an exercise I like to do quarterly, by the way. And it does get easier the more you do it. And again, it's tedious, but the goal that you can find within it is great. What's really interesting, though, is, like, let's just say I do it now for Q1, and then I go back and do it again in Q2, and I've implemented AI in the process. And then when I hit Q2 and I do it again, it's really interesting to look at things like, oh, am I working less? Or the types of things I'm spending my time on. Like, it's really interesting to watch the evolution of that.
- [24:37]
Michael Stelzner
I love that. Okay, so stage one is the audit. Stage two is the prioritization. What's next? What's the next step?
- [24:45]
Rick Mulready
This is where you want to start to plan. So let's just say that you've identified, you prioritize your list, and you're like, okay, I'm going to tackle the first one. It's very easy to get overwhelmed with your list, by the way, because you're like, holy cow, I want to. I want to do all these things. I want to make it easier with AI for these top seven things. Well, let's start with one. And then you want to work through that. And once you dial that in, then you can move on to the next one. But once you've identified that top thing. So I'll use the newsletter again as an example for me. So it's all right, five hours a week, putting this all, writing it and putting it all together. The next thing I want to do with it, and this is actually hard for most people, is we want to break it down into the steps or tasks that go into creating whatever it is that the task that you're doing. So if you're doing like we talked earlier about a podcast or a YouTube video or what have you. All right, what are all the steps? It's not like, okay, just flip on your camera and start riffing. Most people go through topic ideation, fleshing out a topic idea, creating an outline. Maybe people script it, then it's recording, then it gets sent to the editor. So it's like you want to break that thing down, whatever that thing is, into steps. So once you've done that for me for the newsletter, I have three different sections, for example, so I have, like, the relevant news to online businesses. I have what I call an AI Insights section. And then I have a use case of the week. So each of those things, there's different steps within each one of those sections. So the important thing is, is for me to break each of the steps down. So now I know, oh, AI can help me here. So let's just say it's researching relevant news stories that are AI Stories that are relevant to online businesses. Well, AI can help me with that. Rather than me physically going and, you know, doing the research myself, or, oh, I'm gonna write my insight section on a specific topic. Oh, maybe AI can help me come up with the ideas for that so that I'm not always having to come up with an idea and then, oh, I want to use whatever. Claude to help me write that. But I wouldn't know that I wouldn't be able to plan that out if I'm not breaking it down into the steps that go into doing that task. And this is your. Your workflow.
- [27:21]
Michael Stelzner
I love it. Okay, so we've gone from audit to prioritize to plan. And in the planning phase, we're really starting to pick, if you will, the first big rock that we're going to break into little rocks. Right. And we're going to use those little rocks are going to be potentially candidates for AI enhanced steps is really what I'm hearing you say. Right.
- [27:40]
Rick Mulready
Y.
- [27:41]
Michael Stelzner
Now we enter into this testing phase, which you and I were talking about. Right?
- [27:44]
Rick Mulready
Yeah.
- [27:44]
Michael Stelzner
And talk to me a little bit about what we mean by testing, and then let's get into kind of like what it entails.
- [27:50]
Rick Mulready
When I'm looking at testing, it's the whole. Well, you and I have talked about Facebook ads for years. I used to teach Facebook ads. And the question that. Should I fill in the blank?
- [28:02]
Michael Stelzner
Yeah.
- [28:03]
Rick Mulready
I don't even have to hear whatever's after, should I? The answer is yes. What I mean by that is you got to test it out because it all works. And so the same concept applies to AI. And so the test part of this whole thing is there's a lot of different tools that will solve a problem. It's figuring out, you know, number one, what's in your budget. Right. Because a lot of the tools are going to cost 20 bucks a month. Of course, there's free versions, but you'll hit limits and so forth. But let's just say that you want to write an email. Well, chatgpt for most people is not going to be the best content writer. Claude is going to be the better content writer. So testing that, just as a very simple example, is. All right, you know what? I'm going to test both these models, and then there's tools out there, by the way, that you can use that. Will you put one prompt in and you can test different models against each other. So you can put one prompt in on the screen and you'll. It'll show you different models. The. The Output from different models.
- [29:13]
Michael Stelzner
Do you have a recommended tool for that? I really like.
- [29:16]
Rick Mulready
I think it's called chathub. It's Chathub gg, I think, is the URL.
- [29:21]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, so chathub GG lets you select a couple different models and then see.
- [29:25]
Rick Mulready
Yeah, exactly.
- [29:26]
Michael Stelzner
See the output. And then you can kind of very quickly test to see whether or not one model versus another model is giving you the kind of output you're looking for. Is that what I'm hearing you say?
- [29:36]
Rick Mulready
Exactly, Yeah. I mean, that's a very simplified, like, okay, if I put a prompt into a couple of these different AI models, which one's going to give me the best or the kind of output that I'm happy with? The next level of that is I'm going to put together a workflow or an automation. So if I'm putting an automation together, let's just say in Zapier or make.com, does the automation A. Does it work the way that I want it to, and am I getting the kind of output I want from the automation? Same thing is I use a tool called mindpal and I build workflows in mindpal. So it's great. So, for example, if I wanted to do research for the newsletter, for one section, it will do the research and then it will prompt me for like, okay, pick which one I like the best. And then based on that, the one I pick, it'll move on to the next step in the workflow. And so again, this is where it's like, all right, I'm going to test putting this all together and to see if it's working for me. But you've got to be okay with it not working the first several times. And this goes back to. I love what. How you. What you said before, Mike, is like, fiddling with it is just got to fiddle with it until you get to a point where you're like, oh, yeah, I'm really happy with this. I'm really happy with the output. I'm happy with the AI model that I'm using. Just like before, where you were like, oh, could you use advanced Voice mode for ChatGPT to show what's on your screen? Yes. Gemini 2.0 does that too. Like, there's just different options.
- [31:13]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, so just to try to help bring clarity to this, when we're at this stage of the process where we have planned out this thing that we want to tackle with AI and we've identified kind of all the critical steps that are involved, it's at that point that we're going to begin testing various different AI solutions or tools to see whether or not it meets the mark that you're looking for. And to give a good analogy, we have an account called Magi AI. We had Dustin Stout here on the show. We have it for everyone inside the company, and it's got a million different image models inside of it. It's got Ideogram, it's got Flux, it's got all these different models. And I'm the one that creates all the thumbnails for the YouTube videos on social Media Examiner. And there's always new stuff coming out. So what I'm doing is I'm testing the various different AI image models to see which ones have what I'm looking for. Because in the early days, they were all coming out of ChatGPT with Dall E3, and they looked horrible. And then eventually I discovered Flux and I'm like, holy crap, that looks photorealistic. Okay. And then eventually I realized, I've got to bring this stuff into Photoshop and I've got to use Photoshop Generative Expand. So I've got a process now that I have tested and refined where I'm using a couple different tools, and it could take me as much as like, five to 20 prompts to get the image that I want. And then I've got to bring it into Photoshop and I've got to mess with it a little bit. But still, it's so much better than art directing and Illustrator, which is what we used to do.
- [32:47]
Rick Mulready
Right.
- [32:48]
Michael Stelzner
You know what I mean? And then I have to say, no, you need to do this and change that. I can just get it done. And for me, I actually love doing it. For me, it's fun because it allows my creative genes to come out.
- [32:56]
Rick Mulready
Yeah.
- [32:57]
Michael Stelzner
So this is an example of, like, you got to experiment. And the other side of it, which I'm sure you can attest to, Rick, is these AI models, there's new ones that come out all the time, and if you stick with your old one, you might actually not realize that they've evolved. You have any, like, Chat GPT? Oh, one, Right. Is so much better than four. Oh. And most people don't even know it, right?
- [33:16]
Rick Mulready
Oh, yeah. And the creating the thumbnail is a perfect example of what we were talking about. You're like, oh, yeah, I need to be creating these. And maybe it's a weekly thing or if you batch them or what have you, but when you sit down and you're like, oh, Yeah, I spent 90 minutes each week to do these. Now you know exactly what it is and how long it's taking you. And then you start to break it down into the steps like you just mentioned. Now that becomes. Oh, okay, I can start to. Because it's repetitive, it takes up a lot of time. However, I do enjoy the process and it's also a very important thing that you're doing. Right. So, okay, cool. I can enjoy it while also trying to incorporate the different image generation models and stuff like that to try to figure out what the best way is to do it. But you're able to do that because you know what the process is and it's broken down step by step.
- [34:10]
Michael Stelzner
Yeah. And in this case, it's more about getting a higher quality output than it is about saving me time.
- [34:15]
Rick Mulready
Yeah.
- [34:16]
Michael Stelzner
And that's the key. Right. Because we know that thumbnails are kind of everything. Right. And the quality of the thumbnail has very much to do with the likelihood that you're going to get someone to click on it. So for me, I don't mind messing around with these tools and I love it, actually, because for me, it's like the kind of work that I love doing. So this is just yet another example. Let's talk a little bit about the different kinds of tools that solve different kinds of problems. We've already mentioned a few of them, but I'd love you to just share what your thoughts are, just so people know that obviously they're going to, when they break their tasks down, they're going to have a lot of different kinds of tasks. So which tools are best for which kinds of tasks?
- [34:52]
Rick Mulready
So I like ChatGPT for things like brainstorming, for ideating on things, for fleshing out ideas, for creating outlines of different things. I will use it to do some analysis. Gemini is very good at data analysis, especially when you have a ton of data, because the context window in Gemini is a million. Which dwarfs both context windows for.
- [35:23]
Michael Stelzner
Are you using AI Studio for Gemini or are you using some other tool?
- [35:26]
Rick Mulready
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [35:26]
Michael Stelzner
Okay.
- [35:27]
Rick Mulready
Yeah.
- [35:27]
Michael Stelzner
Google AI Studio.
- [35:29]
Rick Mulready
Yeah, just a quick side note on that. So when we're recording this, Google just the other day last week announced that they're including Gemini in Google Workspace business.
- [35:40]
Michael Stelzner
Accounts or free, but they increased the price. But yes, we all have it now.
- [35:43]
Rick Mulready
But I think it's got to get better, especially in terms of its integration into Google Drive.
- [35:50]
Michael Stelzner
Gemini.google.com For anybody who's listening. That's what Rick's talking about. I haven't really used it very Much, but it feels a little bit like chatgpt, right? Or claude. So what you're saying is it's really good for data analysis. So if you've been struggling with data analysis on the other tools, mess around with actual Gemini itself. That's cool.
- [36:07]
Rick Mulready
And again, you can do it for free within the AI studio. Google's AI studio.
- [36:11]
Michael Stelzner
You just don't have any storage or memory or anything like that.
- [36:14]
Rick Mulready
Yeah. If you're using Google Workspace, surprise. You now have Gemini in there. What I'm not seeing yet, by the way, is the Gemini 1.5 Pro deep research tool. You and I talked about this.
- [36:28]
Michael Stelzner
It's available on the personal accounts, but it's coming is what I've been hearing.
- [36:31]
Rick Mulready
Yeah. And you also have another tool that we'll Talk about is NotebookLM plus, which is their latest paid version of it of NotebookLM included in your Google Workspace. But anyway, that's what I would use ChatGPT for. That's what I like to use it for. Claude is my go to content writer. Love it. Really, really good in terms of writing content, Writing emails, writing sales page copy writing email sequences, writing.
- [37:00]
Michael Stelzner
Almost anything really.
- [37:02]
Rick Mulready
Yeah, pretty much anything along with that. By the way, just to give you some different options. I really like Lex A I L E X AI for writing content.
- [37:13]
Michael Stelzner
Never heard of it.
- [37:13]
Rick Mulready
It's interesting because I can use different AI models within lex. I have a call with one of the people on their team next week when we're recording this, so it's a question I'm going to ask. I can use the Claude 3.5 sonnet model within Lex and I get an amazing output with my writing, with my content. It's very personable, it has all the great qualities of Claude, but it's. I don't know, there's something different about it in a good way. So anyway, lexai is another great tool, Claude for writing content. We Talked about Gemini. NotebookLM is free. They do have the free version. This is sort of that probably my top two tools of 2024 that I've talked a lot about on the YouTube channel. It's just great. Basically you can upload different source material and originally was created for people who were like researching for books, like writing a book, doing all the research, the academic papers and so forth. But essentially you can upload at this point, you can upload Google Docs, you can upload Google Slides, URLs, YouTube videos, audio files, copy paste text and create this massive knowledge base, if you will, around a certain topic and within that you can. Or NotebookLM, the Gemini model within NotebookLM. It can connect the dots between the different content sources that you've uploaded. So it's great for connecting the dots between different pieces of content. You can create a podcast of it now. You can direct the podcast now. So that's another tool using all the time.
- [38:54]
Michael Stelzner
I definitely love it. So, folks, just to kind of bring us up to speed where we're at, we've gone from auditing to prioritizing to planning, and then now we're in the testing phase. Now we're not going to get into this, but Rick and I had another interview about automation and I've also had some automation guests on the show. So this is where you can connect make.com or zapier.com behind the scenes to do automations. It's a lot more advanced. But what I think I'm hearing you say, Rick, is you've got to test the right tool for the right little task. Right. Just like you might have different people inside your network of friends that are really good at certain kinds of tasks. It's the same with the AI models. Some AI models are really good with audio or video or the written word or analysis. Right. And that's where testing comes in. It's worth a little bit of money to invest in these tools because it's going to be absolutely amazing. Now, let's just say, all right, we've got this down. What's the next step in your process? Because this is kind of fascinating to me.
- [39:54]
Rick Mulready
Yeah. So once you nailed it down, you know, the important thing is like, this is not a set it and forget it. It's a set it and forget it for a little while. But as you mentioned earlier, Mike, like thing, this stuff's changing all the time. Like models are getting better and things are, you know, agents are coming and all this other stuff. But at least once you dial in the process that where you're getting good results from it, then teach somebody on your team or teach an assistant or somebody or an intern or what have you so that they can take over the process so you get it off your plate and then you go to the next thing on your list and start the process all over again. But you're starting with the planning phase because you've already done the audit, you've already done the prioritization, now you can move to the next thing. And the cool thing is, is like you've already delegated it, if you will, to AI, but you do want somebody to kind of keep an eye on it, especially if it's kicking out content and so forth that you're going to review.
- [40:53]
Michael Stelzner
Any tips on how to teach? Because not everybody knows how to do that.
- [40:56]
Rick Mulready
Number one, I like to record myself going through the process with Loom or whatever tool that you want. I really like loom because number one, everybody knows it. Super simple. They have an AI add on. I think it's an extra $5 a month for it where you can screen record walking through something. And I think that's document is the button on the right hand side of your loom video. And then there's an SOP option. You click the SOP option and it gives you a very well written SOP for whatever it is that you just walk through on the screen.
- [41:31]
Michael Stelzner
Love it.
- [41:31]
Rick Mulready
So that's what I would do first and then I would schedule a zoom call with that person that you're going to teach it to or Google Meet or whatever and then walk them through the process. So now you're walking them through the process and they're doing it. That's the thing. That's the next step. You walk them through it, then ask them to do the process.
- [41:51]
Michael Stelzner
I see.
- [41:52]
Rick Mulready
While you're on the call now they have the sop, they have the recording of you do it. They have you walking through it on the zoom call, and they've walked you through it on the zoom call.
- [42:03]
Michael Stelzner
I love it. Absolutely love it. Rick, first of all, thank you for sharing this process. It's not as complicated as it sounds. It's actually really simple. The hardest part is just starting. The hardest part is actually just documenting what you do. Right. I mean, and once, once the rest of it, AI can assist with. Absolutely the rest of it. Rick, if people want to learn more about you and what you're doing, where's the best way for them to connect with you?
- [42:32]
Rick Mulready
The best way is the YouTube channel, if you just search for my name, rick Mulready on YouTube videos there. And then my community, which is called the AI Playbook, I'm dropping the. The premium part of the name because I'm only going to have one community, which is a good thing. So the AI Playbook. I have an AI community. We're over on school and it is for online businesses looking to pretty much do what we're talking about here today. Stay on top of AI, learn how to leverage AI for their business, make things easier and more profitable, and yeah, it's a lot of fun.
- [43:03]
Michael Stelzner
All right, Rick, Well, I cannot wait to see what you have to teach at Social Media Marketing World in San Diego this year. Thank thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your insights with us.
- [43:11]
Rick Mulready
Thanks Mike. Appreciate it as always.
- [43:13]
Michael Stelzner
Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over@socialmediaexaminer.com a42 and be sure to follow this show on your favorite podcast app. And if you've been a listener, would you do me a favor and give us a review? Or let your friends know about this show. And do check out our other shows, the Social Media Marketing Podcast and Social Media Marketing Talk Show. This brings us to the end of the AI Explored Podcast. I am your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day. And I hope you're not playing this at 1.5x because my voice is sounding really fast. May AI help you become more successful. Catch you next time. The AI Explored Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner. If you're serious about learning more about AI and marketing, I'll see you at Social Media Marketing World 2025. Go to social media marketingworld.info and secure your spot today.