B (4:49)

I feel like this conversation's been a really long time coming, and as someone who is completely obsessed with their productivity, I'm really excited about talking to you about what you know, the best in the world. And I really want this episode to be almost like a masterclass for people that really want to use AI to amplify their life, their work, their business. And I know that there is just so much that you can give them. So if my listeners give us the next hour, can you just tee us up for what you think would be the most valuable thing that they can get out of this conversation?

C (5:24)

Yeah, and thank you for having me. I think productivity is absolutely going to be part of it. So much of what I'm seeing right now is AI to do things faster so we can get more time back. And I want people to reallocate that time toward amplification and toward figuring out how to grow their business and not just send Emails faster. So I'm actually going to be hitting it from both sides.

B (5:43)

You've been doing this for 20 years, and I feel like the large majority of us have probably caught on in

A (5:48)

the last two or three is that

C (5:49)

Botox is a wonderful drug. ChatGPT coming out was kind of the grand opening for a lot of people. There are still people that haven't yet used these AI tools, and there are some people who are building AI agents to help run their business. So it's been out for about three and a half years, like the really accessible AI tools, but you've got millions of people who are at completely different zones of operation.

B (6:12)

If you are one of the people that decides not to adopt AI, like what's going to happen in the next two years for that person's career?

C (6:20)

So I started in AI almost 20 years ago. I've been in it every single day for the last decade. And I think if you didn't adopt it back then, I would say, okay, you're losing, you know, maybe 10% gains. It's okay, you're not going to fall horribly behind. We are now sort of in the last year at a stage where not adopting AI is actually putting you in a really detrimental position for not only your business, if you are an entrepreneur, but for your own individual career. And I really would not have said that five years ago, but the last year and a half has changed.

B (6:51)

And what has changed exactly?

C (6:53)

So these systems, when they were first kind of coming out, a lot of them were just finishing your sentences. It was the ability to respond back to you. Right. That was the big ChatGPT moment, is that anyone, not just engineers, could access these tools, ask a question, get an answer. And it was amazing. Like, I, I don't want to undercut that moment. It was jaw dropping. I moved to New York because I was on a road trip. ChatGPT comes out and I was like, the whole world has changed. I need to move right now. And just. I found an apartment in five days. That's how crazy that was.

B (7:20)

And you knew in that moment, like, that was like the kind of like changing my life.

C (7:25)

Absolutely. I was one of the first users of ChatGPT. Within 48 hours, I spun down the company that I was working on, my co founder, and I said, see ya, I'll check in with you later. We split and we went a hundred miles an hour toward this stuff.

B (7:40)

So what could you see then that perhaps like so many of us didn't see?

C (7:44)

One of the big things was that these systems could just hold on to more information. So when I was really working on early conversational AI, I. E. AI that you can talk to and it responds back to you, it used to be that when you were asking like your third question, it had complete amnesia, couldn't remember a single thing that you said it in that first go. All of a sudden it could hold on to a conversation topic, it started learning. And so the combination of just being able to go back and forth and hold that information, the fact that it was not some ugly, you know, terminal sort of looking thing, like it really wasn't for engineers, it was just a normal website and the fact that it was like very performant and fast, all of that combined, you just test it and you're like, this is the moment that I've been counting down for.

B (8:28)

I want to kind of go back a little bit before we really delve into what is going to be like these big unlocks for everybody listening. But just for somebody who is sitting at home right now, can you just explain exactly what AI is like in a simple framework? Like how should we be thinking about what AI is?

C (8:47)

The way that I define it and how it was initially launched in, you know, 1956, it's been around for a while, is that it's AI attempting to mimic what a human can do. And that might mean typing tweets, that might mean like your Roomba going around and cleaning your home, that might mean a self driving car because again, it's mimicking the fact that a human can drive a car. So it's just some sort of computer system mimicking a thing that a human can do. And that thing might be really simple or really complex.

B (9:15)

So what do you think is the biggest misconception that's actually stopping people from benefiting from AI right now? Because I feel like so many people feel either like beyond excited by it or completely intimidated and overwhelmed.

C (9:29)

Yeah, it's kind of weird, right, that we like lost this middle ground of

B (9:32)

people a hundred percent.

C (9:33)

Like first two years everyone was kind of floating along. Now it's, you're either at 10 or you're at 1. I think what a lot of people are still tripping up on is that they believe it is only for the most technical among us. There's something like a million data scientists and machine learning engineers in the world. There's something like 30 million developers and even the most advanced tools that I am using that I am helping other non technical business professionals use, only a couple million people are using those tools. So I think that there's still a lot of education to be done or at least self experimentation to say, wait a second. Even though these things sound really technical, it's actually a myth. You can use these tools if you're a non technical, non coding business professional. And I know it because I see it every single day. I'm working with Fortune 500 CEOs who are, you know, secretly kind of telling me, hey, I don't actually know what is happening in these systems. Can you show me? I work with business professionals. I've taught courses, I've taught millions of people. They realize in that moment, those first five minutes, they go, it's this easy. Why did no one tell me it's this easy? But it takes opening the computer and having that moment of humility and going, I'm okay. Feeling dumb in this moment, I'm okay, you know, having a little bit of fun and experimentation because I know in the next five minutes I'm gonna learn something that I didn't know before.

B (10:52)

But I think that piece is absolutely critical. And for me, the single biggest unlock that I've had is this ability to experiment. Because it's so, like, you are so habitually trained to use whatever device you're using in the way you currently use it. And the minute you go, okay, I'm not gonna open that, I'm going to do this instead. I'm actually going to give myself some time to play and experiment. And I don't know who has time, but I have literally scheduled.

A (11:18)

I mean, nobody.

B (11:19)

Nobody. I definitely don't have the time. But for me, because I had like those moments where I was like, oh my God, this is a game changer. I decided that it made sense for me. Every four to six weeks, I would do a day. And the way that my brain works, I can't take an hour. It just doesn't work. I have to escape. I have to put myself in like a hotel room somewhere and go, okay, this is what I'm doing today and I'm gonna play and I'm gonna learn. Not everybody can do that, obviously. But I do think it's really, really important, as you just say, to like play and experiment and be okay, to be overwhelmed by it, because what comes out of that time is something really amazing on the other end. Right?

C (11:56)

So we were just talking about how no one has time. It's an important thing to just acknowledge. Like, you can come up with these excuses. You can say, I'm too busy, everyone's too busy. You can say, I'm not an engineer. You have to kind of come to terms with the fact that millions of people have figured out the most advanced tools. So they figured it out, even if that means falling, you know, behind again in air quotes for two weeks, just to be able to kind of get to this next paradigm.

B (12:21)

It's that level of curiosity, that ability to be in learning mode, and you just giving it the time. And I think if I could say anything, it's like, those things are an imperative.

A (12:32)

What I really want to do today

B (12:33)

is move what I think are most people's, like, habits, which is using AI like a bit of a, you know, search engine, and kind of like shifting all of their behavior forward into, like, what is possible. And so if somebody is using AI like a glorified search engine, what comes next for them?

C (12:53)

Two things that I would want that person to do. The first is to kind of hold onto this idea that habits will open up new use cases for you. And so one of the most important things that you can do is just make it a habit. Make it something that you're going to. Even outside of, oh, I need to find the answer to, like, where is Aspire filmed or whatever, outside of an actual search engine question. You gotta start going to it with the weird stuff. So, hey, walk me through the entire process of setting up my first Google AdWords campaign, or taking a photo while you're on your walk and saying, what is this tree? Can I plant it in my house? And by the way, give me five ways to become a better botanist in my life. Like, that is not as much of a glorified search engine that's taking action on your life. Having that be a habit, having that be something that you go to. I literally have a post it on my computer. I had this for the first, like, three years that just said AI question mark, right? And just reminding myself, like, just try the thing. The second, which is way weirder to say and happy to go into it with examples, is that AI is not a tool. So if I know, I know. Because if you think about it as a tool, you'll think of maybe something beyond glorified search engine and you'll go up one level. And I guarantee you, you will find amazing things that will make you 20 to 30% more productive. You will brag to all your friends that you cracked the case. You will feel really, really good about where you have figured out AI in your business or your life or your family or your friends. However, if you treat it as this weird beast alien infrastructure, you're the operating system for your life and you treat it as this weird thing. You start to realize that we can reinvent the way we do things. So it's not just using AI as a replacement for what our human task would have been. It's being able to take a step back and say, okay. The way I used to prep for podcast interviews was these 15 steps. What I'm suggesting is don't even start with today's process. Take a step back and say, my goals are to have a great interview where the person's laughing and having fun. My goals are to make sure that my guest feels comfortable. My goals are to be educated on what that person's background is. You have to take one big step back, go goals first, and then twist to be able to figure out how to use AI as this weird beast as part of that process.

B (15:15)

I so hope everybody is taking notes because that is just a fundamental shift in the way of thinking. This, right? Because people are literally searching for those 15 things. Like, how do you help me through these 15 things? We are not taking a bird's eye view and going, help me get to the end result.

C (15:33)

Literally. Tell the AI system, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, whatever. Tell this system what that goal is. Describe your life a bit and then instead of saying, and now build me this three step method to move to Nashville, I want you to instead say, hey, AI, ask me questions and interview me. Right. Emma Greedstyle to figure out what you most need from me to get to that weird answer.

B (15:58)

So this is a really important part that you're talking about here because I feel like for so many of us, we've been trained in Google to like limit the length of our search, right?

C (16:08)

It's like 60 characters.

B (16:09)

Like it's right there. What you're talking about is probably not even. It's like changing the way you search. Like, I talk everything in. Does that even make a difference? Because I feel like what happens is then I'm expressing myself. I'm having a much broader conversation. It's more like a brainstorm as opposed to a question. Is that input making any different? Because I want to kind of talk to you about prompts. Even like the waiter prompt. Does that make a difference?

C (16:35)

So you're dictating into ChatGPT or Cloud or something right now?

B (16:37)

Oh yeah. Or Gemini or any of them.

C (16:40)

How many times a day do you find yourself yap into AI?

A (16:44)

A lot.

C (16:45)

Like what?

B (16:45)

It depends on the day and what I'm doing. But at least 10, 15 times. Like I'm, I'm just love It a lot. I'm a big chatter. I don't type very much because I feel like it takes up too much time. So I dictate all my emails.

C (16:57)

I don't want you to type anything.

B (16:58)

Well, do you know what I mean? It just like it comes from that behavior of not wanting to type. It's like I don't text, I don't type. So it's like I talk everything into my phone. So that's just like my habit. But I find that what happens is I give more background, I give more context to my prompts when I'm doing that. But again, I would never do it if I was typing it.

C (17:17)

Totally. And also, every single thing that you just said is golden. That is one of the biggest tips that I give to people. Dictation is four times faster than typing. I very rarely am typing these days, so I use dictation tools like Otter AI or Whisper Flow. I use it on my phone, I use it on my desktop. Depending on the length of thing that I'm dictating in, if it's a quick, you know, quick shot, maybe two minutes. There are times when I want to prep or walk through a big newsletter or a big web redesign where that recording is 45 minutes long. Wow. Like, if I'm running a brand new keynote and I'm giving a talk to 30,000 people and I want to reshape my messaging, you better bet I'm going on a walk in New York, I'm talking to myself like an insane person, and I'm walking up and down the street talking for 45 straight minutes. And you're totally right. It's more natural than typing. It's easier to get more content out and it's easier to share your context. So a lot of the systems right now goal context and maybe some, some details on like, what resources you have or whatever. But that context sharing, that is literally the core of these crazy agentic systems that are working for you while you sleep. But they need to know who you are.

A (18:30)

All right, so talk to me about

B (18:32)

supercharging our prompts, because one of the things that I was reading about was this idea of meta prompts, right? And this layering and follow up questions. But what you're talking about is much broader if you're having like a 45 minute conversation. So tell, tell me, what are the, like, the best ways that we can learn to get and make our prompts like, really work for us?

C (18:51)

So if you and I had been having this podcast a couple years ago, then I would have said you have to come to it almost like you're a senior analyst where like, you are laying out the steps, you are specifying the structure of every single thing you needed to do. So if you wanted it to, I don't know, find you the best basketball tickets to a game or something, you would say, I need you to find me two seats in the 30th row of the back section. And this ca you would give it really strict order of operations. And so you're kind of functioning as like very spreadsheet y senior analyst. What we saw in the last again year ish is this movement into more of that coo, CEO type prompting where you're really giving it an overall goal that you want to get done and the context of what's going on. You might want to give it criteria. So like success criteria. How do I know that I have found the right basketball tickets for you? How will I know that I have solved your, you know, business question that you have. You might give it resources. You might say, I have three people, each with 20% bandwidth. I have an extra $2,000 that I can allocate to this. It has to get done in the next three months. So you might kind of give it a little bit of a box to work in. And then you might at the end say, and here's some blockers that I have, or some open questions, but you're way more prompting. And I'm using that in very loose air quotes. You're prompting it like it's a teammate. Like right now, this year, it's AI as a teammate. And that means you're really talking to it and saying, if I were talking to a coworker with amnesia and they just woke up today, what do they need to know about me? Because thankfully, if you are asking a business question, the answer for Emma greed should and is different from if I'm asking the exact same question. If people don't give context, I almost want to lean over and be like, do you not think you're special? Like, do you not think you're unique and weird and funky? Do you not think you have different problems than everyone else? You want to bring all those nuances into that context. So when I'm dictating for 45 minutes, maybe I'll have the task up front. And I'm going to say, hey, I want you to think through the keynote that I'm about to give. It has to be 45 minutes or less. Here are five examples of previous keynotes that I've given. Right. That's more context. And I'm going to ramble for the next 30 minutes about things that I want to talk about. The prompt was actually only that first, like, minute, totally. The rest is just context. Yes. Attachments, images, audio. I am like a context hunter. Like, even just looking around your podcast setup, you're like.

B (21:27)

I'm like, yeah, you're taking in with the inputs. You gotta go in to get whatever it is that you need out.

C (21:33)

Yes. And everything around us is context. Right. The transcript of this podcast, that is context. The design, maybe. I take a lot of photos and say, this is the aura of Aspire and this is what she kind of talks about. I take photos of the microphone. I say, how can I deliver the best speech into these types of microphones? I might take a photo of the chair and say, what are the best size heels? Like the height to be able to sit? I don't know. I kind of just.

B (21:56)

Did you do any of this, by the way?

A (21:57)

Now I'm super curious.

B (22:00)

All the prompts that you put in.

C (22:01)

So as you're going through your business, just think to yourself, like, meeting transcripts, that's context. Every freaking Google Doc you've ever written, context. Every email you've ever read, sent, social post, all of that is building up context. Yes, but kind of like your second brain. And so a lot of these top AI users, they're building up and I'm going to simplify it, but it's a file system of your brain.

D (22:31)

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A (23:30)

The Start With Yourself tour kicks off on April 15th in New York City. Tickets are on sale now@emmigrid.com.

B (23:41)

I try to speak to so many people that I work with about how they're using AI and the number of people that are actually bringing other data points into their searches. It's actually like way less than you think. And so I think that that's a really important thing because you are talking about not just giving context in, you know, from yourself, in the way that you speak it in. You're like, okay, like, then I'm going to like bring in past evidence, I'm going to bring in data points, I'm going to bring in some Excel financial information you're like adding so that whatever you get out is going to give you back this really truly rich information.

C (24:16)

Also, I'm exhausted. Like, you want me to constantly remind the AI system who I am and what my background is? No. I have one document that says these are all 20, 26 goals. Now I might consistently update that document maybe once a recorder or something. But now if I am developing a new productivity system, you know, I have like a morning briefing where every single morning I get a download of my calendar.

B (24:42)

Oh, well, okay, okay, we are going. First of all, you just said two things that for everyone listening to Aspire, they're just waiting a minute. Morning briefing. And you spoke about goals. We're coming back there. But before we move on, what I want people to understand, because I think that there are just so many, and I'm not going to call them tools, systems, whatever they are right out there from Chat to Gemini to Grok to Perplexity, like, you know, Claude, on and on and on, people don't know what to use for what. And so when you are thinking about what tool or what platforms you use for each thing, like how are you contextualizing that and should we all be using more than one thing? Because something that, you know, I think we've all heard is the more you

A (25:22)

use it, the more it understands you,

B (25:23)

the better and more nuanced the information you get out. So how are you thinking about that?

C (25:27)

So the more that you use one, I'll just say like master tool. So that's kind of the ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini. It's like these everything machines that have coding and images and conversation back and forth and the ability to create spreadsheets and revenue models, all of those large tools, let's just say large systems can help you and are building up memory on you. So for Pretty much everyone. I'm gonna say pick one master tool that you just like the style of response of.

B (25:55)

Right.

C (25:56)

And so some people are gonna pick Claude, some people are gonna pick ChatGPT, et cetera. But just pick one that you can anchor a lot of your experiences around. You're going to connect it into a lot of other systems. So my Claude, my ChatGPT, all of those are connected into my Gmail, into my Google Calendar, into my notion.

B (26:13)

So you're giving full visibility to those systems to connect into everything else that

C (26:18)

you use every day so that it's.

B (26:19)

And you recommend that people actually do

C (26:21)

that, assuming that you don't work in

B (26:23)

extremely high risk, you're not working for MI5, it's like, you're good.

C (26:27)

Yeah, exactly. And if you are, talk to me, because it sounds pretty cool and I want to learn more. I think, like, if it's very high risk, be smart about it. But for the most part, we have thousands of really top enterprises making those connections and they're opting out of data sharing.

B (26:44)

So what are the benefits of you attaching, like, your email to whatever system it is that you're using for AI the most?

C (26:51)

So just like we talked about with context hunting, you want that context to be updated in real time. So the ability for me to say, like, hey, can you go ahead and look at my recent two weeks of email? Can you come back with, like, what you think my energy score is? And based on that, can you figure out whether I should take a vacation next week or four weeks after? And you can look at my upcoming calendar to see how feasible that is, like, that sort of visibility into how your whole business or whole life is happening. That's definitely one. You know, I know a guy that set up an entire app that just gives him, he calls it family os and it just gives him a readout for his, like, kids, his wife. It tells him, like, all the emails that he got from his school. It uses the shared calendar. And so. But it just puts it all in one place.

B (27:36)

Yeah, I do it for the school emails because I'm famous for not reading school emails. And I tend to sit there on a Sunday and scroll through and try to get the gist of it. So now it's like I bundle together the whole week school emails, and I'm like, tell me anything I need to know. And it's actually amazing at just summarizing that. And I'm like, maybe the school should have done that for me. Can I ask you, do you have, like, a modality Or a cheat code that you use to kind of approach every interaction that you have with AI.

C (28:04)

A very important thing that is like making me stay humble is that AI is a lot better at coming up with its own prompts and at coming up with its own reasoning steps than I am at telling it so. You asked about meta prompting. I am very infrequently going to a system and say, do this exact thing because I have done it the Last way for 20 years and you will copy me. Just assume that you're wrong, assume that you're doing something inefficiently, assume that it's not as good as it could be. And so you're going to go to these systems and say, listen, here's the general thing I want to do. Help me help you figure out how to get this done. So that interview mode, that is a very common first step and I'm 99% of the time right now and maybe it'll change by the time this comes out. I'm using Claude code for 99% of my work. And so just the ability to talk back and forth and then for me to say, okay, go solve that, show me what it would look like to go solve that. I can in the span of an hour, start to get a prototype of like whatever it is that solves my problem. Just ask it to be your copilot on these problems and like really treat it as a first class employee. Like don't treat it as this little thing to hide in the corner. Imagine if it was a supportive mechanism for your entire team, your entire business and put too much responsibility on it, put too much onus on it and see what it comes back with. Like really truly try and break it.

B (29:38)

That is such an interesting way to even think about it. And I never thought about that before. This is the one thing in your life that you can totally overload without any sense of guilt, any worry. You're like, this is just the resource that is at your disposal and there's no limit essentially, totally.

C (29:57)

And, and there are, you know, risk scenarios, right? It could, there's data privacy concerns. So obviously you want to be safe on that. You could run out of your tokens and it'll say, sorry, you know, come back in four hours when I have more brain power. It could give you maybe the wrong answer, not the best answer, but I am pushing back, going, are you sure that's the right answer? I even this is gonna get really weird, but if I solved it with one AI and I get this perfect outcome and I go, ah, this is the plan. This is how I'm going to do my daily competitive research. Anyone would normally just launch that thing.

B (30:32)

Yeah, you're gonna go over to the other one.

C (30:34)

I'm gonna go to a second AI

B (30:35)

and go, I do the same thing.

C (30:36)

Hey, can you judge the hell out of this thing? And I'll just say, can you check it for this? Can you check it for this? And I will have these AI systems battle to make sure that they've been tested to improve a hundred percent.

B (30:46)

I do exactly the same thing, I think, especially when you are feeding information in like financial information or data to then look at like multiple systems and see what they give you back is pretty interesting actually.

C (31:00)

And I. So I do a lot of revenue modeling, I do a lot of forecasting. You can say, I want you to. This is now going to be very advanced. But again, every single person can do this. You can say, spin up four different agents. You just literally, in natural language, there's no coding. Hey, spin up four agents. I want you to build out this model in one method. I want you to go and research and find best in class for McKinsey. In the second one, I want you to find best in class, Mr. Beast. Third, I want you to find best in class Emma Greed. And fourth, I just want you to best in pretend like you're my mom and you're scared of, you know, high risk and do it from that angle.

B (31:35)

Me, your mom, Mr. Beast and Mackenzie. I mean, it's a, it's a motley crew. Let's go.

C (31:40)

And then you have these four answers. And again, you couldn't do that five years ago because we just didn't have the time. And now I can run any single highly critical business task by like 10 different personalities and in the span of 20 minutes, make it 2x5x more robust. So like, I'm all for productivity. I think productivity is great. I think if we didn't have productivity, no one would be using this thing. Right? But creating higher quality work, work that's been seen by more second set of eyes, like that is where AI really shines.

B (32:14)

I feel like we've all had that moment where we've seen something or we've read something or we hear something that we just know is AI generated and we immediately kind of get this feeling like it really bothers people. And I wonder what you think about that.

C (32:29)

That's a super intentional thought. I love that. I too feel icky when I read it. And I'll say I feel ickier in really human situations. So if I'm talking to a therapist, let's say, and they're very clearly reading off their screen, wow, comma, ally, comma, that sounds really difficult. The landscape of what you're dealing with. I'm like, ugh.

B (32:53)

You're like, come on. I mean, there was one so disturbing circulating online the other day, the priest that was very clearly giving this sermon, and then they read out the end of the prophecy.

C (33:02)

It's not just a sermon. Oh, it's a reinvention in your life.

B (33:05)

Would you like another version? And I was like, no, she didn't say that. You know, that just is horrifying, right?

C (33:11)

People are using it for wedding vows. People are using it for things that I wouldn't. And so I think it's fine using it for things like, I don't know, Google Ads or something. That just feels lower risk. And by the way, there might be some businesses that say, I want to show up authentically no matter what. But people are using AI to, you know, transcribe their podcast to be able to turn it into helpful transcripts. They're turning their newsletters into audio overviews. There's a lot of accessibility gains from it. But if the actual core writing, if the first draft was written by AI, yeah, it's low quality. The best thing that people can do is take their own first pass and then have AI do some of the review, do some of the poking and prodding and review it from five different points of view and try and, you know, twist it and figure out what's going wrong. But we are best off if we are still the first draft.

B (34:03)

I couldn't agree with you more. I think that there is some stuff that you just can't AI your way to, right? Like having a taste level. Like, there is so much within the world of podcasting that we use AI tools for. But at the end of the day, it's like, the guests are who I want to speak to, right?

A (34:20)

There has to be a taste level

B (34:22)

and there has to be an energy, and there has to be a connection and a level of interest. And that stuff is all innately human. Like, you can't fake that piece of it.

C (34:31)

And also, you would have a way worse interview if you were hitting me with AI generated questions. People think about just the one off moment of like, oh, I wrote my email faster and I got it out. But they kind of forget about the domino effect. Like, maybe you lose trust with one of your customers. Maybe that person that was going to share Your newsletter to 10 family members isn't going to. And so people are so caught up in that first short term gain that they're missing the long term play of like what it means to build a business in the AI age.

B (35:03)

And is that all just very personal? Like how are you drawing lines? How do you speak to both individuals and companies about where you draw that line?

C (35:10)

So everyone has their own point of view and it's definitely a spectrum for me, writing your wedding vows with AI, I would say no. Unless you're getting married to an AI, then they probably love it. I think every single business has their own corporate values. And so if you are an entrepreneur, like really take a step back without AI and start to ask yourself like, what are the core values of my business? And then think about how does that interact with or overlap with or not overlap with AI?

B (35:38)

The way that we thought about this in our businesses is that there is just, it's almost like the other way around. As opposed to thinking about what AI should do, we think about what should AI not do, what are the places and the spaces that we need to protect. Whether that's creative or it's specific to product design or it's elements of marketing. But it's like these are places where human touch just can't be replicated and then everything else should be AI.

C (36:03)

That's a really fantastic approach. The extra layer that I want to add on, and again, I work with Fortune 500 companies, private financial institutions, startups. What I want to also advocate for is to review your rules. There might be a reason that you didn't use it. It might be because AI performed too poorly on that task and you come back six months later or a year later and suddenly AI would have been a massive help. In that space. You have to maintain flexibility. You have to have people on your team that are willing to have that open mind. You know, one thing that we don't use it for is like writing client thank yous. That's just. It still would feel very weird to have AI write that.

B (36:42)

I want to talk to you a bit about trust because for so many people the question is not necessarily about the appetite for usage, it's is the information I'm getting correct? Can I trust this information?

A (36:52)

So how do you think about that right now?

C (36:54)

Couple things. One, we talked about having multiple AIs weigh in on things and I know that sounds like you're multiplying the errors, but actually you are reducing it as long as they're not in the same room.

B (37:05)

Right? Because you're looking for the similarities, you're looking for ways.

C (37:08)

Exactly.

B (37:08)

Differences. And you're actually saying, okay, like what? What is my experience telling me what I should say?

C (37:13)

So I worked at IBM, I've worked at Amazon when I was at IBM and we had to have people label images to say, you know, what's in this image? What's in this image? What we learned was that to make it go a lot faster, instead of checking every single image, you could just give that same image to five different people. And if four out of the five agreed, right. Just like boom. Those recaptchas like where's the bicycle?

D (37:34)

Yes.

C (37:34)

If a whole lot of people agree, you should feel pretty confident that that is, you know, directionally accurate. Start using it with things that you know very, very well to get a sense of that bullshit and anchor it to grounded data like give it access to the Internet, give it context, documents. That's always going to improve it. The majority of errors that people show me where they go see, Allie, I knew it. AI doesn't know anything. I open it up and I go, it didn't browse the Internet. You're asking it a question about like the Mario movie and it's giving you answers based on data from 2024. Of course, it's just making stuff up. That is one. And then the last tip is going back to it and saying, no, I found an error. Even if you didn't find anything and just saying, no, a lot of this is wrong. Go and read through it again and just kind of poking it and prodding and not settling for a first go is also going to be super helpful. But you're right, the hallucination rate is still, you know, it's very low, it's under 1%. But it's enough that on very high risk things I am poking and prodding too.

A (38:31)

You have to. What do you think is the most

B (38:33)

common way that you see really smart people misuse AI?

C (38:37)

Misuse AI?

B (38:38)

Yeah. Almost like the biggest mistakes that you see people make when they're trying to use AI really productively.

C (38:45)

Definitely Using it for the first draft of things tends to lead to over reliance.

B (38:51)

I think that is great advice by the way, like having the first draft be you and something that you came up with and then getting AI to critique and go back and make it better. It's like that's just to me a no brainer and should be the starting point of everything.

C (39:04)

The number of executives who are making so much money, they come to me and they ask about their kids and they're worried about their high school kid just using ChatGPT or Claude or whatever to ch. Just cheat and write their essay. There was a study out of MIT done that basically, if you had AI write your essay, even if you then wrote your own essay, the originality, the creativity, the brain activity that second time around, even though you are only using your own brain and fingers, was worse if those two were switched. If you worked on your own, you're in your own world and saying, ooh, this is the perfect essay. And then you wrote with AI, it was completely flopped. Brain activity went up, creativity went up, and it was even better than not using AI at all.

B (39:47)

So a lot of these, I mean, that's just all you need to hear, isn't it?

C (39:50)

Yeah. Over reliance is one of the biggest fears. If I'm Talking to anyone, understood 30, right. People who maybe haven't yet developed their really deep expertise in the field, like someone who has worked for 10, 20, 30 years in a field, over reliance might lead to being less valuable in the workforce.

B (40:09)

So you kind of people just need to rewind that and listen again. Because that is such an important starting point. Because none of us want to lose what it is that makes us great conversationalists or what, like, inspires our learning. We don't want to dumb ourselves down. We want to use this tool to lift ourselves up. And so that starting point is really, really, really important. So for people that run businesses, whether it's like a company is a side hustle, creative practice, whatever it is, I want to ask you, like, what's the sort of highest impact starting point? If you're starting something, you're like, you know, in the early throes of a business, what should people be thinking about?

C (40:46)

The first thing that I'm going to say to do, which does not have immediate value, but is a lot of, like, measure twice, cut 800 times, is you have to write up a context doc on your business. Maybe you have AI interview you, whatever. But I want an entire document. Mine is about 500 lines. All right, talk to me.

B (41:04)

What is a context doc? What are we doing?

C (41:06)

Just like a description. So for you, you might have one on Skims, you might have one on Aspire, you might have one on Good American.

B (41:12)

What's going in the concept doc? It literally is like, here's what we do. This is what we sell. This is where we sell it. This is what we price it at. These are our customers. The data. That is literally what it is. It's like, here's our business and here's how it works.

C (41:26)

Things that are not written down, things that are not codified anywhere. So maybe your pricing, maybe what you sell, all your, all of your SKUs, those are on your website. Give me the behind the scenes. What I don't know, like tell me your struggles. Hey, we've tried to hire five different growth marketing people. Here's why it didn't work. Um, here's why my team is a hundred people instead of 20. Whatever. The thing is you want to give things that are not written down or else I would just say go onto the skims website and pull stuff down. So things like here's what I've struggled with or I've tried three times to run a conference and here's why it didn't go well. Or I've always wanted to expand into Asia, but here's the three things that are holding me back. Things that you've never written down, things that if you were talking to an executive coach and they pulled out, they unearthed these questions of like the deep seated feelings, what would that say? That's how these docs get to be pretty long. So again, 500 lines.

B (42:19)

You can have 500 lines.

C (42:21)

Yeah. But AI wrote the vast majority. I was on my tread desk walking and just like la la la, chatting

B (42:27)

away, having another 45 minute conversation with AI. I feel like there's like a through line in your life. You're doing a lot of long conversations. Yeah. Which that is what people are not maybe doing. Do you think like we're giving like really pissy short ass prompts and you are sitting there giving the full kit

A (42:45)

and caboodle background, everything that's in your

B (42:48)

head, everything that happened, why it happened, full context. That is creating a document, you're feeding that to AI and then you're using it, that background to solve all the problems.

C (42:58)

There are times where I don't do that. Right. If it's like write me a baseline NDA and put it between me and Johnny Smith, but if it is, make me a PowerPoint that is going to impress every VC that I walk in front of and I give it three sentences that says I'm, you know, one of the best AI advisors in the world.

E (43:14)

Go.

C (43:15)

Are you joking me? Like what do you think it's going to do? There was a research paper done that basically said the people who are really good at their job without AI are not necessarily the same ones who are good at their job with AI. Oh wow. And they studied these two groups of people and they figured out that one Thing separates the two. What is it? AI theory of mind. So can you picture yourself in the AIs, you know, shoes? Can you picture yourself in there and go, what would the AI agent need if it were trying to make the VC deck, if it were trying to make an entire financial statement, make an entire hiring and growth plan for the next year.

B (43:53)

How amazing is that to think about? So you could be sitting there right now in a job where you're struggling, where you're not the number one golden, you know, employee of the company, and you could have this complete turnaround because you figure out how to utilize AI.

C (44:09)

Yes.

B (44:10)

Properly.

C (44:10)

The Playbook is being rewritten. If you are someone that has been overlooked, if you are someone who, for the last three promotions, someone's like, you're good, but sometimes you. You pay too much attention to all the other departments around you. You don't go deep enough. Oh, my God. A generalist with AI on that. Like, there's so much that can be done. So, so, so much. Yeah.

B (44:31)

God, I feel like that must just be so satisfying for people to hear, because I think the prevailing wisdom that's out there right now is that AI is scary and AI is coming to get you. And if you don't know it, you're never gonna know it. And you're saying the absolute opposite. This is a tool that can supercharge even if you are not somebody who's, like, really thriving in your professional life right now.

C (44:53)

I wanna both say the scary things. Go on and say, yes, it can amplify.

B (44:57)

You see, I'm an optimist, and the Playbook, this is how I'm wired.

C (45:00)

But whether you're an optimist or a pessimist or whatever, the. The fact that you're afraid is not the same thing as feeling stuck. Right. Taking one small step in the direction like that is still movement. And so I meet a lot of people who are afraid. And I go, that doesn't mean you can't do something about it. Learning how to use these tools again, figuring out a Claude code codex sort of thing, scheduling one thing to run automatically, like, I'm happy to walk you through just like a little bit of an AI first work week that I have.

B (45:32)

Give me an AI first work week.

C (45:34)

So in all of these tools, including, by the way, in just normal ChatGPT or Claude cowork, you can schedule things to happen. So let's say that every single Monday, you're on a hunt or your team is on a hunt, trying to figure out what new podcast Guest should we have. And so maybe the first step is looking at things that are trending and then within that experts that are in those fields. So if you knew that AI was trending, you would look up experts, you would find whoever.

B (46:00)

Yeah, maybe perfect.

C (46:01)

That sort of thing. Why do you have to kick that off? Why are you the first domino, you know it's going to happen every single Monday morning that should run without you. So I have my morning briefing scheduled for me every single morning at 7:00am and again, going back to these context docs, I don't just say summarize my emails because who cares, Like I could have a human do that for me. The reason I want AI involved in this because I want to take in a million things of context that a human just wouldn't have time for. So I'm not just summarizing my emails, I'm summarizing my emails and maybe pre drafting some replies. I'm pulling in my calendar and it's giving me a sentence description of everyone I'm about to meet with. Or it's pre making some of the decks that I have to present or because I feel like I have no social life in New York, it's finding me things to do in New York that night that I can book last minute tickets for that are aligned with the types of things that I want to do. And then even after that it is going through all these things that are working on my list and it has the 2026 goals, what I want to get done. And every single day it's giving me two things to say. You gotta hit your weekly goal of this and this. And it's like a double check of alignment. The theme for, for my year is alignment. I want to make sure that the actions that I'm taking are aligned to the type of impact that I want to make on this world. I want to teach a billion people how to use AI. If I am stuck responding to emails about support tickets, am I doing the thing that I need to do? And so this AI is calling me out, but it can only do that because it's connected to these systems. It has that goal document. And I could have done this on my own, but I am reallocating my deep intelligence and expertise and trust and authenticity into client conversations, into one on one conversations instead of summarizing my own calendar.

D (47:54)

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A (48:52)

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B (50:14)

I constantly talk to people about going after your goals and writing them down and then saying no to everything that isn't getting you closer to your goals. But then there is this struggle of prioritization. Everything else that's happening in your life, a bad hair day, like a migraine, like whatever it might be. What you are talking about here is so incredible because what you're doing is taking all of the thinking piece out of it. Like I have to do this. Okay. The prioritization, you're actually delegating so much of the decision making so that you're

C (50:48)

the lowering decision making.

B (50:49)

But it's like you're freeing your brain and you're freeing your energy to actually focus in on the things that are gonna move the needle, the things that are gonna get you closer to your goals.

C (50:57)

It's also, I'm a people pleaser.

B (51:00)

Oh, not me, babes.

C (51:01)

You should have an entire episode just

B (51:02)

dedicated to, with you and your organization to me and my lack. People pleasing me to take over the world.

C (51:08)

I think at my core, I want to help everyone.

B (51:10)

It's a lovely trait, by the way. Of course, it's better to be. It's almost better. It's nicer to be a people pleaser. It will.

C (51:15)

But I think what AI gives me the second look into is really calling into question whether helping everyone means helping people in the right way.

B (51:27)

Yeah. And you getting to this goal of reaching a billion people, because if every time you please somebody, you could actually see what it subtracts from what you're trying to do.

C (51:36)

Exactly.

B (51:37)

You would, you would think about it differently because you don't have that. And so the AI is actually helping you be so much, like, better at getting to what it is that you wanted to do.

C (51:46)

It's this, like, maintenance system. And I find myself staying more on track because I'm not delegating large thinking. I'm delegating these mini moments so that my brain can be reallocated to the best work that I can do.

B (52:01)

And almost like. And I hate to kind of be the. The spiritual person that, you know, is in the room, but it's like those menial, small tasks are not the highest and best use of your tasks. So you are actually elevating your entire self by being able to put your goals right at the top of your list and then actually get to them.

C (52:20)

And I also want to call out a lot of people and I've met them, are really proud of the work that they're able to complete on what I would think of as, you know, tasks that AI can help. Their work identity is based on these tasks. They go, I'm the best person at reviewing our blog posts or whatever. The thing is, I'm the best person there is. And it's really hard to come to terms with the fact that AI might be better at that task now. And so, like, yes, I agree with every single thing we've said for the last, you know, hour and a half, whatever, but I Still want to acknowledge that there are going to be people where it takes them several months to walk away from some of those tasks, because you're going to be very good at that task. You've probably done that task for years. Everyone praises you for being great at that task. And I'm still telling you to walk away from that task.

B (53:05)

Every time I've left something that I have been really good at, I've kind of opened up new pathways and new things for me and grown and stretched myself and become more confident and more resilient. Because as humans, like human nature is that we have to progress. Right. And so if you stay in that place of comfort for too long, you end up getting stuck. And I think that I speak to so many people who are, frankly, really good at their jobs, but they're bored. They're not challenged. And so I would try to reframe that and think about how you can supercharge the job that you're in and almost like, shift what it is that you're good at in a new direction. Right. There's so many different ways that you can think about this. And as an optimist, I would be like, let's go 10. Like, let's go in and see what you can shift and see what you can change, because that's gonna be really life altering. And I think in. In the best ways. Forget, like, the Prof. Just the professional part of this. If you think about growth as a human, there's some really good stuff here. Yes, some really good stuff.

C (54:07)

I talked to, like, one of the best exec coaches in the world, bestseller, whatever. And I said, what is the number one thing that you keep coming back to in all these conversations? And they basically said that for all of these execs that they advise and help with that, the vast majority of them leave their roles or pivot out of their roles too late. That when they feel like they are finally ready, they look back on it. Two years later, they go, when I do it six months later, I wasted.

B (54:31)

Yeah, I wasted.

C (54:31)

And that when you leave at the right time, it feels like you left too early. And only in hindsight do you go, oh, my God, I needed that discomfort. Yeah, I would do the same thing with AI. If you feel like right now is a little too early to pivot your role a little too early to walk away from that task. Again, not 80% early, but 30% early, that means it's the right time.

B (54:49)

It's the right time. Let's talk about something important, because I feel like there's such a growing concern and a conversation about women being left behind. When it comes to the conversation in AI, I'd really like to understand what are you seeing and what does that gap look like?

C (55:04)

We talked about this a little earlier, which is around gatekeeping. And gatekeeping is a powerful drug and a lot of people are using it in AI. And you realize that when you use some of these platforms and systems and you build out a chief of staff that's working on your behalf and flagging things to you, you realize that you are gaining 10x on that task. Why would you tell anyone about that if you are gaining all of that value? So what I'm seeing a lot, especially right now, is uneven leverage. Because these early adopters are largely men, because a lot of them are engineers. A lot of them come out.

B (55:43)

They're not opening up the part.

C (55:44)

They are not opening up.

B (55:45)

Right, sorry.

C (55:46)

A lot of like women have higher. These are scientific studies in 75 countries studied women outperformed men on verbal ability. In all 75, women go to therapy more than men, journal more than men. Which helps with that goal oriented stuff that we were talking about. Higher empathy than men, again, might help with some of that. How to work back and forth with AI. Women have the skill sets in spades, especially because of how we work with AI agents today. But these systems are being adopted by largely technical young men. How do they. And because of the power of leverage and gatekeeping as a result, you might just not see these stories being told because they're getting done in private group texts. And so you kind of have to acknowledge that there are going to be people who are going to keep all of their cards close to their chest and that they're disincentivized to share this information with you and that you have to work twice as hard to grab and find that information. It's one of the reasons that I post online all the time.

B (56:47)

No, and I see that from you. You post all the time. And listen, this is, you need to like, this isn't just a reserve of AI, right? That's a bigger, broader business conversation. And you could take the whole of tech, you could take, you know, politics at large and really apply the same type of thought to it. But I want to talk about women specifically and the uptake of AI. Like what's at stake if women don't change the behavior and become more comfortable with using AI.

C (57:12)

So, so stats wise, there's 8 billion people in the world, something like 1 billion ish have adopted AI at all out of that, you know, maybe a smaller percent are actually paying for it. And a tiny, tiny percent, less than 1, 1000th of the world are using some of these agentic tools like cloud code or Codex. So it's somewhere between like 2 and 10 million people out of a base of billion. Wow. A lot of people look at that number and they go, oh, I have so much time. It's only, you know, 0.1%. Fine, I'm good. What I want to share with the world, having seen the inside of companies that are leveraging this, the inside of solopreneur shops that are leveraging this, is that the power that you get out of using that type of tool is the highest amount of leverage I've ever seen in my entire life compared to any other tech release ever. So you can look at these numbers and go, oh, I have plenty of time. Or you can look at it and say, oh, my God, these 10 million are going to lap us before we even realize what's happening. The businesses of tomorrow that are being made by one person, five people, that needs to be started today, and they're being started with these tools that, again, only a couple million people are even using.

B (58:30)

And are they being started by women as equally as they're being started by men?

C (58:33)

No, absolutely not. Women adopt AI 25% less than men.

B (58:38)

Indie 25%?

C (58:40)

Yeah. You think that that could be bigger?

B (58:42)

I think it's bigger, I think. Listen, I only have like a tiny data pool, right? I have a few hundred people that work here, and I am, my team will tell you, pretty consistent in asking, are you guys using AI? Who's using what? Oh, they're using. But let's be honest, it's like when I get the list from the girls, it's shorter than the list of things that are coming from the boys.

C (59:00)

Do you also think the quality is different or is it just by number?

B (59:03)

No, I think it's just about adoption. Just about a level of in listen. And I think a lot of this is happening socially.

C (59:10)

Definitely.

B (59:10)

If you're a guy in your group

A (59:12)

chats, in your text chains, in your

B (59:14)

DMs, you're getting sent stuff, your bros are sharing it, and it's just a different level of socialization. And for women, perhaps that's not happening so much. And so that's like another one of the million reasons that I wanted you on today, because I think there is so much stuff here that women are going to be able to grasp onto. So long as we, like have the conversation, we share the Information, not gatekeeping, any information. And you do that so beautifully. Because I read your newsletter that comes on LinkedIn. And honestly, largely, that's where I'm getting, like, you know, I'm gonna try this. I didn't know that was happening. It'll prompt me to read something else that you've linked out to. It's just that encouragement to be on it. And I guess beyond systemic change. My question is, if you're a woman right now and you're thinking about, like, how do I close the gap for myself, what's your suggestion? Like, what should we do today?

C (60:05)

First, you're reminding me that in my inbox I am getting DMs. And it's like a very common template, right? Where people are going, my name is xyz. I am so and so years old. Usually it's like older than 30, somewhere between like 35 and 55. I've been using AI every single day, and everyone around me thinks that I'm crazy. I agree with you on the socialization, but I have a theory that a lot of people listening to this are using AI a lot, but they're surrounded by people who have no idea what's happening. You might be better off instead of finding the people you know that you went to high school with or college with, you might be better off going to, like, an AI meetup and finding people who are in this space where they go, oh, I understand we're in Act 2. I understand we're in Act 3. I understand what is needed from business professionals in this moment and are willing to dive in. So just, you know, thinking about your circle. You should always surround yourself with people that you want to be more like.

B (60:56)

What is that beautiful quote that I love? You become the average of the people you surround yourself with. So it's like, check out who's around you.

C (61:02)

By the way, let's go a little weird with that. You are the average of the five people around you. Maybe two of those people are AI. Like, maybe you decide, oh, one second.

B (61:12)

You just changed that one for me. Wait a minute. You're like, switch a bitch out and bring in an agent. Okay?

C (61:19)

Really? But maybe you're like, I'm mostly against AI companions and whatever, but, like, they're amazing. We didn't even get sparring partners.

B (61:28)

But as a sparring partner, as, like, when we get down to this, like, you're really thinking about, like, this from a time point of view, right? It's like, if you're going to surround yourself with people, then you need to surround yourself with, yeah, do it now.

C (61:40)

I think like AI is making me feel weird about time and that I think like time is a construct and no longer exists. But anyway, ways I think that urgency exists, particularly as it means learning AI.

B (61:50)

You kind of just touched on it. I feel like there are so many people that use AI for therapy or for companionship. What do you actually make of that?

C (61:56)

I really want everyone to be able to get the help that they need. And I'm disappointed in our healthcare system that not everyone has access to that. So on the one hand I'm like very pro people getting the help that they need. You also have states like New York who are working to ban people asking questions about health into these systems. I think we're at a stage where people are still learning what is right, what is wrong. My bigger worry is with children, I am very loudly against, you know, AI toys. Without any sort of parent supervision. We're in just like the muddy muck of it.

B (62:34)

I personally really get concerned about AI as a therapist, but AI as a coach I think is a totally different thing. So I think it's a really fine line. What about when you, you know, because you just mentioned kids. When we think about AI being so like not, you know, accepted in schools. Like my kids are at a school where AI is absolutely not allowed. They're young, obviously they're not of kind of test taking age. But what are your thoughts on that not being an accessible a moment for learning in schools? For the most part, I think it's

C (63:05)

a very helpful tool to bring into the classroom when it makes sense.

B (63:10)

High school age?

C (63:10)

Yeah, definitely in high school at least I see people cheating on all of their tests and essays with AI. So my biggest thing that I haven't yet seen from teachers at large is changing the way that they test students because AI is there. So maybe you have, you know, essays being written by AI and then you have your actual students edit and talk about how it's bad or how it sounds like AI. Maybe you do more oral exams, maybe you do more group projects. There are a lot of ways to test our children and make sure that they're progressing and growing. That make more sense in the AI age. That's one of the biggest changes that I want to have happen. And then again, just having that constant thread of am I teaching over reliance or am I allowing over reliance or have I given people AI access as a system of support? Education in general is always a bit behind enterprise, so they're still catching up a bit. Parents, unfortunately, have a lot of burden right now. I would have healthy conversations with your children. I would not advocate for AI as a companion. I would make sure that they are putting down their phone and talking to friends, human friends. But parents are going to have a tough two to five years.

B (64:22)

How do you think about that in terms of your own AI consumption? Because you do this for a living, you've been in it for years. You arguably have an unbelievable understanding of where it's all going, where it's headed. How do you balance that and make sure that you are being healthy, that you're doing other things? Is that even a concern of yours?

C (64:41)

It is definitely a concern. There are some nights like this is now. This is a therapy session. There are nights where I am using Claude code and I get so into the thing that I'm building and just the magic of me actually solving my problems. I will all of a sudden look at the clock and it's 5:30 in the morning. We're in the unhealthy stage of Allie using harnesses to be.

B (65:05)

Yeah, thanks for being honest about that. Because you go in a rabbit hole with these things.

C (65:08)

Oh yeah. And. And I go to AI meetups and I'm not alone. It's not like I'm a weirdo. All these people are suffering from sleep issues and I think it's a variety of things just AI is not helping. So one is you might find yourself addicted to what you are capable of doing and that can be a really self reinforcing thing that you just want to keep going and going. I think one of the best things that you can do because again there's always more that you can do, always more that you can build, always hours that you can take out of your sleep. One of the best things you can do is just carve out time to be non tech. So I have a group of friends in AI. There's about seven of us, like I guess 11 with partners and we're renting out a home in a city that none of us live in. And it is a tech free weekend and we have like an arts and crafts thing and like a performance hour. I advocate for people proactively blocking this time out to learn AI. Yeah. But also proactively blocking out time and breaks. Some of my most creative AI solutions or thoughts or business ideas come from the off times. And you have to give your brain sort of some of these waves or else you're gonna just completely burn out.

A (66:22)

You might not be able to drop

B (66:24)

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A (66:26)

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B (68:05)

boston, Atlanta and London.

A (68:07)

Visit emmigrid.com for for tickets and full tour details.

B (68:11)

I cannot wait. I love that you have this like giant mission of, you know, like reaching a billion people and turning this idea of like anxiety into agency. Will you talk a little bit more about that and just tell me what that type of progress actually looks like?

C (68:30)

So a lot of people have anxiety related to AI and a lot of people have anxiety related to all other parts of their life life. What I have found is that one of the best solves for anxiety related to AI is actually testing the tool. Like when I really dig into it with people that have anxiety on it, it's because they haven't yet tested at the level. It's a, it's like a fear of unknown more than anything. And that once they actually test these systems, they go, oh my God, I can't do this part of my job at all. Like, what was I worried about. And so I want people to start to reduce anxiety by having at least exposure to it it and at least deciding that you hate the tool or you don't want to use the tool after that test. That's a big one. Second is definitely having that kind of group effort toward it and not feeling like you are alone. That is another big common source of anxiety. And then I think the third one is this like identity work that people are having to go through. I've spoken with tons of people, educated millions. Those are the three core sources of anxiety.

B (69:29)

They all try and very, very true.

C (69:31)

Yeah, yeah.

B (69:31)

It's what you hear from people.

C (69:32)

Yeah. Which is like I'm a seller now AI is making calls or I'm a marketer. But now AI is managing a, an 80 country campaign at scale and a lot of people are having to look inside and go like what is my role in this future? And the complex answer is that that answer is still being figured out. But the bigger answer and why I talk about agency is because the answer is being figured out and it's being decided by people who are involved.

B (70:02)

Beautiful, right? It's like you have to be in it to win it. It's like don't ignore it because that's not gonna be helpful at all.

D (70:08)

Yes.

B (70:08)

When you think about just your biggest challenges and your biggest concerns right now,

C (70:12)

what are they as it relates to like my individual work or just as I'm looking at it?

B (70:16)

A little bit of both really.

C (70:17)

Oh, there are so many challenges. I think like education is still a massive challenge, especially as these new types of systems come out. All of this has kind of happened in the last couple months. So like how do you manage a multi agent file system with self learning capability that is just a hard thing to bring into the world. Also cost right now is starting to become an issue. And the way that I think about money and the way that I think about time has literally changed since end of 2022. So I used to think of what is my hourly rate or ah, this is how I should calculate the cost of software and the cost of my time. And we had ways of measuring these things over the course of decades. Right. What is the worth of your hour? Like your lawyer or what is the worth of this tool? And I think one of the biggest challenges, and this relates to education, relates to all these other smaller pieces is what is the value of time in the AI age? Because if your lawyer, how do you charge for it exactly? Oh yeah, no one listening should be charging by the Hour anymore. Like that. That should be obvious. That should be dead. I mean, that's like, that's just like charged by Outcome. Charged by retainer.

B (71:29)

Charged by Outcome.

C (71:31)

Yeah, charged by project.

B (71:32)

Like, I hope my lawyers ain't listening.

C (71:37)

The, the shift that's happening. So that's on the time side and on the money side, people are not looking at these tools going, oh, but it's $20 a month and I don't know, or, or 200amonth or, or $10,000 a month. They're looking at it compared to the outcome and the value that these things can generate. That's why I'm talking about that Productivity is kind of a trap. Like, it's obviously important, but the idea that you can have AI help you create a brand new business line, like I'll give you this as an enterprise example, but Ikea, they released an AI chatbot that was able to answer 47% of their questions. And they did not need the humans that they had before. They didn't need all of those humans. So 8,500 customer support agents were no longer needed in the customer support role, but they had 8,500 people that were crazy smart on the IKEA catalog, which is insane, as you know. And they had always wanted to create an interior design business line, so they reskilled them into interior designers that were AI supported. And so AI is coaching them in the process. AI is helping generate these new, new interior designs. And hey, put this stool over here and this table over here. This new business line generated $1.4 billion in the first year.

D (72:51)

That's crazy.

C (72:53)

If you hadn't thought about time and money in the new age way, in the outcome and growth and top line type way, you would have never started that business line. Time and money, the way that your parents taught you about it, the way that, that your accountant's probably thinking about it, it is completely different than it was five years ago.

B (73:14)

Wow, that's.

D (73:16)

Yeah.

B (73:16)

I mean, that's insane.

C (73:17)

Yeah, Einstein was right. Yeah.

B (73:20)

Literally. Literally, when you think about your legacy, you personally and what you're put here to uniquely do, what does that mean to you and what does that look like right now?

C (73:31)

It's something I'm like always kind of thinking about, always tweaking a little. The North Star is definitely bringing up non technical, non coders, business professionals into this age. Because I think the best work of humanity is done when everyone's involved, not just amazing PhDs in science or incredible software engineers. Like, we need everyone. And so I want to get this into the hands of, you know, a billion business professionals. I just. I see the future of humanity as net better if I can do that. I have had two near death experiences, and just like, every time that I have come out of that, I'm like, this is the time to double down. Like, I am dedicating my life to this. Even if it means losing a little bit of sleep, even if it means sweating in a podcast room. Like, even if it means all these things. I have to do it because that is why I'm still alive.

A (74:29)

I mean, how have we got to

B (74:30)

all of this time that you've just mentioned? What happened to you? Like, what we're talking about that what happened to you?

C (74:35)

I was in a. This sounds weird to be casual about it, but it's like, my way of, you know, dealing with it. I was in one terrorist attack. I was in the Boston Marathon bombing, and then I was in a hotel shooting about a year ago.

B (74:50)

Oh, my goodness.

C (74:51)

But look at me now.

B (74:52)

All right, we're gonna move to rapid fire really quickly. What is the one AI tool that you personally can't live without?

C (74:59)

Whisper flow. Because I'm dictating nonstop typing makes me feel like I am a cave woman.

B (75:04)

What's the last thing you asked AI to do or answer?

C (75:08)

I was on a walk this morning and I did ask it to, like, tell me what tree it was in front of me. But then I asked weird questions and I was like, how many people do you think in all of eternity have climbed trees and just was, like, getting to talk to.

B (75:22)

She is a curious Kathy over here.

C (75:24)

My head is like that view of the numbers all circulating around so on.

B (75:28)

I can literally see it now.

C (75:29)

Literally just an outlet for my weirdness. I can see it now.

B (75:31)

If AI didn't exist, what career would you have pursued?

C (75:34)

Game show host. Is that weird? I'm, like, obsessed with game show network. Oh, my God.

B (75:41)

You would have done a great job.

C (75:42)

I like, love trivia. I love the crosswords. My, like, dad was in the crossword championships. Like, we are a game.

B (75:49)

So I feel like it would be a really complicated game show, though. Like, do you know what I mean?

C (75:53)

Yeah.

B (75:54)

What is a book that changed your perspective?

C (75:57)

Crucial conversations, Thinking fast and slow. Good one. Atomic habits. Those are probably my top three.

B (76:04)

You're wonderful. This was absolutely amazing. And I just am so grateful for the work that you're doing, actually. I think it's really, really important. And I think that, yeah, I just. I find you. So I feel like everyone that listens to this podcast needs to follow you, needs to read your newsletter, needs to keep up with what you're saying and what you're teaching. You really are a wonderful teacher.

A (76:27)

Thank you.

B (76:27)

Really, really first class. Amazing.

C (76:30)

Thank you for that human complime.

B (76:32)

There you go.

A (76:34)

Thanks for joining me on the Aspire Podcast. For more strategies on how to build the life of your dreams, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you're loving this podcast, be sure to click Follow on your favorite listening platform. While you're there, give us a review and a five star rating and share an episode you loved with a friend. You'll be so grateful. Aspire with EM Agree is presented by Audacy. I'm your host, emma greed, Ashley McShan, Derrick Brown and me. Our executive producers from Audacy. Leah Reese, Dennis, Asha Salouja, Lauren Legrasso

B (77:10)

Producer, KK Sublime Stephen Key is our senior producer.

A (77:14)

Sound design and engineering by Bill Schultz Angela Peluso is our booker. Original music by Charles Black Video production by Evan Cole Cox, Kirk Courtney, Andrew Steele and Carlos Delgado Social media by Olivia Homan, Kathryn Bale Special thanks to Brittany Smith, Sydney Ford My teams at the lead company and wme Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Hilary Schuff, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchinson, Rose, Tim Meekol, Sean Cherry and Lauren Vieira. If you have questions for me, you can DM me at Aspire with Emma Breed. Greed is spelled G R E D E. That's Aspire A S P I R E with Emma Greed. Or you can submit a question to me on my website. Emma Greed Me.

E (78:02)

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C (78:07)

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E (78:08)

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A (78:14)

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E (78:14)

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