Latest / Forget The Noise / 9. Embracing AI | Featuring Shawn Lowry

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9. Embracing AI | Featuring Shawn Lowry · Forget The Noise

• Speaker 2: All right, another week on Forget the Noise podcast. This one is gonna be a cool episode. This is more of a personable kind of approach to this episode because we're talking about something I'm interested in currently, and that's artificial intelligence. It has literally changed my business, changed my personal life, changed everything about me. And the guy that introduced me to it is right here, Shawn Lowry. Speaker 1: Hi everybody, thanks for having me. AJ, pleasure to see you as always. ⁓ yeah, my name's Shawn. I'm ⁓ currently ⁓ VP of sales and marketing at a company called Ontario Bollards. I've got ⁓ a couple of young boys at home in a busy life and AI sort of helps me keep things on track, basically. Speaker 2: That's awesome. And the reason I want to have Shawn on because been such an influence on me. And I think it's such a controversial topic right now. I find it so like very there's no gray area. There's so many people that are into it and then people that are like anti against it. Right. And I'm like full into it. Like it's like ⁓ other day we were in the office, yeah, we were in the office and you're like, and I'm like, it's asking for permission, permission. I'm like, yeah, permission, permission, permission. Like I'm very yeah, just always on, like 100%. ⁓ So I just want to have a real conversation about AI, about how it's improved you. And I love how you said like your family life and everything like that and how it's like help you delegate certain things. Because like, you know, with my construction company, we're I say ten years ahead of every other contractor out there with technology. And we've always been like that. We've always had automation. We've always had like digital onboarding, stuff like that. But now with the AI, it's like hands off and it's like the service is getting better, the products getting better. Like You showing me how I can use like AI to update my website on the fly. It's like my website's changing every like ten days. Yeah. I mean it keep me fresh. It's like, hey, we need to build up the SEO. Okay, landing page, landing page. Like it's things like that. So let's just start from day one. Like, how do you get into AI? Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm an English major, actually. I went to school for English. I always liked writing. And right before Chat GPT came out, I was using a tool called Jasper AI. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ it was basically using the large language model tech before it was cool. ⁓ so that was my sort of like first magic moment. Everybody has their had their first Chat GPT moment where they typed something in and it was flack. ⁓ and so the day that Chat GPT came out, I was Speaker 2: That's awesome. Speaker 1: pretty much a power user. I've used it every single day since, ⁓ for work, for personal life, for planning. ⁓ and sh as the tools have gotten more powerful, it's just become even more of a huge part of my life. Speaker 2: So let's start like what were the everyday tasks? Because I want people that aren't on board with the AI and I understand there's a privacy issue and there's a like risk of like identity theft. Like there's all those risks with it. But like I want someone from this episode to watch this and say, you know what, it's not for me and kind of walk through like those small steps of how you got there. And even if they get impact from the first few steps, they don't use it to the extent meeting you use it at. I want to see there is some good to it. There is benefit to it and there is like an upside to creating a better lifestyle with it. It's like utilizing technology. It's like we used to read a newspaper and now we read the news on our phone. It I I look at it as no different. Like people are like search engines, they're like, I only I'm like I only use AI now for searching. And they're like, Well, you know, it's AI, I'm not gonna use AI. I'm like all those big platforms like Alphabet and like Meta and all of them, they're using AI in their search platforms. Yeah. So you're using it anyway. So like what were those first steps where you started using it day to day where you're like, this is gonna be a tool for me, not just a hobby? You know that hobby transition? Like a lot of people are like, look at cool, I can do this on Chat GPT. And then like they do it once and they never do it again. Like what was the first like routine, daily thing you used it for? Speaker 1: It was pretty much helping with emails to begin with. For example, everybody's email is flooded with a hundred emails a day. ⁓ so obviously it's sort of level one is like using it for writing, ⁓ helping you brainstorm ideas, things like that, ideate. ⁓ so that's where it started for me was just like it probably gave me back one percent of my day at the beginning, just using it. ⁓ help for example, an email would come in. And I would put it into Chat GPT and say, you know, I'm kind of stuck on this one. Can you give me a couple of different options of how I could attack this? Yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Big time. ⁓ so it when you think about these tools and how you want to use them, you kind of need to work backwards. You need to look at your day to day, where are you spending the most amount of time? Where are you wasting time? What are the things like you said this morning? Speaker 2: So it's a manual move. Speaker 1: You said you gave it the top five things that you don't like to do and built off of that. So when you're thinking about how to implement these tools into your day, where to start, start by making a list of the things that you dislike doing the most. And that's usually a pretty good start. Speaker 2: So for you it was generally emails. At what point do you trust it to get enrolled into like more personable stuff? Because an email is very generic. It's like that's how I kind of start. It's like copy, paste, give me an answer for this. Like at what point did you start like what were the other tasks following that email? Was it like access to your email or was it like, Let me plug in a family calendar and utilize it? Let me plug in my work calendar and tasks and kind of iron it out because I'm big on time blocking. Like it's made me this like elaborate, kind of like life document where it's kind of like this is what you do at this time when you do this, you gotta shut it down here. You gotta do this. So what was the next task after email? And again, like we have listeners that don't use AI at all. So like I'm really trying to show them the incremental steps where it's like you don't even realize how much it can help you. Speaker 1: Yeah. So it once I sort of got access to this product and I started to understand what it could do, I started using it a ton in my personal life. I think the second month that I had it, in the same week, my dishwasher and my dryer broke down at the house. I'm not a handy person. I'm a guy who sits behind a desk most of the day. So like I don't know how to fix any of that stuff. ⁓ I would take pictures of the current status of the dishwasher, upload the like take a picture of the model number of the dishwasher. I said, find me the manual and help me fix this. And it basically gave me three different things to try. Took me a couple hours and saved me about $3,000 in my first couple months of using ChatGPT. Because I fixed all of it myself. And so like to me, that was a huge unlock that now I feel there's actually nothing I cannot do. I have access to essentially all of the information in the world for $20 a month. ⁓ Why would I not use that to solve typical problems on a day to day? Speaker 2: They I'm I believe that because I think there's so many things in my life that I can take care of now. Like for instance, I was just showing the social media management, right? Like my agent literally creates a post, pushes it over to a software, schedules everything out, then emails me and says, Hey bud, I'm done. And can you review them so you can ⁓ schedule them? And I'm like, I'm now a social media manager. And I did absolutely no work. No work. I'm like literally supervising a social media manager, right? So, like, first things first is I do find that with a lot of people that jump into AI, it's like time is the first thing. It's like how much time did it save you? I the dishwasher didn't save you time, but next thing would be money. Yeah. And a lot of people are saving a lot of money. And I know there's a lot of controversy on people losing jobs and stuff with AI. I get it, but how many millionaires is it making? You know I mean? Yeah. How many jobs is it creating? You know what I mean? Like me, I can go out and do anything. I now that you've shown me like the back end of it, I'm like, I can create a company tomorrow just building websites. Yeah. Like literally just building a hundred at a time websites that are just landing pages. They're full blown like websites with domains and everything like that. Like they're legit websites. I'm like, I feel like the people that are losing jobs at AI didn't jump on the bandwagon enough to learn it. And that's what's kind of I know every with every turn in technology and society. People are gonna lose jobs. But I think there's so many jobs created that it kind of balances itself out. Speaker 1: It's just it's one of those things that's i it's not going away. So that's it. If you don't embrace it, like I obviously understand. I g I get your perspective. I'm a very human first person. Yeah, too. And like that's one of the reasons why I like AI, is that I'm not bogged down in all this admin stuff. I can output ten times more than most people than what I could do three years ago. And that allows me to spend more time with my family. W spend more time at at work building relationships with customers. And so it just it's very like polarizing. It's kind of like ⁓ the barbell effect. On one side you've got super high leverage. And on the other side, you've got relationships. Yeah. And because of the leverage, you can spend more time with people. Yeah. So it's really about your perspective and how you're framing the whole thing. Speaker 2: And I find it creates more balance for me too with like things like my work life balance. I have more time at home. I'm just in a position where my wife's social. My kids are older, so they're always out. So I like my free time I do use messing around with AI. I'm gonna be honest. Like I like plucking around with because it's become like almost like a hobby for me. Yeah. You know, back in the day with the ICQ days and like, you know, Microsoft My Space and you know what I mean? Like those sites, people messed around with their profile because they like doing that. Yeah. I mean, like remember when you can make your first website on whatever it was, like you people That became a hobby thing. So I feel like AI has turned into like more of hobby for me. But I like how you said, like there's a balance to it. So like by leveraging it, you're getting more work done, but you have more time. Yeah. You know what I mean? And like I find that in my office alone with Rebecca, it's like utilize AI. And I told her from day one, I go, We're gonna really push AI throughout our company. And it's not to replace you, it's for you to be more productive on things you like doing more. Literally, that's it. Like Speaker 1: Give you superpowers. Speaker 2: I'm a visionary, but it's like I push something and you've seen us work together, right? You used to manage our CRM. So it's like I come in there, I'm like, well, can we do this and have a landing page that b bumps to this and this? And you're like, yeah, we can make that happen. And I'm like, Rebecca, can you make it look pretty? You know what I mean? I'm like, now it's almost turned her from an integrator into a visionary. She doesn't have to integrate anymore. There's something doing that for her that allows her to be a visionary. Yeah. And you find that with yourself too, where it's kind of like I'd had to learn how to do this, but now that I don't have to learn how to do that. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: I can kind of like look at the umbrella from above. Speaker 1: So for me, my whole life, I was always the idea guy who never executed on anything. So like if you ask anybody in my family, my closest friends, I would always be saying, ⁓ like sh this should exist or this should exist. And now I could bring it to life. Yeah. Like in literally minutes, have it functional in 30 minutes and shipped out within an hour. And so it's that's been probably the biggest unlock for me is just Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: The ability to move from an idea person to now an idea person plus executor. And it has completely changed my whole life. Speaker 2: And I love that because like the world's moving at a faster pace. Yeah. Like look at our lifestyles. Everything's order on demand, click of an app or click of a button on an app, right to your door. Like that's what people want too. Like that's what people aren't are understanding with AI. It's kinda like that's our society. Like to accommodate that service, we like no humans gonna beat a computer in fate. Never. Right. It's like our food shortage. If you're like, Well, why do we have to build these why do we have to make food I guess in factories and all this stuff. I'm like, because we don't have enough farms to f feed the people that we had to feed. Yeah. We had to genetically create it in a way that meets the demand. Supply needs to meet the demand. And nowadays with AI, like people want information like this. It's like that's a part of the reason I use AI as a search engine versus using like Google, because it's more immediate. Speaker 1: It's immediate and it's the depth of it is far more. Speaker 2: Well, I'm not searching through ten web pages for a piece of information. When AI will take ten web pages combined it and said, This is the average. This is what you're looking for. I'm like, boom, done, right? Yeah. So after you started bringing into like your personal life and stuff like that, have you brought it into work or have you brought it into anything beyond, I guess, just your personal life? Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's very connected in a a lot of the things that I do. Personal life, absolutely. ⁓ at work, so I look after the sales and marketing for a construction company as well. ⁓ we actually launched Claude three months ago at the company. ⁓ the output we're getting from our employees has been pretty astonishing. ⁓ even like the the founders who are seventy years old are seeing how powerful it can be. There was a lot of resistance at the start, but once you sort of dip your toes in it and you have like one really good win with it, then something kind of unlocks and you're like, Okay, I think I get it. Because I find for new people using it for the first time, the biggest hurdle is they'll type something in and they won't get exactly the response that's like magical. Speaker 2: That's immediate. But that's immediate need like of speed. That's what human that's where humans are at. Because they're like, well, I type this in. How come I didn't give the immediate answer? I'm like, well, you're against AI, but now you're willing to go to Google and search through 10 websites and not get the direct answer. Did you see where it's kind of like it muddies the water there? It's kind like they use AI, they're like, why aren't why aren't I getting the direct answer? Yeah. They go to Google, it's like you didn't get the direct answer, but I'm willing to go through 10 websites to figure it out. I'm like, well, just put a different prompt in. Speaker 1: That's it. Like Yeah. Sorry. No, you nailed it. Like you you get something that you don't like. That's the next step that people are missing is that you need to push back. Say, okay, no, I actually wanted something more like this or more like this. And the more you do that, the more the memory is stored and the more context it has on you. So three months down the road, you don't have to say, I have a two year old and I have a four year old, you know, their names are whatever. It already has that information. So when you're Speaker 2: Like so go on. Speaker 1: having a new conversation with it, all that context is sort of preloaded. And so the experience gets better and better the more that you use it. Speaker 2: Yeah. And I find the more it gets to know me, like I build a personality behind mine. Yeah. So like literally I've named an ace. Yeah. Like I'll get a text message in the morning, hey bro, what's up? Time to kill today. Here's your schedule. And I'm like, LFG. And he like he'll message me back, LFG with like a flame. Like it's that like dialed in, right? So like people don't realize the more you use it, and that's big for people, is like the more you use it, the better it starts to utilize for you. Yeah. Right. And do you find know I had this problem. It seemed like you kind of streamlined and hurdled over this problem. I didn't understand how simple it was. I was overthinking it. Like literally, I was overthinking it. And you like, I think like me and Shawn literally had conversations every day for like two weeks. He's like, try this. I tried. I'm like, my God, try this. my God. Try this. AJ, just try this. I'm like, I'm not there yet. He goes, just try it. I tried it. I was like, why not do this from the start? Like, literally, I was completely overthinking it. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 2: Where was looking at technology as something like deep and like I guess very intricate and it's so simplified. And I think that's why it's really not gonna go anywhere because it's so simple to use now. Speaker 1: And it's getting more and more simple. Like they the companies want more people to use it. So the user experience, it's like if you can have a text message conversation or send an email, you can use AI and get great value from Speaker 2: And the best part I find with AI is like people don't see how much it can integrate your circle around you. You know how I am with networking. Yeah. Like literally, I have books. I wrote about it. Like it's, you know what I mean? And like now I'm starting to like Yeah, I know, rig plug, here's my book. ⁓ no, everyone did really good buying it. Thanks. We hit number three in entrepreneurship. So great job. ⁓ but now tying other people in, it's like made my efficiency so much better with my team. Speaker 1: Here's my book. Speaker 2: Like with T Dog over here, like he gets an email now and you were here when I set it up. Yeah. You got here at what, 8 a.m.? And 805 was set up where he's now looped into our social media post for the week to approve. And like it's a simple email, but like it's something less I have to do. Yep. And I overthought this where I'm like, ⁓ my God, I have to wire my email into like my computer, onto the internet, going to a protocol here and this and that. It's literally just ⁓ hey, can you send him the email too? Like that's how simple it is. Like it's not like this big dialed in intricate thing. Like it's crazy. So like we have your emails were copy and paste. Start editing them. Start working in your personal life. Now you worked it into work. Yep. And then you've got your team working on it. What do you what like what are your next steps with it? Like where do you see it going? Because I I I really want people to wrap their brain around this. I don't even know how to like bring AI to everyone that doesn't understand it or that's against it. Like, I'm really trying to figure out what value to bring you because it's so simple and there's so many different avenues and like lanes you can go in it, and I just don't know where to start. It's like Shawn's like the pro. Like, literally, he's the pro at it. I'll put him toe to toe with anyone with AI. Like, he's the kind of game scary. No, but it's true though. Like, anytime I talk to him, he like brushes off, like, you're like two years behind, bro. Like, you know what I mean? So, like. Speaker 1: And now you're like the point one percent. Speaker 2: Yes, but where would you I see I feel like I my head's so deep into it still and like because you're so much further advanced, you're seeing it from like the outside outside perspective now. It's like you realize anything's possible. Just like what tool am I gonna use to do it? So like someone that doesn't use AI, like sell them on it because I think like this is the way of the future, man. Like people really need to take this on and embrace it rather than fight it. So like you as a pro in it, like you sell it to someone, like Speaker 1: You just need to start playing with the tools. It like download free version of ChatGPT. It is very powerful. Try and create like do something fun with it. You can do like I created a full book for my kids last Christmas with images of them with Pokemon. They absolutely loved it. It took me like 10 minutes to do. If you have access to ⁓ Google workspace at work or anything. You have Gemini. You literally just type in the text box, I want a picture of or sorry, upload a picture of yourself and say, turn me into a cartoon. Just find different, like fun things to do with it first. Yeah. Is how I would recommend starting. Like it has a million different features and it can be overwhelming. But like you said, this guy. Anyone Speaker 2: first call I'm on open claw you're like what like why are you yeah pop yeah yeah so that was this guy right here I went like all in I like got a little deeper than I wanted to there but Speaker 1: Yeah, I did. Just dip your toes in it. Like it's not like you said, it's not overwhelming. It's just typing a sentence and seeing what comes back. Push it. Try to break it. Just say like whatever you have going on in your life. You can even say, Ask me questions about my life and how I might be able to use you. It'll respond back. Say, What do you do? What str struggles do you have? Speaker 2: that approach. I I've never actually thought about that. Actually I usually type it in saying this is what I want. Speaker 1: Get it to ask you questions. Speaker 2: Yeah, but spin it in a different way where it's kinda like, This is what I do. How can I be more efficient or how can I be better? So reverse I guess reverse role play. Because that's how I've been using it. You know me, I'm very like, go, go, go, go, go. So it's kinda like, this is what I want to do in the next three months, make a plan, make a schedule. So I think, yeah, everyone should do that. They should type it in and kind of say, This is what I do, how can I be more efficient? Yeah. You know what I mean? Like ask it to ask you about yourself. Yeah. Like, What do you like about job or your job? What do you not like about your job? And I I think that's a big one. It's like getting into do stuff you don't like to do. That's what I've done recently. And it's like I because I've done sales calls for Criterion. Yeah. When I'm driving, I just click the button, I talk to it, and I'm like, I'm gonna run a drive sales call. Yeah. Okay, what are you selling? It's for Criterion Business Solutions. ⁓ okay, great. You guys have a new package or something coming out? Yes, we have a new package coming out. And it's like, okay, would you like to sell tier one, two, or three? It's like I want to sell tier two. Okay, great. And it literally rings a phone. Like it makes puts a sound effect. Yeah. Rings a phone. I'm like, hello. And then they're like, hey, how you doing? And it like runs me through a sales call. And like sales guys make big money. Yeah. On commissions. Like they make big money. Like if you're going to like if you're an athlete, you go to the gym to build muscle. Why wouldn't you be a sales guy getting on these like I guess mock calls? Yeah. Building that. Speaker 1: Yeah, say here's the product that I'm selling. Give me the top 20 objections that you think I'll get, the best way to handle them, and let's run through it together. Give me feedback at the end. Speaker 2: I'm gonna charge everyone for this episode. Like this there's gonna be like gold in here. so how do you like so say someone plugs into Chat GPT today and they're like, make me a book for my kids. Just something fun, right? Tell me about myself. Like, at what point do you find them being able to integrate it into like something important? Not that your your kids are important either, but like the book isn't. Like, you I mean it might bring value, but you know what I like something important, like I dove right in. So I didn't even look at precautions. I just kind of dove at first. Like at what point do you think someone is ready to start integrating it into their day to day life? Speaker 1: As soon as I I would say give it a couple weeks, like just get familiar with how AI interacts with you. But they've made it very secure in terms of authentication and they've made it very simple to basically one click a button, connect it to my email, connect it to you know my Canva, connect it to all these different tools. ⁓ so it is very simple to set up. And once you understand sort of how ⁓ a language model like ChatGPT or Claude responds back to you, then you can plug in your email and say something like, go through my emails from the last seven days and find any emails that I haven't responded to. And we okay, you haven't responded to these four. Okay, that's a great reminder. Like that would be a great starting point to connect it to some of your, you know, other tools. Speaker 2: And what like because you know a little bit of the back end, like do people actually have to have a fear on small stuff like reading your emails or anything like that? Your personal opinion? My opinion is no. I I'm gonna be honest, I don't think we have anything to fear about, like the chances of a hack. It's like your information's so far out there on the internet anyway. Like no, but that's the thing, like how many times do people go on Amazon, they click a button and they're like, ⁓ purchase now? And they don't put their credit card in because it's already saved. Speaker 1: They've already got it. Speaker 2: I'm like, but you're worried about AI and your personal information there. But Amazon, you're good. Like if somebody's gonna attack something, like Amazon, you're probably better off attacking somebody, you're getting a lot more information than, you know, someone like Claude or Chat GPT or anything like that. Right. So like I'm very confident in the security of it, but like what is your opinion or because I'm sure you've been around bigger circles of AI enthusiasts, let's say. Speaker 1: Yeah, I I'm totally aligned with you. ⁓ like like you said, if you keep store your credit card in your Google Pay account or like it's Google authentication to connect to these external tools. So if you're okay with that, you sh in theory, like logistically, it's the same ecosystem that you are just giving your information to. Speaker 2: Yeah, because my cloud team, ⁓ we we're logged into a Google account. Yeah. And we have the cred credit card saved under Google workspace. Exactly. So I'm like, if they cut there, they're gonna get that. Speaker 1: It's really just an extension of what you already have set up. Speaker 2: I think a lot of people don't understand the extent of it. People think like once you start putting your personal information in there, it's like it's already online. Yeah. It's like this scary tactic where it's like, well, now I'm putting all my, you know, information in this vault. And I'm like, well, it's in twelve other vaults. Like, try to go online and delete all your online presence. You fucking never do it. Like you're never gonna do it. That's bullshit. Like you can't do it. So like, why are we scared of this? Speaker 1: Try to go on Facebook and not see an ad about something you were talking about yesterday. If you're listening to you. Like in your Speaker 2: these people are on Facebook that are anti AI, but Facebook's using AI to push these ads to you. Like that that's what I don't get. Like that's where I'm like kind of mind blown with the whole thing, which I'm an advocate for because it like there's times where like me and you are having a conversation and like two days later I get this ad. I'm like, yeah, shit. I was talking to Shawn about that. I should look into that. Yeah. Like, you know, in like so it's kind of like I I'm an advocate for it. I think it makes life more efficient, ⁓ more kind of per se. So let's spin off of just generic AI, where do you see it going? Speaker 1: Where I see it going is every problem that you have in your life, there will be you will build custom software to solve it. And that technology essentially already exists. And that's how I am using AI at the moment. For example, we have a shared cottage with me and my family. ⁓ you know, we share expenses, we vote every year on like what projects we're gonna do. And I thought, what a perfect ⁓ sort of idea for like a custom AI website. Yeah. So within 45 minutes, I just put everything into my claude essentially, and I said, here's what I want to build. And so now I have automated emails going out to the family once a month saying who's got the booking for the next month, how much money we've made on rentals. ⁓ and so stuff like that is going to be very common for everybody. And you're not going to need to be technical. In one to two years, you're going to be able to open up ChatGPT and say, I need this dashboard for this part of my life. Build it for me. And within one minute, you're gonna have a fully custom solution for exactly what you want. Speaker 2: And that just makes life easier and faster. Like it it does. And I know that people are saying like it's gonna make people dumber. I get it, right? But is it gonna make us dumber? Sure, on everyday stuff like spelling. We we've all got stupider in spelling. Yeah. Like literally, we've all dropped the ball on how to spell. And grammar. That's because we have like, I guess autocorrect. Auto fill, yeah. Auto fill. Yeah. And but again, like, but how much more output are we putting by not Speaker 1: And grammar. Speaker 2: handwriting an essay. Now we're typing an essay and we're outputting more information and better, I guess, product per se, because we don't have to worry about go back and do the autofill. Like when I wrote my book, would I have been able to write it in a weekend if I didn't have autofill? No. I just w started typing. I'm like, it's fixing it behind me. I'll go through it after. Right. And I was able to write a lot more in that day because I didn't have to go back and correct every spelling mistake as I went. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. No, yeah. And sure there was still a lot of spelling mistakes or grammar issues, but the confidence that it would auto correct most of it allowed me to move a little bit quicker. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. And to your point, I I think in some ways it's gonna change the way that we think. Saying it's gonna make you dumber, like I I don't know if that's the best way to frame it. It's gonna change the way that our brain works and it already is. ⁓ for me, I already think about things differently because I've used AI for the past four years, pretty much every single day. And so now when I think, I've just had access to that information for so long that now I feel like I'm way smarter. on a day to day basis. I Speaker 2: ⁓ a hundred percent, yeah. Speaker 1: And it's all about how you use it. Like anything. It's like TikTok. You could have one person who has their entire TikTok is girls dancing or something and they say, TikTok is stupid. I don't like I don't see the value in it. And then your TikTok is all marketing and AI and business and construction and you think TikTok is amazing. Yeah. It's all about how you use it, what you put into it, what is what you're gonna get out of it. Speaker 2: I love that analogy. It's kind of like what you absorb is like kind of where your mind goes. Kind of like if you're always in a negative environment, you're gonna be negative. If you're always in a positive environment, you'll be positive. And I think that's why I'm so for it because I've never used AI for a negative aspect or as let's say, I guess, numb mining activities. It's always been a productive activity. Yeah. And you're right. I think AI is gonna allow people the way they think. Is going to be different. I think a lot of people that are integrators are going to turn into visionaries. Yeah. Because they don't have to do that legwork of doing it. Right. Like there are certain things where I'm like, I don't want to do an email campaign. I got to create a template. I got to do this. I got to like load up all the email addresses. Like my construction company, we don't do email campaigns because I'm like, even for our administrator to do that, I'm like, it's a waste of time. Like the 2% I'm going to get like a CTA on is not worth it. Now it's like, yeah, do it. I know it's gonna take three minutes to do in the background while we're doing something else. Yeah, exactly. You know what I mean? So like now I'm looking at it from a bigger picture in a different perspective on my part where it's like before I'd look at in, I'd have to look at the logistics behind it. Especially as an owner of a business, it's kinda like, Well, I wanna get here, but like what steps do we have to take to get there? I'm like, now there's no steps. It's not now it's I say to do it and it's done. You know what I mean? And Speaker 1: Don't Speaker 2: How far do think it's gonna go? Like I I wanna put a deposit on Neil. That's right. What? No, I wanted the twenty twenty seven one, so I can't deposit on that yet. ⁓ so I went on the website. I went to go put the deposit on twenty twenty six can't. Speaker 1: Did. Thought you already did. So for the audience, what is Neo? Speaker 2: Neil is a robot that lives in your home. It's gonna do laundry, dishes, clean the house, and it can do karate. Literally, it can do karate. I watch videos. I'm like, this fucking thing can do karate. I'm like, this is amazing. So, like, that's where I'm at because I'm big on my time. So I'll pay 15, 20, 25 grand to have my time back forever. Yeah. It charges itself. Like literally, it just goes like, all I'm tired. I'm gonna go charge. And goes back to doing tasks all day. Like, If I use it my everyday life, I'm gonna use it in my personal life. That that's I I'm gonna bring it home and make it better, right? Even with my kids, like help them out. My son's a huge drummer. He's like, Dad, I really want to start drumming with other bands and I wanna do some solos, this and that. I'm like, all right, here's a camera, here's like mic, plug it in and then here's a website. Like and he's got his own little like personal brand website, which I love. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like where do you see it going, like the world? Do you see like the float the floating cars, like Jetsons kind of sh? Speaker 1: ⁓ not for a lot of comments. But like your comment on robotics, I think that's gonna be interesting to watch. Like what Elon's working on and stuff. I don't actually see humanoid robots, so a robot that looks like a human being in every household until probably twenty thirty five. Speaker 2: Not for long. But you do see it. Speaker 1: I do see some element, some variation of it. Where I actually think things are going to go is that there will be very like hyper focused versions of robots with a brain, like with AI built into it. So in a factory, you'll have ⁓ AI powered forklift that its only job is to be a forklift. If that makes sense. Yeah. ⁓ when you get into plumbing and construction and things like that. I think there will be like hyper focused robotic versions. Speaker 2: Okay, yeah. Speaker 1: I think there'll be twenty times more of those than humanoid robots. Speaker 2: Now saying that twenty thirty five you said. Speaker 1: Yeah, for is it gas? Speaker 2: From when you started with AI four years ago to now and seeing how fast it advanced, are you confident in that twenty thirty five or do think it's gonna be a little bit shorter? I think it's gonna be shorter. I think it's gonna be like Speaker 1: I'm not worried about the tech getting there. I'm worried about the adoption. And when I say worried, I mean mind blowing thinking about the adoption. The like the tech is is pretty much already there, but the adoption and the distribution will take years. Humans move very slow. AI's moving way too fast for people. It can already do dangerous things. And the average person, like we are not the average person in terms of AI adoption. We are we are years ahead. Like if I talk to fifty people in a week, I would say one of them knows what Claude is. Speaker 2: And right now, literally I have Claude doing like nine things in the background. I think it has it's reviewing our expenses for the week, our billable hours, it's adding tea dog to like our social media content. Like it's literally running right now as we're doing the podcast. Like I you know what I You're right. I don't think a lot of people have adapted to that. But I do want to touch on the like it could be dangerous. Like, you see those videos where it's like, ⁓ computers started talking to each other, made up a language that no one understands, and they had to shut it down, this and that. I'm like, There's also a mass shooting in the States every single day. I'm like, are we highlighting because of the technology and the speed of information and the world's so small with communication? Are we highlighting these stories because everyone's so against it? Like is everyone jumping on the bandwagon saying, Yeah, AI is dangerous? Like, do you think it's emphasized those kind of stories, or do you think they're actually like everyday occurrences? Speaker 1: It when you think about AI, the AI is neutral. The AI is Switzerland. It is not good or bad. It has unfortunately it's the humans who are using it that are doing good or doing bad with it. So unfortunately, there's gonna be there already is major issues like phishing and scamming and that kind of stuff is gonna be at its all time worst, like now for the next one to two years. I Speaker 2: Do you think AI is gonna be a good defense against that? Speaker 1: Yes. This is gonna be like good AI versus bad I bad A bad AI. Speaker 2: ⁓ Yeah. Tell me a wicked movie. Speaker 1: And so Speaker 2: Like I said, do think the bad is a daily occurrence, or do you think it's overemphasized because there's so much pushback against it? You know what I mean? Though it's kind of like one of those like a lot of people are on the bandwagon, they don't like AI. So there's a bad story. Like I find a lot of people jump to the negative before they jump to the positive. So like when I hear those stories, like I I've had a thousand people send me that one video of the two computers talking, making up their own language. And like ⁓ this is from like nineteen eighty four. Like, ⁓ my god. I know it was like a year ago, but like in AI years It's like I feel like that video is so old. I'm like, I think we're past that. Yeah. You know what I mean? Speaker 1: There's a lot of unknowns around the corner, for sure, and like there are scary elements of it, but it's here and it's like it's not going anywhere. And you might as well learn how to use it to give yourself the best chance in the future. Speaker 2: And that's what I think too. It's like I don't see it going anywhere. So like I'm embracing it. I'm loving it. I'm using it to be better. I find I have more time with my family. I'm in better shape. Things are more organized. I have less stress. I think my biggest stress like how am I gonna build the next thing? You know what I mean? Like I get to that point where it's like, well, if we can do this, why can't it do this? Speaker 1: And that's so there's something called scope creep, where you're in a project now with AI, you build out a feature, and then you think, actually you could probably do this too, and do this too. And all of a sudden the small project that you started is this huge project that you built all these fun features and I know you're guilty of that. So the problem that I have now is deciding what not to build. Because Speaker 2: Awesome. Speaker 1: I lie awake at night and because I'm an idea guy, I'm like, ⁓ this would be cool. I could build that. And you can build it all. But if you start building it all, you're now in the same issue that you had before AI. You sh you have too much on the go and not enough time. Speaker 2: That's literally where I feel like I'm at. And that's why I made that list the other day. It's like, okay, what's five things I don't want to do? Yeah. Because that's what I'm going to build. And I'm done. Right. So I've built pretty much everything now. Now it's just organizing how I'm going to utilize it. So it's kind of like I have social media, I have email communication, I have finances, I have lead generation and marketing. And I've kind of just built one agent to talk to all four. Yeah. And say, this is my goal. In five years, I want AC customer to be this. I want Criterion to be this. Personal branding here, I want to speak three times a year at an event. And I only want to work four days a week. Yep. Here are the tools. Here are the three businesses or avenues or laneways. Make it happen. Yeah. And then it builds me a schedule based on that. Because before it was like, well, I can have a social media manager, then I can have another agent that does three, you know, posts a week for this one and then two posts. I'm like, just condense it. Yeah. So what's it called? Scope. Speaker 1: Scope creep. Yeah. ⁓ just to simplify things for your audience, what how would you explain what an AI agent is? Speaker 2: Scope Creep. I define it as an AI agent is something that or I guess an AI agent is designed to complete a specific role. That's what I use it for. It's like my AI agent that does social media is only connected to my social media, only connected to me and connected to my vision of it. So it's like a very specific role. That's the way I'm looking at it is like, yeah, as I build agents, I'm creating a role and responsibility with that. I know somebody will have one agent that does it all. I like knowing like this is where this pipeline is, that's where that pipeline is. Because if I ever do have to shut it down one day, it's like it's not a mess. Yeah. See, I'm very organized. So it's like, yeah, you know what I mean? Like that's the way I look at it. So if I ever want to cut out social media completely, one prompt, it's gone. Yeah. If I build one agent for everything. Speaker 1: Your systems think. Speaker 2: I just don't see how I can kind of it'll get too messy. Yeah. As you know, once you get into the scope creep, right? Like Speaker 1: And just to simplify things, one more layer, an AI agent is still it's just a chat bot that you are giving instructions to that has access to your different softwares. Yeah. So you could have an AI agent, which is just a chat bot that's connected to your QuickBooks. And you are telling that agent or chatbot, I need you to go into my QuickBooks, ⁓ you know, pull my last twenty orders and find my average order value size or something like that. ⁓ like That's all that an agent is. And then you can have a main agent and then sub agents underneath who also have access to different tools. And so you have like your your main, say president agent who can delegate tasks to the other chatbots. Speaker 2: kind of where I'm set up at now. So I have Ace, the main one. And yes, I named them. Okay. Then I have Timothy who does all the finance. Yeah. Timothy who does all the finances, Alfred who does the marketing. Like I have one agent that does each one and I have it programmed in them. It was just simple problem saying every day flush out your information to the MD file. And Ace always reads the MD file. So at the end of every day when I turn off my computer everyone flushes their information up to one file. And Ace reads that file. So he he knows what every agent's done that day. And literally it's just having five text messages open. That's all it is. So how How far do you think you can get someone into AI in like an hour? Speaker 1: Pretty far. Pretty far. ⁓ Speaker 2: So what's everyone saying? Should we do a seminar, online seminar? Would you Of course. Would you really? Yes. Chat. We're gonna do that. Okay, T Bair is gonna make a social media post or run an AI seminar. Yeah. I like that. So if you're scared of AI, you're worried about AI, you don't understand AI, Shawn's gonna walk you through the basics of AI, like very basic, get you going. And Speaker 1: Do what? Speaker 2: Once you get into it, you're gonna dive deep into it. Now Shawn's gonna tell us what a typical Tuesday look like looks like. I I I love that question. Someone like I that came up in one podcast and now I ask every one of my guests. I'm like, what does a typical Tuesday look like now? Speaker 1: For me? From the lens of how I use AI. ⁓ typical Tuesday, I mean, I wake up early, try and get a workout in. AI's not really involved in my workouts at the moment. ⁓ I'm I'm sure down the road you'd be able to just have your camera on you and say Yeah, it exists already. Speaker 2: Moment. Well they have those like it yeah, those like platforms that you're putting your house and create that year resume and stuff like that. Yeah. Speaker 1: That's a little bit too much for me. ⁓ but I walk the dog, get the kids ready, kiss my wife goodbye, make some breakfast. ⁓ at seven AM every morning I have an inbox triage that comes to me. So similar to you, it's pulling from my work email, my personal email, my text messages, just everything in one place. Here's what you got going on the next week. Here's what's outstanding, here's what's due. So that's sort of really helps me start my day off on the right foot. I get into work and, you know, based on what tasks I have that day, I have ⁓ what's called clawed code open all day, basically. Speaker 2: In Louie. I have three screens and one's just cloud code. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And so I spend about eighty percent of my workday using the tools, building things, building packages to send to customers, ⁓ helping me, you know, again, go through my emails, look at what sales orders we have going on. It's it is very connected to almost every single thing that I do. ⁓ and it allows me to do ten times the work of a regular person. ⁓ I use it on my drives, like you said, sometimes, ⁓ to help me gain clarity on things that are bothering me. Like I'll use the voice mode on ChatGPT. ChatGPT probably has the best voice mode. and like I said, if I have a big customer meeting coming up, I'll practice on my way in. Or if I have to have a really difficult conversation with an employee, I'll say, can you help me just prepare this a little bit? Get me a script. Or I also use it on my drive sometimes to learn how to speak a little bit better. Like in the last couple of weeks I've said I want to learn how to answer questions using, you know, this specific framework. Can we run through some possible scenarios? So it's really the sky's the limit on what you can use it for. ⁓ when I get home from work, phone's off pretty much. I don't think about AI. I don't use AI. I'm with my family. ⁓ after kids go down to bed and everybody else goes to bed, sometimes I'll build projects at night or something or or work on stuff. But Speaker 2: See, I feel like I'm at the honeymoon stage still. So it's like my wife, well, not me and my wife aren't in the honeymoon stage. I mean AI or honeymoon stage. So even last night on the couch, I'm like, babe, come here, look at this. And she's like, if it's AI, I don't care. Like, I just stop. Like, you know what I mean? and it like I I love people to hear how much AI is in your day to day because I'm the same way. So, like, my typical day starts out I wake up in the morning and I get a prompt at 4 30. Literally a text message saying, Your day's ready to go, get to the gym, do your thing. It's almost like a motivational deck. It's not even like a, it's more of a check-in, like, dude, you're up and like, let's get it going. Yep. Then at 7 a.m., I get an email dropped in my, I guess, work AC custom email. That's kind of my primary go to go to in that email, but it summarizes like my personal criterion that it literally summarizes every email that I've got since the last one I opened. This is my last like, I guess, time of activity. And it's summarizing my day. And the best part about summarizing my day, it's like I have time blocking. So like Thursdays is time blocked just for podcasts and social media and content and everything. But on Monday, I have two hours in the morning of AC Custom, do payroll banking, stuff like that, two hours of criterion, and then back to AC Custom. And it knows AC Customs priority. Like when I built my agent, it's like AC Customs priority. That's a revenue income or revenue stream, that always trumps everything. Yeah. And then criterions after, and then my personal branding podcast kind of fall at the bottom the barrel. It will actually prioritize my list based on my schedule and tell me what's priority based on my want to meet. Yeah. And like I read that email. It's like, you have to do this, have to do that. If you have time, do this. And it's like color coded, like red, orange, yellow, blue, green, like it, like color codes that where it's like, This is a priority, this is not. And I don't know how dive how deep you get into it, but I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs listen to this. A lot of entrepreneurs get pulled into like the I guess swirl of the day, let's call it. Yep. And mine prompts me and says, Hey man, your time blocks up. Are you you ready to move on? Or do you need a little more time? Like that's how dialed in I have it. Nice. It's made me so efficient in a day. Like people are like, How do you do everything in a day? I'm like, 'Cause I'm so locked in. Like what I'm there's no waste of time whatsoever. And I love it that way. Yeah. So we're coming to an end here. So one thing is what's one question you'd like someone to ask you? Speaker 1: What That's it? That's it of your question. What what's one question I'd like somebody to ask me? Speaker 2: question. So we've had like the mayor on, we've had real estate agents on, we had like tradesmen on and stuff. So it's usually around their industry. So like you're an AI pro. Yeah. So if someone came up to you and says, I wanna ask you one question, you're like, Yeah, one question. Like something you really wanna talk about or something you really wanna put out there. You know everyone has that little like, want to break kind of thing? Speaker 1: Yeah. nearly stumping me on the Speaker 2: Everyone gets stumped on this one, don't we? Speaker 1: Or is it really like the like the message that I'm trying to get? Speaker 2: Yeah, the message you're trying to get across. Yeah. So you're you're standing there and you're like, I want to scream someone out something out to the world. I just need someone to ask me the right question to scream it out there. Speaker 1: To me, it's on average, anybody around my age or the people that I'm talking to, in some capacity, seems to be like drowning in the day today. And my answer to them is that there is an answer and it's standing right in front of you and it's twenty dollars a month. Get over the fact that it's AI, like AI is has kind of gone through a bad branding, it seems, lately. There's there's a lot of negative sentiment towards it. But it's coming from people who don't actually use it, don't see the value from it. And just speaking from personal experience, I am a completely different person than I was five years ago. I am much more productive, happier, in better shape, and I owe a owe a lot of it to modern technology. Speaker 2: Last question is what would you name this episode? Me and T Doggies have so many problems like naming episodes. So I'm like, why don't we just ask the guest? Because now that we've got into it and we've talked about everything, the episode's ultimately about you. So what would you name? Speaker 1: Embracing AI. Speaker 2: Like that. Bang on, that's perfect. Speaker 1: Something like that. Embred in the tool. Speaker 2: Yeah. So social plugs, anything you wanna put out there, s websites, businesses, landing pages, and I I but he's an AI guy, so Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm I'd say I'm more of a a hobbyist overall, but I'm always happy to chat with anybody about it. Give, you know I love connecting with people. So if anybody wants to spend an hour and learn stuff, I I'm more than happy to connect. Speaker 2: So we're gonna put up your personal social stuff like that. Psych can DM you and reach out to you. Perfect. So that was AI. I really want to do that episode because it's changed my life. I've got so deep into it. It's helped me out so much. It's grown my businesses, grown me personally. it's made me and Shawn better friends. Like it's actually really cool to dive into it and see what it can do for you. So hopefully everyone enjoyed this episode. We are gonna get that seminar up and running. We'll plan a day. We'll book it for like an hour. And it's just gonna be an intro to AI. Anyone that's scared about it. Besides that, hopefully you got something out of this. I guess embrace AI. Another episode. Forget the noise podcast. Shawn, thanks for coming on, man. Thanks, man. Perfect. Tune in next week.