Listen. It sounds like you did it. You don't need me. Sounds like you did it. I mean, that that that's that's exact well, that's okay. Well, let's just do the basic source. The basics first are and let's use ChatGPT as our reference AI. It's not again, not the only one, but but I'll refer to it. So make sure you set up your custom instructions. Every every one of these AIs has something, like custom instructions and that's what ChatGPT calls them. In that, you can basically define who you are, the business that you run, the markets that you, you know, your business, operates in, how you like to work with AI, like, you know, do you want your answers in short bullet form or longer conversation or whatever. So set up your custom instructions. I'm surprised how many even power users of AI don't set up their custom instructions. I don't think I've done that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's a huge fail. You need to fix that. Okay? So make sure you make sure you've got good custom instructions. And by the way, you can update them as well as things change. Right? You you know, your business grows or whatever. And you can put in family information, you know, personal information there as well. That's first thing. Second thing is make sure your settings are turned on for memory, memory turned on. And they usually are, but just double check because you want the AI using memory because it that's how it gets to know who you are. It's keeping track in your conversations, and it's learning about you. And then and then that's held in memory. And then that's a good thing, I think, for for all of us. I think the a we want the AIs to be smarter. I know for some that sounds scary, but I I like my AIs knowing me better because I think that that means they'll just be smarter in in when they work with us. And then that the next step is what you're talking about, which I think is just everyone every one of us should do it. Every GM or or president or CEO should be doing this, of a team or of a business. And that's setting up sort of a a second brain. The way to do it is think about it as a shared AI workspace. And if you use Claude, they call them Claude projects, and, frankly, so does GPT. OpenAI GPT has a a a feature called GPT projects. It's a shared AI workspace. Your chats are private. So when you're in there, if multiple team members are in this same workspace, your chats are private. What's not private, what's shared are all the reference documents. So in that AI project, you can upload the company plan. You can upload the org chart. You can upload your marketing material. Whatever it is, whatever documents or plans you have of record, you can share them with AI in this shared workspace. And then whenever you go to brainstorm, whenever you ever go to kinda, you know, work with AI, do it from that shared workspace because that is the essentially the company's, second brain or the team's second brain. So we do this at my company section. We have, you know, we we call we call him or her. We call it section expert. It's a shared AI workspace. And what I tell the company is when you're doing strategy work and brainstorming and, you know, all that kind of work about the business, go and do it there. Because in that shared workspace, all the company's plans are already there. So So you don't have to share anything with AI. We've shared everything into the in this workspace, and I asked my chief of staff to keep that up to date. So then I know, okay, I I then I've got confidence as CEO. I've got one place where my chief of staff is loading up, you know, the the the business plan, the the cash model, the forecast, the product road map, you know, the org chart, all that's in one place, and she keeps it up to date and accurate. And then everybody else using that AI is using this super smart second brain. And to your point, you're merging your data with the world's intelligence, which is the AI's intelligence. And that's when AI gets useful. That's why initially when companies rolled out AI, it was such a fail because they said don't put company data in the AI because it's not secure. And, you know, this is like and it's still I still hear, you know, people say this to no, it's not it's not safe. Well, AI is kinda useless, I think, if you can't use your information. Right? You want you want, to your point, to blend this really intelligent, kinda machine with what's matters to you. So for example, on the health side, I load up all my health data to to OpenAI. So I I had cancer four years ago. So I load up my scans. I load up my tumor reports. I load up everything, to GPT. So, you know, Google thinks I have cancer because Google can can infer I have cancer, you know, from a Google

thinks everybody has cancer.

Yeah. But, you know, they they they they can know that from the search history. But GPT has it all. Yeah. And I'm okay with that. I I think that the right balance here is check your settings because you can turn off you know, you can make your settings private. And all the all the AIs have a setting that say that say don't share my data to train the model. So make sure that setting is turned on where your data is not being shared with the AI for training purposes. And then at that point, I think, again, my opinion, you're safe, you're secure, and the more personalized you can make your AI experience, the better, the more useful AI is gonna be.

Yeah. I find, like, for years, I could search Google for solutions, but I could never ask it specific things about me. And finally, I can. Finally, it's like, what should this what should Danny do? What should Breakthrough Academy do? What should Right. And now you're suddenly getting the intimate specific knowledge. There was something I was playing around with. I don't know if you played around with this yet, but the in chat gbt specifically, and I think, Google has its own version of this, but we have a Google Drive folder for all a lot of our SOPs and a lot of our metrics. And so I've I've can turn on a toggle now. And you have I think you have to have Plus or Pro to be able to do this. But I can turn on a toggle now, and I can connect it to Dropbox. I can connect it to Microsoft Office, Suite. I can connect it to, Google Drive.

Yep.

And so it can go and spider web and find my files and use some of those files to bring, like you just said, that database type information back specific to my business. The thing I've kind of stopped at, and maybe it's just because I haven't had time yet, but it's like, how do I index all that information in a way where I'm not constantly trying to tell it go to this drive file and look at this specific folder? Is there a way for it to start to read it all for me and and kinda know? So I don't have to and and as things are being updated as well, stay up to date without me constantly having to tell it where to go and what to do.

Not not yet. Not for small business. Yeah. I mean, that that isn't that is a challenge for sure. And there have there are products now, but I'd I'd I'd say they're really focused more on the larger enterprise market that are trying to solve that problem. So sort of basically indexing the company's information in a way that the AIs can access it, you know, faster, more accurately, and not have that burden kind of fall on you. Nothing that I've seen yet for small business.

So stay patient. Wait for ChatGPT six coming out January.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Stay stay patient. This is why you gotta pick your high value use cases. Right? Like, AI can't do everything, not notwithstanding what everybody says and what all the ads say and all the hype, AI can't do everything. So you you gotta do you do have to kinda pick your use cases. Where is it worth it to you to kinda keep uploading or keep pointing AI to that document or, you know, that kind of thing. So so for example, for me, I use AI as a board. I've got a human board. I've got I've got venture investors. I'm not as smart as your audience. Your audience owns their own business. You know, I always raise capital to start my companies, which means that means I work for someone else. And, and I've got a board, you know, who want a five times return on the capital. But, you know, I I use AI as a as a board. And I take the same board deck that I that send to the humans before the board meeting. You know, we have quarterly board meetings. Right? I got five board members. I send them typically, you know, a big board deck to read. I give the same thing to AI before the board meeting. So I'm smarter and better prepared when I go to my human board meeting because I I've had AI basically play the role of a board member, and I upload the same deck. I do that four times a year because I have, you know, quarterly board meetings. So it's not a big lift for me. Right? I'll upload the deck every time, have AI play that role. By the way, AI scores ninety percent or higher when compared to the human board. And we know this because we record everything. We write down. We don't use AI note takers for board meetings. That's for legal reasons. But I have my chief of staff take faithful notes around everything the human say in a two hour board meeting. And typically, Claude or GPT scores ninety percent or higher when compared to the humans. Meaning that means ninety percent of what the humans said, the AI has already told me before the meeting.

Wow. Yeah. So you're using it very much as a sounding board, as a as an information partner, as a little buddy on your shoulder that's there to help you think through all these high level decision making or decisions you're making in your organization. Where where else are some practical use cases that maybe aren't as obvious? I mean, we've all talked about how you can use it for marketing, and you can increase your, you know, your headlines and and, you know, adjust your your funnels and all. What what are some of the things that's like, hey. Just so you know, especially for a contracting business, what are some of the most, like, powerful use cases that our listeners could utilize this for at this point?

Yeah. I think it's probably getting getting ready for client meetings or, like, use it as a to role play. AI can be a coach where AI can also sort of role play who you're about to talk to. So if I was if I was about to pitch a piece a piece of business, you know, a big piece of business where it was where I really wanted to make sure I I, you know, I want it. I, you know, I got it right. I might role play with AI before. I might load up my proposal Mhmm. And ask AI to critique my proposal. Like, if you were the buyer of this proposal, whatever it is, whatever this job is, you know you know, where does this sound off or, you know, what what questions you might have? That takes just five or ten minutes with AI. I mean, you can do it you can do it in a car or in the truck on the way over or, you know, you know, in a parking lot before you go see the client kinda thing to pitch that piece of business. That that that's one. I think, you can also I had to record everything you do in terms of, projects as a contractor, either with photos or video. And I'd I'd start to use AI just to catalog and and kinda, give you an archive of that work. AI is gonna do a great job. But if you know, it just it's kinda like, you know, iPhotos, you know, photos on the iPhone now. Right? It's got AI search. Mhmm. It's amazing. And so when you think about sort of building a body of work that you might wanna learn from or show clients, whatever, I I would basically use, you know, I I would use AI to help that way. Listen, a lot lots of other, lots of other ways. You could help You could use AI to help you screen, people that you're hiring.

Yeah. Right. Basically, going against an ideal profile of who you're looking for, what the role actually is, and then yeah. And especially if you were I don't know if you'd be able to. You could get a permission, but you could record the actual interview itself put

to that If you wanted to record the interview Yeah. Abs yeah. You could, just even getting you getting you prepared for the interview. You know, most of us aren't very good at interviews. Most of us aren't very good at most of the things we're asked to do when you're on a business. You know, we're not, you know, we don't come you know? Yeah. We're we're not we're not created to be business people. Right? We gotta we gotta learn it. And so, I would ask AI almost anything to to to do it a little bit better. You know?

There's there's so many things that and, actually, I was another one was just thinking about just financials, which is, like, getting your actual financials in and benchmarking it against industry averages, which I know a lot of our members are always looking to do. And we we can do that, but I think now you have the world's access to what's out there. Here's the thing about all this. How do you do this, work on this, encourage this with your team, and, a, like, get adoption, but, b, more importantly, not get it to the point where you've just, like, killed critical thinking on your team. How how do you start to integrate this in a way where people are like, yeah, okay. Let's use it. But then they don't turn their brains off. You know what I mean? Because if you trust it

Some will. Some will turn their brains off. Listen. I mean, we we should worry about that. I mean, I worry about that a lot, with especially with AI native kids, you know, kids in high school and college because that's that is what's happening already. I I think I think that's almost a good problem to have, Danny. Meaning, let let let's get people using these tools a lot. You're right. There's a tipping point where you're using them too much. Right? You're you're cutting and pasting. But I think most of us are away away away from that, meaning we're still not using this these technologies enough. And by the way, we we all have day jobs. We all got businesses to run and and other stuff to do. Right? This AI stuff kinda is is now something new we gotta figure out, you know, and find time for it. So what I would say first is find the hour a week, whether it be, you know, during the workday or on the weekend and, you know, start to develop your kinda AI chops, find your personal use cases, find where it adds value, and and run with that for, you know, six months, maybe a year even. Yeah. If you find yourself spending hours a day on AI, you're probably not if you're running a contracting business. I I do think there are knowledge workers who sit in front of computers all day who are finding themselves spending hours now, you know, with AI having these conversations. They are beginning to cognitively atrophy. Absolutely. And then they're beginning to outsource. And I was in a I've I've been in meetings recently in my own company, and and we talk about this publicly, obviously, in the company. Like, don't do this, but people still do it. It drives me crazy. They'll say, well, I'm recommending this because AI says this. And I'm like I mean, I just lose my when I hear that, you know, inside my own firm. It's like, guys, like, you know, if we're doing what AI is telling us to do, then we really don't need you. Right? And and that's just not a first of all, it's not a good look. And second of all, it's probably not the best decision because the AI doesn't know everything about us. The AI is not real time. Like, we're we're the ones, the humans, right, that have the judgment and the context and and, you know, kinda know what really matters in the moment. Right? So yeah. Listen. I think we should worry about it. If I as a parent of a kid in middle school or high school, absolutely, you should be having this conversation with your kids.

Mhmm.

The schools won't. They're freaked out about AI. You as a parent own this responsibility, I think with your family, which is how to use AI the right way and how not just to cut and paste. Because if you do that, yeah, you you probably won't know how to critically think in three to five years.

Yeah. How I'll you need to describe, like, how I've been prepared for this podcast was I reviewed you, actually, and I sat down and wrote a whole page of notes on my own, just personal review of you. I then fed that into ChatGPT and had it start to summarize some key topics and questions that could be asked. I then cut that, pasted it into a word file, and read through every single individual question and and gave it thought. And was like, is this relevant to our audience? Is this actually relevant to you? Does this make sense for me to ask this? Like, am I smart enough to ask this question? And I started deleting, adding, changing, and modifying. I then took that, and I put it back into chat g p t to get a final opinion. And then finally from there, I had a final version. And I feel like that's kind of, like, the process we need to do to encourage critical thinking while still gaining the knowledge that it brings and making sure that we're not just putting it out there. But because if you get it to go over your financial numbers and be like, you need to be four percent higher on this, and you're like, okay. Like, do you that could be wrong.

Yeah. Yeah. It could be wrong, or it could be better to be six percent better on a different number. Right? Like absolutely. And and by the way, you know, you you're closer to your business. GPD is looking for patterns, but, you know, every business is unique. We're all unique as individuals. And the way you're the way you describe how you're working with AI is how we want everybody working with AI. I describe it, Danny, as be an AI driver, not a passenger. AI passengers, they're the they're the ones I think are just gonna outsource to AI. Give me a good enough answer. I'll cut and paste it, send it on, and and be done, frankly. And I I I do think a lot of knowledge workers are gonna start doing that. It's not gonna be good for their careers, you know, or their economic, you know, stability, but they're gonna start doing it because it's easy. And by the way, you're gonna buy yourself a couple hours of time every day. And you can, you know, like I said, you can go walk the dog or or take a yoga class. I do think what's going on right now with AI is the employee is capturing the gain sometimes, not the employer. Mhmm. Because they are getting they are making themselves more productive. They're not telling their boss, hey, boss, you know, give me more work. They're actually figuring out, hey, I can get this presentation done faster, you know, or this creative brief or this marketing plan, whatever it is faster. So I'll use AI and kinda not tell anybody and, you know, and capture the game. Eventually, companies are gonna figure this out and, you know, team some teams will shrink, you know, you know, after AI has been been implemented. But, again, for your audience, I think this is about finding some drudge work that you can outsource to AI, using AI as a thought partner, and then maybe using AI AI to grow the business once you begin to understand, you know, how you can leverage it.

Okay. For for all those listening, like, some people are doing what we're talking about, which is we're just we're waiting for the next release to be able to get the next feature. Some people haven't even started an account yet, and they just hear about this, and they're like, I don't wanna touch this thing, and everybody in between. What would you just say to everyone listening? Like, what is a good just, like, first, second, third step to start to make this a part of the company culture? I I just think about change management. And and you mentioned it earlier. Small businesses have the upper hand on this, so we shouldn't sleep on this. But what are some simple things we can do weekly, monthly, quarterly with our teams, with ourselves to just stay on this train and not miss it?

Yeah. Yeah. It's just so I think the the first thing is you gotta use it yourself. Don't don't be the leader that runs around talking about AI and then basically, you know, can't find GPT on their phone. So so so get get get the AI yourself, GPT, Claude again, Gemini. I I don't think it really matters which one. Get it on your phone and start having these conversations with AI. And as you said, don't use it like Google. It's not a search engine. If you put in a generic question, you're getting a generic answer and you're gonna be underwhelmed by AI. The more you make the question a conversation and the more you personalize the conversation to, you know, your own situation, the more AI really kinda finds its superpowers. And you're gonna be impressed. And and there'll be moments where you're gonna be blown away. And then, again, other moments would be like, you know, this thing's an idiot, and that's okay too. Right? But use it yourself. That's the first thing. Second thing is, normalize the behavior, and not just normalize it, but encourage it with the rest of the team. A lot of people are scared of AI. They again, maybe not in your audience as much because, you know, not not as many people seeing in front of a computer in terms of, you know, their day job. But when you think about knowledge work, you know, a lot of people, mostly because of the media narrative, have been told these AIs are coming for your job. And so people are anxious about it and people are, you know and or have their head in the sand hoping it's all gonna go away. It's not. And I don't think you need to be anxious. In fact, the more you use AI, the more you realize it's pretty useful, but it's not taking my job anytime soon. Right? So so normalize that. Like, you want everybody playing around with AI. And if you have to pay for it, if you're the boss, then pay for it. You don't need to. Free AI is pretty good. But if you, you know, you might wanna upgrade, that's twenty bucks a month. GPT teams is twenty five a month. That's got, more security in place, which is kinda the default is kinda turned on. Like, it doesn't it doesn't share your company data. So we use GPT teams. It's twenty five bucks a month. Of course, we pay for it. That to me makes sense. Encourage its usage. Talk about it in a regular way. Like, a a monthly meeting, a weekly meeting, whatever it is, just talk about it. Who's using AI? Personal use case, business use case, doesn't matter to get started. You know, where where was it helpful? Where was it not helpful? You know, those kinds of conversations are great. Just make it normal that we are gonna be working in this team, in this firm with AI in some way. We're not trying to reinvent ourselves today. We're not, you know, we're not you're not gonna get put out of business by AI. There are some companies who are gonna get put out of business by AI. Right? That's happening already. By the way, you know, translation the whole translation business and and everybody working as a translator, that business is gone. It disappeared overnight. That's not happening to your audience. That's that's the good news. Right? For others in the media and advertising and, you know, other businesses, yeah, AI is a real threat to them, and their businesses, but not not for your audience. That's so that's great. Like, you know, get going, but don't freak out about it. You don't need to. You know, no panic.

I I think about one thing. I've note I've noticed a bit of a trend in this, which is the industry of contracting is going nowhere. There's a lot of solidarity in that industry. But there we also live in capitalism. And so the expectation of what is acceptable for marketing, what is acceptable for follow-up, what is acceptable for good proposals, what is acceptable for tight numbers, what is acceptable for professionalism, we've been here for ten years, BTA has been busy doing this for ten years, is going up. And AI seems to be increasing that level of expectation from a customer standpoint. And I would say the one thing is, like, it's not that our industry is going anywhere. It's not that, you know, the these these companies are gonna become irrelevant for any anytime soon. But against your competitors, there will be people that will be using this and have the upper advantage. And I actually watched, even in our team, where the workload on marketing has almost gone up in a way because the expectation of content development and release has gone up, not down. And now we're using the tools to help with that. But if you don't use the tools to help with that and you wanna try and keep up, now you're in a bit of a pickle.

Yeah. No. I think that's right. I think no. I think you nailed it, Danny. I think I think this idea of expectations going up, on the on the buy side, right, on the client prospect side is absolutely right. And both in the consumer and in the enterprise or, you know, or b to b b to b to c and b to b. I think everybody's expectations are going up because when you work with AI, you you you're like, okay. Wow. This is, like, this is fast. It gives me a great answer. You know, I don't have seventeen browser tabs open when I'm you know, think about travel. Like, travel planning is the best example. Right? Travel planning in the Google browser world is TripAdvisor and Travelocity and, you know, you're looking at websites, reading reviews. It's a real pain. You got ten, fifteen tabs open to plan a vacation with your family. If you do that with AI, it's one conversation, one window, one tab, and everything is summarized and presented as an answer, as a really intelligent answer. Travel planning with AI is amazing and getting better and better. I think what that means is we're gonna expect all of our interactions with information, with content, with proposals, you know, with invoices. Like, I I think you're right. All of our expectations are gonna start to go up across the board because we've been given this new version of the Internet, this new version of kind of how we interact with information and data. It's it is this new paradigm. Right? And so I think that's right. In any business, I think our customers and our prospects are gonna be like, you know, you should send me that proposal, like, in in an hour.

Yeah.

You you should be able to walk around and take photos and whatever it is.

The other guy did it. Why can't you do it? Yeah.

Yeah. And the estimate the estimate should be done by AI, and you have to review the estimate as a human, but absolutely, like, what and why can't you be doing this on Sunday? And why can't you come on Sunday afternoon and send me proposals by Sunday night? Like, you don't need to get back in the office on Monday. Like, I think this idea of, you know, machines don't take breaks, you know, twenty four seven, for the machines. Right? We we we like to take breaks and take weekends off and vacations. Machines don't. So I think as we merge this intelligence, the machines with us, you know, we're gonna have to figure this out because I think that's right. Expectations are going up across the board.

Alright, man. Greg, this is great. Any final words advice for everyone listening, especially our audience? All the plumbers out there,

all the

owners of plumbing companies?

Yeah. Don't panic. Figure it out. And if you figure it out, help someone else figure it out. Pay it forward. Cool. This is a this is an anxious time, reasons.

Yep.

And, and I'm Canadian, and I'm not wearing my never fifty never fifty one hat, but I probably should be. But, you know, these these are anxious crazy times, and AI is, you know, contributing to some of that. So don't panic. Figure it out. Help someone else figure it out. Talk to your kids about it Mhmm. As well. And and yeah. And have a little bit of fun with this. Like, it's not it's not just work. Right? AI can be fun. You know, make a song on Suno or build a website or, you know, make a children's book with GPT. There's a lot of fun ways to play with AI, to, you know, to kinda get to know it. You know, it's not just it's not coming for our jobs.

Awesome. Alright. And if people wanna reach out to you, because you help you help with integration and change management for organizations.

Yeah. They should yeah. They should just go to go to prof dot ai and use you prof dot ai is a coach, an AI coach for AI, and it's free for consumers. And, go there and and that'll spend an hour with Prop dot ai and your skills will be, you know, be really sharp in terms of how to use an AI. So that's probably the best way or just find me, you know, just email me, You know, I'll put it in the show notes.

K. We'll put in some links for you. Awesome, Greg. Okay. I'll let you get back to your day. Thanks for your time on this. And, to everyone else listening, let's go see what we can do with AI in the next couple months as things change, as things move. K.

Yeah. Thanks, Greg. Thanks, Danny. See

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