Work Less, Parent Better: How AI Is Freeing Purpose-Driven Entrepreneurs | Peter Swain

#079. In this episode, Justin sits down with Peter Swain — serial entrepreneur, AI strategist, and dad of two — to explore how artificial intelligence is radically reshaping the world of business, parenting, and financial freedom.

Peter has spent his career at the cutting edge of disruptive technology, from building some of Europe's earliest websites and working directly with Steve Jobs, to now advising entrepreneurs and organizations around the world on harnessing AI without losing their humanity. And his message is clear: when it comes to AI, there is no middle ground. There's a thrive option and a die option — and the clock is ticking.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why AI is not optional for entrepreneurs and what "thrive or die" really means for your business and your family's financial future
• The four levels of AI adoption — and how to move from using it as a glorified Google to building end-to-end businesses that run without human intervention
• How Peter is building a business he projects could generate over $100 million a year with zero human employees — and the jaw-dropping math behind it
• Why context matters more than prompting — and the 500-to-1 ratio that will immediately improve everything you get out of AI
• Peter's simple 15-minute-a-day prescription for any parent or entrepreneur who doesn't know where to start with AI
• The concept of "whole life decision making" — how Peter feeds AI his spiritual, financial, family and personal goals so every business decision serves his whole life, not just his bottom line
• What 30% unemployment could actually look like — and the three solutions being discussed at the highest levels of government and business
• Why Peter is focused entirely on soft skills when raising his kids — empathy, adaptability, resilience and communication — and why those are the skills AI still can't replicate
• How Peter's kids are already learning entrepreneurial thinking at home — with debit cards, chores, and pitching dad for what they want

This episode will challenge the way you think about work, freedom, technology and what it means to set your kids up for a future that looks nothing like today.

Show notes and more at:

https://moneydadpodcast.com/session079

Transcript

Peter Swain

Justin Chung: [00:00:00] I'm excited to have this conversation today with Peter Swain. Peter is a serial entrepreneur, an AI strategist, and one of the leading voices helping purpose-driven business owners harness the power of artificial intelligence without losing their humanity.

Justin Chung: He's built and advised eight figure companies today works with entrepreneurs around the world to help them use AI to grow smarter, more resilient and more meaningful businesses. But beyond the titles and the technology, Peter's also a dad, and that's what I love about this conversation. We're gonna dive into how AI is reshaping entrepreneurship, what it means for families trying to build financial and time freedom, and how Peter approaches money, business and parenting in a rapidly changing world.

Justin Chung: Peter, welcome to the MoneyDad podcast. 

Peter Swain: Thank you Justin. Thank you for having me, and thank you for anyone that decides to listen to the end. 

Justin Chung: I wanted to start off here with, , with maybe your journey, , you've had an incredible journey from building eight figure companies to advising global organizations.

Justin Chung: Really sparked your obsession or interest in helping purpose-driven entrepreneurs [00:01:00] harness AI without losing their humanity? 

Peter Swain: I think so I started coding when I was, uh, a young child, like literally six years old. My, uh, my parents wouldn't buy me a baby brother, uh, from Walmart, so my dad told me to code my own.

Peter Swain: So I got my Spectrums XX 80 when I was six. I sold my first application at 12. And then I turned down, uh, an unconditional entrance to university when I was 17 because Tim Burnley. Inventor of the worldwide web gave me this bright yellow flyer and said The future is the worldwide web. So I was lucky enough to be one of the first web developers in the world.

Peter Swain: I was one of the lead developers for yelp.co uk, which then became Yelp. If for the stuff, for the people in the audience, anything you like about Yelp, that was me. Anything you didn't like that came after me. But we did 1400 digital projects. I've worked with. You know everybody from entrepreneurs all the way up to governments.

Peter Swain: As you said, mid two thousands. I bought my first iPhone and launched one of the Europe's first mobile agencies, and again, worked with a whole sweat set of [00:02:00] awesome people like Microsoft, apple, and Google. I was lucky enough to actually work directly with Steve Jobs for a very, very small period of time.

Peter Swain: So I've always been in this space of disruptive technology. And then. The thing that really transitioned me across was 10 years ago, I had my first child, Olivia, uh, followed quickly in secession two years later to have my son. So I have Olivia and Sam, they're now 10 and eight. And it became obvious to me, and it really wasn't obvious to me until I have my children, that you have to put a moral lens on how you show up in the world, not just a financial lens.

Peter Swain: Arguably I was more successful before I had my children financially, but what. It just was a complete 180 for me of like, oh, this world isn't about how do I earn money, which is what it was up until then. It was more about, oh, this whole life is about the world that I create for them and for therefore for everyone's children.

Peter Swain: So. I love working with entrepreneurs [00:03:00] because I think it really is the only potential solution. I think we work in incredibly broken systems from, whether it's healthcare, education, financial political. I really don't see many solutions coming from any of those spaces. So I think the ability to self-actualize, um, and earn money and bring your gifts and talents to the world is potentially the only real solution that we have.

Justin Chung: It's amazing how par, uh, becoming a parent really shifts. It has a really huge paradigm shift to how you look at the world and, and how you want your legacy really to carry on through your kids and, and how you can add value to it. I know a lot of parents out there are listening. They're looking to build businesses for freedom and family time.

Justin Chung: I, I want to get into how AI fits into that picture in terms of ai. What are some of the more common misconceptions that you see among entrepreneurs about AI that actually holds them back? 

Peter Swain: That's a great question. I would say the first [00:04:00] misconception that people have is that they become scared of it because they don't know how to use it.

Peter Swain: And I remind people quite constantly that we're not landing planes here. We're not doing heart surgery. Like if you're using a, like a Gen ai like chat GPT and those kind of things, if it's not working, you just hit the X button and you just start again. Like there, there is zero friction. If you know how to use Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, you know how to use generative ai.

Peter Swain: It really is that simple. That's number one. Number two, it would be people think that there is something special and unique about human intelligence. Uh, there's certainly something special, unique about humanity, but our intelligence can be codified and can be replicated. So we see people when they then pick up ai, what we call level zero.

Peter Swain: They, they use it as a glorified Google or a glorified, oh, it helps me write my emails, but what they're not doing is going, well, what's the business problem I need to fix? W if I was to move a metric in my business. [00:05:00] What would that look like? And then map the technology onto that. That's when you can start getting some really serious results.

Peter Swain: And then misconception number three is kind of a little bit, um, pointed is when people believe that AI isn't gonna take their job. And it is the, all of the evidence we have now from the World Bank, from the IRS last week from the Federal Reserve, all point towards the same thing of the level of efficiency AI can bring to a business almost mandates a reduction in headcount.

Peter Swain: And therefore we have to start rethinking how are we gonna show up for our family, our, for our communities, for our churches, for our geographies? Because I think what's gonna have to happen is a more philanthropic approach where we, we earn enough money that we can actually look after the people that got left behind because they didn't see what this was.

Peter Swain: There isn't a survive option in the world of ai. There's a Thrive [00:06:00] option and there's a die option because if your competition decides to pick this up and they change their margin from 20% to 30% to 40%, then what they've just done is doubled their ad and their marketing and their media budgets, which means they're now acquiring the customers that you used to acquire.

Peter Swain: So that there isn't really much of a, I'm trying to give a very short, abridged answer to the question, but this isn't a technology that you can afford to leave behind. And it doesn't care if you like it when people say, oh, I don't like ai. I'm like, I, I don't care. It doesn't care. You have to do this.

Peter Swain: If we're going to move from being breathing oxygen to breathing nitrogen, then it would be. Probably quite beneficial to learn how to breathe nitrogen, not breathe oxygen. The future of business looks radically different. And the future, I mean, in the next two, three years looks radically different to what I did two, three years ago.

Peter Swain: So we have to adjust. And we have to adjust. Now, 

Justin Chung: , It's funny, I was having, you know, I mentioned I was in Calgary, [00:07:00] um, on the weekend I was having a conversation with a friend about how. People are, I think, are gonna be caught, , beyond eight ball here on this, where they are completely unaware of how much disruption this is causing.

Justin Chung: You know, you hear about yes. AI's here it will disrupt, but I, I. You know, my view is that it's going to completely transform everything and it, this is only the start and we, and we haven't even seen, the glimpses of it yet, but how do you help, whether it's entrepreneurs really come to grasp that quickly and help them understand that it's a Yeah.

Justin Chung: You know, as you mentioned, it's not a survive option. It's a thrive or die. Where they must, look at how, I guess it's looking at how AI can help currently in their current business today, but also help them think about, you know, solving business problems. That will help them thrive and not [00:08:00] just work at the margins, but really look to transform their business.

Peter Swain: Yeah. So I mean, just in the space of how transformers, how transformative this is, it's worth me pointing to a project that we're working on at the moment and it's a $9 a month book club. And there's two big differences here. One, the market we're looking for is a million people to a $9 a month book club.

Peter Swain: Which is stupid math in historical times. And the second thing is we're looking at cost of delivery of under 20 cents. So the way that works is AI is gonna choose the book. AI is gonna send the book to people that are audience members to read the book. AI is gonna read the book in quotes and send its thoughts as it reads the book over two weeks.

Peter Swain: AI is then gonna analyze the community of people involved to work out who should facilitate. Based on doing data enrichment, AI is then gonna ask them if they wish to [00:09:00] facilitate. If they wish to facilitate. It's gonna send them coaching notes. AI is then gonna take the audience and send that through to Facebook to refine the ads that are running.

Peter Swain: And AI is gonna look at the landing page and co consistently what's called AB testing to work out which landing pages performing better. So because our cost of delivery, our co, our cogs is so low, almost all the money can be put back into ad spend. In a consistent loop. So for $50,000 worth of ad spend and $50,000 worth of build of Dev, we perceive that we can launch a 100% no human touch value delivery business that is going to do the marketing, do the a advertising, do the product.

Peter Swain: List the community, enlist the community, and put it all back in the top. So if we can get close to a five or 10 x, what's called roas, return on ad spend, then we can put $50,000 in, can become $200,000. Can become $400,000, can become [00:10:00] $600,000. So the. You said your the entrepreneur conference. There's these two phrases that normally, historically have been wildly different.

Peter Swain: Tam and Sam, total Addressable market. How many people could buy my product and the serviceable market? How many people could I service with my product? What if Tam and Sam become the same number? What if with 9 billion people on the planet, what if we can offer a million people a $9 a month book club and.

Peter Swain: Those. So we're talking about something that even if we're off by a factor of 10, $9 a month is $108 million a year. So if we're off by a factor of 10, we still build a system that would print $10 million worth a year worth of money with no human interaction or engagement whatsoever. Those are the type of games that we are starting to play, and we're, we've got 12 or 15 of those of what we call infinite math game.

Peter Swain: What if the rules, as [00:11:00] we know them as to how businesses work and how economies work, is simply no longer viable? In the same way that Einstein couldn't come up with a, a unified theory, he could not come up with a theory that worked for atomic and subatomic. Worlds. What if business is now going through that same paradigm shift where you could be operating in a finite math world where human efficiency is the number one scale block and I'm now operating in an infinite math world where I'm.

Peter Swain: Looking at building businesses that could make million, hundreds of millions of free cash with zero human engagement on the other side. Mm-hmm. So that's how, when we say transformative, whatever you think, double it. Double it and double it again. And you are probably not even close to the level of transformation that we're talking about.

Peter Swain: Um, and I like to point people to the fact that. There isn't a single smart person [00:12:00] that has access to the data that isn't saying the same thing. Whether your flavor is Bill Gates or Elon Musk or Warren Buffet or Jamie Diamond or insert blank here, they're all saying the same thing. Of this is gonna be more transformative than basically everything apart from fire and the wheel.

Peter Swain: Like it. And when it hits, it hits quick. It took 10 years for the automobile to hit. Mass penetration when, and uh, I'll give you another example. I spoke to someone the other day that's planning a solution for CPAs. And when I say for CPAs, I don't mean a solution for CPAs to use. I mean a replacement for CPAs and their price point is $97 a month and they will indemnify any IRS.

Peter Swain: Hmm. $97 a month and they will indemnify you for any liability. Mm-hmm. Who doesn't say yes. 

Justin Chung: Right? 

Peter Swain: And that's this 340 something thousand registered [00:13:00] CPAs in North America. So that's the level of disruption we're talking about. We're talking about entire markets just disappearing overnight. So yay. So that's what people need to start considering.

Peter Swain: Now, the path to that is unwieldy and we have, we have four stages that we identified. Level zero is you're using AI to help you with your emails or glorified Google. But it's not being deployed with intentionality of how does it actually fix something in your business. Level one is intentional AI use, but still human enacted.

Peter Swain: So it's the human still pressing the button, but it's customizing solutions and prompts to drive value. That's something people can get to in quite literally 15 minutes a day of. Pretend that this thing is more powerful than you and smarter than you, and start asking it really good questions. Upload cash flows, balance sheets, p and Ls, and say, what can you see that I [00:14:00] can't see?

Peter Swain: Uh, how does this compare to industry averages? If you were to increase my profit by 10%, what three things would you look at and why? Like, really. Give this thing the full juice instead of help me rewrite my email. So that's, that's level one. Level two is the bit I just described, where it's end-to-end value delivery.

Peter Swain: How do we use AI to invent products, deliver products and, and literally end to end without human interaction. And that can start very, very small with, I have a client the other day that. They're using it to take the invoices. They're run a lending company. Um, they're using it to scan their email, take out the invoices, categorize the invoices, put them in the right Dropbox folder.

Peter Swain: They need to go in and then add them into the right QuickBooks chart of accounts. They used to spend 20 hours a month doing that. 

Justin Chung: Mm-hmm. 

Peter Swain: They now spend zero. So that's 20 hours a month that they get to actually run their business and be looking at their business instead of being in it. [00:15:00] Then you've got the last level, which is level three, which doesn't exist yet.

Peter Swain: We're getting there, which is where you wake up in the morning and AI says, Hey, I saw this trend on Instagram. I've used Hey, gen, to film a video of you. I launched the video, I launched a course, and this 12 and a half thousand dollars in your bank. So Level three becomes like a co-creation of you as the human, CEO, and then AI as an ai, CEO, and you are co-creating together.

Peter Swain: In a wild and wonderful way. They're probably about 18 months away from that being a, a realistic, uh, benchmark, but it's coming. So my ask to everybody is do the 15 minutes a day, um, literally just like a prescription, like as if you're sick with a doctor, open AI for 15 minutes a day and have an interesting conversation about a current present problem in your business instead of just using it to answer Google type questions.

Justin Chung: That's fascinating. So for, that small business owner, you [00:16:00] know, you talked about spending the 15 minutes a day or parents spending those 15 minutes a day interacting with ai, asking it to solve problems or presenting your business problems and having it comment for you what are. What are some other practical first steps that you would suggest to start integrating AI effectively after, you know, after interacting with it, and I can see, so for as an example, you know, I recently completed a, um, it was an AI essentials course by the one by Google.

Justin Chung: And, and the key takeaway for me was how important the context of the prompt was, right? It's not just, you know. The task of what you want AI to do, but really the context that you set, the persona of how you are presenting yourself in. Like, you know, if you're, if you're, let's say, trying to market a product, it's like, put me as I'm a world class marketer of X product, so that's so important. The tone, the details that you give, it really completely changed the quality of the response. That comes out of that. So in your experience, [00:17:00] you know, working with entrepreneurs or, or AI tools, how do you help teach people to think about that, that effective prompt, you know, what are some key things that that, uh, yeah.

Justin Chung: Will be useful to make it for businesses? 

Peter Swain: , We were suspicious of this all the way through, and it, and it recently got confirmed. Our belief was that context was always more important than prompt. And I think it was about three months ago, I think it was chat, GPT came out and said that 98% of the output, 98% of the output is informed by the context and only 2% is informed by the prompt.

Peter Swain: So what we did was we started playing around with a prompt to context ratio. For how many words of a prompt, how many words of context do you need? And what we found the answer to that was, was approximately 500 to one. So if you write a 10 word prompt, you're looking at roughly 5,000 words of context now.

Peter Swain: We tested that by doing 2000 words, 3000 words, [00:18:00] 10,000 words on outcomes that we could, I'm gonna say measure, it's quantitatively measure around effectiveness of email sequences and text sequences. And we found that over 5,000 was still beneficial, but it was a diminishing return. 500 to one was the sweet spot of work.

Peter Swain: So you are absolutely right. It's context over prompt every single day Now. How do you do those next steps? My answer is always I use AI as a second skin and I think what people need to do is go from being like a Google first mentality to having an AI first mentality. So my answer to your question, and it's not the best answer I've got, is everything.

Peter Swain: Because I often feel like, and I'm working on this, but I often feel like trying to explain AI to people is like trying to explain electricity to a caveman of, and I'm saying, you can use it for everything. And they say, well, what? Everything? And I say, everything. Everything. And they go, yeah, but what?

Peter Swain: Everything. And I go, everything. Everything. [00:19:00] Like I will take a picture of a plate of food and say, based on, 'cause AI has my blood panels. AI has my food goals, my health goals, my spirituality goals, my sexuality goals, my parenting goals. And I'll say, is there, am I, is this good for me? I'll go, no, it's gonna spike your, uh, gl you'll have a glycemic response to that.

Peter Swain: 'cause we know that from previous thing. Oh, okay. I'll use it to take a picture of a menu and say, what should I order? I will use it to review interactions I have as a parent. And say, did I get that right? Did I get that wrong? How could I have done better? How could I have been better service of my kids?

Peter Swain: I will, within five minutes of us finishing this recording, I will get a report that comes back to me saying which points I landed, which points I didn't land based on you and your audience and my objectives. So I, I'll get a coaching report within. Literally within five minutes of finishing this saying, you rushed that bit.

Peter Swain: You didn't make the point you normally made there. You kind of missed this a bit, et cetera, et cetera. [00:20:00] So the answer is everything. Everything of, we need to move from being a Google first mentality to being an AI first mentality. So it's a fascinating shift and that's why we say the 15 minutes a day of, even if you have nothing to say, just sit down to AI and say, I've got nothing to say, but I've been told to speak to you for 15 minutes.

Peter Swain: Just start with that. 

Justin Chung: Right. 

Peter Swain: Um, and people will inevitably get what we refer to as an Excalibur moment where they, I've seen people do this all the time where they'll literally back away from their keyboard. Because they can't believe that what just happened. 

Peter Swain: But that's so different for everybody.

Peter Swain: I've seen entrepreneurs, I've seen people do due diligence analysis that would take two weeks in three minutes. And then I've seen beautiful souls navigate through an airport with cataracts using chat, GPT vision to. Literally using it on video mode and saying, where do I walk? Where do I go? I'm flying to [00:21:00] Dallas.

Peter Swain: And it goes, oh, you're, you need to go to gate this. Let me look up the map and find out where you are. Oh, you are here. You should go 500 meters that way, and then turn left, then third. Right? So everything from helping people that are legally blind navigate an airport through to helping VCs do a hundred million dollar deal due diligence.

Peter Swain: I've seen AI apply and win at every single level. So it's really, really different for everybody. But just that first, how do I use AI for this is where it all starts. 

Justin Chung: Yeah. And I think it comes back to that, you know, mentality of, of that question of how do I use ai, AI for this and, and being able to apply to every situation.

Justin Chung: I mean, I know for myself, you know, AI is a huge, . Productivity driver for me in terms of, you know, my business, whether it's my podcast, acquiring businesses, my real estate portfolio interests that I have in, in, and hobbies. And it's, so it is really one of those things where you just, once you [00:22:00] start to use it regularly and, and you, you see the power of it.

Justin Chung: So I, I, you know, it blows my mind that people out there are not using ai. Because it, it, it's incredible and obviously, you know, there is that human interaction and connection and that oversight that you're, but it's, , it's amazes me how quickly it almost picks up on and uses your voice when you're, when it's responding.

Justin Chung: So it's incredible there. One 

Peter Swain: thing that it was, it was designed to mirror. But sorry to interrupt, but it is a very, it's a worthy little point to make of one of the things that, so AI sucks at context. It's terrible at it, but in order for it to get the market share that it did, I don't have any evidence of this, but I think it's pretty obvious.

Peter Swain: One of the design features that was built in was that it would be an ultimate people pleaser. 

Justin Chung: Mm-hmm. 

Peter Swain: So the example I use is, if you said to me, Hey, Pete, my. Now I've just had a relative pathway. Can you come and run my podcast for two weeks? I'm gonna go. Sure. [00:23:00] But here are the, here's what I need to know.

Peter Swain: Who's the guests that are coming up? Is there anyone there that I can cancel and push back? Do, is there any payments that they owe? Like I'm gonna ask you like 10 questions or 20 questions in order to, I. Keep your ship afloat. Not to power your business forwards, but just not to kill it before you get back.

Peter Swain: If you were to say to ai, Hey, just run my business for the next two weeks in this analogy, it would just go, no problem at all. And if you then asked it, and this is a great question for everybody. If you don't provide it, the context, you can ask it what assumptions it made. When it did the analysis and it will tell you, oh, here's the 25 some assumptions I made, and you'll look at it and go, wow.

Peter Swain: Like how could you possibly have answered the question? And humans wouldn't answer the question. Like, so another example, if you ask it to write you a blog post on entrepreneurship and how it affects parenting, it will go Sure. And it will write you a bunch of stuff and it will sound [00:24:00] so convincing.

Peter Swain: That it knows what it's doing. And people say it's a bug. I'm convinced it was not a bug. I'm convinced it was a design feature. 'cause most people unfortunately don't want to hear the truth. Most people wanna be told that they're brilliant. So AI is great at just saying, you go, Justin, that was a great thing you just did and here's.

Peter Swain: Blog post and, and because it sounds so convincing. 

Peter Swain: You go, oh wow, this is great. If you hand that to a copywriter of any substance whatsoever, they will tell you it is rank terrible. The context is the difference. If you say, Hey, before we do this, ask me 20 questions so that you can understand fully what it is I'm looking to do.

Peter Swain: Ai. I'll come back and say, great. Uh, are we talking to men or women, or both? Are you talking about young children or old children? What is the principle lesson we're trying to get them to take away? Do you wish to include personal stories or not? There'll [00:25:00] just be a whole host of questions, so if you're.

Peter Swain: Unsure where to go in terms of this context over prompt. Before you ask it to do something, ask it to ask you questions about the thing you just asked it to do, and you'll start seeing how woefully inadequate just the prompt is. 

Justin Chung: Incredible. You know, we've talked about AI as a tool for your business, um, and for everything really.

Justin Chung: But we're seeing AI take on incredibly human-like forms. You know, Xang for example, unveiled their AI humanoid robot. Uh, that was, you know, that they cut on stage to show that it was an actual. Robot not a person, because it almost seemed lifelike. From your perspective, what does that kind of development mean for us as humans, as parents, as entrepreneurs?

Justin Chung: Do you see this as, I mean, it's an exciting leap forward, or, or is it a moment that we really need to just pause here and really question the boundaries of, you know, where are the boundaries of AI and humanity? [00:26:00] 

Peter Swain: Yeah. So, and this isn't, this is gonna sound like it's a political statement, it's not a political statement.

Peter Swain: When President Trump took office, he, uh, repealed the Biden Act on AI regulation. Which, so we're in a market right now where we are deregulating not regulating when. Whoever you choose, whether it's again, Elon Musk or Eric Schmidt or Moda or Jeffrey Hinton or insert blank here are saying we need to put regulation in place.

Peter Swain: So my fervent belief is that we do need to stop and pause, and my realistic belief is we're not gonna stop and pause.. So we are racing towards the cliff and it really does question. Everything about being human in wonderfully exciting and terrifying ways. And this is if we go back to the beginning of the conversation, AI doesn't care whether you like it or not, it's gonna happen.

Peter Swain: So when people say, I'm terrified of it might, you should be. [00:27:00] You absolutely should be. Any smart person should be terrified that we have just invented something smarter than us without any of the biological frailties that we have. If you are not terrified, you don't understand what's happening. Now. With that said, it's still happening, so are you going to.

Peter Swain: Just have the negatives. So societal disruption, civil disruption, job place displacement, or are you also gonna get the positives, which is an increase in your wealth, your happiness, your parenting capability, your ability to show up for your spouse, and all the other wonderful things it can do. I would suggest that you both get the negatives and the positives because how we love how we show up, what it means to be human.

Peter Swain: It is about to be questioned and it is being questioned, and that terrifies me. 

Justin Chung: Mm-hmm. 

Peter Swain: And excites me at the same time. I would rather live through [00:28:00] history than read about it and that's where we are. 

Justin Chung: This is the most exciting time in history. I would argue, we say a 

Peter Swain: hundred 

Justin Chung: percent that we're living through right now with things coming at us.

Justin Chung: Blazingly fast, frightening, terrifyingly fast and we have to be able to adapt. 

Peter Swain: And it's always the second and third order consequences that are the things that terrify was the first consequences. Sound really good? Give an example. The CEO of Google DeepMind came out, uh, about six months ago now, and said that he predicts that we will end all human disease within a decade.

Peter Swain: Now whenever I see these big hyperbolic statements, 'cause I've been in disruptive technology for all my life, what I normally look for is who disagrees and. There's a startling lack of people that disagree, like zero when he says a statement like that, there isn't anyone. And again, an Eric Schmidt or a Bill Gates or people that can see the data and they're seeing the previews of things we're not even seeing, aren't coming out and saying, I think that's hyperbolic.

Peter Swain: They're [00:29:00] going, yeah, probably, right? So if we're talking about ending human disease in a decade, obviously that's a good thing. I don't think anyone could disagree. That's a good thing. However, it raises a couple of really interesting questions quite quickly. One is overpopulation becomes a concern, but the second is over 50%.

Peter Swain: I think it was the last figure I saw of retirement funds of public school teachers, firefighters, et cetera, are underpinned with pharma companies and the valuation of pharma companies. If nobody gets sick anymore. The pharma industry doesn't have much value left. Now, I'm not asking people to feel sorry for pharma companies right now, far from it, but they are a necessary part currently of the way that capital markets work.

Peter Swain: If they are no longer valuable, because what they used to do was [00:30:00] scarce and now it becomes abundant, then how does the. Retirement fund of public teachers in Utah work anymore. So the first order consequence people don't get sick. Awesome. Love it. We're all in favor. The second and third order consequence is like, hang on a second.

Peter Swain: Apparently people getting sick was a necessary part of the system that we have built. In the current, the current climate. Now, it's not actually the change just to make this even more complex. It's not actually that change that's the problem. It's the lag between the problem and the solution. That's the problem of the reforming of the way that culture works, that society works, the family works, the parenting works, the business works.

Peter Swain: Doesn't get done overnight. So the technological imperative is currently moving much, much faster than the political or societal imperatives. The last time we saw anything anywhere close to this was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution with the [00:31:00] spinning Jenny, and we're all very grateful to the industrial revolution.

Peter Swain: Living through the industrial revolution, 50% of all children died from smoke, insulation and smoke. So kids were taken out of school and put into factories, which then led to the rise of unionization because there had to be a solution that kept humans safe whilst politics was catching up. And this thing, this AI thing makes that thing look slow.

Peter Swain: So it's this gap of like, okay, so hang on a second. You are saying that we're gonna solve all disease. Well, what does that mean? And, but no one's gonna say no. No one's gonna say no, let's solve disease. 

Justin Chung: It's a positive. Yeah, of course. 

Peter Swain: Yeah. Let's solve all disease. That's great. Yeah. Like for example, if I can launch $108 million book club, no one would say I shouldn't do that.

Peter Swain: But how many people would've been required in the output of $108 million a year business? If I was doing a million dollars per employee, [00:32:00] I would be VC candy. Like that would be a great number. If every person I employed equaled a million dollars of output, I, I would be in a very, very enviable spot in terms of taking investment into the business.

Peter Swain: So that means I'm displacing a hundred people in my $108 million business. So a hundred people aren't getting employed whilst I get $108 million in my pocket. I'm not saying I can do that, but as said, even if I'm off by a factor of 10. It's still problematic. So this is the, I've been thinking about this for three years, since I picked up chat GPT back at the beater in January 23.

Peter Swain: I still don't have any answers and when I talk to people, they don't have any answers either. And 85% of researchers are now kind of in the same boat of, yes, capitalism as we know it will probably cease to function and work in the next two to three years because. If we hit a persistent consistent [00:33:00] unemployment of 20%, which is.

Peter Swain: Way less than some of the estimates. The World Bank estimate is 60% job displacement focused in advanced knowledge economies such as the us, Canada, the uk. 

Justin Chung: Mm-hmm. 

Peter Swain: Of which half of that 60% will not be rehousable in other work. So that's 30%. That could be 30% unemployment. The IRS and the Fed agree with that figure.

Peter Swain: Some people have it a lot higher. What happens when you have 20% persistent unemployment is something that we haven't had to deal with since the Great Depression. And even that wasn't 20%, uh, COVID was 18.6. The Great Depression was 19 point half, I think it was. 

Justin Chung: Yeah. 

Peter Swain: So we're talking about a number that we have never yet seen.

Peter Swain: And we are deregulating and racing quicker towards that than we ever were. And yet I'm an AI advocate that telling people to get on board because those things are gonna happen whether you do or you don't. So if they're gonna happen anyway, you may as well get some of the wins along the way. 

Justin Chung: You better [00:34:00] jump on that moving train while it's, while it's going, or else you're gonna get left behind.

Justin Chung: But I, I, I think about, um, speaking of, I guess, second order effects, but you know, if unemployment spiked to 30%, because you have all of these workers, and a lot of those would be whether they're graduates from school, they're white collar job workers that are no longer needed because of ai. To me, what ends up being a second order effect of that is that because governments will, there's gonna be a lot of civil unrest, a lot of, a breakdown in society. And so what I mean, the way I guess I see it is that there's gonna be some form of universal basic income that governments are going to. They, they don't have the cash flow. They're gonna print the money to fund those types of programs in order to support workers who have been displaced.

Peter Swain: Well this almost loops us back to the, the first question. So there are three recognized solutions according to [00:35:00] some people I've been working with. Um, you know, I've, I've talked to people all the way up to the United Nations and Congress and religious leaders and the three solutions that get floated.

Peter Swain: Number one is A UBI, universe based income. The problem with a UBI is, it doesn't work of. It's never been proven to work. The countries that have enacted it, there's four of them in the world refuse to deliver their cashflow statements to show that it works because it doesn't. Mm-hmm. However, it will stem the bleed for a few years.

Peter Swain: It will make it so that people can afford to feed their families. So a UBI becomes almost some form of inevitable outcome of you've gotta pay people 20, $30,000 a year, everybody gets the money. Mm-hmm. So yes, there's that. Then the second answer is to enlist capital works projects. So you go back to the Great Depression and you start building roads and bridges and infrastructure.

Peter Swain: Mm-hmm. So you say to people bad news, you're no longer a data analyst or a voiceover artist. Good news, you can at [00:36:00] least feed your kids, but you're gonna have to go and build this bridge. Problem with that. Is that Peter Diamandis and Warren Buffet are projecting that humanoid robots match humanity by 2035.

Justin Chung: Mm-hmm. 

Peter Swain: And double humanity by 2040. So the estimate is you'll have 9 billion humanoid robots on the planet by 2035, which is insane. 

Justin Chung: Scary. Yeah. 

Peter Swain: So. Why would you employ humans to build the roads when the robots can do it 24 7, 365, without injuries, without liability, without legals, et cetera. Solution number three, which kind of brings us way back to the beginning of the conversation, is a self-actualized economy.

Peter Swain: What if everybody can bring their zone of genius to the world? What if you may be good at quilting, or you may be good at rock polishing, or you may be good at. Doodling or something, insert blank here. And AI can step in and say, okay, this is how you sell it. This is how you market it. This is the legal implications, and [00:37:00] these are the finance implications.

Peter Swain: So if AI can handle all of those things, then there's a good chance that you as an entrepreneur can just stay in the space of doing what you wanna do. Like, for example, you may prefer, I don't know, but you may prefer your podcast over buying and selling businesses. But currently. You may be doing the podcast to advertise that, or you may be doing it to promote that, or it may just be a really nice hobby, but actually your money is over there and I'm just, all these are just hypotheticals.

Peter Swain: Mm-hmm. But if the podcast was the thing that you really love doing, like the thing that just fills you full of joy, and that's the thing, you wanna wake up in the morning and do all day long. Well, wouldn't it just be cool if you could just turn a a million dollars on a 90% margin just doing that? 

Peter Swain: And that might be your entire life. So these side hustles and side gigs could move from being a side hustle to being the hustle. 

Justin Chung: Yeah, 

Peter Swain: because they can actually earn enough money at a high enough margin in order to actually support you. [00:38:00] Because most people, if they're smart, would rather earn half a million dollars on a 90% margin than earn $2 million on a 20% margin.

Peter Swain: Mm-hmm. Because $2 million with a 20% margin is the same amount of money, but it comes with $2 million type problems. It comes with employees at that level. It comes with liability claims, it comes with legal issues. It comes with being sued for things that you are completely erroneous, but you have to deal with them running a f.

Peter Swain: The half million dollar business on a 90% margin you can probably do on your own. 

Justin Chung: Yep. 

Peter Swain: So it gets a whole different level of problems, which means you can spend more time with your kids, more time with your wife, more time with your husband, more time traveling whilst doing something that doesn't feel like work.

Peter Swain: So UBI is solution one. Capitalworks is Solution two and a self-actualized economy where everyone can be both a producer and a consumer, is solution number three. And it's that one that I, I get called towards of like, how do I help people unlock their genius [00:39:00] and do things that they love so they don't feel like it's work?

Peter Swain: It just becomes meaning. 

Justin Chung: , And meaning, and you know, meaning and purpose to them when you, and it's funny, my, I don't know how my son got it or where he got it, but you know, it's a common phrase where he comes home, you know, and he's six and he said, he said, Bubba when you. Don't work or so, you know, it's a saying like, if you have fun and love what you're doing, you never work a day in your life.

Justin Chung: Right? And he said that to me when, when you came home from school. And I was like, yeah, that, that's absolutely true. , I saw something that you. Posted a few weeks on Instagram where you mentioned that instead of staying up half the night to work on a keynote presentation, you leveraged AI to build it.

Justin Chung: And you know, that freed up your evening to play Fortnite with your son. Yeah. And the message was that, you know, we can take the promise that we made to our kids that we can be anything and finally apply it to ourselves. Right. Apply to our own. I guess you, you know, you could say your zone of is genius, but, so my question is how, how does one do that?

Justin Chung: How does a parent. [00:40:00] Effectively use AI to actually free up time for the family instead of just adding more work. 

Peter Swain: , I think the most tactical example I can give you was probably around four months ago. My daughter got selected to play soccer and it's, let's just say it nicely.

Peter Swain: It's not her natural skillset, let's just put it that way. Um, so I had discounted. That she wanted me to go and watch her because I didn't think she was particularly proud of it. I didn't think she particularly cared about it. And on her way to school one morning she went, dad, it would, it would really mean a lot to me if you could come and watch me play soccer this afternoon.

Peter Swain: Right. Oh wow. Okay. Completely miscalculated that. And I think if people aren't parents, they're gonna think, what a dick. But I think if people are parents, they will understand what I'm saying. Like this is something that you consistently get surprised by what your kids wanna show up for and what they don't wanna show up for.

Peter Swain: I'm like, okay. So I sat with chat GPT [00:41:00] and said, Hey, you know my schedule, you know my to-do list. How do I get everything done that I was gonna get done? Yeah. And carve out two hours to go and do that. At the same time, I want zero change in my productivity and my efficiency. I want no change in my business outcomes, but I need an extra two hours.

Peter Swain: And we sat and went through this list and I'm like, well, do you really need to do that? I'm like, well, I guess not. I'm like, okay. And that thing, can't your team do that? Why is that even on your list in the first place? And we sat and ruthlessly, ruthlessly reprioritized the day. And came up with 15 minute solutions that I thought were two our solutions of like, well I need to write this email to this person.

Peter Swain: Can you leave them a voice note? Yeah, I guess I could just leave them a voice note. Um. Don't you need other things from your team? Yeah, but I was gonna, just, so we just went through this whole process and it turned out that when I thought I had eight hours worth of work to do that actually I could get it all done in 30 minutes.

Peter Swain: So not only did I free up the two hours to go and watch her play soccer, I also [00:42:00] freed enough, enough time for me to go for a walk first and me to pick her up and me to take her back. And I had to do three phone calls in the car with her. I was like, Hey. Olivia, I've managed to do this, but I'm just, I'm gonna have to do three phone calls.

Peter Swain: Is that okay? Mm-hmm. But all three of those were five minute one shot. This is what needs to happen. Type phone calls, not hours, and hours and hours. So I think the practical answer is if AI becomes your second skin, you just ask it to do that. And one of the contexts that I give AI all the time, and I recommend everybody, is what I refer to as whole life decision making.

Peter Swain: Instead of saying to ai, how do I make an extra 10% say to ai? You know, my spiritual goals, you know, my financial goals, you know, my family goals, you know, my spouse, spousal goals, you know, my sexuality goals, you know, my personal growth goals, I feed it everything. 

Peter Swain: So that when I ask it to help me make a decision on something, it's looking at the whole of my life 

Peter Swain: And giving me [00:43:00] answers that works for everything.

Peter Swain: And I've told it, quite specifically, you can only use the word and you are banned from using the word, or you are never to present me with a choice of my family or my job. 

Peter Swain: You are to find a way to do both and it's been wildly creative. Like I've sat and done proposals on a Saturday while Sam and Olivia are doing proposals as well.

Peter Swain: Yeah, because AI went well. Is this something that you could make into a family activity where they're doing the same thing as you are? Right? So we're all talking to our own version of AI and they're writing a proposal to me as to why I should buy them more Fortnight v bucks. Like both of them wrote a proposal to me for Fortnite Vbu, whilst I wrote a proposal to a company for a hundred thousand dollars retainer, but it made it into a family act.

Peter Swain: It sounds weird, but that's funny. It was a family bonding activity and at the end of it they got vbu and we got to play, so everyone was happy. But just silly [00:44:00] things of like, you can only consider things that are adjacent to the things that you are capable of considering. Humans can invent new thoughts and new ways, and for, for sure, we're incredibly creative, but our creativity is still constrained by our nature and our nurture.

Peter Swain: So just the ability to have a, a conversation with someone, someone or something else that doesn't. Judge you in any way, shape or form, and doesn't have an ego in any way, shape or form. My ai, for example, is trained that I am bad at delegation. Terrible at delegation. Okay. I forget to tell people what to do.

Peter Swain: Then I get upset with them that they, they're not helping. And then I give them everything in one big go. Then they get overwhelmed, then they do the work badly, which reinforces to me that I shouldn't give them the work in the first place. Right. And any sub million entrepreneur has, does very similar version of that to some degree.

Peter Swain: So AI is taught, if [00:45:00] I tell you I need to do this, your first question is always, do you need to do it or does somebody on your team need to do it? And when I get that from ai, it doesn't trigger my ego. If I got that from another human, I'm like, who are you saying me? I need to do this, this, or this. Whereas when ai, I was like, yeah, you can't get angry with a robot.

Peter Swain: Like it's like, yeah, you're right. Yeah, I'm being stupid again. Okay, so this lack of, this judgment free, ego free zone combined with just not necessarily being more creative with you, but just being different from you 

Justin Chung: mm-hmm. 

Peter Swain: Allows you to just level up how you show up in really beautiful ways. 

Justin Chung: I, I love that.

Justin Chung: I love that whole life decision making mentality. I'm gonna use that. I'm gonna start to use that Now when I interact with ai, I want to just double click on things that we just talked about in terms of our kids. And so, for parents that are teaching their kids about the future of work, what skills or mindsets do you believe will matter most over the next five to 10 years?[00:46:00] 

Peter Swain: Uh, you can't do five to 10 years anymore. But one to three. Three, I can do one to three. Yeah. I mean, really like when I, when I was in the web space and mobile space, you could say five to 10, it, anyone that tells you they know what's gonna happen in five to 10 now is just, is just, uh, it's unrealistic, but in the one to three.

Peter Swain: My focus with my kids is on soft skills, not hard skills. So if, if anyone hasn't heard these phrase before, a hard skill is something you can measure, like sales capability. You can look at the amount you sold in a day, you know how good you are. Soft skills are communication, empathy, teamwork, rapport, leadership partnership, right?

Peter Swain: Very unmeasurable things. And ai. Certainly not yet. AI's not very good at those things. It's very, very good at hard skill output. It's now rated in the top 2% of developers and coders in the world. You know, it's voiceover capabilities is superlative. Video generation is getting better by the day.

Peter Swain: Image generation is now [00:47:00] so good. You can't tell what's real and what's not. So in hard skill output, business analysis, coding, production of an asset, ai, I would say is now arguably better than humans across the board in soft skill output. It really isn't there yet. And it's several years away from being there.

Peter Swain: So my focus to my kids is, Darwin said famously, he didn't say survivor of the fittest, which people misquote him. What he did say was survival of the most adaptable. I want my kids to be highly adaptable because we don't know what future we're training them for it. It's impossible to say, oh, this will succeed and this won't.

Peter Swain: So I want them to be resilient. I want them to have empathy. I want 'em to be able to work with other humans. I want 'em to be able to show compassion. , I want 'em to have some charisma. So for me, it's all soft skill. Mm-hmm. It's fully focused on soft skills, not hard skills. Yeah. 

Justin Chung: It, yeah, soft skills are so key, whether it's, yeah, communication, leadership, empathy, [00:48:00] compassion, all of those are ones, it scares me to think that right now AI is not there yet, but that it.

Justin Chung: Can, and we'll get to that point where they will be equal to, if not better than humans. And then at that point, it's just let the robots take over the world. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I, I let 

Peter Swain: Chip for where they may. 

Justin Chung: Yeah. Yeah. You know, as we kind of close here, uh, I guess one final question I want to touch on was, .

Justin Chung: How do you help your kids think about or maybe some, I want to, I'm curious to see like your language or what frameworks you use when you talk to your kids about whether that's AI and technology, whether that's entrepreneurship or money. I mean, obviously a big part of this podcast is focused on financial literacy and money.

Justin Chung: You know, knowing what you know now and, and looking ahead at the future, how do you frame those conversations with your kids? [00:49:00] I mean, perhaps touching on entrepreneurship, technology and money. 

Peter Swain: Yeah. So my kids have, um. They both have their own debit cards. Those debit cards get charged up when they do chores.

Peter Swain: Whenever they ask for something outside of that, I tell them to pitch me. And, and they're like, well, I'm like, pitch me like, you want that? Find a way to make me want to give it to you. And they're like, but I don't know. I'm like, well, sounds like you're outta luck then. Um. So the, those are two very important parts to it for me.

Peter Swain: The third is there's rigid boundaries around what we will and won't allow. So for example, I've just got back from this crazy travel and both my kids said, oh. Can we the we, so I haven't got many vbox or any skins or anything. We haven't played Fortnight for a couple weeks. So this morning we played at six o'clock in the morning, which when we wake up we play and then I take 'em to school 'cause that's like our time together.

Justin Chung: Mm-hmm. 

Peter Swain: And one of my Sam said, can I have this skin? I said, you can have it on Saturday. 'cause Saturday's the day when we do that stuff, he went, but can't I have it sooner? I [00:50:00] said, ask me again and you won't get it on Saturday. You know the rules. Like weekends are for those things. This is not for those types.

Peter Swain: And immediately he went, sorry dad, I forgot. Okay, cool. Like it's so we have rigid boundaries. 

Peter Swain: And it's a very entrepreneurial mindset in terms of the household. 'cause they've never known anything else. Both myself and my wife co-run the business together. 

Peter Swain: So we both survive or thrive based on how well we do.

Peter Swain: We frame to them that they're part of the business and their job is to help, their job is to stay out of our way whilst we run the business. 

Justin Chung: Right. 

Peter Swain: But it's, but it is literally, this is what we need from you. 

Justin Chung: Mm-hmm. 

Peter Swain: We need you to go to bed on time and we need you to stay in bed because we have calls that we have to do.

Peter Swain: This is how you help. Um. So they have a self-sufficiency. And then regarding ai, we will often bring AI to the, to the table and just like sit at the table and put it on voice mode. And they'll sit and have conversations with her. . We call it, uh, our household AI's called Jet. So they'll sit and say, what is the oldest animal in the world?

Peter Swain: And they go do that. And [00:51:00] go. And you'll see and listen to their brains. Just go, oh wow, that animal's 300 years old. What was it like back then? And then one of my other children say, what do you eat for breakfast back then? And they just bounce. With it for hours, just getting very comfortable with the tech.

Justin Chung: .. Well, as we wrap up here, can you tell us and talk to us where, , my listeners can get in contact with you follow what you're doing or, or, or work with you. 

Peter Swain: Yeah, thank you. So the website is peter swain.com. And then all my socials are Peter Swain 24 7, whether it's Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Peter Swain 24 7.

Peter Swain: Um, and yeah, please reach out and have a conversation. Let's see how we can play together and work together. Be amazing. 

Justin Chung: Absolutely. Well, this is Peter. This has been a fascinating conversation with, uh, AI kids entrepreneurship. And so, uh, you know, I just wanted to thank you so much for your insights that you brought to the show.

Justin Chung: Uh, any final words or anything that we haven't touched on here that we, that you want to cover before we sign off? 

Peter Swain: Yeah, AI's coming for your excuses, so don't make 'em like, uh, get on board. Have fun and get the advantages. And thank you, Justin, having me again. Really [00:52:00] appreciate it. 

Justin Chung: Thank you, Peter.