Data vs. Soul: Finding Your Value in the AI Revolution with Jim Edwards

When Jim Edwards graduated with a history degree in the 1980s, he never imagined he'd become a pioneer in AI-powered copywriting. After bouncing between seven sales jobs in 18 months, he discovered his talent for persuasion, eventually building a six-figure career in mortgage sales before turning to entrepreneurship. What followed was a fascinating evolution from rejected author to software developer to AI innovator.

During our conversation, Jim delivered a powerful message about AI that challenges the prevailing narrative. "Most people are trying to figure out how to use AI to replace themselves," he warns, "and that is a really stupid thing to do." Instead, he advocates using AI as an accelerant that amplifies your voice and eliminates "mundane intellectual labor" while preserving the uniquely human elements that create genuine connection.

The most valuable insight from our conversation is Jim's distinction between DATA (Default Answers To Anything) and SOUL content (Stories, Observations, Unique perspective, Lessons learned). While anyone can get generic information from AI, what truly engages audiences is the human experience behind the information—the stories that contextualize knowledge and make it meaningful. For educators, content creators, and professionals navigating the AI revolution, this framework offers a clear path forward: leverage AI to handle routine tasks while doubling down on the human elements that technology cannot replicate.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing Jim Edwards
• 1:23 From History Major to Sales Copy Expert
• 8:25 Building Software for Copywriters
• 13:54 AI Integration and Evolution
• 18:14 Using AI as an Amplifier, Not Replacement
• 28:14 Creating with Soul in an AI World
• 43:59 Final Thoughts and Takeaways

Transcript

Jackie Pelegrin: 0:01

Hello and welcome to the Designing with Love podcast. I am your host, Jackie Pelegrin, where my goal is to bring you information, tips, and tricks as an instructional designer. Hello, GCU students, alumni, and fellow educators, welcome to episode 53 of the Designing with Love podcast. Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Jim Edwards, a bestselling author and founder of Guaranteed Response Marketing LLC. Welcome, Jim.

Jim Edwards: 0:31

Hey, I'm excited to be here. Jackie, Thanks for having me.

Jackie Pelegrin: 0:34

Yes, thank you too. I'm glad we got connected on Podmatch. It's wonderful. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Jim Edwards: 0:41

I am. It's funny when people ask you what do you do and you're like you get. That whole big resume thing goes through you. But if I had to summarize it in a single sentence, I am a software developer and an author who helps people figure out how to put words on a page or in an email or out of their mouth that persuade other people to give them money.

Jackie Pelegrin: 1:06

I like that. That's great.

Jim Edwards: 1:09

That's what I do in one sentence.

Jackie Pelegrin: 1:12

In a nutshell Great, that's great. Can you share what inspired you to dive into the world of AI and sales copywriting, especially since AI is everywhere right today?

Jim Edwards: 1:23

Yeah, now that is going to be a much longer answer, so that will be a pomegranate. The other thing was a nutshell. This is a pomegranate, so you know it's funny. I actually graduated from William Mary back in the 80s with a degree in history and I could have had a minor in Chinese comparative literature if I had not been drunk the whole month of March, my senior year, and had gone and filled out the paperwork. We're just getting real, jackie. Okay, I mean, the time limit on the penalties for that has expired.

Jim Edwards: 1:57

So, interestingly enough, when you graduate with a degree in history and you aren't going to get a master's in teaching, you are eminently qualified to go get a job in 100% commission sales. So I went and got a job in sales and I quit or got fired from seven different jobs my first 18 months out of school and the best job I could find was working at Domino's. But then every time I had one of those jobs I learned something else about sales. I learned about how to talk to people. I learned about how to prospect, how to follow up, how to not see no as no forever, but just no for today.

Jim Edwards: 2:38

And then I was actually working at a place called Nutrisystem, when they had physical locations. I sold the lady and she said, wow, you'd be really good in my business. I remember thinking, well, I've been in almost every other business, what do you do? I said, oh, really, tell me about it. She told me about the mortgage business. Long story short, I went in the mortgage business and I was 23 years old and I started making about $100,000 a year, which back in 1991, $100,000 a year is a lot of money.

Jim Edwards: 3:14

Yes absolutely, and so I was doing really well. I met a girl. She told me, hey, you're pretty smart, you should write a book. And I'm like, hey, yeah, I'm smart, I'll write a book. So I took four years to write a book and I had since married that lady, been married to her for 31 years now, and I tried to get a publisher. Nobody would publish my book. I got turned down by 40 different publishers. It was more than that. I just stopped counting at 40. Book I got turned down by 40 different publishers. It was more than that. I just stopped counting at 40.

Jim Edwards: 3:48

So in 1997, I ran into a fraternity brother at William and Mary at Homecoming and he mentioned that he and his dad had bought a web server. Well, this is when the web was first firing up, really the worldwide web and stuff. And I asked him a question that he was totally unqualified to answer and I said, hey, do you think I could sell my book on the internet? And he's like, sure, and you can buy web hosting services from us. This is he was. I was paying in 1997. I started paying 125 bucks a month for 10 megabytes of web space.

Jackie Pelegrin: 4:20

Oh my gosh.

Jim Edwards: 4:21

Yeah, it was, yeah, Expensive, yeah, very so. Then I had to figure out how to sell. So everybody was talking about you got to have this big sticky website. So I, you know, after I've I learned how to do HTML, I learned how to do all this stuff and I had this 40 page website. And for four years I was struggling along. It was just this basic little hobby. And for four years I was struggling along. It was just this basic little hobby. And then, in 2001, I got exposed to the idea of a one-page sales letter, which is those big, long sales letters that everybody hates but yet everybody buys from them if they're interested in the thing. So somebody reads your sales letter and says, well, it's too long and they're just not in your target audience. So it was funny because I was actually even speaking at that event. I taught a 12 point sales letter and I said, hey, I can do that, Cause it was always kind of.

Jim Edwards: 5:20

Even back in school, I was always looking for the underlying formula. I was always looking for the underlying formula. I was always looking for the underlying pattern, Like in 11th, I mean, I did really well in English. You know, I got the highest grade on my paper in my AP English class. I you know my still still hold that little star, but I was always fascinated with the patterns that created the pleasing result. You know, I still remember that the best way to do a summary sentence for a paper is to go therefore. I mean, your best concluding sentence always starts with therefore. So I just took to it like a duck to water and that night I was staying in a hotel at the conference and I took his formula and I applied it to my 40 page website, got rid of a bunch of stuff, took some things that I was giving away for free, turned them into bonuses that you only got when you bought, and my sales literally went up 250% overnight, literally, Wow, literally went up 250% overnight, literally.

Jackie Pelegrin: 6:26

Wow, that's amazing.

Jim Edwards: 6:26

I two and a half times my sales by going from a 40 page website to a one page long form sales letter. And I was hooked and I started reading every book I could read. I started learning and I was just like, if I can do this with one, let me do another, and another, and another. And I think in that first year I wrote 10 sales letters to sell stuff. Some of them hit, some of them didn't, a couple of them hit huge, and so I ended up just being fascinated with not just making stuff and figuring stuff out, but then I had to figure out how to sell it stuff out. But then I had to figure out how to sell it. And then you know this is back even before the turn of the century and stuff, but figuring out how to do this stuff on dial-up. Then you know how to do audio files and how to do screen capture video, then how to do full motion video, then how to do membership sites, then how and all these things. And so what I would do is I'd learn how to do something and sooner or later customers would start asking me how to do something and sooner or later customers would start asking me hey, how are you doing that? And so I'd turn around and teach a class based on what I had done. But then what I did was I taught them how to sell what I had taught them how to make so if they had written a book you know, I've been teaching people how to write books since 2001. Tens of thousands of people I've helped to write and publish their books fast. And so I became kind of the accidental copywriting coach.

Jim Edwards: 7:56

Then, in 2006, I actually licensed my first piece of software from somebody who had a little fill in the blank thing called. Well, I don't remember what his thing was called, but I private labeled it as quick sales copy. You can't I mean the user can't see that, but I'm showing you the thing. That's what I look like like 35 years ago, 35 years ago. And so that's when I got hooked on. How can? Because copywriting is such a repeatable formula, it has very specific formulas. I said there's got to be a way we can use software to help create the first draft. And so I became fascinated with frameworks and with patterns and blueprints and templates and all these different things. And so I, in 2006, I started. I hired a developer who's been with me ever since. Side note when I hired this kid he's not a kid anymore. I hired this kid he's not a kid anymore but when I hired him he was 18 years old and living in Siberia. I found him through a site called Elance. Oh yeah, and so he. You remember Elance from?

Jim Edwards: 9:15

way back in the day Yep, I do. Then they became Rent-A-Coder and then I don't know what up or anyway, I digress we just started developing this platform. And so in 2016, we had developed this platform really far, we morphed it into another platform called Funnel Scripts. That had over 100,000 users and it was all about sales copy, and so we sold that for a while, and about three and a half four years ago, gpt-2 came out. It gets a little muddy, but GPT-2 came out.

Jim Edwards: 9:57

I was like, hey, that's kind of cute, maybe there's some future there. And I started developing my own large language model future there. And I started developing my own large language model because when GPT-3 came out, microsoft grabbed it and put it under wraps, like they were the only person to license it. You couldn't use GPT-3. And then they came out with some stuff with open AI, right, but long story short, I spent a ton of money and practically lit up the entire eastern half of the United States with all these servers that we were burning on to train this language model, and I spent a lot of money, a lot of money my wife still reminds me of the money that we spent on that and so I got this thing all trained up and a week later they came out with OpenAI having an API into GPT-3.

Jim Edwards: 10:47

And then right after that 3.5. And so it was what it was. So we took my existing software that I'd been developing then for 15 years 15, 16 years and we just plugged it into OpenAI and we just plugged it into OpenAI and so it was a very natural thing for us. I was very used to getting information out of people's heads about themselves, their customers, writing all this stuff and plugging it into frameworks and some dynamic content stuff. That did a really good job of getting people a first draft. But now, taking that exact same input and then plugging in the AI, they get a phenomenal input.

Jim Edwards: 11:36

Because with our stuff it's not like going over to ChatGPT and saying, hey, I need a sales letter for real estate agents for my course on how to get more listings, and then you expect ChachiBT to just magically give you a finished product that you don't have any idea whether it's any good or not. Our stuff I might be feeding this thing a 30,000 character prompt, whereas most people that download you know, hey, I got the HubSpot free ebook on 10,000 amazing chat GPT prompts and it's really good and they're all like one sentence. So that is how I became interested in AI. I saw it as the next natural extension of what I'd already been doing for almost 20 years.

Jackie Pelegrin: 13:09

Wow, that's great, I love that. And you were able to build that blueprint and then, when the technology caught up with what you were already doing, it was, like you said, a natural fit and you were able to interweave the technology as it got better. So that's great, I love that 100%.

Jim Edwards: 13:27

And so now we have like five different models that we're plugged into. So the way I created the software I can plug into anybody. So if Nick and Tony's auto body and large language llama model upstairs turns out to be the best in the world, I can just plug into there.

Jackie Pelegrin: 13:46

Wow, that's, that's awesome. I love that. Wow, so it's great because then someone who, like myself, we were talking about before we started this, recording how you know, somebody that may not have realized they could write a book or be an author, um can take content maybe that they already have, like I have, from my podcast, and that idea can come to life now like it never has before, right With the help of these tools that are available 100% For something like copywriting and things that you're not going to be doing all the time trying to learn how to be a prompt engineer, to have it.

Jim Edwards: 14:28

Give you specifically copywriting stuff, ads, marketing content, all that stuff, and then knowing whether it's any good or not. That's the challenge, right, and so that's what we remove. For people, you don't have to be a great copywriter in order to create great copy. All you have to do, though, is know exactly who your ideal customer is and what motivates them, what their hot buttons are, what gets them emotional, their problems, their questions, their roadblocks all that. Then you got to know your offer. What are you trying to sell? I mean, what makes it special, what makes it unique, what gives you a strategic advantage over other people? And then you also got to know yourself. How does your story, your background, your uniqueness factor into all that stuff? That's what you need to know, but then you can load all that into the software, and it takes it from there and integrates it and just gives you what you need.

Jackie Pelegrin: 15:29

Wow, that's great. Yeah, cause there's probably not a lot of people that like me that have two, two master's degrees. I have a bachelor's in business and then I have an MBA, and I was going to go into business and go into market research and then things shifted and I ended up pivoting and changing completely and then went into education, got my second master's in instructional design, and now I've been doing that and been in higher ed for almost two decades now. So it's kind of weird how I thought I was going to go one direction and had that first master's and. But you know, the MBA wasn't a waste. It's helped me in what I'm doing now, so it's not like it was all for nothing, right?

Jim Edwards: 16:10

So, um, so it's kind of a unique thing. No, education is a waste.

Jackie Pelegrin: 16:14

Right, exactly, yep, that's so true. So you just never know where life takes you and then where you can actually share that information and be able to give that unique perspective that people are looking for. So that's neat. I like that, I love that. So for those who might doubt their intelligence I know I used to for a while their capabilities what empowering message do you want to convey about their potential for success?

Jim Edwards: 16:40

So when it comes to AI or just in general, Maybe just in general.

Jackie Pelegrin: 16:44

Yeah, like, if they're doubting, you know that they can be an author, write a book or, you know, do what you had talked about with being able to reach that audience that they want to reach and be capable of doing that, especially if they're not familiar with sales and copywriting and stuff.

Jim Edwards: 16:59

So here's the thing, and the great thing about what's happening right now is that there's a lot of change going on. And because there's so much change going on, the I'm not going to say the rules don't apply, but the restrictions that were there before have loosened up because the playing field is moving, the game board is changing. So I'm going to tell you a real quick story from back in 1991. So when I got into the mortgage business, the week that I got into the mortgage business, there was a huge change in the way that FHA loans were made, and FHA Federal Housing Administration loans they're heavily insured government loans allow people to basically buy a house with a 3% down payment. But they totally changed the way they calculated the mortgage insurance and how people qualified for that loan. And so that change meant and real estate agents had to be able to know how to figure out if first-time homebuyers and lower-income homebuyers were going to be able to buy a house or not. Figured out pretty quick.

Jim Edwards: 18:17

So me being two years out of college, less than two years out of college, and not afraid of algebra, I figured out a way to be able to calculate those mortgage insurance premiums and stuff with one simple little calculation and it worked perfectly. It was just math. So what I did was I ran around to all these different real estate agents that I was going to try and get business from, because I had learned hey, you create a little farm, create a territory, and no today doesn't mean no tomorrow. So I need to go out and meet these people and bring some sort of value to the table for that. Well, lo and behold, when I showed up and I had a little flyer with a headline of how to calculate FHA loans in 60 seconds or less, even if you suck at math, a people were like who is this kid? But then I taught. I just started teaching people how to do this thing and that got me in. I was not an annoying pest who was there just trying to get them to send loans. I became a welcome guest because I brought value and very quickly I parlayed that into hey, coming back and adding value to people's lives. Sometimes it was something simple, sometimes it was major, but my point is, because things are changing so fast and no one can keep up with all of it.

Jim Edwards: 19:47

The first thing you got to do is figure out who do you want to serve? Who are you going to help? Who are you going to be a blessing to? Whether it's like you, jackie, helping people with instructional design, flavored with some, you know, a little bit of woo-woo and some self-actualization and some other cool stuff, which is perfect, that's your flavor, right, right? And so you got to figure out who you're going to serve, what your flavor is going to be, and then you just go at it with a servant's mentality of what do these people need and how can I help them get it? Because what's happening right now I mean whether it has to do with AI or anything else.

Jim Edwards: 20:31

I mean, how many old people have no clue how to use social media the right way? I mean, how many people could yeah, how many people could use some help in doing realistic social media stuff in their business? Right, I mean, if you were in your 20s and really understood Instagram, tiktok and all that stuff in doing realistic social media stuff in their business, I mean, if you were in your 20s and really understood Instagram, tiktok and all that stuff and then had a track record of being able to get views and stuff, you could go get somebody to hire you to help them. And if you got 10 people to hire you at one third of what they would pay a full-time person, you'd be making three times what you would make Okay, or more. And so the key is, most people look at what they don't have and therefore they just get more of that. But if you look at what you do have going for you, you'd be surprised. But here's the big thing, I will tell you People pay to solve problems and they pay to get results. And if you can help people solve a problem, if you can help people to get a result, whatever it is, they'll pay you. And because there's so much change going on right now, nobody can keep up with all of it. So if you can just figure out how to use AI for one specific thing and become really, really good at that, you can go out and have people hire you or pay attention to you.

Jim Edwards: 22:04

I always default to hey, I'm going to go find a customer and sell them something, um, but that's always been my mindset, uh, and so I mean, the biggest thing I would tell you is if, if you doubt yourself, look back at the stuff that you have done any any time that you ever are getting down on yourself and you're not believing you can do something. You've done stuff. I mean I can't tell you, when I was, I was a theater kid. I was really big into theater and my junior year in high school I beat out a bunch of kids for a part in the school play that I became the Duke of Ephesus, okay. And then we ended up going to the Folger theater in Washington DC for their national high school Shakespeare competition and I ended up winning best supporting actor for the whole competition. That's amazing and that was a big deal. But you know what, you know how many times I have looked back on that. I mean, I remember sitting on my bed with a tape recorder learning my lines and doing all that, finding that frame of reference of stuff you've done in the past to give you confidence that, hey, I may not have done this, but I've done other stuff that was harder. I can figure this out. Another thing you can do is I'm big in making asset lists and everyone's like asset list Does it mean money in the bank or you know?

Jim Edwards: 23:34

Nope, asset list is, you know, I'm alive and on planet Earth. I got access to the internet. I got access to a library. I got, you know, my, my sister, um, who can help me with stuff to to figure things out at the. I clearly remember I I was actually. I was a syndicated newspaper columnist for 10 years and I got that job. Well, it wasn't even a job, but I got that column because I was too stupid to know that I shouldn't be asking somebody to allow me to have a newspaper column, which then I would go syndicate myself. But I said, okay, I got my dad who can help me edit my articles. I've got my sister who can help me. I've got a college degree. It ain't that hard to write 500 words and I mean I've got access to the library, to the internet, to this computer to just start making these asset lists. And if you're focused on what you got, you're going to be able to make good stuff happen. So I don't know if that's what you were looking for or not Jackie.

Jackie Pelegrin: 24:44

I like that. Yeah, look at what you have instead of what you don't have. Yeah, and focus on that. Yeah, that's great. I love that. Um, so could you share an inspiring success story of someone who used your techniques to transform their business? You kind of went over that a little bit, but do you have like a specific story of someone that came to you and, yeah, just, uh, uh all of a sudden.

Jim Edwards: 25:05

Here's a recent one by a gentleman named Larry Carter. So Larry had been in, he was career Air Force, then he was uh, had a another whole entire career as a chaplain for law enforcement. As a chaplain for law enforcement, and so he wanted to break into coaching chaplains for police, firefighter, first responder roles, and he said you know, I want to write a book. And so he went through our process. He wrote his book, crossing into Purpose, where service meets significance. He never thought he'd ever be able to write a book. I mean, we've helped countless people go through this and he contacted me, though, and this is where it was like oh, I got to sell a gajillion copies. He contacted me after he sold 50 copies. He said I just want you to know I've sold 50 copies of my book and I'm really proud of myself. So I had him on my podcast and we were talking.

Jim Edwards: 26:14

He sold 50 copies, but he also got a chief of police. Because of selling those copies. He had a chief of police bring him in to do training and the dude's building a six figure training business selling a $14 book. That if he sells just a few hundred, because how many people are actually first responder police for, you know, firefighter chaplains. His market's not all that big, but he's building a six figure business around the book that he wrote using AI. But more important than that, because I'm going to digress for just a second Okay, so we're going to put a pin in this. Most people, jackie, are trying to figure out how to use AI to replace themselves.

Jackie Pelegrin: 27:05

That's true.

Jim Edwards: 27:06

Yeah, and that is a really stupid thing to do.

Jackie Pelegrin: 27:11

I would agree.

Jim Edwards: 27:12

You should be using AI to eliminate let's call it mundane intellectual labor from your life. All right, so responding to emails or drafting dopey email responses and stuff, yeah, use AI for that. But you certainly should not be treating AI like it's some giant vending machine that's just going to figure out how to walk like you, talk like you, think like you, and then going to spit stuff out to you that you can turn around and show to the world like look what I did, mommy, and then expect to get a reward. Right, because it's not going to happen If everybody else is going to the same water fountain known as Chachi, pt or Grok or Llama or whatever. Gemma, gemma, if you try to replace yourself with AI, you're probably going to be able to do it, and then you will have absolutely no value to anyone. We need to start looking at AI as a way to amplify our voice and accelerate our ability to get the stuff done that we're supposed to do, stuff done that we're supposed to do, not to replace ourselves, so that we're going to try and live Tim Ferriss's book with the you know, not the five hour work week, but the five minute work week.

Jim Edwards: 28:33

Oh, I can set up some agents and then I'll sell agents and just all this BS you see on YouTube about you know how to make $5,963 a day. Copy me. It's all. Can I say the BS word, or would you prefer I didn't? It's all bullshit, jackie. It's not true, because if those dudes were all making $10,000 a day with AI, they wouldn't be making some janky video on YouTube to teach you how to make $10,000 a day using AI. They just wouldn't.

Jackie Pelegrin: 29:06

They say, if it's too good to be true, it usually is.

Jim Edwards: 29:09

Well and okay. From another standpoint, if you replace yourself with AI, what are you going to do? You can only play so much Xbox. You can only eat so many Oreos. You can only look at so much idiotic stuff on Facebook or social media. At some point, where's your life going to have any meaning whatsoever?

Jackie Pelegrin: 29:32

There's no purpose anymore. Yeah.

Jim Edwards: 29:34

Right Now. That doesn't mean I can't use AI to help me. Just put together the stuff that I need to put together to amplify my voice or to share my message. I do it all the time, I do it every day, but it's an accelerant it's. You know, is it more noble to cut down a cheat tree with an ax, or, if you can get a chainsaw, and cut that puppy down, limb it up, log it real quick and get the same job done in 15 minutes as opposed to three hours? Is it more noble to type it up at a typewriter or to know how to feed in your stuff into AI to be able to then have it spit back out, your stuff and then you take it, curate it and then you do something with it? Right, yeah, and I think that's there's really.

Jim Edwards: 30:26

There's a fork in the road that most people have already taken who are using AI. They've either decided instinctively hey, you know what I need to use this just to accelerate my message, like what we were talking about in the pre-interview that you, you know, you're taking your podcast stuff and you're taking some things that you've done and you're having AI help you turn it into a book. You didn't say to me hey, jim, I found a prompt on Facebook that I can give to ChatGPT and it wrote a book for me. That's not what you said. You used it to help you get it done faster. The other fork is literally oblivion. It's literally oblivion that you are going to try and replace yourself with this thing, and so that's just dumb. So what Larry's doing? Back to Larry. Okay, now we're back from that side trip.

Jackie Pelegrin: 31:18

Yeah, I love this story, Larry chose to shortcut the process.

Jim Edwards: 31:22

Instead of being like me with my first book, where it took me four years to write my first book. My most recent book took me five days, and it's still. My book is just faster, and that's so. Anybody who is using AI to amplify and accelerate the work that they are supposed to be doing is being successful.

Jackie Pelegrin: 31:47

Absolutely.

Jim Edwards: 31:47

Whether they're using our tools or not.

Jackie Pelegrin: 31:50

Yeah, like I mentioned, I do it with my podcast now and it's it's sped up my work exponentially to be able to just say hey, can you give me ideas for some episode? You know ideas and things like that, and then I have it, helped me write an outline, and then I fill in all the details and of course I check the work because it hallucinates, we know that. So it doesn't get things correct. So that's why I tell my students to don't take it for what it is, just use it as a tool.

Jim Edwards: 32:21

I don't think it hallucinates. I think it's stoned out of its gourd, probably Sometimes. But the way I visualize it and y'all can't see this. But I want you to envision a battery, okay, and that battery has a certain amount of juice in it and let's say it's represented by some red lines. So you got like 10 red lines of juice.

Jim Edwards: 32:43

And in the past, if you wanted to, let's just say, write an article, so when I was writing my syndicated newspaper article, I would literally take four hours on a Sunday to write this thing. And so you've got to create the idea. Then you got to do the outline, then you got to do the first draft, then you got kind of massage it and work it and come up with a second draft. Well, as you're going through that whole thing to try and get to the final draft, you're losing more and more and more and more of that energy and you're depleting the battery until there's not that much left Right. Well, now, if you're using AI, is it cheating to have AI help you come up with 10 different ideas for this week's article? In my opinion, no, I don't think so. I don't think so If I can get my ideas in about two minutes to choose from, as opposed to thinking about it for 20 minutes. I've saved a whole bunch of time, energy and effort, psychically, energetically, otherwise, if I can say, hey, these are the five things I want to talk about, or give me some ideas, some things to talk about. Okay, those are five things I want to talk about.

Jim Edwards: 33:56

Now let's come up with an outline, okay. So now I want to talk about this and this and this and this, and maybe even I dictate it into the AI. So I just start talking out the points and then I tell it hey, you know what I've talked for a while, jackie, I know it's hard to believe, but I don't have any problem talking for as long as someone will listen. But I just talk it out and then tell it hey, now what I want you to do is clean this up. I just talk it out and then tell it hey, now what I want you to do is clean this up. It's a transcript, make it sound like it was written in a friendly, you know whatever style. Well, now AI can take my thoughts and turn my thoughts into the draft of that blog post or that article. It's all my stuff.

Jim Edwards: 34:42

Just AI is accelerating the process and then it hands it to me. I'm like, yeah, that sounds pretty much like me. Now I'm just going to go through and do a quick edit. Well, hey, instead of burning out nine and a half of my 10 bars, I've only used up five. So now I have still psychic other energy and time left over to do the most important thing. Especially when we're talking about creating content or sales copy, I have time and energy to go promote it. Because, see, here's the problem, jackie, we have been trained especially people liberal, that kind of thing. As soon as I can hold it up and say here it is, it's done, give me my A, I'm finished. But in the world of content creation, content marketing, sales copy, getting that thing done is just the beginning, right? Because if you make it and don't promote it, you might as well have just been on the um the couch playing Xbox, eating fudge rounds, because you're not going to get any good result from it.

Jackie Pelegrin: 35:57

It's just going to collect dust Right and just sit on a shelf.

Jim Edwards: 36:01

Not even that. It's just going to collect up electron dust.

Jim Edwards: 36:04

Yeah, exactly If it's a neat yeah that we all are going to have to make. We need to shift from thinking that being a creator is what we want to be and we need to make the mental shift from creator to curator. I love that it has elements of creator. We cause the thing that we want to have to be created by using the tools, and then we have to be a curator. So, instead of spending 90% of the time coming up with the thing, spend 30% of your time coming up with the thing and then 70% of your time making sure it's good and getting it out there right.

Jackie Pelegrin: 36:57

That's the difference between the creator mindset and the curator mindset it's a complete mind shift now, yeah, we're turning it on its head right but but you can't.

Jim Edwards: 37:08

Nobody rewards just. You know, I could start sending all my stuff to jackie and be like hey, can I have an? A pro professor, can I have an? A? She's like yeah, I have an a. She's like yeah, here's the name she typed. She typed an a in the Gmail back and it's like thanks, I can't eat it. I mean it can't spend it. But sure, here's your age, Jim, you can start selling a's for like a hundred bucks. I don't want to get you in trouble, but I mean.

Jackie Pelegrin: 37:39

Well, it's like with the tests with students that I could search for classes that I help with GCU, and all of a sudden you type in the title of the course or the course code and you find the quizzes online, and so it's a constant challenge of that. And so, yeah, it's like, yeah, quizzes have value, but if people can just sell them on the internet then, yeah, it takes away from that.

Jim Edwards: 37:59

So yep, I think it's all going to. You know how are you going to solve it? It's, it's all going to have to go back to blue book, yeah, and everybody's going to have to sit there with their fat little pen and fill the thing out, and you're going to have to wand them, like at the airport, for any kind of smart device, like you know. Okay, give me your earbuds, take your watch off. You're going to have to inspect their glasses to make sure they don't have the heads up display that they're able to murmur to the thing to show it?

Jim Edwards: 38:30

yeah, and the problem is, is that kids these days Jackie, my grandson's heading to VMI this Friday, so he's starting as a freshman you can't cheat yourself. In other words, if you could find the tests online, sure, look at them. If you could find, you know. But ultimately, the whole purpose here of education, the whole purpose of content creation or right, is for you to grow as a person, for you to it's, it's great you can go find the answer. But if you don't know, if you haven't developed that muscle to be able to create the answer, to create the thing, or to know if it's right or not, it doesn't even. You don't even have to be the one who knows how to create the answer. You need to know how to know whether it's correct or it's any good. That's the ultimate skill where we're trying to get these people and kids and adults and everybody to. Now. I don't care how you got the answer anymore, I really don't, as long as you know how the answer is created and whether the end product is any good or not.

Jackie Pelegrin: 39:38

Exactly. Yeah, that's so true. Yeah, because if we so many instructors today they want to police AI, and I know some instructors at GCU that are just like no, hands off. And I'm like, yeah, but if you tell them no, they can't use it while they're in school, and while you can teach them to use it ethically, then when they get in the workforce, they're going to just want to still cheat, right, and so teaching them how to use it, how to have boundaries around it while they're in school and say, hey, you know what, if you cheat and with your paper, you're doing yourself a disservice and you're doing everybody else that you're you're wanting to serve a disservice in the future.

Jackie Pelegrin: 40:18

Yeah, so it's very interesting how I have I've shifted the mindset with. My students are like can I use it? And I'm like, yes, you can use it, but just know how to use it ethically and know that it's a tool and it's not replacing us. Yeah, hopefully that fear goes away, because so many people are like is my job going to go away? And I'm like, no, I don't think so. I think it's just this is a for me, it's a virtual assistant, it's a way to like you displayed so well and talked about you know. So it's great, I love it. So, as we kind of cap this off, what are some tips and advice you can share with those who are currently in the master's program that I teach for in instructional design at Grand Canyon University?

Jim Edwards: 40:59

So I would just say that what you are learning about teaching people how to learn and structuring things so people will learn is going to be more important moving forward than ever, because anybody can go to now ChatGPT or Google or whoever's version of a large language model, and I call it data versus soul Data, I see as an acronym. You go to GPT and it gives you data, which stands for default answers to anything. Anybody can go get a default answer. That just sounds about good enough. It's Wikipedia level. But what is really going to make a difference and make people pay attention to you and really want to be a part of what you're doing is what we refer to as soul content, and soul content is again an acronym for stories, observations, unique perspective and lessons learned. In the end, if you want people to pay attention to what you're teaching them, you got to be able to tell a story to make it relevant. You got to be able to give them a unique perspective on the data in order to make it interesting. You've got to be able to share observations that only can come from experience, that again are going to dimensionalize that data, and then lessons learned, the ultimate thing of I've been there. I've done that I got the t-shirt. Here's what's happened and here's what you can learn from it.

Jim Edwards: 42:32

And, interestingly enough, if I use the example of if I tell you the story of the very first book I ever sold online, back before the turn of the century literally, and now this century is a quarter of a century past, which really makes me feel old yeah, me too. But if I tell you about the shock when I saw, oh my God, there's an order here. And then when I realized I had no way to process the credit card payment because I didn't think anybody was ever going to buy it. And then I called my aunt at the Williamsburg Outlet Mall and asked her if I could process my credit card orders through her craft mall and how. She said sure. And then I had to explain to this guy somewhere that bought this book why his credit card details were going to reflect country treasures instead of selling your home alone the book. And all through that I realized if I could get one person to buy from me, I could get a thousand people to buy from me and it was going to change my life.

Jim Edwards: 43:44

And if I tell you that story, and then I say, by the way, here are five tips on how to make your very first book sale. Do you care if ChatGPT wrote those five tips? No, I don't know, because that story got you so hooked. Anything else I do slides right under your anti GPT radar. You don't care, because I'm sharing a piece of my soul with you. Yeah, and that is going to be one of the most important things that anyone who is an education, an educator, an educational design person or anybody who's putting together anything to teach anybody anything, you better have some soul up front to give some context to the stuff on the back end. That it doesn't matter who created it, because it's all just data, right?

Jackie Pelegrin: 44:39

I love that. That's great advice because, yeah, especially now in this data-driven world that we're in, right, yeah, we have to have that human experience. We can't lose that human experience and that soul that's so important. Absolutely Right, a hundred percent, yeah Well, thank you, Jim, for your time and your expertise. I appreciate it. I'd love to have you back on the show and we can talk about some other topics. Yeah, that'd be fun. Once I get into some of these things and we start talking, it's like, oh, we could expand upon this and there's so many different great things that we can delve into a little bit more, so I'd love to do that sometime.

Jim Edwards: 45:15

I'd be happy to.

Jackie Pelegrin: 45:16

Thank you for having me. Thank you, jim, appreciate it. Thank you for taking some time to listen to this podcast episode today. Your support means the world to me. If you'd like to help keep the podcast going, you can share it with a friend or colleague, leave a heartfelt review or offer a monetary contribution. Every act of support, big or small, makes a difference and I'm truly thankful for you.