74. We want you to make cool shit with AI. Here's why.

If you're exhausted by AI replacing human voices, automating the soul out of everything, and those hustle-y calls to "adopt AI or be left behind" — we're with you.

But here's the other side. Right now, for the first time ever, you have the power to build tools that are custom-tailored to the exact problems you want to help solve in the world, carrying your specific voice and perspective — without a developer, a designer, or a five-figure budget.

My colleague Danny Lim and I think this is one of the most exciting things ever.

Let's talk about the opportunity, and what it takes to exercise it responsibly.

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Check out:

• Join us in Singapore, June 13-14, for the The Joyful AI Buildathon.
• The Joyful AI Field Guide — Play with this free interactive tool that generates five ideas for cool shit you can build that are specific to your business.

Transcript

Hello, you're listening to Liberatory Business. I'm your host, Simone Seol, and thank you so much for listening.

Okay, listen up. If you're a coach, a creative, someone who's built a business or wants to build a business around your ideas, your values, your very specific way of seeing the world — there's a good chance you're probably so tired of hearing about AI right now. Because so much of the dialogue is about how it's replacing humans, how it improves efficiency, how it allows you to do more in less time. And at the same time, you're watching people automate their own voices and uniqueness out of their creative work, so that so much around you is just becoming generic, AI-flavored mush.

I get that, I really do, and I share the weariness around that 100%.

But here's the other part of it that I don't think gets talked about enough — for the first time ever in human history, you, as someone who is a creative spirit and has the heart of a helper, have an unprecedented amount of power to build something that is super specific to who you are and your unique mission.

You have the power to get away from static resources. For whatever impact you want to have on the world, in whatever specific way you want to help people, you now have the power to get away from static resources that the internet originally made easy for us — like making PDFs, audio files, video files, static web pages. These are commonplace. But now with AI, you can custom-create tools that your people can interact with and actually use to solve their problems. And you don't need to know how to code. You don't need a developer or a designer. You just need to know what you want to create, and you need to know why it matters.

This is what we are teaching — and by "we," I mean myself and Danny Lim, my colleague, serial entrepreneur and master coach trainer — in our upcoming Joyful AI Buildathon in Singapore on June 13th and 14th. Meet us there. The link is in the show notes.

But even if you can't be there, stay with us, because what we're getting into today really has the power to change how you think about what you're capable of building, and why you building things matters.

Here's the conversation.

This is the coolest time to be a creative person

Simone: This is the coolest time to be a creative person who actually wants to help people, and nobody's talking about it, and it drives us crazy.

Danny: It is such an exciting time, because it's almost like I've discovered this magic wand that has unlimited power. It reminds me of traditional media versus social media when it appeared. After social media appeared, it decentralized and redistributed the way we can share information and our points of view. With AI, it is the same. Now we are not subjected to molding our work around other people's structure or platforms or apps at $100 a month. Now we have the ability to create the very same things that we used to spend a lot of money on — and they are highly tailored to the people we want to serve or for our own purposes and objectives. And I think this is freaking fun.

Simone: I think the first layer of democratization by technology was the internet in the first place, right? When the internet was first born, there were some people who were worried — oh, if you can just access any information lightning fast, are we gonna become dumber? People worried about that when the internet came along. And then the next level of democratization came, like you said, with social media. Now you get to make your ideas known from anywhere, any place, without any of the traditional gatekeepers.

Danny: Yes.

Simone: This is maybe the third layer of democratization. Now you can not only create content, you can actually create things — tools — without being hindered by your lack of technical expertise.

And, you know, Danny, we've talked a lot about how any tool comes with bad use and dark sides, and I don't think any of us would ever pretend that AI only brings good things with it. It certainly brings a lot of scary, bad things that we don't want, which creates havoc on human and non-human lives. The same can be said with a lot of other technology, but maybe especially we have that fear with AI because it's so new and developing at such a dizzying speed. A lot of it is genuinely, wow, out of control. People are being more reckless with it — especially these billionaire companies — than would be responsible. But at the same time, we want to see more creative people who are good people step up to drive what this technology can do and what we can create with it.

The AI edge vs. the human edge

Danny: Exactly. So I think with this magic wand, we can use it to harm people or we can use it to uplift people. It's like nuclear energy. It's like a revolver. This is a discovery of a new tool. Now, AI is brilliant at anything you hand it when it comes to solving a problem. You can ask it to write a better email, a higher-converting funnel, a faster summary, and it will deliver. But what it cannot do is zoom back out and decide whether the problem it's solving for you is, in itself, right or wrong. Nor can it invent something you didn't ask for.

It only knows what's already been done, because that's what the LLM is all about. It has access to all the information that's already out there — and genuinely new synthesis, new thinking, new problems that you would like to be solved have to come from the user, meaning you. AI is very good at increasing our productivity, and there is speed in all of that, but I think that edge was never the point.

AI will always out-execute what we humans can do manually when it's a task. But where is our human edge? We need to separate the AI edge versus the human edge. Our human edge lies upstream, before we employ AI. We have to think about what problem we want to solve, what is worth doing — and notice that if the problem we're getting AI to solve is the wrong one, we need to realize it, because otherwise it would be really excellent at solving the wrong thing.

Simone: Which can be dangerous.

Danny: Very. Which is dangerous.

Simone: The human edge — it's your human wisdom and discernment that allows you to say, "You know what? AI can solve this problem, but this is a stupid problem," or, "this doesn't matter."

Like, I love what you said about AI making your funnel convert better. If you say "make this convert better," it'll take that at face value and do whatever it already knows about the conventions of what it means for something to convert better. I actually told my AI to make some of my stuff convert better, and it spat back its work. And one — I knew that yes, in fact, that would convert better. And two — I would never in a million years use that.

Why I'd never use the "higher converting" version

And the reason I would never use it is that yes, it would convert better — but it was written in a very strategic way that follows the classic template, right? You articulate the problem, you pitch yourself as the solution, you anticipate their objections and overcome them, you stack the value, and blah blah blah.

And the thing is, all these things work.

But I think part of the reason that I do so well in my business is that people trust me, like as a human being. That's the reason people come to me, stay with me for years, and tell their friends about me — they trust me at a deep level. And the reason they trust me is that every time I show up in their inbox, I don't sound like someone who's there to pitch them, even if there is a pitch. I sound like a person. I sound like a friend. I sound like a mentor who actually gives a shit about them, and who's talking to them human to human.

So by definition, sounding like a human being means not being optimized to maximum strategic advantage. Like, I don't always get to the point right away, even if that's the most high-converting thing to do. I might meander in how I talk. I might take a while to get to my point. I might add personal details or personal stories that don't really have anything to do with the pitch — but it's just how I talk. Or I might intentionally refrain from drumming up the scarcity or stacking the value or whatever I'm supposed to do to pull the psychological levers in my advantage, because that's not how I want to relate to people.

So if you change all those things to make sure my stuff fits the mold of what is classically the highest converting — then you have something that not only doesn't sound like me, but erodes the very thing that I think is my number one asset in business, which is the trust I have earned with people over many years.

And that's what I mean when I say high conversion is good — selling more is good — but it's not the only goal. It's not the highest goal. And knowing that for yourself, whatever your version of that is, knowing what you value and being able to name it clearly — that is your human edge.

Simone: This is the kind of decision-making process — cognitive and emotional and, I might even say, spiritual — that Danny and I feel really strongly about teaching. We have this powerful technology at our fingertips. What are we gonna do with it? Let's help and empower and teach people who want to do good with it.

Danny: That's why we're doing the buildathon.

About the Joyful AI Buildathon

Simone: Yes. So listen — if you're listening to this, we are putting on a weekend AI Buildathon. We're calling it the Joyful AI Buildathon, because the joy component is really important, as I'll get into in a second. June 13th and 14th, Saturday and Sunday —

Danny: In Singapore.

Simone: Now, if you're listening this week and you can be there on the 13th and 14th in Singapore — be there. We will see you there. We'll leave the sign-up link in the show notes. But if you're like, "I live in London and I can't fly to Singapore this weekend" — we still want to leave you with really great food for thought. And frankly speaking, we want to give you homework. If you're interested in what we're talking about and want to explore this more deeply, we have really useful ideas to share, so keep listening even if you can't be with us this weekend.

Danny: Do you want to share what you've created? I was mind-blown when you showed me.

Simone: You heard my rant in the beginning about how possible it is for you to build really fucking cool things — to give value to your people, to solve problems. I was like, I just wish more people knew about this. Because ultimately this is what we're doing in the AI Buildathon. So I created a thing — a tool — where you can go and it'll give you ideas for AI tools you can make, depending on what your business is. It's gonna give you five ideas. I genuinely think you're gonna look at these ideas for your business and go, "Oh my God, that would actually be so helpful. My people would love that. That would actually help me grow my business." I'm gonna leave the link in the show notes, because whatever your business is, I want you to go look at it and think, "Oh wow, I could make that." And then I want you to go try to make it.

Danny: When I tried your tool, I was mind-blown. Firstly, it is so much better than reading a static PDF, because it's interactive — you can click around, you can fill things in, and it generates responses based on what you feed it, which is really fun and very magnetic and very sticky. And I wish that more coaches and educators — whatever you're teaching, whatever you're helping people with — when you have the ability to create such fun and engaging tools and resources for people, wouldn't you want to know how to build it? This is so cool.

Joy is the strategy

Danny: And the reason we call this whole thing Joyful AI is because I think joy is the centerpiece. Joy is the strategy. It is not a soft thing where we go like, "Oh, you know, have joy on the side." No — joy is the strategy. When we're having fun, we get so creative. Our creative energies get dialed so high up when we're in the zone of joy.

A few things I've created for my community doing these fun artifacts — I came up with a human design chart reader, where people can input their date of birth, time of birth, place of birth, and generate a human design chart. I also came up with something for the many people who come to me when they're very stuck in their soul-sucking day job and thinking of quitting. I always tell them, "Don't quit until you know how long your runway is. You need to quit responsibly."

And a lot of people ask me, "But I don't know how to calculate my runway — how much money I need, how much I have, how long it's gonna last." So I created a runway calculator. It walks them through the teaching bit as well — I'm not just gonna hand you a tool without explaining what to plug in. There's a teaching component before they plug in their numbers, then you teach them the concepts, then they key in their numbers, and it generates a report for the phases they need to focus on for the next 90 days, depending on their situation.

And I really, really love it. People tell me, "Oh my God, this is life-changing. Thank you so much." And I give it out for free. It is so much easier to equip people with this tool — they have fun with it, I change their lives, and it is passive for me. I create it once and it impacts people forever and ever. They share it with other people, and other people's lives get impacted.

Simone: And that's the thing, right? When you create something that's actually interactive and fun and useful for people, they're gonna spread it to their friends. They're gonna forward it, post it. When you create something fun, it's gonna do so much marketing for you.

Danny: Exactly — reach and visibility. And literally, this is what we'll be teaching people to create over the weekend. You have to learn by getting your hands dirty and building the thing. That is when you learn the fastest. And of course, Simone and I will be there to guide you.

I had a lot of messages from people saying, "Dan, I would love to learn from you. I'm not able to join the bootcamp this time, but I would love to learn AI from you because it looks like you're having a lot of fun." And, "It feels like you are getting so creative with AI." And I'm like, boom — that's the highest compliment anybody can give me, because that's exactly the point.

To be honest — in the beginning when I first discovered AI, I was very lazy. I was like, "Oh my God, take all the work away from me, AI." Write this for me, do that for me, post this for me. Let's automate everything so I can just not do anything and sip mojitos on the beach. By the way — that's overrated. But then after a while it got stale, because like I say, creating is our birthright and it's what gives me joy. So why would I want to delegate the most fun bits out to AI?

Simone: Exactly.

Danny: The whole point here is not to teach you AI, because we're not AI experts. We want to teach you AI applied to what we love teaching — which is business, marketing —

Simone: And creativity.

What this technology can actually do for you

Simone: I've been able to build things that blew my mind and blew my team's mind. For the insiders I've been able to share my progress with, the response has been, "Oh my God, Simone, you just made this thing come alive. Your stuff was always alive before — it's not like it used to be dead — but now it feels so much more alive." And that, I think, is the highest use of this technology.

Whatever people are giving you praise for — if you are a coach, if you're a creative business owner — think about the kind of feedback you get that makes you really happy. Maybe it's, "You made me feel really safe to be myself," let's say. That's feedback you love getting. Well, what if you could do so much more of that? What if people said, "I used this thing you built and I feel so much safer to be myself, and I didn't realize I needed to give myself permission around this, and now I have that so much more strongly thanks to this thing you built"?

So whatever your highest value is, whatever impact you want to be known for — this technology helps you do more of it. And honestly, this is exactly why Danny and I are doing this thing together — the Joyful AI Buildathon in Singapore on June 13th and 14th. Two days, thirty people, both of us in the room with you. And you walk out with your lead magnet, your landing page, your email sequence — actually done. Not almost done. Not in your drafts. Done and live. I'm so excited about it, the link is in the show notes — come if you can.

We're starting with the philosophy — how you lead with your human edge. Not just the human edge, but the edge of you being you. How to make sure you are in the creative director's seat and not having AI make decisions for you. We start with that. And then we have you go on a sprint of building a landing page, a lead magnet, and an email sequence for your business, all in the span of just two days. At the end of the weekend, you're gonna walk out with a fully functioning funnel that starts working for you right away.

Danny: Yes. And I think the most important thing we want people to walk away with is that feeling of — I made this. Oh my God, I can do this. That is the real take-home.

And I think the real question is: why do we even want to use AI and not do this by hand? That's a very valid question. You could — and a lot of us have been building things the manual way for years, for decades. But the gap between an idea and a finished thing is huge, and most ideas die in that gap. We all have a whole cabinet of 25%-done artifacts that never got released into the world.

Now — AI, like I say, speed is not the edge. That's the AI hustle-bro framing we don't want you to adopt. Our philosophy is not that.

Simone: It's not scale for its own sake, efficiency for its own sake, conversion for its own sake.

Danny: Yeah. We're not interested in that kind of AI use. What I'm interested in is reducing friction that kills the work. When we lower the friction, the thing gets born — and that's what we want to help you get to over the two days.

You can now be the researcher, the copywriter, the designer, the developer all at once, which is so crazy — but that's not even the real thing. AI lets you keep wearing the one hat that is most important, which is director with taste and vision. The point was never to replace ourselves. It is to amplify ourselves. The manual way of doing things is limited by our very real 24-hours-a-day constraint — but now we can transcend that limitation. The amplified version of us can do so much more. And that's what I'm so excited about.

The bonuses Danny built

Simone: So I know you've prepared some incredible bonuses for people who attend the Buildathon. Tell me about those, because they blew my mind.

Danny: You know, I'm all about over-delivering. Initially, when we talked about doing this, I said, "Wouldn't it be so nice if we could give our participants some bonuses? I want to create an AI employee for them that they can use over and over again." I thought of creating two — but the interesting thing about being in that joyful creative state is that two started to feel like very little.

So I ended up creating six AI employees.

Simone: Wait — I didn't even know that.

Danny: Yeah, you're hearing this first. Six AI employees, built only for this weekend, and not sold anywhere else. We planned two, and it grew to six because I just can't help myself.

Okay, so the first AI employee is a research employee. It does your audience research for you. One of the pitfalls of running a business or creating lead magnets is that you misfire — you create something people don't really need. So this research employee goes deep into forums and discussion boards like Reddit and reads what people are actually talking about, struggling with, in their own words. And you'll be able to identify the gaps that nobody's filling right now — so you know who you're serving and what they're still looking for that's missing in the market. In and of itself, that's already wow, right?

The second AI employee is something we'll be using in the class itself — an extraction employee. It extracts all your wisdom out of you and builds you a second brain. It's fully interactive, fully guided with questions, and it's genuinely fun. That is the day one centerpiece, because with the second brain extracted out of you, that's when you give AI the full context and texture and voice of who you are. Before you create anything, that's the first thing we need to get out of you.

A lot of people have trouble articulating what they're doing, what they're good at, who they want to serve — but with the AI employee, you just riff. You just talk. It's almost like a coffee house chat, and it makes it so easy. And the most beautiful thing is that it understands the way you synthesize your sentences, the words you use, and gets all that flavor into the second brain.

And then I've created one employee for every single build step over the weekend — when you're creating the lead magnet, the landing page, the email sequence. We'll teach you the concept first, so you understand what's required. You can't delegate anything to AI without knowing how to do the thing yourself first. That's an important piece.

And then finally, after the two days, I'm giving participants an AI employee that will continue building the second brain — and it's yours to keep, and it'll grow with you. It grills you one question at a time, you just react, and it writes everything down in a permanent memory bank so you don't have to start from scratch ever again. It captures, stores, and you compound. That is the big bonus at the end.

Come be in the room with us

Simone: We would absolutely love to see you and support you over these two days.

Danny: A lot of people have DM'd me — either the date didn't work for them, or they're not in Singapore and the logistics of travel are tricky. But we actually have participants who are flying in. This is crazy, right? And what's so different about this is that you will get both Simone and I in the room, over your shoulder, while you build. There's accountability, and it's on demand. While you're building, you can ask us questions.

Simone: Yeah, like one-on-one — we will be there in your face. We will be very nosy: "What are you building? What are your ideas?" And you're gonna be surrounded by so many incredible, creative entrepreneurs who are aligned with the same values we care about, and who are also gonna be leading the way in building cool shit with AI. So — join us if you can be in Singapore.

Danny: And if you can't join us, look out for the online version, which is coming.

Simone: Yes. And if you take advantage of the free tool I'm offering you — linked in the show notes — where you can get ideas for what you can build with AI, and you put your email in there, you'll be entered into our wait list and we'll let you know about our future digital version of this course as well.

I've seen so many AI courses on social media that are really focused on efficiency — offloading work — but we really felt like the gap in the market was a course that helps people become better creative directors of their own business, their own creative vision. How do we honor the human edge — the you-edge — in all of it, and use AI as a servant, as an amplifier, while you are always center stage? What you want to see in the world, the unique taste you bring, your discernment, your judgment — it all matters.

Danny: And especially for people who feel they are non-technical — yeah, you can do this.

My last words before we wrap up: it is called Joyful AI because joy is the strategy, and it is the north star. It is the whole point. It is not the reward at the end — it is the reward while you are doing it. And I think joy is so powerful. Why? Because nobody can outwork a person who is having fun. When we lead through joy, you become almost impossible to beat. This is also how it's sustainable, and how you will never burn out. So my invitation is for you to get your hands dirty, enjoy it, enjoy building, enjoy creating — and you keep going long after the grinders have quit.

Simone: I think joy is non-metaphorically, literally divine. When you feel joy is how you know you're connected to the divine — connected to your own divinity — and how you have access to your best ideas, your most enlivening visions. And nothing short of that is good enough for us. We want your joy. The world needs nothing less from you. So anchoring to joy, navigating by joy — we hope you can join us this weekend. If not, we'll see you online.

Danny: See you online. Keep creating.

Simone: Keep breaking things, keep having fun. Talk to you later.

Danny: Bye.

[Outro]

Okay, before you go — two things.

First, if anything we talked about today made you think, "Hey, I want to build something cool for my people" — go to the Joyful AI Field Guide. The link is in the show notes. It's a free interactive tool that gives you five ideas for what you can build with AI, specific to your business. And I built it myself with zero tech or coding knowledge, which kind of proves the whole point. I hope you go play with it.

And second — if you want to actually build a thing with Danny and me physically in the room with you, looking over your shoulder, talking to you, coaching you, encouraging you — we are running our very first ever Joyful AI Buildathon in Singapore on June 13th and 14th, Saturday and Sunday. 30 seats only. After the two days, you're gonna walk out with your lead magnet, landing page, and email sequence done and completed — funnel ready to go by Sunday evening. If you're listening after the fact and the event is already over, still check out the link in the show notes, because we're gonna do this again.

All right. I hope you go and make something today. Bye.