Is AI the Secret Weapon for Busy Parents?

What if your fridge, your fitness plan, and your future business had an AI assistant?

Joe and Peter unleash real-life ways to use AI as your behind-the-scenes genius…whether you're feeding picky kids, managing a student athlete's chaotic schedule, navigating adult life (hello, taxes and insurance), or finally testing out that big business idea at the kitchen table. 

From chicken nugget hacks to college soccer dreams and even negotiating with your AI like it's your life coach, this episode is packed with clever, hands-on tools anyone can use…no tech expertise required. 

If you've ever stared at your pantry, your kid's calendar, or your unfinished startup idea and thought, “I’m in over my head,” this one’s for you

Listen For

3:00 How can AI solve your “what’s for dinner” dilemma on a chaotic Tuesday night?

10:21 Can AI remember your food allergies and help plan weekly shopping trips?

16:03 How can student athletes use AI to build a complete training and recruiting plan?

26:12 What can AI teach you about life skills no one ever taught—like taxes, insurance, and parenting?

33:16 How do you test your business idea with AI before spending a dime?

Joe Downs 

Website | Email |LinkedIn |YouTube  

Peter Swain 

Website |Email |LinkedIn |X 

Chapters

• 3:00 How can AI solve your “what’s for dinner” dilemma on a chaotic Tuesday night?
• 10:21 Can AI remember your food allergies and help plan weekly shopping trips?
• 16:03 How can student athletes use AI to build a complete training and recruiting plan?
• 26:12 What can AI teach you about life skills no one ever taught—like taxes, insurance, and parenting?
• 33:16 How do you test your business idea with AI before spending a dime?

Transcript

Peter Swain (00:01):

Hey, I'm looking to do my weekly shopping this week. We're going to go on Sunday. I've got two hours before we have to get to the ball game. I need seven days worth of food. We prefer fresh food over frozen food. I know that I'm probably going to eat out twice, so we only need to get five. Maybe we should have a couple of tinned canned things so they can just stay there and if we eat them this week, great. If we didn't, great. My son likes this type of food. My daughter likes this type of food. And then the last thing I'd say, I'm going to Walmart or I'm going to Walgreens, or I'm going to wherever it might be. Put the shopping list in the order of the aisles.

Joe Downs (00:48):

A friend of mine has a son who wants to play college soccer. He's a junior. He's talented, motivated, but he knows if he wants to play at the next level, he's got to step up his game. The problem is he doesn't know where to start between schoolwork, SAT, prep, nutrition, strength training, skills training, recruiting, showcases, club soccer. It's a lot to balance. Last week I showed he and his mom how to use AI to build a fully integrated plan, periodization, nutrition, recruiting timeline, academic balance, the kind of thing that used to cost $20,000 a year in private coaches. It took 20 minutes and it was free. If AI can build an Olympic level training program for a 16-year-old, imagine what it can do for the chaos in your house. I'm Joe Downs with me, Peter Swain. We're just a couple of successful idiots who figure out how to use AI to improve our lives and power our businesses, and that's what we're here to share with you today. Alright, Peter, let's show these people how AI can put more horsepower behind their hustle than a British mum has. Passive aggressive ways to say that's interesting.

Peter Swain (01:48):

Well, that might be a bridge too far. I dunno if we can do that, but where'd you want to go with it? I mean, this is such a great subject of AI and families and kids, so yeah, let's do it.

Joe Downs (01:58):

Alright, well before we jump in, here's what's coming up in today's episode. So we're going to cover meal planning that actually works. Building a training program for your kid who wants to play college sports, the adulting stuff nobody ever taught you. And my favorite Peter at the end, how to test out that business idea you've been sitting on without risking anything. So stick around. By the way, we all know these people. I'm related to them. They've always coming up with ideas, but it never goes anywhere. Alright, Peter, let's get into it. Meal planning that actually gets eaten. Sounds simple, but in most households I believe it's probably more like chaos.

Peter Swain (02:36):

Okay, well let's, first of all, it sounds simple if you don't have kids,

Joe Downs (02:41):

So perfect, perfect. So picky kids, busy schedules, groceries going bad. Hey, how does ai, I mean if I look at our fridge, we shop, we've got constantly the healthy lettuce and this and that, and then you're constantly throwing out unused lettuce. So how does AI actually here?

Peter Swain (03:00):

Well, the first thing is to remember that AI is a lot more siloed than people think. So the first thing, and this is for everyone listening, but also to help us with the question there is, in the world of ai, there's a huge difference between the planning, like the shopping off, the purchasing off versus the reaction to what's in the pantry mode. So which one do you want to focus on because you'd handle both of those quite differently.

Joe Downs (03:29):

Well, why don't we start with, I'm thinking about the busy parents, even though sometimes there's two of us, sometimes you feel like you're a single parent some nights, so you got the craziness, the chaos, and you open your fridge and you hit a wall.

Peter Swain (03:48):

So it's Tuesday night, seven o'clock. Yeah. What are we going to do? Okay,

Joe Downs (03:52):

Yep.

Peter Swain (03:53):

So as with everything in AI context is everything. So for example, I know if we take my kids, Olivia and Sam, Olivia is a protein fiend. She is going to eat up steak and chicken and be all over that, whereas Sam is a carb fiend, so he's more on that side of things. So I would go into the ai, I'd probably use a voice memo to do this if I hadn't already set it up in advance like a project or something or a custom GPT. But as a thing, I go, Hey, I need your help with this. So exactly what you said, it's Tuesday, it's seven o'clock, I've got to be on a call in an hour and a half. I really want to make sure I eat with my family. I don't want to just eat in front of a tv. I want it to be as healthy and wholesome as we can.

(04:40):

I do not want to go and order out yet again. Sam loves this, this and this, and Olivia loves this, this and this, and this is a really important one. And my wife is allergic to tomatoes. So we need to avoid anything on that side and anything that has general flavoring. Next thing is I'm going to take a picture of my fridge, a picture of my pantry, and I want you to give me five different recipes. And then the last thing I would do is my kids are a bit younger than yours say, I want you to give them fun names so that they're going to respond and feel part of it. Finally, I also want you to give me ways that they could be involved in the preparation and the cooking of the thing and so that they feel like it's that they made the decision. And then the last one, I think this is really important is with everything I just said, ask me up to five questions to dive into areas of assumption that you would make or things you would come that I haven't said that would really help round this out.

Joe Downs (05:48):

I can already tell the, I mean, I wish I could be in the kitchens with the people that try this out to watch their faces as it just starts to deliver recipe after a recipe. It

Peter Swain (06:00):

Works.

Joe Downs (06:02):

Really great question after, but I got to tell you, your kids are younger because you just took me back to, especially with the naming of it, because I remember we used to have to get our kids to eat carrots or whatever and dip it. We would call it dippy doo, but it was just W ranch dressing.

Peter Swain (06:22):

Just last

Joe Downs (06:22):

Week he took you back.

Peter Swain (06:25):

One of the pieces of advice from AI was that Sam cuts the chicken, but he cuts it when we've cooked it versus cutting it before we cook it. Because then he could use a kitchen knife, a table knife, not a kitchen knife because at eight years old we're not going to give him a carving knife and that let him feel that he was part of it because trying to get him to eat something like chicken versus chicken nuggets is a reach.

Joe Downs (06:53):

The second part

Peter Swain (06:54):

Of that, oh, we always had naked chicken nuggets the other day, which is basically chicken, but because we called them naked chicken nuggets, he was on board.

Joe Downs (07:03):

The second part of that that was so interesting of your first response there was you got the kids involved. And I think that changes the whole experience too, but it was sometimes, look, if you're listening, you're like, well yeah, of course I can think of that on my own. Well, can you on a Tuesday night after a long day and you're tired and your brain is done and you're now staring at your fridge in your pantry going, what do I do? Can you think of that? And that's the beauty of it. It just puts ideas in your head.

Peter Swain (07:37):

We speak about this a couple of episodes ago of this concept of the thing that kills momentum is starting. I think we did. I think we talked about in terms of doing your accounts and when you get into it, it's okay, but it's this phantom, this big thing that you're like, oh, I find consistently that AI pulls me into my best self.

Joe Downs (07:57):

I agree.

Peter Swain (07:58):

Because it's like, yeah, that's not as hard as I thought.

Joe Downs (08:00):

Okay, it gets the creative juices going and then once you're into it, you're into it.

Peter Swain (08:04):

But I also want to just dissect the tactic around that quite quickly because one of the things I'm hoping that fine folks listening to this are getting out of this is the transferable skills that really we're talking about because what we just said could apply to a business meeting as much as it could apply to the fridge and food. So the transferable skill here is this two parts that I put into the prompt. The first part was to give it as much situational context as I know of. I know that Olivia's going to eat this. I know that Sam's going to eat this. I know that my wife's allergic to tomatoes. It's important that I eat with my family. I only have an hour and a half. All of these things are really important criteria in working out the recipe. If it's got a four hour prep time, don't work.

(08:49):

If it's lasagna doesn't work. But then still at the end, the second part of the prompt was, and I know there's 8,000 other things that I haven't told you when I said, now ask me up to five questions. And again, why five? Because the example we're using is I have an hour and a half and it's not life or death. If this was, I'm about to write my 2027 business plan and I'm going to go and ask the bank for 1.4 million line of credit, I would tell it to ask me questions for six hours because I'd want to grab every single assumption and finesse it. So that's the two parts. Give it as much situational context as possible, number one. Number two, give it the space to call you out on the context you didn't give it.

Joe Downs (09:36):

Yeah, and I think what you're saying is it's the same skillset, just a different application requires different details. No, that's such an excellent point. Real quick then on, so that's Tuesday night dinner. You got me out of a jam. How about can you help me plan for the week? I'm going grocery strapping this weekend. Oh, lemme back up that exercise we just did. Where can that live so that it remembers it? In other words, do I have to tell it every time that my wife does is allergic to tomatoes or can we get into a situation where we're building out a central source of truth or a Rosetta stone for how we eat? Because then from there, I think you can build on that, right?

Peter Swain (10:21):

So the exact example, I'm going to reverse out the example because the answer to memory is unfortunately, it depends. Something like my wife is allergic to tomatoes is going to be remembered by the AI at the global level because that is a mission critical. Somebody could get seriously injured. AI is going to go, got it. This is important. It doesn't matter what we're talking about now, this is important, but around the naked chicken nuggets worked versus chicken nuggets, if you want that level of details remembered, you would put it into a project. So chat, GPT and Claude, both support projects which have a contextual memory just for the stuff that's relevant to that. So you'd put it in a project, have the conversation, and within two or three chats within that project, you'll start seeing the memories start getting filled in and it will start getting more and more accurate, more and more specific, much better. And you are going to go, no, that doesn't work. I tried that yesterday. The kids didn't like it and it's going to start learning and honing based on that. So the quick answer is put it in a project

Joe Downs (11:27):

And then real quick on weekly planning.

Peter Swain (11:31):

So really the same pattern applies situational context and an iteration phase. So hey, I'm looking to do my weekly shopping this week. We're going to go on Sunday. I've got two hours before we have to get to the ball game. I need seven days worth of food. We prefer fresh food over frozen food. I know that I'm probably going to eat out twice, so we only need to get five, but maybe we should have stuff in this is literally how I do it. Maybe we should have a couple of tinned canned things so they can just stay there and if we eat them this week, great. If we didn't, great. My son likes this type of food, my daughter likes this type of food and it's the Super Bowl on Tuesday, so let's do a Super Bowl themed thing on Tuesday and let's make that a big deal.

(12:19):

Now again, my kids are younger now I also need this something I do, which is quite fun. I also need an operation name like Operation Valhalla and the kids need missions when we go to the supermarket. So one kid gets the go and get the stuff mission and the other kid gets the scan mission so that I can turn this into a game. Everything's just one of my life rules. I want everything to be a game. If it's not a game I don't want to play. I want fun in every area of my life, ask me three to five questions, let's go. Same thing.

Joe Downs (12:52):

So same thing. Then you're taking a picture of your fridge, you're taking a picture of the pantry, and then to accomplish all that, it's going to tell you what you're missing or you could build this meal if you go by whatever.

Peter Swain (13:03):

And then the last thing I'd say, which I think is really useful for people that again, it's like the level this can go to. It has people go, what the I would then do finally I'm going to Walmart or I'm going to Walgreens, or I'm going to wherever it might be, put the shopping list in the order of the aisles.

Joe Downs (13:28):

That's the next level hack right there. All right. That was worth the show, the price of the show right there, folks,

Peter Swain (13:36):

Which I'll give you another little one. And is we talked about being vulnerable with your weaknesses. Another great addition to this would be say, now I want to be honest with you Mr. Ai, I often buy stuff I don't need when I go. Or I have noticed that if I don't eat before I go, I tend to buy more X or I always end up buying this food and throwing it away. How can you help me with that? Now, for me, because it's spoken to me for so long, it would probably give me a scoring protocol of like when you come back, take a picture of everything and I'm going to give you a grade out of a hundred and your goal, Pete, is to get 90 out of a hundred, which is the king shopper grade. And that stupid stuff motivates me. Other people that might say, well let's eat before you go take a picture of the fridge and let's do something healthy and satiating before we get into the thing. Or it might say, depending on how it knows you, well, let's give you a $30 budget for you to just blow on something else, like help you with your weaknesses.

Joe Downs (14:39):

I'm thinking most people should be using ROC for that. Alright?

Peter Swain (14:43):

Yep, you're

Joe Downs (14:43):

Right. Let's move on because this one's a little personal for me. The student athlete optimizer. I, alright, so I introduced this in the opening, but I also have student athletes that are going through these same challenges myself. So let me break down what happened for you and I want to see if I gave the right advice. So Peter, as I mentioned in the opening, colleague of mine asked if there's any way AI could help her son Vance Vance is a junior in high school, wants to play D one soccer. He's talented, motivated, as I said, but again, he's struggling with the SAT prep work, the schoolwork, the nutrition, the strength training, the skills and drills, training, recruiting, club soccer, school soccer. That's a lot to balance. Now listen, I have no idea. I know you're excited. He wants to play soccer. I have no idea,

Peter Swain (15:40):

Just Asage that he's smart. Russell,

Joe Downs (15:44):

I've no idea if he's a Totten him fan or not, but let's just assume he is. So he gets the best advice out of you. How will this help? What can he do? What are some of the critical must-dos when you're talking about the calendar, the puritization, nutrition, recruiting, the academic balance, what should he be doing?

Peter Swain (16:03):

Okay, so I think your advice of building out that plan is absolutely correct, but I think there's another little addition to it. So what I would do is I build out that plan, as you said, I'd be talking to Claude and saying, this is my goes. These are my no-go. These are my musts, these are my must nots. Building that for him because one of the things that can't be, can I

Joe Downs (16:22):

Cut you off for a second? Yeah, of

Peter Swain (16:23):

Course.

Joe Downs (16:24):

I love that you said Claude, I was starting in chat GBT because I thought this could be a GPT. Am I off base there? Is that too much?

Peter Swain (16:31):

No, because you're not going to the next piece of the advice you're not going to be able to do, which is the bit you need.

Joe Downs (16:36):

Okay,

Peter Swain (16:37):

So yeah, I mean it's a great question though. So you're going to build this, go NoGo, because what you can't do is build the perfect plan. It is impossible. When we say, how do I balance all of these things? The question you're actually saying is, what can I sacrifice in this list? Because just the perfect nutrition could be an 18 hour day that on its own could be a full-time job. So actually what you're saying is, well this is more important to me than this and this is more important than this. So it's not the perfect academic plan, it's the perfect plan for him. That's what we're trying to get to. So I build that, then I'd open up a project and I would put some custom instructions in the project that says, your job is to help duh, execute this plan. There will be two modes of operation in this two protocols you are going to follow.

(17:32):

Protocol number one is the daily check-in protocol where you are going to help him work out what he needs to do, where he's behind, where he's succeeding. And I would put in caps, this is a confessional booth. This is his ability to have an ego free conversation that helps him adjust, accelerate, understand, query and question. Then the second protocol is a weekly report that can then be generated to share with parents or coaches or multiple different people across different areas. And I'd have in the second one, the weekly the adjustments that are suggested to the plan based on the conversations that have happened during the week

Joe Downs (18:18):

And what he did or didn't do.

Peter Swain (18:20):

Exactly. So it's going to go, okay, so you are aiming for a hundred grams of protein a day split into 30, 30, 30. You hit that five times a week, but you didn't hit it on the weekends. Okay, so what do we need to change in the plan to help with that? Is it food prep, is it this, is it this, and it will self-diagnose and self fix as it goes through.

Joe Downs (18:47):

Is this in Claude or is this in chat or does it matter?

Peter Swain (18:50):

This is in Claude and I'm referencing a recent project of mine, which is my health coach

(18:56):

That I've been putting together that does exactly this. I would go in every day. I'm like, okay, it's breakfast and it'll say, this is the affirmation that we've agreed, this is the rules again for me. This is how you score. This is how you win the game of breakfast. And I talk to it and I talk to it afterwards and I do it for lunch and I do it for dinner and then I do weigh-ins and water and protein and walks at the end. And then at the end of seven days it provides a report back to my human coach, my real coach saying this is where he succeeded, this is where he failed. This is what he seems to be struggling with. For her it says, these are the patterns that I'm now seeing week on week that he's doing. This is my suggestions. This is the AI talking to my coach. This is my suggestion of how you now coach him and these are the suggestions that we think we should change inside the protocol. I had a,

Joe Downs (19:49):

Is the AI talking to your AI coach? No,

Peter Swain (19:51):

My AI is talking to my real coach, my human coach.

Joe Downs (19:53):

Oh, your real coach.

Peter Swain (19:54):

But I had an argument with this yesterday, literally I full on standup row with my ai because one of the rules is that I have to take 15 minutes to eat to allow lectin to be produced so that I know that I've eaten so I can slow down my food. And another rule is that if I get to 80% full, I should stop eating. And I was like, I got to 12 minutes and I felt full, so I stopped eating and it wouldn't give me six out of six. And I'm like, this is bs. And it's like, no, that's the rules. I'm like, yeah, but I air the pace that the 15 minute thing inferred, which achieved the goal of me stopping because I worked out, I was hungry before I finished the meal and now you're telling me I can't win.

(20:40):

I'm like, so I'm out. Because for me, and again, just trying to be vulnerable and help people and hope that they can see some of their journey in me. For me, an unwinnable game is a game I won't play. If someone tells me you can't win this game, I'm like, then I'm not. Why would I bother? I've got so many other things on in my life, I need things I could win at. And I think when we're talking about kids looking into college athletes or young adults, giving them the wins is the most important thing because they're being judged by the recruiters, judged by the coaches, judged by judged, by judged, by judged, by giving them a safe space to have a conversation and be honest and vulnerable about what worked and what didn't. So that we can look at the, so the AI can offer, I know we're going long on this, but such a passion, it can give the systemic fixes that are needed because it's not that you're a bad kid, it's not that you're broken, it's not that you don't care, it's just that the systems that you need for the way your brain works aren't necessary optimal.

Joe Downs (21:40):

So how is Vance going to pull all this off? And by the way, he's not going to have an external life coach or whatever. I'm trying to think of a kid like Vance who he wants to use just the AI to pull this off. Does he build his own board of coaches? We have a board of advisors.

Peter Swain (22:02):

That's exactly why I'd go with it. Next I'd go back to the episode of our pod where we talked about Manus and I would use Manus to go and get a report on 2026 recruitment for collegiate athletes, like what's important, what's not important? I mean we all understand the basics, but different things pop. He might have a preferred set of schools, they're going to have their own unique values and things they're recruiting for. So I'd go and grab that. I'd go and grab who are the world's top five nutritionists for 17, 18-year-old. I'd go and grab that. I'd go and grab all of the skills and drills trainers for that, go and grab that. And then I'd bring all of that back into Claude and say, okay, you've got access to all this knowledge from all these experts. And then as I said, what's his go? No GOs, what is he willing to sacrifice in order to achieve this? What is he not willing to sacrifice in order to achieve this?

Joe Downs (22:55):

I have a 16-year-old son as well, and I'm just trying to picture all of this is amazing. I'm trying to picture either Vance or my son Degan. Trying setting it up. Yes, having the conversation with the go no go. And have you ever tried, your kids are younger, 16-year-old, 17-year-old boys, they don't talk. Who's going to get this information out of the go? How can they get the AI to work for them to ask them the questions,

Peter Swain (23:24):

Hey, I need to work out

Joe Downs (23:26):

That they need to be asking,

Peter Swain (23:27):

Hey, I need you to work out my go no-go rules around this subject. Ask me questions.

Joe Downs (23:33):

So Claude will lead them through that process privately. As you said, it's a confessional note. Mom and dad aren't listening, right? It's your own private time. And then it's up to them I guess at that point to give the AI feedback every week, this is what I did, either daily or weekly and then have it recalibrate every what Sunday or something.

Peter Swain (23:57):

Yeah, if they've done the go, no goes right, then it's up to them. This should become an enjoyable process because it's not them reporting to a teacher or sitting down with you and going through this, this and this. My ai, you know this from firsthand, my AI curses as badly as I do or as well as I do depending on your what side of that fence you're on. It knows how to motivate me. It knows when to let me slip it knows when to push me a bit further. It knows the language that I need to make me laugh as I'm having the conversation. So done correctly. And this is why this setup of like the go, no go. What does he want? How does he want to engage with this, make this work for you, but to such a degree that it becomes happy, happy time.

Joe Downs (24:51):

Love it. Alright, stuff nobody teaches you, Peter. We got two more segments. I think we're, we're going to have to run long and it's fine because this is amazing stuff so far. It's very useful and so is what we're about to talk about. So Peter, all the stuff we're supposed to know as adults, but nobody ever taught us. I'm thinking, and I don't mean what I'm about to say, does that mean replace your professional CPA or your professional insurance agent or attorney or anything? But like we've been saying before in previous episodes, having AI as your personal assistant with these things, these areas, especially when it comes to the documents and the esoteric and these documents written by attorneys, my goodness, it helps bring you up to speed on what's going on and compare and contrast. And I think most of us are just out there winging it frankly. So how can ai, I mean I could start with examples if you want, but I'd love to hear from you what are some examples of how AI can help with your taxes if you're a small business owner or whether you're comparing insurance quotes on cars or life insurance or estate planning or we've all been through the contractors getting stuff done at your house and which quote and you go with and whatnot.

Peter Swain (26:12):

I understand in the personal space for a second of I've got a neurodivergent son, not massively problematic, but certainly requires an understanding and it's an area that when you said we are all winging it and we don't get taught this stuff, this to me is the perfect example because this space is full of so many. They say of oh, they say you shouldn't do this and they say you shouldn't do this. And I get to it and I haven't worked on helping him with strategies for two years. Every time I get into it, I back away from it. So I'm like, this is so just trying to decipher the truth from the fact and the fiction is a headache in itself. So this is what Liz and I did last week. We sat down and went, okay, what's important to us? And we turned on applaud, a voice recorder.

(27:11):

And I was like, one of the things that's important to me is that we're going into an AI first future. So banning screen time is absurd. Second, if we are being honest, and again, this is one of those where non-parents are going to judge me and parents are go, yeah, every so often we need the digital babysitter. That's part of our life, whether we like it or not, we both run the company. So we can't have strategies that are going to need a full-time parent to be involved. And we went through these 20 rules of how we wanted to approach this situation. Next thing went to Manus and said, I want evidence. I want proven clinically validated by world recognizing institutions. What is the truth as we scientifically understand it right now around these following subjects specifically with reference to an 8-year-old boy that is exhibiting these symptoms. Then I went back to Claude and I took the voice note from me and Liz, the science and went give me the protocol and it went,

Joe Downs (28:21):

That's amazing.

Peter Swain (28:22):

And it wrote a 12 page, this is how you do this. Use the button philosophy for this, use this reward mechanism. Important is that he's the one that chooses what the rewards equal. You need to work on this. It's step through. And it gave me not just what we should do that matched who we are, but also gave me an understanding of why it was suggesting that what was the piece of the science? And we went back and Liz and I looked at it and it wasn't right, but it was 90% right? And it gave me and her the ability to have a second conversation of going, I don't quite like that. What about this? What about that one more iteration and we now have a plan that we can sit down with Sam part of the thing and talk to him this weekend.

Joe Downs (29:09):

What you just said was interesting. A second ago wasn't right, but it was 90% right? What at 90%, right? How much more right was it than what you were doing?

Peter Swain (29:20):

90%.

Joe Downs (29:21):

Isn't that incredible? And that's my point is it just brings you to a new level. We talk around, everyone walks around, especially in corporate world and entrepreneur, we've got to level up. You got to level. This literally helps you level up in an instance if you just have an open dialogue with it and share who you are, what you are, where you are in your life and what the issue is at hand, assuming you're using the right tool.

Peter Swain (29:49):

But yeah, and another thing, I bought a trading card, I'll share no trading card and I was like, hey, do I get it graded or do I sell it?

Joe Downs (29:59):

Is that a baseball card with a soccer player on it?

Peter Swain (30:01):

No soccer card. So what for your son? That's the Tottenham fan. It's a soccer totten card.

Joe Downs (30:06):

That's not my son to,

Peter Swain (30:07):

We said we were assuming he was, otherwise he didn't get good advice.

Joe Downs (30:09):

He's not my son, he's my friend's.

Peter Swain (30:11):

That's me. Alright, so the point was that was I did it in Gemini and I just took a picture of it and went, Hey, I just got this in a random draw. Do I keep it? Do I sell it? Do I grade it and it's going to eBay, pulling latest prices, it's going to this go dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. It's giving me a price range. It's saying if you do this, you do this. And I went, that's all really complex. What do I do? And it went sell it like great, thanks.

Joe Downs (30:39):

Interesting. On that point, my son's friend Hogan does actually trade baseball cards and football cards, all kinds of cards. The kids are a little entrepreneur and he crushes it. We had a whole AI conversation about it. Pretty sure he is using it now as well.

Peter Swain (30:51):

Yeah, you take one picture of a trading card, put it in Gemini and it will give you the price range, the grading range, the everything. It's insane.

Joe Downs (30:59):

That's amazing. Real quick, I'm going to just drop another example in here because we just used this, well, I wish we used this to compare contractors several years ago. Then we wouldn't be in the lawsuit we're in right now with contractor. But although I'm using AI to help me understand that lawsuit and how to get through that with our attorneys, but had we before that, for instance, an example, you get three roofing quotes, you're out of your field. I'm not a roofer, you a roofer, Peter. So you get

Peter Swain (31:32):

It's a hidden skill. Don't tell anyone.

Joe Downs (31:34):

Hidden skill. Yeah, yeah. You seem like the kind of guy be up on a roof on a hot day. Just comparing the roofing coach quotes. We just did this, we switched auto insurance recently because we've got one teenage driver now we're adding a second one next week. And our insurance carrier who's amazing usually is just not right for kids. So we actually used AI Manus to shop different policies based on who we are and what we are. It's incredible. I'm doing that for shopping for a car right now. And I sent it to my buddies, a car dealer, and his response was, dude, that's some pretty cool ai. And it was a full workup on the three or four different cars we were comparing. So there's just so many amazing uses for it. Alright, my favorite one, the kitchen table side hustle, last segment. Save this for the end because everyone listening has at least one idea or someone they're related to.

(32:35):

Or for instance, I'm in a text group with my, and every now and then between all the idiocy that crosses that thread, there's a business idea and it's, oh, we should do that. Or someone should start a business doing this or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Peter, how can I personally know because I'm literally building a business using c Claude right now as my ideation partner. Can you share with the listener how they can do this too? And actually test out for, I don't know, maybe a couple hundred bucks and a couple hours at time, whether or not their idea has any legs.

Peter Swain (33:16):

Yeah, so that's a great question. So the first thing I would start with is as per usual context. So again, I would voice note in this is my idea, this is where it came from, this is the genesis of it. The next thing I would say is, and this is how excited I'm am I like a 10 out of 10, I need to do this. Chop a finger off. This has got to happen. Or this was just me shooting with my brother-in-law and we think it could be cool and fun. Give it, how invested are you in this? If you've got an idea of it, how much would you be willing to sink into the validation of it? If I lost $5,000 and I knew the answer to this, I'd be okay with that or anything more than 250 and it wouldn't be worth it. Give it those points. And then say, before we go ahead on something like that, I'd say, now ask up to 10, 15 questions to really understand what my idea is. Then I want your brutal assessment of whether you think this is a good idea or whether you think this is a bad idea. Specifically I want you to point out any holes, any gaps in my thinking as to why this may not work. And then I want five ways to test and validate my idea that fit within the budget that I'd said,

Joe Downs (34:39):

You doing this. I know you and I are doing this in Claude. If someone doesn't have Claude, they're not ready to pay for it. What's the prompt look like in Chachi, BT, or Gemini, if that's what we have.

Peter Swain (34:50):

Same prompt in either of them. You're just going to get varying degrees of quality output. And if you're willing to spend 200 bucks validating the business, spend 20 of it on chat GPT, and then find $180 solution instead of a $200 solution. Do you mean on Claude? Well, no, you just said we're investing a couple hundred bucks either way to find out how good the idea is, use $20 of that to buy Claude, not chat

Joe Downs (35:14):

To buy Claude. That's why I was just clarifying what you meant. Yeah, and I've done this, obviously, you and I talked about it, I think on the last episode, an idea that we had. That's how that started. I started ideating asking, is this a good idea? Does this have legs? And it told me no, which was okay, all right, fine. But then it asked me a question and then I kept going with it and then it became a really good idea from a bad idea.

Peter Swain (35:48):

And that's why I,

Joe Downs (35:49):

Or not even a bad idea, an idea that was a good idea, misguided indirection.

Peter Swain (35:55):

But this is why I said specifically on this topic, more than almost any of the others doing this in chat, GPT would be a mistake because chat GT's job is to tell you that you're brilliant and awesome and give you a high five. So I won't start chat GPT. Hey, I'm thinking about setting up an estate agency for Mars. I know that there aren't any properties on Mars yet, but I think I should get ahead of this. So how would I launch an estate agency for Mars and develop the social following, et cetera. By the way, I'm about to hit 50, so houses probably don't exist on Mars whilst I'm alive, but this is where I want to sink my life into. And it came back and said, that's a great idea.

Joe Downs (36:38):

That was probably Elon's

Peter Swain (36:39):

Prompt. So if you're like this exercise of validate this idea, help me think this out. You need a sparring partner. You do not need a cheerleader and chat. GPT is a cheerleader, not aspiring partner. So Grok, yes, Claude, yes, Gemini, yes. Chat, GPT for this. No,

Joe Downs (37:04):

Love it. Incredible advice. Peter. We went a little longer than we like, but I think it was so well worth it. These are such great topics. Chaos at home between meal planning and building an integrated plan for your kid who's an athlete or all the adulting stuff. We barely covered the adulting stuff with taxes and insurance and hopefully you got the ideas flowing. And by the way, everything we talked about is transferable to your business, especially the adulting part with the comparing documents and quotes. That's all I do now. Anything that's put in front of me, it goes right into Claude and help me understand it. 98 with it. And is this good for me or bad for me? Or whatever. So hopefully you found it as exciting and fun as Peter and I, and if you did, please like the episode we love, likes and helps get the word out.

(37:58):

Also subscribe. So when we drop the next one, you don't want to miss it. And if you've been sitting on a business idea, try, try out Claude, give it a run. I totally agree, Peter, it's worth it. $20 a month and frankly I hate to, I probably won't cancel my chat GPT ever because I'd still use it for other things, but it's definitely worth adding $20 a month in my opinion. So folks, don't forget to. If you have any questions or comments, email us at idiots@successfulidiots.com. If you have any ideas that you need help with anything at home, like my friend, son, Vance, anything of that nature, give us ideas. We're

Peter Swain (38:39):

Here for you for free consultancy for you now. Being free consultancy for everybody. Is that what just happened?

Joe Downs (38:42):

Like I said, Peter, the ears here and the eyes see what the brain is looking for.

Peter Swain (38:48):

I look forward to it.

Joe Downs (38:48):

I'm Joe Downs with me, Peter Sue, thanks for listening. See you next week folks.