Is Success Costing You Your Life? AI Can Help You Get It Back

What if the real cost of entrepreneurship is not just stress, but the life moments you miss while trying to hold everything together? 

Joe Downs and Peter Swain unpack two challenges that hit entrepreneurs hard: being constantly pulled back into the business and struggling to say no when people need something from you. 

Using a vacation rental manager’s story as the jumping off point, they explore how AI tools like knowledge bases, support systems, and role play prompts can help reclaim time, reduce repetitive work, and make space for what actually matters. 

But this conversation goes deeper than automation. 

It becomes a smart, funny, and surprisingly honest look at boundaries, people pleasing, and whether success really means anything if you are still too distracted to be present for your own life.

If you're a small business owner who's technically "free" but somehow never actually free, this one is going to feel uncomfortably personal.

Listen For

3:39 How can AI automation help small business owners stop answering customer questions 24/7?

7:39 What is Intercom and how does this AI tool handle customer support for service businesses?

18:31 How do you build an AI-powered knowledge base to answer repeat questions automatically?

29:41 Can AI tools help entrepreneurs set better boundaries and protect their personal time?

34:54 How do you use ChatGPT to role-play difficult conversations before they happen?

Links Mentioned

Gemini AI (by Google)

ElevenLabs

Notebook 11

Read.ai

Otter.ai

Fireflies.ai

Nano Banana 2

Claude AI (by Anthropic)

Wey App

Email the “Idiots” Joe and Peter Idiots@successfulidiots.com

Joe Downs

Website | Email | LinkedIn | YouTube

Peter Swain

Website | Email | LinkedIn | X

Transcript

Peter Swain (00:00):

But if we can't set those boundaries, what is the point of playing the game of entrepreneurship if it doesn't actually get you the things that you're going to judge yourself on on that last day? Surely that's the point of why we become entrepreneurs. It's to create legacy, it's to challenge ourselves if we're being honest, because an entrepreneur is one of the only people that actually knows how much they're worth to the world.

Joe Downs (00:33):

Picture this scene. You're in the bleachers because your kid is on the mat and a big wrestling meet. Big match. Where are you? You're on the phone. Not because you want to be, but because a guest at one of your rental properties just texted you about a wifi issue. If you don't respond in the next five minutes, your five star review is going to three or two or worse. You look up, you miss the takedown. That's not a vacation rental manager problem. That's an entrepreneurial problem. You can change the job and the sport or activity, but you know you have a version of that story. Here's a different scene. Someone sends you a text asking for something you really don't want to do. You already know before you've typed a single word of response that you're going to say yes, not because you want to, but because you can already feel their disappointment if you don't, you're going to hear about it.

(01:24):

And that feeling is faster than your logic. So you explain, you apologize, you justify to yourself and you say yes. Folks, that's not a weakness. That's actually what makes you good at relationships. But left unchecked, it costs you your time, your energy, your moments in life, and eventually your patience. And today we're going to get into both. Systems that free you up and the human stuff that fills back in when you do. Peter, today I'm throwing you a left hook of systems and a right hook of humanity. I want you to try not to go down in the first round like Glass Joe or Piston Honda.

Peter Swain (01:58):

Done. Or Tottenham people are about to get relegated if we're going to go to a British reference.

Joe Downs (02:02):

Now, do you know who Glass Joe and Piston Honda are?

Peter Swain (02:05):

I know of them, but don't know them well enough to say I do.

Joe Downs (02:08):

Oh, you definitely know them. You played Mike Tyson punch out. All right. I'm Joe Downs. With me is Peter Swain. We're just a couple of successful idiots who figure out how to use AI to improve our lives and help run our businesses. And that's what we're here to show you today. Quick note, if this is your first show, Peter is British, which means he apologizes before disagreeing with you and somehow you end up thanking him for it. And that's basically what AI does too. All right. Peter, agree, disagree.

Peter Swain (02:34):

So we're saying AI is British. Is that what we just said? Damn it. Love it.

Joe Downs (02:37):

Definitely don't want to give the Brits that credit. All right. Peter, let's give into it.

Peter Swain (02:41):

Well, Geoffrey Hinton is regarded as the godfather of AI and he is British. I thought it was, “AI is British.”.

Joe Downs (02:47):

Google.You're

Peter Swain (02:47):

Welcome.

Joe Downs (02:48):

It's an American company, although they're rushing, whatever. All right. First up, a listener named Cassie who runs a vacation rental company in the Poconos, so Pennsylvania, and wants to watch her kids wrestling meet. That's who I was referring to. We got an email from her without running the show. And then, because these are two awesome topics, why only do two? And we're closing with something I think most of you are going to quietly relate to. It's the conversations you keep meaning to have, but never quite managed to start about boundaries. So Cassie first, Peter got an email. Of course, the dear idiots mailbag here. And Cassie, as I mentioned in the opening here, she runs a vacation rental management company in the Poconos. She's managing like 20 properties, but on top of that, she's got a cleaning company and they clean over 50. So she's busy.

(03:39):

She's already using AI. I just almost just read this email and said, thank you, Cassie, though, because we just kind of did an episode or a segment on this about how to use AI for vacation rentals. But then I kept reading. I realized this isn't what this email's about. Cassie's pain is different. She's already using AI for pricing and automated guest messaging and check-in structures and all that stuff. But you heard my opening story. She wants to be at her kids' game, like present without being on the phone. And the automation she has in place isn't solving it. So Peter, if Cassie came to you tomorrow or today and said, "I want to get off my phone and be present at my kids' game and I want to do it by Friday." Where do you even start?

Peter Swain (04:29):

Turn off your phone. Caveman

Joe Downs (04:35):

Advice here?

Peter Swain (04:38):

Yeah. I mean, I'm finding it hard to think into this, to be honest, because it's reminded me of an occasion where I was living in this area that was kind of very predominantly student housing and it was snowing. And I had decided, I mean, just I think, again, I think people relate to this. I had decided to drive into the office so that I could get snowed in in the office instead of getting snowed in at home. And as I left the house, a group of students asked me if I wanted to join them for a snowball fight. And I said, "I can't. I'm too busy." And I got to the office and literally cried. I was like, "What am I doing with my life?" Having a snowball fight, it's one of those universal joys. It's like throwing a ball for a dog. It's just universally a nice thing to do.

(05:43):

And my default reaction is I can't do that because I'm too busy to drive to an office to snow myself in. And as you said, everyone's got a version of that story where they miss one of life's moments because they feel compelled to do something because the sacrifice of not doing it is too great or perceived to be too great. Perceived. And in this moment, as you said, it's that five star review dropping to a four star review, which legitimately is a problem. It's going to affect you forever. So the answers I would give would be AI is very, very good at two things. One, giving the superficial answer and two, giving the quick answer.

(06:28):

And it's superlatively good at giving all the answers, but maybe some of that stuff might be technically beyond some of the people that are listening at the moment. But the ability for AI to go, "Hey, I've got you. Don't worry. We'll be back with you in 30 minutes or give us an hour, or this is the response time you can expect." And answer the simple questions is very, very simple. Now, for an off the package, off the shelf solution, I'd recommend for Cassie a program called Intercom, I- N-T-E-R-C-O-M. Intercom is an AI enabled customer support system. It supports Facebook Messenger, instant messenger, phone, text, WhatsApp, email, website, pretty much everything. It can hold the context of a customer. So you can say, "This customer bought this thing at this price on these days, and it will understand that. " And you can feed it a knowledge base of content such as what the wifi isn't working, please press this button, wait 15 minutes and press this button again.

(07:39):

And you can also tell it, if you don't know the answer to a question, then put in that holding email that I just said or the holding text back, telling them that we'll come back in an hour. So you can get that up and running in a couple of hours. So Cassie could have that future that she's talking about two, three hours from now.

Joe Downs (07:59):

Okay. So that's Intercom. So anyone who's in a, I guess like a service based business like this, because this I'm guessing would be applicable for the plumber, the electrician, anybody who's-

Peter Swain (08:12):

100%.

Joe Downs (08:13):

... who's got clients who have temporal needs or ... Because what I'm hearing you unpack there is it's also like a help desk. Well, actually it kind of sounds like a clone too, right?

Peter Swain (08:34):

Yeah.

Joe Downs (08:35):

If using your wifi, press this button, wait 15 minutes, press this button, which sounds like a slow wifi, but that sounds like a problem that ... When you go on those chats and you start typing some words and it's like, "Is your problem about this, this or this? " It sounds like that. Is that kind of what you're saying?

Peter Swain (08:56):

So that was what Intercom was. Exactly that. So if you go back three, four years, that thing with the little blue bubble in the corner of the website with the speech mark, that was Intercom and they've introduced an AI layer that now sits on top of that, which is very, very effective. In fact, the first company I ever put it into was a property management company, because when you looked at their metrics, their property managers, they had seven metrics in Manhattan, seven managers, sorry, in Manhattan. And of the seven managers, they spent on average 68% of their time answering menial questions that were just FAQ. There really was nothing to those questions. And my offer to the company was, "What if that 68% of their time could be bought back?" And what they originally wanted to do was let a couple of them go. And what I persuaded them to do was like, "No, don't let anyone go.

(09:54):

Why don't you become a proactive property management company?" They weren't short-term rentals, they were single family and multifamily units. But if I was running a property management company and they had 7,000 doors, I think, what I would look to do personally is I'd be looking to check in with every tenant every six months because lots of people won't actually come forward with the problem. It doesn't mean they don't have a problem. It just means they don't come forward with the problem. So you could turn your property management company from being purely reactive to being proactive and you can take that time and put it in a much, much better place. In Cassie's specific case, that's not really the challenge, but the challenge is how does she watch her son or daughter do wrestling instead of answer crappy texts that really she doesn't have a choice to answer right now.

(10:45):

And a system like Intercom would step into that within minutes.

Joe Downs (10:50):

And so how does that work logistically? And we're getting kind of specific into a service-based industry here, whereas I didn't see it going that direction. I didn't know there's an off-the-shelf product. I thought we were going to talk through more of how you would set it up for yourself using AI, which I'd still want to get to. But since we're solving Cassie's issue, how does she set that up? And maybe this is the answer to both. I would imagine you have to list out all of the FAQs. How do I turn this wifi on? I'm thinking about- It's a good question.

(11:30):

... a house that I have that's a short-term rental, the questions I get are about the gas fireplace that are the same ones every time. How do I turn the heat on the gas powered wall heater in the basement? How do I turn that on? Hold the pilot light and do this. And we've thought about different solutions in the past, but everyone ... It's funny, people say, "Put a QR code here." Well, you know what they do? The first thing they do, they go to the app. They don't try to solve anything they sell. They just ask questions. So I love this solution. I might have to look at it myself, but so how does she set it up? Is it just per house? This is the list of all the crap that goes wrong there? Are the stupid questions we get?

Peter Swain (12:15):

Yeah. So you'd set up a different knowledge base in her, in Cassie's case, you'd set up a different knowledge base per house, and then you would fill it, and then you would tell the agent that it's working in a multi-property environment, and that the first thing it should do before it answers any question is ask where they're currently staying. So you could say, "The wifi's off," and it goes, "I'm sorry to hear that, just for my records, where are you staying right now?" And you say, "123 Main Street," and it goes and uses the address from 123 Main Street. My approach to this, Joe, just so you're aware, is always going to be the same of if it adds to your balance sheet, then I think you should build it. And if it doesn't add to your balance sheet, I think you should buy it or rent it.

(13:04):

So what I mean by that is Cassie is not going to suddenly become an IP company that's going to sell her property management company because she's invented a bunch of technology. And Cassie probably isn't a technologist, and I'm thinking that because if she was, she wouldn't be asking us the question, she'd be fixing the thing herself. So my advice to a non-technology person is never going to be to invent a bunch of technology. It's going to be, who's already solved the problem? Who can we just go and say, "I'll take that. Thanks very much." Now, the other reason I like Intercom for this, and for almost everybody that will listen to this, is that their business model is a per completion. So they don't have a fixed fee, a 500 a month, a 2,000 a month, a 10,000 a month. I think it's 70 cents per completion.

(13:51):

So

Joe Downs (13:51):

Like case resolved?

Peter Swain (13:54):

Yeah. So they get paid when they resolve the case.

Joe Downs (13:57):

So interesting. So you're saying, maybe I have the mental block here. You're saying this could work for everyone because I was of the mindset that, for instance, for somebody responding to a series of, or you get the same email question once a week or twice a week or every day, I was thinking there was some sort of, that was like the angle you would go with it. You're saying this intercom software could be applicable.

Peter Swain (14:28):

The problem is that AI in its kind of native state, the majority of the AI that you and I talk about is reactive AI, it's reactive to you using it. It's not proactive on its own. So as soon as you're talking customer support, you're moving the needle quite dramatically and saying, "This now needs to be able to respond to an incoming request." Now, that is doable in Claude Code. And if we start creating custom agents and et cetera, et cetera, but it's way outside of the purview of what we're doing here. So without something like Intercom, I would ask AI to interview you and say, "Hey, I want to get the, here's everything I've been asked. Here's this email, here's this email, here's this email from the last year." Now interview me to fill in any gaps. I'd create a knowledge base and I'd certainly send them the link to that knowledge base when they checked in.

(15:30):

I'd certainly do that. There's some easy wins there, but because I've stayed in many Airbnb and short-term rentals and some of the best ones, there's a book, like literally 20 pages of what do I do if, what do I do if, what do I do if? And in those cases, I don't call somebody because I don't want to call somebody. I was just, "Oh, I press that button." Okay, good. Understood. But something like Intercom is going to really help propel the use case for any service-based business.

Joe Downs (16:07):

Yeah. No. And as you're saying that, now I'm thinking, is this what you're using in my Storage Muggles community?

Peter Swain (16:15):

No, because the next layer up from Intercom is you start embedding it into the CRM inside GoHighLevel because at GoHighLevel has context on who the customer is, what the customer's doing, so you can deliver a richer experience. But the plug and play solution would be something like Intercom. There's other choices there, but Intercom's the easiest to roll out.

Joe Downs (16:38):

So you just hit on something that maybe that's how I want to answer it for everybody because I didn't want this segment to just be about property managers or service based segment. I want people to understand that it's applies to a lot more. So maybe, and you just kind of opened the door for that. Let me just make a quick pivot here. So folks, I'm currently, I'm in the self-storage business and we educate people in self-storage and I'm building a platform, full disclosure. You already know I'm in Peter's mastermind, but Peter's consulting with me on building this platform, the storage education platform. And the whole goal is to build something that like Cassie doesn't need me or the key members of my team every hour of the day when they have a simple question, but we also don't want to stop them from learning. So it's different.

(17:29):

It's not Airbnb usage. It's more proactive, "Hey, what is the cap rate again? Or what's the median household income minimum I should be looking at?" Just questions about the business as they're learning, right? But we need something that runs and when we're not, or is answering questions when it's nine o'clock at night and maybe I'm at my kids' game and they want to reach out to us. And I thought the whole goal was to build something that doesn't need me and the key members of my team at every hour of the day when people just have simple, basic questions, they're just trying to learn and they're trying to find that storage facility or understand or negotiate or whatever. But there's so many questions, Peter, that are asked over and over and over again. And first it's by Peter, then it's by Doug, then it's by Bill, Tommy, Jane, Sally, whatever, and it's the same questions.

(18:31):

And so we wanted to create, as you know, since you're helping us, a community, a digital community that's AI powered with a knowledge base such that when people ask those questions, there's engagement. And I guess that's what you were just explaining. And what I realized, and Cassie, this is for you too, because I'm going through it now, what I realized is it's more work upfront, but it's not that much more work, meaning the content doesn't change, the answers don't change. In other words, Peter, if you were calling me with a question or emailing me or texting me or messaging me through the platform with a question, the difference between me answering it every time and me answering it one time and never again is recording it in the multiple forms and then allowing the platform to dispense the information as it's asked, right? It's sort of like cloning, I guess you could probably explain it better.

(19:37):

So there's more work of-

Peter Swain (19:38):

Well, let me ask you-

Joe Downs (19:39):

It's a little more work upfront in the, "Hey, I've got to remember to record this and think about it and do this and do that. " But at the end of the day, it's countless savings and countless savings of hours and more importantly for our students, what an incredible benefit for our students that are in this platform because now they're not waiting for these answers. Sorry, go

Peter Swain (20:05):

Ahead. 100%. So British Airways did a study once on their customer support and they worked out that X, that 90% of their questions could be categorized into X amount of categories. Guess what number X was?

Joe Downs (20:25):

10. Five.

Peter Swain (20:29):

12. 12. 12. 90% of their customer support was aimed at 12.

Joe Downs (20:37):

That's not even

Peter Swain (20:38):

The- What if I miss my flight? What is the bag allowance for this flight with this type of seat? 12. And they've rerun this statistic up and down, small businesses, large businesses. It's about the same number. There's 12 questions. Now, in a property management company, there may be 12 questions per property, but how many can there actually be? I've lost my ... I'm just literally physically walking through for a second. How do I park my car? Okay, this is before I get in the door. What if I've lost my key slash what's the key code/how do I get into the lockbox? The lights aren't on the heating, the electricity, the wifi, the next door neighbors are being loud. I mean, we're kind of running out of questions already. Well,

Joe Downs (21:28):

I'll add, so the ones you're missing are amenities. So for me and the Poconos where I have a house too, it's gas fireplace and hot tub.

Peter Swain (21:36):

Okay.

Joe Downs (21:37):

Right? There's questions about those too. But you're right, you've nailed all the rest. Those are the questions you get. 100%.

Peter Swain (21:45):

Now let's talk about your ... What you just said is absolutely profound of the people that tend to succeed in AI naturally succeed are people that have an engineering background. Because when I speak to people that have done manufacturing, for example, they understand that they're going to spend tens of thousands of hours on the mold, on the CNC molding, and they're going to go through multiple variations to create the mold. But once they've created the mold, they hit the green button on the production line, and now they've got a million copies of the thing, and now they're multimillionaires whilst creatives are still scrambling around editing slide six. AI is a very manufacturing engineering led process of you're going to do all the work upfront for no return whatsoever. Let's be honest, zero. But once you've done that work, you are never going to have to do it again, and it doesn't matter how much you scale.

(22:55):

This is, to me, the core thing, because if you do that work, whether you have one tenant a day or three tenants a week, or you're booked 365 days of the year, you're never going to have to touch this problem again. It doesn't exist in your business. And turning human scale problems into zero scale problems means that all of your energy can go elsewhere. Maybe it's going to watching your Sunday wrestling, or maybe it's going to buying another three properties. Either way, they're infinitely more interesting than handling the dross and crap that let's also be honest, makes you hate your customers.

Joe Downs (23:40):

So true. So true.

Peter Swain (23:42):

Like by inquiry 11 on a Saturday night, you're like, F my life. Why am I doing this?

Joe Downs (23:49):

I love the mold analogy because it's so true in most senses. I have to say, this is even easier than that though, because it's already something you're doing. You just have to record it. So it's not building a whole mold from scratch. It's just the next time you go to answer those questions, write them down or record yourself answering them or copy and- Or

Peter Swain (24:16):

Copy email. ... copy and paste

Joe Downs (24:18):

It out of Airbnb app or whatever. Copy and paste it and start building a database that for each property in this case, that's how-

Peter Swain (24:27):

You've got a team, pay them $5 for each new entry they put on the list and watch it be finished in a day.

Joe Downs (24:33):

Yeah. And that was ... Cassie, you're listening. I know because you already told me you listen to every episode. So thank you for that, by the way. But the same thought process is exactly how I approach building storagemoguls.ai. And Peter, I said, is literally my consultant on it and we're using AI to educate students in completely new ways. There's like how-to guides, videos, AI tools that answer questions, but we're still there. We're still there for the questions that it can't answer in. Cassie could build her guess and what she could do basically for each property, what we're doing for students at storagemuggles.ai. By the way, if you've ever been curious about self-storage or real estate entrepreneurship, you should probably check out storagemuggles.ai. And you can see what Peter builds. It's awesome. We're launching in the next couple of weeks, by the way. So depending on when you're listening to this, it's either right around the corner or already humming.

(25:36):

Cassie, thanks for the email. I think a lot of people just heard their own problem described by somebody else, right? It's just change the details. We all have this problem and that's always clarifying. So homework for everyone, make a list of the 20 most common questions or situation you're answering in your business. And if you're in the service-based business, maybe check out Intercom. If not, drop them in ChatGPT or whatever AI tool you're using and start building yourself kind of a first responder playbook. Now, Peter, I opened this whole segment with the question, if Cassie came to you for a solution by Friday, but here's the thing, she actually could. So how do people find you? I'm not ashamed to give you a quick plug. I just gave myself one. Well,

Peter Swain (26:27):

Thank you.

Joe Downs (26:28):

I'm a proud member of your mastermind. I'll vouch for it and I want people to know how to reach you, whether you're just looking to take what you're listening to on this podcast and then take it to the next level in a mastermind, or if you actually have projects and you want to do an audit of your business, I think you're offering free audits, Peter of ...

Peter Swain (26:48):

Yeah, I was going to suggest that to be the best way for people to kind of engage and first touch it would be to use audit.peterswain.com, which we'll put in the show notes. It's like a five-minute process. You talk about your business and it will decide, or my brain is in the AI that will help decide where you should be looking to put AI, what you could expect to achieve, what kind of wins you could get, what would work for you, what wouldn't work for you. And then you can reach out to us on the back of that and have a conversation, see if we can help. Yeah. So thank you. Yeah, it's audit.peterswain.com.

Joe Downs (27:23):

Love it. And I'm not only the president of the Hair Club, I'm also a member, if you remember that commercial. So I can vouch for-

Peter Swain (27:33):

I do. That one I do. Thank you.

Joe Downs (27:35):

I shouldn't be making jokes. It's jokes about Hair Club.

Peter Swain (27:39):

It's a fascinating time because the answers to what we just said to Cassie would've been very, very different a year ago, very different two years ago. Yeah. This thing moves so quickly that almost my full-time job is trying to keep up with what's changing.

Joe Downs (27:52):

Yeah. It's to the point where you know how you always have the, when you sign up for something today, it's pay monthly is more expensive than pay it all annually. I used to buy it annually. Now I'm going back to monthly,

Peter Swain (28:06):

Because

Joe Downs (28:06):

I don't know if I'm going to be using this service in six months. It might be different.

Peter Swain (28:10):

It is. Everything about AI now is like, well, ChatGPT is about to release ChatGPT 5.4 in the next couple of months and it's looking pretty strong as to what it can do. We're bad. So my anti-ChatGPT ramp might disappear. And

Joe Downs (28:28):

Claude shut down the other day. We didn't even talk about that and we're not going to have time because I got to get to the second story from the top of the show, the message you already know you're going to say yes to before you've typed a single word. So IPEC Williamson is an executive coach who posted something I saw on LinkedIn about exactly that. Why people who are really caring, really tuned in are often the ones who can't say no. And it's because they can already feel the other person's reaction before it even happens. I'm guilty as charged here. So they overexplain, they apologize, they justify, and then eventually their time goes first, then their energy and then their mood. And then I feel like as I say these words out loud, I live them. Is it just anybody else? Is it just me?

(29:16):

IPEC, I think I was meant to read your post. Peter, where does AI actually fit into something this personal? Because on the surface, it sounds ridiculous that AI or some chat box could fix this people pleasing problem. But I actually don't, I don't think it's ridiculous. I have my own theories, but I want to hear you make the case for me here.

Peter Swain (29:41):

Okay. Well, I'm going to say two things. So first of all, this isn't an AI answer, but it was my interesting answer. I don't think, Joe, you've never done this, which says something about you. I have a $500 an hour dog walk that people can buy from me. It's five 500 dollars, you get to walk my dog with me. So I'm not on Zoom, I'm not on screen, I can't review documents. It's $500. It's non-cancelable. It's non-movable. And my team have been trained to send that to people that ask for something they're not allowed.

Joe Downs (30:15):

Wait a second. To ask for something they're not allowed, what does that

Peter Swain (30:18):

Mean? So if people ask for like, I want 30 minutes of Pete's time to run this idea past him, they get sent a link to click here, buy now $500.

Joe Downs (30:27):

Is it a 30 minute dog walk?

Peter Swain (30:29):

It's scheduled at 45, but it normally goes an hour.

Joe Downs (30:33):

What kind of dog do you

Peter Swain (30:33):

Have? No. A German Shepherd. I'm going

Joe Downs (30:37):

To get to the most important parts there. Is there a discount for who picks up the poop or if-

Peter Swain (30:44):

No, you're on a call with me. You're not actually with me because

Joe Downs (30:47):

I'm in

Peter Swain (30:47):

The cab.

Joe Downs (30:48):

I'm not walking

Peter Swain (30:49):

With

Joe Downs (30:49):

You.

Peter Swain (30:50):

It's just a call. Oh,

Joe Downs (30:51):

Okay.

Peter Swain (30:51):

Okay. But people pay it.

(30:56):

Okay. Quite regularly. Two or three times a week, people pay it. It's fantastic. It's the easiest $500 an hour I ever earned because I have to walk the dog anyway. So it's like, well, I might as well talk to somebody whilst I walk the dog. Number one. Number two is some of the most productive calls I do because people don't go, "Hey, how are you? How are the kids?" They go, "Right, this is what I need." At $500 to just have a call for 45 minutes, they get straight to the problem. And number three, it's the best filtration system I've ever designed. Because if people reply saying, "No, I was looking to connect for free." Well, no, we've already established that that doesn't work. And some people have got upset about it and I've gone, "Were you really thinking I was going to give you the time for free?" I just want to check, Joe.

(31:40):

What you were asking was me to take time away from my kids and give it to you. And you thought that I'd do that for free?

Joe Downs (31:47):

All right. So what you're demonstrating is that that article that IPEC Williamson wrote was not for you because this is not a problem for you. No,

Peter Swain (31:56):

It used to be a problem for me. So for those

Joe Downs (31:57):

Of us who it is a problem for.

Peter Swain (31:59):

What I'm offering everybody is if you don't give people a way to do the thing they want to do, they're going to do it in a way that you don't want them to do it. You and I had a conversation about the community and where I've put the water cooler channel in this community, which is where all of the banal chat conversation goes. Yes. I'm not that person. You're not that person. But if you don't give people that are that person a place to play, then it goes into the places you don't want it to be. I don't like saying no to people, so I like being able to say yes to people. So I'm giving them the ability to say yes on terms that I'm happy with.

Joe Downs (32:44):

I love it.

Peter Swain (32:45):

See what I mean?

Joe Downs (32:45):

Yeah. All right. So that's the Peter Swain answer.

Peter Swain (32:49):

How- Now let me do the AI answer.

Joe Downs (32:51):

Well, because, and I don't want to disqualify what you said. I think that's actually brilliant, but there are people that have clients that are already abused. It's the, let's meet at 10 o'clock at night client because it works for me and it works for them. Now I got to make it work for me when that's not what I want to be doing. So what's the first step in getting reclaiming that? So I can start tomorrow with new clients and the $500 dog walk. I don't even have a dog, but I'll pretend I am. But how do I kill the 10 o'clock, the current abuser when I'm the giver, I'm the one that can't say no?

Peter Swain (33:34):

See, there's so many answers to this question because one of the problems with AI is AI is going to accelerate whoever you are and whatever you do. So if you're running an unsustainable, crappy business or you have unsustainable, crappy personal habits, AI is actually going to accelerate those for you. So you've got to be really careful with how you deploy kryptonite is kryptonite. So we've got to be quite careful on how we deploy these things. So I still want to kind of root back in the answer of saying, we'll have two booking links, one for your existing clients, one that's free and it's set to these hours and one that's paid and it's set to these hours. People say often, Joe, they don't want to trade their time for money. I don't believe that that's true. I think they just don't like the exchange rate by which they're exchanging their time for money.

(34:25):

You just said you don't want to meet at 10 o'clock at night. Okay. What if it was $100,000 for 10 minutes?

Joe Downs (34:31):

Yeah, I'd probably do it.

Peter Swain (34:32):

Yeah, you'd probably do it. And you'd probably be quite grateful. It's not that people don't want to do something, it's that they're not valuing their time enough to charge for it at a rate that they're happy charging for it. But I will answer the question you're trying to get me to answer. If I was-

Joe Downs (34:46):

Well, answer both of those. So answer that and then answer, how do I use AI to get the rate that I would do it at 10 o'clock at night?

Peter Swain (34:54):

Yeah. So okay. First thing is I would get AI to role play the other side of the conversation because most people are more scared of the phantom of the thing than the thing itself. The people you're talking about are highly empathetic and when they say, "I know they'll be disappointed." No, you don't. You do not know that. That is not a fact. That is your thought about the thing. You think that they will based on the things you've put in your head. You can't know for sure how somebody else is going to react to you.

Joe Downs (35:27):

Yeah, probably convince myself. Yeah.

Peter Swain (35:30):

So yeah, but what happens when you convince yourself is it gets bigger and bigger and bigger in your head. So one way to get around that is to tell AI, "I'm avoiding saying this thing to this person. I want you to role play all of the alternate scenarios that could come when this happens to de- energize them," whatever the right word is, right, to desensitize them. One of the things that I was taught by my coach when I was going through some really gnarly stuff with investments was like, "You're going to hear a lot of stuff said to you, so I want you to write them all down in advance. I want you to have heard what's going to be said before you hear it, so that when you do hear it, if you do hear it, it doesn't have the energy behind it anymore." So I would advise that.

(36:20):

I'd say if somebody wants to say, "I'm sorry, I'm looking to respect my health and my boundaries right now around how I show up, so I'm not free then. I would love to talk then or then or then." Well, what responses could you get? You could get, "That's really disappointing, but it has to be 10 o'clock." I mean, really, how bad is it going to be? The truth is it's the phantom that lives in our head that's the problem, not the actual truth of it.

Joe Downs (36:49):

It's true. And then back to your other point, if you're doing it, you must think that client's worth it, meaning the exchange rate that you talked about. 100%.

Peter Swain (37:01):

You

Joe Downs (37:01):

Must think it's worth

Peter Swain (37:02):

It. You and I have spoken at midnight regularly. Your

Joe Downs (37:08):

Time.

Peter Swain (37:09):

Because I value on my time, because I value what we're doing together and I see the long-term engagement and it's also in the mix, you're not an asshole. So if we are on the call and at 12:15, I'd be like, "John, I'm done." You'd be like, "Shit." Sorry, sorry for the ... No. You'd be like, "Yeah, no issues at all. Sorry, we went so late. Off you go. " Whereas some people, if I was on that call, I couldn't leave that call without them being offended. So with those people, I would not extend. I would not go beyond 10 o'clock. My team has a list of who I will take a meeting between 10 and midnight and who I won't. And there are people that are not just worth it, but they're people that I don't find energetically draining. They're people that I find energetically gaining.

(37:56):

Well,

Joe Downs (37:56):

That's part of your exchange rate too, right? Right. There's the monetary exchange.

Peter Swain (38:03):

Human

Joe Downs (38:03):

Connection exchange.

Peter Swain (38:05):

There's some people who don't pay me a penny that I'd take a call from at 11 o'clock at night. Yeah. So I really hope people put their head around this because the more AI infiltrates and optimizes and makes efficient, the more value human efficiency is human connection is going to have. So putting the right price tag on that for your own ... I'm going to sound really philosophical. We're all going to leave this world at some point and when we do is the only time we're going to get to draw up the scorecard of did we win or lose at the game that we were playing. And most people's game factors in family, friends, health, travel, et cetera. It doesn't factor in resetting the wifi in four minutes for the guy in the Poconos. Yeah. I understand why it has to happen. I get it.

(38:58):

I'm not ... I do it, you do it, we all do it. But if we can't set those boundaries, what is the point of playing the game of entrepreneurship if it doesn't actually get you the things that you're going to judge yourself on that last day? Surely that's the point of why we become entrepreneurs. It's to create legacy. It's to challenge ourselves if we're being honest, because an entrepreneur is one of the only people that actually knows how much they're worth to the world because the bank tells you, but it's also to give ourselves the ability to have kids and to travel and have meaningful relationships and et cetera. So I feel for people in that situation quite deeply because I look back at my history at the mistakes I made and I feel like a bit of a simple term. The answer is just don't do it.

(39:50):

I mean, it really is. The answer is just say no, because they're not really going to be that disappointed. They'll be okay.

Joe Downs (39:56):

You were 100% right. And some people need to mentally get themselves in that position and then they're not there yet. And that's why I know AI can coach you through it. Right. And I want to get moving here because I don't want the show to be too long, but I think I'm going to give a low hanging fruit here, Peter, because I think I already know the answer because when I read that, I was really thinking about the person that just really can't say no. And we all know some of those folks in our lives. And to some extent, it is us depending on who the person is. And so I think one of the low hanging fruits here is I know you can have a conversation with AI and tell it, "Hey, be this person that's hard for me to say no to, and let me role play with you.

(40:48):

" You kind of touched on it earlier, but I want to drive home that point. You could actually role play this. You could describe the situation and you could ask AI to be the character, the real person, but as a character, and tell them they're this or that or whatever, and then role play it with them. And to your point, when you said earlier, write down those hard things that people are going to say to you so it takes the shock value away and the energy out of it. I think role playing it with AI would be huge so that you

Peter Swain (41:19):

Find

Joe Downs (41:20):

Yourself in that situation. And then, and by the way, even after that, it doesn't go well, it doesn't go the way you would hope that that person just doesn't understand that 10 o'clock at night on a Friday night is not respecting boundaries. Maybe you've got some decisions to make. Maybe to answer your question earlier, Peter, or you just posed, when we leave this earth and we're answering that question, is that really one of the things we want to be answering?

Peter Swain (41:48):

I'll tell you a very quick, very fun story. I was working with a client once who used to curse me out in front of a 300 person office, and I'm talking cursing that I find offensive, which is quite high. And I took him to one side once, I went, "Spence, can I ask..." I was a consultant. I'm like, "Can I ask a favor?" He's like, "Can we drop some of the language? I'm finding this is really pushing a bit too far." And he added five expletives in a row in his answer to me. It was basically no. So I said to a friend, "I can't believe you did this da, da, da, da, da." And my friend turned around and said, "Just charge him." He's like, "What?" I'm like, "Charge him 200 bucks every time for every curse word. Just put it on the invoice.

(42:31):

You have an expenses claim, just put it on the invoice." Six months we did that for, and his accounting team came back and he asked me, "What was this? It was $22,000." And I'm like, "Oh, every time you curse me out, I decided to clip you 200 bucks because then I didn't care." That was good. Every time you said it, it just brought a smile to my face. That's a

Joe Downs (42:51):

Hell of a swear jar.

Peter Swain (42:54):

And he told me to F off.

Joe Downs (43:03):

IPEC, thank you so much for that post. I really head home, and I hope folks that you found it engaging and interesting as well, and you should follow her, IPEC Williamson. Folks, if you found today's show worthwhile, please give us a like and share this with a friend. I think we got into some deep stuff here, which I really enjoyed. Unsubscribing Never Hurts either, makes for nice reminders for when the show releases. We appreciate you listening and your dear idiots emails. Please keep them coming to idiots@successfulidiots.com. That's idiots@successfulidiots.com. For Peter Swain, I'm Joe Downs. We are your successful idiots. Thanks for listening and see you next week.