AI Prompts to Find Your Secret Sauce Before You Waste More Time

What if AI could save you 34 years of chasing the wrong thing? 

Joe Downs and Peter Swain use Vera Wang’s late career breakthrough and James Clear’s recipe for success to explore how AI can help people discover what they are naturally wired for. 

The conversation breaks down how AI can identify hidden skill patterns, reveal energy draining work that should be delegated, help design a week that supports persistence, and even act as a thought partner when someone realizes their current business or career may not fit them anymore. 

It is a practical episode about using AI not just to work faster, but to stop fighting your own wiring.

Listen For

6:46 How can AI analyze your past jobs, hobbies, and feedback to reveal the skills you were actually wired for?

11:00 What does Peter's 20-questions AI game look like — and how did it surface 196 of his hidden skills?

18:03 How do you use Claude's custom instructions to make AI actively pull you away from work that drains you?

25:20 How can ChatGPT help you build a personal energy menu — and design your week around what fuels you?

32:08 What should you actually do when AI tells you your current business is the wrong fit?

Links Mentioned

Peter's Free AI Business Audit | Claude | ChatGPT  | James Clear — Atomic Habits | Manus 

Email the “Idiots” Joe and Peter

idiots@successfulidiots.com 

Joe Downs

Website | LinkedIn | YouTube | Email Joe:joe@belroseam.com 

Peter Swain

Website | Email | LinkedIn | X

Transcript

Peter Swain (00:00):

The worst thing you can possibly do is do this for 180 days and then quit. Don't let your idea sit in the graveyard of hopes and dreams along with everybody else's. If you're going to do it, do it. And if you're not going to see it through, then don't even stop.

Joe Downs (00:26):

There's a woman whose name is on wedding dresses worn by Mariah Carey, Victoria Beckham, Chelsea Clinton, Kim Kardashian, and countless others. If you've ever been to a wedding in the last 25 years, odds are you've seen her work on the bride. Here's what almost nobody knows about her. She didn't design a single dress until she was 40 years old. Her entire first career was figure skating. She started training when she was six, competed at the US Nationals, had her eye on the Olympic team, but didn't make it. She was devastated, so she pivoted and ended up at Vogue. At 23, she became the youngest fashion editor magazine history. She spent the next 17 years there grinding toward editor-in-chief, but got passed over for Anna Wintour. Devastated again, she went to Ralph Lauren for two years. And then at 39, she got engaged. Went shopping for her own wedding dress, hated everything she saw and sketched her own.

(01:28):

She spent 34 years on this planet from the age of six to the age of 40, being good at things that weren't the thing. And then one afternoon, because she couldn't find a dress she liked, she accidentally stumbled into the career that the entire world knows her for. Most of us don't have 34 years to figure out what we're actually wired for. Luckily, because of AI, we don't need them anymore. I'm Joe Downs. With me is Peter Swain. We're just a couple of successful idiots using AI to simplify our lives and optimize our businesses. Peter, before I give you your true or false question, would you like to guess who I was just talking about?

Peter Swain (02:08):

I have no idea. I've got to say wedding dresses are probably not my forte.

Joe Downs (02:13):

I have a feeling Liz would get it right away.

Peter Swain (02:16):

Go on then.

Joe Downs (02:17):

Vera Wang.

Peter Swain (02:18):

No way.

Joe Downs (02:19):

I didn't know that either.

Peter Swain (02:20):

Well, I do know the name.

Joe Downs (02:21):

Yeah. I didn't know that either. I just would assume she grew up in the fashion industry.

Peter Swain (02:26):

Yeah.

Joe Downs (02:26):

She was almost a figure skater. She was probably a ... I was going to start to throw out figure skating terms and I realized I don't know them. She was a triple axle.

Peter Swain (02:36):

Well, you say almost a figure skater, but if she was gunning for the Olympics, then she was.

Joe Downs (02:42):

I mean Olympic. Sorry. We almost knew her name is what I was trying to say from the Olympics. She might've been a triple axle away from us knowing who she was for a completely different reason.

Peter Swain (02:53):

Pretty good honor.

Joe Downs (02:53):

Wild. Wild. All right. Triple axles. I hope that's right. I almos said triple

Peter Swain (03:00):

Individual. Probably not.

Joe Downs (03:04):

Peter, true or false? The British national sport is technically cricket, but the thing you Brits are actually wired for is forming an orderly cue for absolutely no reason at all.

Peter Swain (03:17):

We did cues last week, man. Come on. I know.

Joe Downs (03:19):

I thought

Peter Swain (03:20):

So. We did cues last week. I was actually recording some social content the other day and I realized the other thing we're really good at is roundabouts.

Joe Downs (03:28):

Roundbouts.

Peter Swain (03:29):

We're amazing at roundabouts. You guys are terrible at roundabouts.

Joe Downs (03:32):

Except in New Jersey. We have roundabouts everywhere in New Jersey. And that stands to reason because it's new Jersey. And they used to drive me nuts as a kid growing up in Pennsylvania, across the river. You go to New Jersey, like, what the hell are these things? But I got to tell you, as an adult, I see the wisdom in it and I appreciate them. I've come around.

Peter Swain (03:56):

Well, mathematically they're the most efficient. It's just when you get stuck behind somebody that doesn't realize that, it's not true anymore very quickly.

Joe Downs (04:04):

That's true. Although made for a great scene in National Lampoons, European vacation with the whole-

Peter Swain (04:10):

They are.

Joe Downs (04:11):

Big Ben kids. Big Ben. There's Big Ben again. All right. Peter, today you are unwittingly going to give our listeners three AI prompts that will tell them exactly what they are wired for. You're going to give them the cheat code for the Veer Wang 34 years. And I think they're going to be excited about that. We're also going to go over a recipe from the guy who wrote Atomic Habits, James Clear. Most people only half read the recipe that is. I'm sure they read the book, but we probably sped through the recipe and we're going to focus on that today. And it ties exactly into theme of the show today. We're going to talk about the why, the work, the actual work that feels easy to us is the business or could be the business that most people can't figure out how to copy. So Peter, you know who James Clear is, right?

(05:03):

Toma Habits, famous author. Yep. 20 million copies sold. All right. Well, I follow him, I'm sure as most of you do. And this is what I came across this week. He wrote a recipe for ingredients. You have the courage to get started. This is for business, right? The courage to get started. The sense to focus on something you're naturally suited for. That's what I want to highlight today. The sense to focus on something you're naturally suited for. The third is persistence to stay in the game long enough for a lucky break to find you. I thought that was a curious way to write that. Stay in the game long enough for a lucky break to find you. And then the fourth is a lot of hard work, so grit and grind. And that's it. That's the recipe. Now, again, all four of those matter, and I don't want to misrepresent what he wrote, but the one I want to pull out for us today, because I think the most underserved and the one people skip the most is the second one, which is focusing on something you're naturally suited for.

(06:03):

And I'll tell you why, because I've watched entrepreneurs, and I've been one of them myself, spent two or three years building a business that's fighting them every single day. And they're doing the thing they thought they should do. I know I was, but not doing the thing we're actually wired for. And it costs you years. And I know I've talked about this a bunch, so let me get rolling on it. Peter, most people have no idea what they're wired for. They're too close to themselves to see it. If someone's sitting there right now thinking, "I don't even know what my natural advantages are. " Where does AI come in here and what does that prompt look like?

Peter Swain (06:46):

Well, AI can find patterns and can find subtext in things that you hadn't even described. So you could literally do something like, you could tell AI your past jobs, projects that you've enjoyed, things that drained you, feedback you've got, what people often ask me for advice on, and ask it to identify three top skillsets withinside that. Now, I wouldn't limit that, and this is something that kind of is what we're talking into. I wouldn't limit that into your professional life. I would tell AI that you love building Legos, or you enjoy playing Fortnite, or you enjoy doing historical reenactments, because that's what we're trying to find. We're trying to find this intersection of your passion and your skills, where things become easy. What's the phrase? Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. It's the same kind of thing. If I could just talk on stage and talk on podcasts about AI, I would.

(07:58):

Everything else that I do is work that I have to do in order to do that work. So that's what we need to discover.

Joe Downs (08:06):

You know what was interesting about what you just said, because I didn't see it going this way is not only ... At first, I went to bird hobbyists. I don't know why. I'm not even one, but I have friends that are birders out or that's where I thought you were going thinking like, "Oh, could you start a business around that because you love it? " And maybe you could steal some skills from the job, whatever you're currently doing that you don't love, that isn't your thing. Maybe you could take that skillset to your hobby. But as you were saying, build Legos, my immediate thought went to, or is the fact that you like and are good at building Legos more of a tell as to how your brain operates. Maybe you have a little bit of an architectural engineering background.

Peter Swain (08:51):

Exactly.

Joe Downs (08:53):

So that's where you're going with that. That's interesting.

Peter Swain (08:54):

100%. So there's a Japanese word that there's what James brought this from and it's called Ikigai and it's a four-piece Venn diagram and the pieces of Ichigai are what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. So it's what you love, what are you good at, what the world needs, and what can you be paid for? And we've talked about this before. We did some math wants to work out how many ballerinas would want to be astronauts. If you wanted to create a course for ballerinas that wanted to be astronauts, there was something like 680 in the intersection. So if you had a $10,000 a year program for ballerinas that wanted to become astronauts, you could have a very successful living.You could easily do $700,000 a year for ballerinas that want to be astronauts. We don't realize how much abundance we live in, how much money there is, how much opportunity there is.

(09:59):

So what people naturally tend to do is they naturally tend to, instead of niching down, they tend to scale up, which makes them more generalist and more broad, which means a couple of things. First of all, they're not as interesting anymore to the people that are in the niche that they want to be in. They've become less interesting to those people. Problem number one. Problem number two, their time is now diffused and diluted doing stuff that isn't at that core of everything, which means problem number three, they can't charge as much.

Joe Downs (10:37):

It's interesting. It's reminding me now of the episode we did recently about the mustard.

Peter Swain (10:41):

Mustard. Yep.

Joe Downs (10:42):

And that was really focused on the entrepreneur who's already got the business and maybe to your point, they started scaling up instead of staying focused on what was their mustard. And here, this is almost like the, what's your mustard if you're the employee. I didn't even make the connection.

Peter Swain (11:00):

I did this exercise for me in December to generate the curriculum for my mastermind. I worked out what are the ... And I took a slightly different approach than we're describing. My approach was, I want to describe, I want you to give me 20, what would I do in this situation and I'm going to answer what I would do and I want you to discern from that what my skillsets and my natural passions are. Because for example, if you say a funnel is underperforming, would you look at the copy, look at the offer, look at the technology? None of those answers are wrong. All of those answers are correct, but it tells you very quickly as to whether you are a copywriter, because if you're going to look at the copy, you're a copywriter. If you're going to look at the funnel speed, you're a technical person.

(11:54):

And if you're going to look at the offer, you're a revenue person. So I'm like, I would definitely look at the offer. For me, if the offer doesn't fit the audience, there's no point doing anything else. It's like, got it. So you're closer to a CRO, chief revenue officer, or a growth officer than you are a CMO or a CTO. Okay, cool. And it's not that I can't do those other jobs, I can, and I have done, but there's not my natural position. And it just asks me questions all day of just like, "Well, what'd you do in this situation? What would you do in this situation?" And at the end of it, it came and said, "We've identified 196 skills." I'm like, "Whoa." And it's like, here's tier one, here's tiers two, but this, these three are your secret sauce.

Joe Downs (12:42):

It's 196 skills for one person.

Peter Swain (12:44):

For me, yeah.

Joe Downs (12:45):

For you. Are you exceptional or obviously- Is everyone going to be ... If you're 196, am I 96?

Peter Swain (12:56):

No, I think everybody's 196, but when you looked right at the end, it's stuff that I can do, but I know that there's people that are better than me.

Joe Downs (13:04):

Gotcha.

Peter Swain (13:04):

And there's some stuff that I don't really enjoy doing, but I can do it. But the top 20 was stuff. And the reason we did it for me was because I'm terrible at preparing my content. As you know, I have three or four live calls a week and I'm really quite bad at sitting down and preparing the content. So what I wanted to do was make it so that I never needed to prepare content by doing stuff that I can just chat about.

Joe Downs (13:32):

You're getting better at reading content that was prepared for you, if that makes you feel any better.

Peter Swain (13:37):

Thank you. I appreciate it. But I now, I've got the mastermind today and I know it's a subject that I can just riff on for 20 hours if I have to.

Joe Downs (13:51):

Yeah. So what you're saying is there are patterns. We all have patterns that we all have skills. How do we tease them out? Because it's so hard to see in yourself what others see in you. What's the prompt look like? How do I get this out of me?

Peter Swain (14:09):

I would say I would point it at James Clear first and say, "Hey, are you aware of James Clear's recipe? It's going to say yes." It's like, "Great. We want to work on point two." And it would go, "Okay." And we'll go, "The way I want to do that- "

Joe Downs (14:23):

There's the cheat code I didn't think of, but go ahead.

Peter Swain (14:25):

Yeah, just point it straight at the thing. And then I enjoy making these things into games. Consistently, I play games. I think humans enjoy life more when we play games. So I would literally tell it, let's play a game. Ask me questions. What would I do in certain scenarios? Give me an A, B, C, D choice. I might give you E other. Ask only one question at a time. Once I've answered that question, ask me another question. Your job is to come up with a set of unique skills, monetizable capabilities that represent the secret source of me.

Joe Downs (15:07):

And I'm assuming part of that prompt would be, if it's the claude, ask me as many questions as you need to ask me to give me the response I'm looking for based on the James Clear recipe. I

Peter Swain (15:21):

Don't ever like an open-ended question like that with AI. I would say ask me 20 and then tell me where the gaps are in your knowledge and I will tell you whether we do another 20 or not.

Joe Downs (15:30):

Okay. All right. All right. There's prompt number one. All right. So let's say someone does this exercise and now they know there are three natural advantages. The mirror image of that is the stuff they should not be spending their time on. Peter, I hear you talk about this with your clients all the time. So the work that burns you out, for instance, how do you use AI to actually get that off your plate and what does that prompt look like? You just referenced it. There's things you can do, but there's things that they aren't things you should do.

Peter Swain (16:05):

Yeah. Running my teams is not something I should do. It is not my natural skillset to handle the emotions of people when I'm paying them. It doesn't compute in my brain that I have to go, "How do you feel about that? " I'm like, "F you.

Joe Downs (16:30):

" I was going to make a joke about feelings.

Peter Swain (16:34):

Yeah. Have you seen the Mad Men? It's the Mad Men thing of, "That's what the money's for. "

Joe Downs (16:40):

Feelings are not your currency.

Peter Swain (16:43):

Well, but in my coaching clients, I don't mind them because in the coaching clients, I'm getting paid. So in that scenario, I'm like, "Okay, so part of my job is to help you get through this and feel the way through this. " But when I'm paying people, I'm like,

(16:58):

"That's what the money's for. " Anyway, however, for a small limited period of time, until AI does take over the world, managing people is important. So that's something I shouldn't do. I can do it, but the amount of preparation I have to put into meetings around it, it literally takes me twice as much time as the meeting because I have to prep to meet people, but I can do 20 hours ad lib on optimizing offer stacks for sales copy for landing pages. But I have to do double the prep time. At half hour meeting, I have to do an hour of prep. Insane. So I shouldn't do it. So it's once you've got this, okay, this is who you are, I would then ask AI, "Okay, based on the above, what do you think I shouldn't do? We're looking for things that I maybe can do, but are going to be an energy drain, not an energy gain.

(18:03):

Based on the above, what do you think it might be? " Go one at once and I'll give you a strongly agree, strongly disagree, like a yes, no out of 10. At this point, you could upload CliftonStrengths or Kobe or any of those things. You could help enrich it that way. So I would ask it to go, "Yeah, give me 20 things that you think I probably shouldn't be doing, yes or no." And I'll go through and tell you, because there'll be something there that it gets wrong. There's going to be some that are just outliers where it goes, "You probably shouldn't do this. " Actually, I love that.

Joe Downs (18:33):

And

Peter Swain (18:34):

It's like, okay, fair enough.

Joe Downs (18:35):

I'm glad you added the Kolbe and CliftonStrengths and print would be another one because I was going to say this recipe you're giving here right now is good, but better would be you're actually doing all this and everything you do work-wise is inside of Claude already. So it already knows and has been learning everything about you.

Peter Swain (18:57):

Depends how long you've used it for.

Joe Downs (18:58):

Okay. So better would be you start adopting it, it knows your work product, it knows what you do every day, it knows your frustrations, it has all your personality tests. It's reading your emails, right? It's connected to your emails. So it understands where you fall short in certain areas and therefore it's even more informed even after you have an interview. And by the way, that probably helps form the interview because it probably could personalize it.

Peter Swain (19:28):

It does. And then once you've got those things, I'd add them to your custom instructions. So if you click on Include, you click on settings personalize. There's a thing called how do you want Claude to react? How do you want Claude to respond? And you can add in there customer instructions. And I have two that I recommend everybody does. My number one is what I call whole life advice, which is no matter what I ask you, never give me advice that is in contradiction to any of my other goals. Your job is to find the perfect answer. So that's number one. And then number two is exactly this of these are my weaknesses. These are the things I shouldn't be doing. I said delegation, one of my ... I forget to delegate. I put it on my plate and I go through this vicious cycle quite regularly.

(20:26):

So AI now says, "Hey, this is probably something ... Is this really something you should be doing?" Every time I say, "I want to do this. " It goes, "Really? Is that something you want to be doing?" I'm like, "Yeah." And he goes, "You sure?" I'm like, "Well," and it goes, "Perhaps this is something that should be on Liz's plate." And you're like, "Good point. Yes, it should be. " So AI actively tries to move me away from stuff that I accidentally forget that I shouldn't be doing.

Joe Downs (20:54):

And which AI is doing that for you? Is that Claude?

Peter Swain (20:58):

Claudia.

Joe Downs (20:59):

Okay. I've noticed that I have Telegram synced with Mannis. So my interface, my user interface is Telegram for daily personal, not just personal business, but my personal assistant type of stuff. And I've noticed that it's a couple mornings you'll say, "This task has been sitting here unfinished for two weeks. Who can help you with this? " I was like, "All right, well, you're learning."

Peter Swain (21:25):

Which is fantastic, right?

Joe Downs (21:26):

You're figuring me out here.

Peter Swain (21:29):

Yeah. At least for the foreseeable future, what we have the ability to do is we all have the ability to be Batman and this thing be robbing for us, but we have the ability to have a sidekick and most of the heroes in the story only become heroes when the sidekick is there. We get to be a hero in our lives, which is pretty cool.

Joe Downs (21:55):

That is pretty cool.

Peter Swain (21:56):

And we can let this thing help us both esque, elevate the things that we're amazing at and also nullify a little bit of the things that we're not so good at.

Joe Downs (22:06):

That's a good analogy, the Batman and Robin. I hadn't thought about that, but that's what it feels like. It honestly does. I'm like, I don't know how I get ... My output is three to four X, maybe more because of it. All right. So two of clearest four ingredients down, what you're wired for and getting the anti-skill work off your plate. Third one in his recipe is persistence. Staying in long enough for the lucky break to find you. Peter, how does AI help with that? Because on the surface, to me, persistence, and I'm probably reading this wrong, I'm sure you're about to tell me, but it just sounds like grit. Sounds like keep grinding, and that's not really a prompt.

Peter Swain (22:47):

Have you heard of the marshmallow test?

Joe Downs (22:49):

I have not. I'm looking forward to it.

Peter Swain (22:52):

You are going to love this one. The marshmallow test is the clearest known indicator. What's the thing you do before you go to college?

Joe Downs (22:59):

SAT.

Peter Swain (23:00):

SATs.

Joe Downs (23:02):

Or ACT.

Peter Swain (23:02):

The marshmallow test is the clearest indicator of SAT score that we have yet, and it's done when kids are four years old. How about that? You can predict a kid's SATs by the age of four.

Joe Downs (23:17):

If I'm four, I'm eating the marshmallow. So what does that mean? I'm dumb.

Peter Swain (23:21):

Yeah, dumb is a strong word. So the marshmallow score is literally you put one marshmallow in front of a kid, and then you say, "Hey, if you don't eat it, I'm going to return with another one soon." And you see how long it takes them to go, "Screw it. I'm eat the marshmallow." I would hate to give my kids this test.

Joe Downs (23:44):

I'm four? I'm eating the marshmallow.

Peter Swain (23:47):

I think it's four. I think it's four or six. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it's not measured in a great period of time. And what it's measuring is willpower, because willpower is actually a ... It's a brain function that is able to suspend the production of dopamine. So I think it's the right prefrontal vetricle contest. Anyway, what I'm trying to get to, willpower and grit are not ... You can't keep pushing your way through it. You do have limits. So what you need to do, which is why I'm going to bring it back to an AI week, is you need to design your week around the things that boost your energy, and you need to have the discipline and consistency to do those things. I've got a lot going on as you know right now, some good stuff, some bad stuff, and it would be very easy to come back to my desk after dropping the kids off and just start working because there's so much that has to be done, both good stuff and bad stuff that need to be looked after.

(24:55):

But this morning, I woke the kids up at 6:30, dropped them off at eight in the morning. I went and played golf, went to a driving range. I went to the shops and bought the component parts for a chimichurri sauce, and I went to the butchers and got a really nice steak, and I went and got my head and I spent three hours looking after myself.

(25:20):

Because if I don't, what will happen is I will work until tonight, and then I'll make some really dumb health choices, guaranteed. I'll eat food I'm not supposed to eat. I'll drink food. I'm not drink stuff I'm not supposed to drink. I'll stay up too late, and then I'll start the next day even more in a scarce mindset. So the way I look after this with AI is a long time ago, I sat and said, "Hey, I want to define energy drain and energy gain. I want to make sure you and I are locked into the things that light me up, and I want a range of them, like a whole menu, a recipe of things that I could do in five minutes, things that take four hours." And it's like, great. And we just sat and literally talked. I think I did this in ChatGPT and I was walking with headphones on.

(26:13):

I'm like, "Yeah, I love playing golf. Hate

(26:17):

Putting." No, because I'm not very good at it and I don't really want to practice it, but whacking a driver on a driving range, yes. Love that. It's like, great. I love playing golf, but I really don't enjoy the walking. I'll do it if it's with a friend, but I'd rather be on a buggy and a cut. It's like, "Okay, why is that important?" I'm like, "Well, because I live in the UK." So for six months of the year, they don't let carts out because it's just muddy. It's like, okay, I love cooking, but I don't love cooking something that takes six hours to prepare. That's not my jam. Okay. So we went through this list and came up with, I think there was like 110 things on the list. And then when I plan my week with AI every Friday, it puts these blocks in and it gives me suggestions.

(27:08):

It's like, maybe you could do this, maybe you could do this, maybe you could do this, maybe you could do this. So I would say that persistence isn't a output of willpower. I'd say it's an output of discipline and consistency of having systems in place to design weeks that can be done so that you want to stay doing this. I'm going to end with one last thing. Without our prefrontal cortex, we are just smart monkeys and our prefrontal cortex can only be cleaned. Our brain can only be cleaned when we're sleeping. The only time you can get toxins out of your brain is when you're asleep, because when it's working, you can't shut it down to clean it. So if you cut your sleep down, you are removing the one thing that makes you you.

(28:12):

I heard a quote once from somebody that was kind of a scientist in this area and said, if he had a choice of being asleep 23 hours and awake one, or awake all the other way around, so asleep for 23 and awake one, or awake for 23 and a sleep one, he would choose to be awake for one hour and sleep for 23, and he believes he would out earn the other person 50 fold over because your brain will see the pattern. AI is amazing, but humans are really amazing and we can see the ... You and I had a conversation two nights ago around difficult conversations that need to happen. When you're awake and refreshed and feeling abundant, you see the conversation. It's just easy and obvious. It's like, "Oh yeah, I need to say this, this, and do this, this, and this. " And when you're tired and down, it can escape you and you end up having a much worse conversation.

(29:13):

So I would say this is a great space for AI to help people design their week in a way that actually propels them forwards and helps them

Joe Downs (29:26):

Succeed.That's interesting. I mean, look, we hear it all the time. You have to reset, rest, recharge, but you get, as an entrepreneur, so lost in it and you push it off and I'm guilty of this, I'm up late doing more because AI lets me do more, but now I'm up later than I used to be and I'm feeling guilty now. My sleep's been compressed lately. So everything you said resonates with me. And it all sounds clichic, but there's scientific evidence behind it But when you're the entrepreneur, you're just trapped. We have this motor that can't stop, but we know we need to, but it's hard to because there's so much to do.

Peter Swain (30:14):

A hundred

Joe Downs (30:14):

Percent. And I think you're right, that's where AI comes in, everything you just said, but including probably to help you understand, no, you need to shut down so that you can be your best tomorrow or next week or whatever it is.

Peter Swain (30:32):

Yeah, I got massively helped on this when I was at the gym once and I enjoy one of the things I'm doing is enjoy lifting heavy weights. And we'd finished one set and he said, "Okay, rest." And I'm like, "You don't mean rest?" And he's like, "Yeah, I do. " I'm like, "You don't. For me, rest is popcorn, sofa, sport." That's not what you mean. You don't mean go and rest. He's like, "What do I mean? I mean, you mean prepare because in 40 seconds time, you're going to ask me to do it again." And he's like, "Yeah." I'm like, "That's prep. You want me to control my breathing, do a lap around the gym, go and get some water and have my mind ready to lift this again." And he's like, "Yeah." I'm like, "That's not rest. That's prep." If you think about it as an entrepreneur, as prep, not rest, you need to prepare your sleep.

(31:29):

Sleep is preparation for what's about to happen. Playing golf is preparation for what's about to happen. It's not rest. It's prep.

Joe Downs (31:40):

I like your take on the playing golf. I'll have to schedule more golf, more prep in my life.

Peter Swain (31:48):

How many great ideas have you had whilst doing a golf round?

Joe Downs (31:51):

Oh, for sure. Yeah.

Peter Swain (31:53):

Because you're allowing another part of your brain to join the party. You go, "Oh."

Joe Downs (31:57):

I just wish those ideas were around what to do with the golf ball and not work.

Peter Swain (32:05):

Well, that's prep.That's where the coach comes in.

Joe Downs (32:08):

That needs prep too. All right. Peter, last one here. And this is the question I know is going to be sitting in somebody's head the whole episode. What if they run all three prompts and the answer that comes back is your current business is the wrong fit. What do they

Peter Swain (32:27):

Do with that? I've got a question for you. And you're not going to agree with my answer, so I'm going to give it anyway.

Joe Downs (32:32):

Wait, question and answer? Do I get

Peter Swain (32:35):

To answer it? Well, the question is, do you wish me to answer that question for someone that is 25 and single or somebody that's 40 and married?

Joe Downs (32:45):

40.

Peter Swain (32:46):

Then you find a path.

Joe Downs (32:48):

Yeah. 25 and single, that's the easy answer. You got time. You got plenty of time.

Peter Swain (32:54):

Yeah, blow it up.

Joe Downs (32:56):

Move back in with your parents and figure it out. 40, like Vera Wang at 39, 40, right? That was a risk she took. So yeah, no, I want you to speak to someone who's in it with something to risk and lose. And your point's going to be, well, AI's coming for your job at some point anyway, and that's fine. Even though you've said it isn't, it's coming for your excuses, but eventually it's coming for the job. So for the 40-year-old married, with a family and real risk on the line, real life risk on the line, what's your response to that?

Peter Swain (33:34):

First of all, this is like a little homage for a second. I could do anything without the support, love of my wife. I'm blessed that she now runs the business with me, but she didn't used to. And when she didn't used to, she was still a hundred percent all in helping me try and do what I wanted to do. So my first question to people is, how much support do you have? Because you need to work out how much risk you can actually take. Do you have an equivalent of this, Joe? I spoke about this yesterday. We have this thing called a tip. So your home refuse, if you have too much soil or wood or metal, is there a place that you go to take it?

Joe Downs (34:22):

Depends on where you live. I live in a township that does have what we call a dump.

Peter Swain (34:27):

Right. Okay. So yeah, we have what we call a tip, which is dump. Whenever I go to these things, which I love doing for some reason, it really fills me up because it's like half an hour in the car. I can't work. I'm decluttering the house. For some reason, I enjoy these things. Sad. But anyway, there's always somebody that joins the car queue, which is normally about 40 minutes, and there's somebody that leaves it after 20 minutes. And I really just want to get out and go, "Why? Why did you waste 20 minutes of your life?" You knew how long this was going to take. It's probably not your first rodeo and you just wasted 20 minutes of your life. Either commit and do the thing or don't. And what we're talking about here reminds me of that, of if you're going to do the thing, work out how much do you actually have to spend?

(35:23):

How much do you have to burn? What are the savings involved? How long do you think it's going to take? And yes, AI can help you with all these questions. How much support do you have? How young are your children? How much is your wife or husband willing to do more? Because you pretending that it's just your sacrifice is untrue. If you're going to keep your full-time job and launch your part-time thing over here as well, there's going to be an impact on holidays, vacations, childcare, schooling. So I think it's, first of all, using a lot of the skills and things we've talked about on the podcast, work out how to have the difficult conversation with your partner. We've done an episode on that. Work out what the burn rate is, how much money you're going to lose as you go through this thing. Work out what your appetite for risk is and see how you can go from where you are to where you want to be, which we did a couple of weeks ago.

Joe Downs (36:17):

So we're all in line for the dump or the tip in life. And the question is, how long do we get out of line? That's what you're saying. I'm kidding.

Peter Swain (36:31):

I'm saying the worst thing you can possibly do is do this for 180 days and then quit. That's what I'm trying to get to. Okay. Because if you need to be realistic, if it's going to take you three years to go from who you are now to where you want to be in a way that ... And I'm not saying it's going to take three years. I'm saying depending on how much risk you're willing to take, it could be three years or it could be six months. Don't do two years and then quit. Don't let your idea sit in the graveyard of hopes and dreams along with everybody else's. If you're going to do it, do it. And if you're not going to see it through, then don't even stop.

Joe Downs (37:09):

Look, to me, it's very obvious and anyone who's listened to this show for a while now, we've given probably from ... I don't know if we've exhausted every angle, but we've given plenty of angles on how to use AI to work out the thing. Today we just talked about how to figure out which one it is, how to tease it out of you. But certainly business plan, risk, how to map it out, how to talk, all that stuff, how to have the tough conversation. We've given the full playbook, or at least most of the playbook. So to me, the actual business part of it, I feel like if you've been listening, you believe us. It's there. It's AI, you're probably already doing it. I think that part is, believe it or not, the easier part to understand. Or when I say that, I mean, it's easier to understand how AI can help with that part.

(38:05):

That part seems very quantifiable. It should to everyone. The part that I think is still a little squishy is the emotional part.

(38:17):

When you realize, one, realizing, and two, when you do realize this thing I've been doing for so long is not my thing. It's not my jam. How does AI help you with the emotional side of that? Because you're fighting your own inner demons at that point. You're fighting, am I a failure because I've been wasting 20 years doing this thing in this industry? And sure, I've climbed the corporate ladder and my salary's gone up over time and I've got my 401k and my option. So it's not a total failure. I might even be very successful at it. I just don't like it or I don't love it. Or it's been providing for my family so that we can do things we do love, but I don't love it. I dread going there. How do I bridge between that feeling, that inner conflict of I don't love it, I don't hate it, I don't love it, it's not my thing, but it is providing all these other things to, "Hey, I'm going to start doing what I love.

(39:27):

I'm going to take these steps. I'm going to ... " I know this is maybe one of the most difficult prompts I'm going to ask you for or at least concepts is how do we- It's

Peter Swain (39:38):

The easiest.

Joe Downs (39:39):

Okay. To me it seems hard, but go ahead. Make it easy.

Peter Swain (39:41):

Yeah. Tell it. Just tell it everything you just said.

Joe Downs (39:45):

I hate when you do simple things. What does that mean?

Peter Swain (39:49):

You would literally just say, "Hey, I've done this exercise and am I a failure because I am walking away from my career, but I dread it, but I see this thing and da, da, da, da, and I want to get started, but the feeling in some ... " Whatever you just said, but all that, I don't identify with that at all because I'd be like, "Wow, this is cool. This is exciting. I've found something new that I can go and conquer."

Joe Downs (40:12):

Yeah, but you're cut from a different cloth that most people are not like

Peter Swain (40:16):

You. 100%. And I agree, which is why I'm saying I can't even repeat it because I wasn't really listening to it. But when I am at points where I'm emotionally challenged, when I'm disappointed of myself or I haven't done something I said I would do or da, da, da, da, da, and I need it reframed, I just tell AI, "Hey, talk me through this. Reframe it for me. " Give you an example, social media. I said to Claude years, probably a whole year ago, "I hate social media." I think it is the lowest common denominator of intelligence and I refuse to upload pictures of what I've eaten and self-grandiose crap that makes me look like I'm some form of superhuman because I can rent a Ferrari for 10 minutes and do 50 pictures before I give it back. And I recognize for my business to succeed that social media needs to be part of my life.

(41:19):

So help me reframe it.

(41:23):

And it came back and said, "You're not wrong, but it's just a stage, which means it is a performance, but you like standing on stages and this is perhaps the only stage that no one can censor you on. " I'm like, "That sounds fun." It's like, oh. It's like, yeah, any other space people can say you can't curse and you can't do this and you can't do that and you can't do this. Here, not only can you do it, the algorithm is going to reward you with people that listen that want you to do it. I'm like, "Yeah, that's different. That's cool." So I might not relate to the emotion that you just described, but I'm a human. I have emotions and I will process a lot of them with AI. Why don't I want to have this conversation with my wife? Why don't I want to have this conversation with my partner?

(42:15):

Why do I feel uneasy about this? And it'll go, "Well, it could be this. " I go, "No, it's not that. It could be this. " It's like, whoa, it is that. Okay, let's work on that.

Joe Downs (42:25):

Yeah. So you're right. Tell it. We started, I think the very first episode, I think we started talking about you have to just start having a conversation with AI.

Peter Swain (42:34):

100%. Well, there's times we want directed output, which is where we started in this conversation, but there's times when we want a thought partner. And if we're after a thought partner, it's not a prompt, it's a conversation.

Joe Downs (42:49):

Yeah, that's a good point. That's a really good point. I find that I'm doing that a lot with Claude, just ideating, just conversations.

Peter Swain (42:56):

Yeah, just riffing.

Joe Downs (42:57):

Yeah, riffing. Asking questions, "Does this make sense? Is this a stupid idea?" It's interesting. All right. Well, thank you, Mr. Clear. This was a fun one. So the recipe, it really is stop fighting your wiring, stop doing the work that drains you, which will allow you to stay visible long enough to catch the lucky breaks and course correct instead of starting over. And for me, Peter, it hit home because when we were teaching storage one way and marketing it to a certain group, we thought we were supposed to be teaching people how to build big portfolios. And I thought that's where the credibility was going to be, and that's where the money was. And turns out the people that were winning from what we were teaching were closing the smaller deals and they were the husband and wife teams. They were solopreneurs, they were entrepreneurs, first time buyers.

(43:53):

That's why we built storagemoguls.ai and thank you for helping us build it, which is launching next week. Thanks to peterswain.com, peterswain.com. I highly recommend it folks. And look, Clear's recipe has four parts, and I'm not suggesting you skip three of them, but the suited four part, the one we really focused on is the one people assume they'll figure out as they go and they won't or they will, but it'll cost them years they didn't need to spend like Vera Wang. And she didn't have AI. Well, now she does, but she didn't have it then. And AI lets you figure it out before you run out of time. So before you've built years into a business that's fighting you, and I'm so grateful that we had AI to help us figure it out quickly. I'm sure Vera ... Well, Vera's doing just fine. All right. Please like and subscribe.

(44:49):

It's the cheapest thing you're going to do all week, folks, that actually helps somebody. And share this with someone you know who's building the wrong business or sitting in the wrong seat. If you're interested in real estate, you want to go deeper, storagemongles.ai for real estate and self-shortage entrepreneurs. And Peter runs a mastermind for entrepreneurs as well. So if you're interested in seeing what he's up to and how his business can help you, you can find him at peter@peterswain.com or just peterswain.com. Keep those emails coming, folks, idiots@successfulidiots.com. I promise you, if we see one that just makes sense to talk about an episode, we will feature it and we again appreciate it. For Peter Swain, I'm Joe Downs. We are your successful idiots. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.