The $21 Billion Secret AI Can Now Help You Replicate

Ever wonder why some people seem to own their niche while you're still chasing the next shiny strategy? 

Joe Downs and Peter Swain dig into the story of Bob Knakal, a commercial real estate broker who started broke and unknown at 23, picked six blocks in New York City, and turned relentless unglamorous consistency into $21 billion in transactions over 40 years. 

His three-pillar formula of specialization, consistency, and proof of track record still holds up today. 

The twist? AI makes the 40-year grind optional. 

From Claude routines that scan hundreds of news sources every morning to building your elevator pitch from scattered emails and old Drive files, this episode shows you exactly how to use AI automation and AI workflows to compress decades into months. 

If you've been looking for the shortcut, this is it. Just not the one you were expecting.

Listen For

5:05 Bob Knakal built $21 billion on one idea. What was it?

10:16 Does AI actually change the formula or just speed it up?

17:25 How do you become the most informed person in your niche without trying?

24:40 Why is willpower killing your business consistency?

36:29 Can AI build your 30-second pitch from emails you forgot you sent?

Links Mentioned

Peter's Free AI Business Audit | Storagemoguls.ai | Claude | ChatGPT

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

Joe Downs (00:00):

I think the road to business failures pave with burned out good intentions. I think the solution's probably building some sort of system that doesn't get burned out. He was 23 years old and completely broke. No one knew his name. He had no connections and no edge. He picked one neighborhood in New York City. That's it. Six square blocks. He wrote down every building, every owner, every sale he could find. Then he knocked on doors day after day and introduced himself to people who had no idea who he was and had no reason to care either. They didn't care. Not at first, but he came back and he came back again every year, every building, the same six blocks. While other guys were chasing the next hot neighborhood, the next big deal, the next shortcut, he was still there on the same blocks. Same owners, same relentless, unglamorous routine.

(01:06):

40 years later, he had sold more than 2,200 properties, more than $21 billion in transactions in one of the most competitive real estate markets on the planet. And when someone finally asked his secret, his response, there isn't one. I'm Joe Downs, with me's Peter Swain. We're just a couple of successful idiots using AI to simplify our lives and optimize our businesses. Peter, I'm not going to ask you if you know who it is because you won't. But I am going to ask you.

Peter Swain (01:38):

Unless I cheat in and use Google whilst you're talking, but-

Joe Downs (01:41):

Did you?

Peter Swain (01:42):

No. And

Joe Downs (01:43):

First of all, why would you use Google? Wouldn't you just use AI?

Peter Swain (01:48):

Well, that's a great question. We can actually answer that legitimately. Because Google's time to respond is instant and claudes two seconds and I would've needed to get it done before you asked the question.

Joe Downs (02:01):

Gemini. All right.

Peter Swain (02:03):

Gemini. New version of Gemini, big week for Gemini.

Joe Downs (02:06):

Oh, all right. I hadn't thought to ask you that, but we can sprinkle that in. But not before we get to our true or false. So Peter, true or false? The British approach to becoming a domain expert is to read every book ever written on the subject, form a very strong opinion, and then absolutely refuse to share it unless asked twice.

Peter Swain (02:30):

Well, that's old school. The new school is go on Twitter, Facebook, or X, download some footage from four years ago and make it look like it's a bigger deal than it is. But traditionally speaking, you're completely right.

Joe Downs (02:41):

Hi, I'm going to have to have a word with Claude about upgrading its British humor here, giving me old, true or false. Peter, today I'm going to give you or give our listeners something that runs completely counter to everything the internet AI is trying to sell them.

Peter Swain (03:00):

Ooh.

Joe Downs (03:00):

No hack, no shortcut, no secret formula. Well, sort of. You're actually going to provide the secret formula here. But first to do that, we need to unpack what actually works and how AI can help you build it faster than the people who figured out how to do it the hard way. And I can't believe I'm going to try this. Bob Knakal, who was the commercial real estate broker.

Peter Swain (03:27):

You know that you can get the researchers that do this for us to get people with names you can pronounce, right?

Joe Downs (03:34):

Well, look, Bob's story is one I want to talk about and we can't control

Peter Swain (03:40):

The names. Names in the show notes, guys.

Joe Downs (03:43):

Look, it's this one admittedly. It's K-N-A-K-A-L. All right.

Peter Swain (03:49):

Knakal.

Joe Downs (03:51):

I wanted to say Knakal, maybe it's Knakal.

Peter Swain (03:53):

Bobby K. Okay. So Bobby K.

Joe Downs (03:54):

Bobby K. It was probably called Bobby K in the streets of Brooklyn and I think that's where it was. Anyway, once we unpack what actually works, what Bobby K accomplished over a lifetime, then we can unpack how AI can help people today basically replicate what he did almost. He can't completely do it, but it can certainly give you the headstart and that's what I want you to help us unpack here. So here's the setup. So I came across something that was written about Bobby K this week and if you don't know him and I don't expect anybody would. No offense, Bobby K. I hope you listen to this someday, but I think you'd understand nobody knows who you are unless we're in that tight knit community up in New York. But he sold more than 2,200 properties, over $21 billion in New York City commercial real estate.

(04:49):

I bet you Donald Trump knows who he is. That's over a career of 40 years, right? That's a number that almost doesn't make sense. And I said it in the opening, that's the world's most competitive real estate market, right?

Peter Swain (05:03):

100%. Half a billion a year.

Joe Downs (05:05):

So what he did is just incredible. And he wrote something this week that I think is going to land differently depending on where you are in business. He said that the biggest misconception in commercial real estate brokerage, and this applies to anything, is that success comes from some secret strategy or a perfect script or a magic lead source. And he said after more than four decades, he said, "It's actually very simple. It's not easy but simple. The brokers who separate themselves are the ones willing to do the basic things consistently for a very long time while everyone else loses focus or quits." We touched on this a little bit several episodes ago in a very different way. This is a completely different angle and one I really like. Do you remember the mustard episode we did, your mustard business? This was his mustard, these six blocks.

(06:02):

And look, I've run into this in self-storage. Every person I talk to that finds out about self-storage, they want to know what's the heck or the new student, what's the secret, what's the hack? And they want the thing that's going to shortcut the time. And the thing Bob is describing is this relentlessness, this boring, consistent specialization. That's the thing that's the hardest to compete with once it's built. But building it takes the time. It took them, probably didn't take them 40 years, but it probably took them a good 10 to 20 and therein lies the problem for most people, which is why I think a lot of people give up or quit or pivot or add things that aren't their mustard business. But today, Peter, I think AI can actually accelerate the compounding that took Bob Bobby K 40 years because I think he's right.

(06:56):

I think what he has become because of what he did is what everyone strives to become, but I also think he's wrong or at least the line of thinking that we would have agreed with a few years ago pre AI. The line of thinking that suggests the only way to do that is time and consistency and dedication the way Bob did it is if not wrong, certainly made obsolete or partially obsolete by AI. And so Peter, your job today as you tilt your head in a way I've never seen before, you must be really deep in thought. Your job is to prove me right and now I'm concerned that you're not going to. So should you accept this challenge?

Peter Swain (07:43):

Well, okay. So I'm going to half accept it because to me, this is one of the reasons that most people like hiring veterans and it's the reason that collegiate sports is so important.

Joe Downs (07:59):

Interesting. Okay.

Peter Swain (08:00):

Because we spoke about this before, I was a pretty high level rugby player. I had a national tryout. I didn't make it, but I was on the verge of that level of capability and we only drilled the basics. That was it. At the level of almost national team and the thing we drilled was basics. Basics, basics, basics. And everybody at our level, this wasn't that we were different, was the same. And anytime I've run into anyone that's a D1 type athlete, there isn't a secret sauce. They just do the things better than everybody else because they just drill them and drill them and drill them and drill them. And the other thing you reminded me of is, have you heard the quote from Will Smith on the treadmill? No. It's one of my favorite pop quiz quotes. He says, "If you and I get on a treadmill at the same time, there are only two options.

(09:07):

You're going to quit or I'm going to die because you may be smarter than me, you may be a better actor than me, you better be maybe sexier than me, but you're not going to outwork me.

Joe Downs (09:21):

"

Peter Swain (09:21):

Because that's the one thing that he can control.

Joe Downs (09:28):

He was a Philly guy. That's a Kobe Bryant, Philly guy. I mean, this is-

Peter Swain (09:31):

Yeah. Okay.

Joe Downs (09:33):

Rocky-

Peter Swain (09:33):

So you know a better origin, but it's the same Prince

Joe Downs (09:36):

Work. Rocky four, Peter.

Peter Swain (09:38):

You're never going to outwork B. And I think that that's something that the armed services, the armed forces do really well. I think it's something that sports does really well of like you don't need advanced stuff. You just need to do the basic stuff really, really well. And I think it's the same in business. So the reason I look so deep in thought is I don't think we're going to prove him wrong. I think he's still right. I don't think AI changes that equation. It just replaces the equation.

Joe Downs (10:16):

Well, so I might have misled you in my setup there. I didn't say we were going to prove him wrong on everything. What I was saying, there's three basic things, the three components to this, and I want to break him down one by one here. Where I think AI changes the game is the time. I agree. I 100% agree, and we're going to talk about this in a second, the basics be the dedicated, the specialization, right? Specialization in basic, something basic, right? You can specialize in something basic. 100% agree on that. Although I think AI can help and that's what I want you to unpack here. Where I think the biggest difference is that the biggest delta, the gap that AI can close is the 40 years.

Peter Swain (11:15):

A hundred percent.

Joe Downs (11:17):

That's the part where I said, I think we're going to ... I agree with him, but I think we can prove him wrong on one thing that if, you probably don't remember what I said, was a few years ago we would have all agreed with everything you said. Today, I think I agree with two out of the three things he said.

Peter Swain (11:38):

Well, I think being an entrepreneur is really an exercise in understanding leverage. It's how do I leverage people? How do I leverage technology? How do I leverage money? Well said. I mean, that's all it's about because the aim is to not have a job. The aim is to turn your capabilities, abilities, and skills into monetary return at a multiple that's higher than what you can get done in one hour. So the question is, well, where's my leverage? So Bobby K could have done this in 10 years, not 40, by employing 20 people. He might not have been able to financially do that, but he could have had somebody standing on every block, every day, knowing traffic patterns, looking at what restaurants are coming up, knowing how many people are walking in the doors of this restaurant versus that restaurant. So you get my point. He could gather that data quicker than he probably did.

(12:46):

Not saying he could afford it. I'm not saying it would have been a good idea. But it was possible. But the leverage would have been there. And I don't want to take anything from away from what he did because I think it's a lesson everybody should learn, but what he did was this relentless focus and his point of leverage was his relentless focus.

Joe Downs (13:07):

Yes. Well, let's get into that.

Peter Swain (13:10):

And it's insane. I've been guilty of this in my own business because I think as you start something new out, normally you have to be less focused. You're throwing more against the wall trying to work out who you are, what it is you do, who your customer is. But you've heard the phrase, "What gets you here will not get you there." That's where we're at as a company right now. And we're in the largest growth sector. I think everybody agree in the world of helping people understand AI. So the new opportunities that come my way are like 10 every day. I've been internally focusing with a team of focus, focus, focus. What do we do? Let's not do that. Let's not do that. Let's not do that. Let's just do this. And let's try and get really good at just doing this.

Joe Downs (14:00):

So you're actually, I didn't even get to set it up, but you're nailing point number one and I'm just going to repeat what you said and then ask you where AI comes at. So point number one was become a specialist. And that's what he did. His edge was knowing every building, every owner, every transaction in his territory better than anyone else on the planet.

(14:19):

And that knowledge for him took decades to accumulate manually. And you just were alluding to this. He could have done that faster. If money was no issue, he could have done that by hiring a team of 20, 30, 40, 50 people, whatever, working around the clock to accumulate that data. He did it himself walking the same streets, knocking on the same doors, tracking the same data year after year. Most people don't have 40 years though, and that's my points. But the goal to your point is the same to become the undisputed authority, the specialist, the specific niche for him in those six blocks at first, for anyone else, your niche, your territory, whatever the person who knows more about that slice of the market than anyone else. So we agree he's right there.That's one of the key pillars. There's three pillars to that's one of them.

(15:12):

But how can you use AI to gain that kind of deep specialization, but not in 40 years rather in 90 days or six months? That's what I'm trying to

Peter Swain (15:23):

Get to. From my own space, I have an AI process that kicks off every morning that reads on last count. It reads 460 RSS feeds and email newsletters every day on AI and comes back and tells me what is of interest to my audience. Because one of the key roles that I offer people like yourself and other people in my mastermind of my programs is I'm a discernment filter of like, "Don't look at this yet. It's not ready yet. It's still in hype stage or this is really sexy but it's not actually going to drive your business forwards. This thing over here, this is really important." So every day this thing runs and it reads RSS feeds and emails and goes, "Hey, Pete, you should be aware of this, this and this. " And people are always like, "Wow, how do you know so much about the space?" I'm like, "Because AI goes and finds out everything I need to know and brings it back to me in a one page summary that I go, oh, this Google conference was really interesting, Joe." Because it pinged up on my email this morning saying this is going to be a subject people are talking about.

Joe Downs (16:40):

What are you using for that, by the way?

Peter Swain (16:43):

A Hermes agent now.

Joe Downs (16:45):

Don't start throwing new agents at us. Come on.

Peter Swain (16:49):

You asked the question.

Joe Downs (16:52):

What is a Hermes agent? Let's

Peter Swain (16:55):

Go down that rabbit hole another day.

Joe Downs (16:57):

Is it Hermes or Hermes?

Peter Swain (16:59):

Hermes. It's kind of the new successor to OpenManus.

Joe Downs (17:04):

Okay. So you've created an agent that does it for you. How does our listener who's running a small business do this? What do they do? What's an example?

Peter Swain (17:18):

Yeah, the Claude now supports routines.

Joe Downs (17:22):

I saw that, but I haven't unpacked that yet. What is that?

Peter Swain (17:25):

So you can hit new routine and say nine o'clock every morning and then it'll ask you what prompt to run. And you could simply say, "You are an expert researcher on the subject of X, go out and find the relevant news around ABC that's relevant to my audience of X, Y, Z." Really that simple.

Joe Downs (17:48):

So if they have a web presence, it can find out anything you want to know, right?

Peter Swain (17:53):

100%.

Joe Downs (17:55):

If I own a bar and restaurant or a chain of them, I could run a routine that looks at all of my competitors' specials. I don't know.

Peter Swain (18:03):

Yep. It could look at city hall and ordinance that's going to come down that's going to affect you. It could look at how many health and safety violations are being tracked day by day and in what location so that you can work out where the inspectors are. I'm sure there's patterns of how many inspectors are currently working versus how many violations there are per day. So you could work out if they're staffing up or staffing down. Obviously, I'm sure that every listener we have would obviously have a five star rating, but maybe, maybe not.

Joe Downs (18:37):

Or Peaky Blinders in their back pocket.

Peter Swain (18:40):

Yeah. What are the national chains doing? What's the Morgan Stanley report on insert blank here? You could literally just get that rolling in every single day.

Joe Downs (18:49):

Oh, even for cost of ... I mean, we're sticking with restaurants here. So cost of ... I don't even know what they order anymore. Sadly, I used to own one, but cost of food, right? What's up or down? Should I order this from this supplier or that supplier, right? Interesting.

Peter Swain (19:06):

Yeah. We had a consultancy contract when we started out with one of the big real estate brokers and we did a bit of research and AI did a bit of research. And what we found was the number one differentiator between a successful realtor and an unsuccessful realtor was actually local market knowledge because everybody's got the numbers. "Oh, I did X million or I did five listings last week. Everybody's got a version of the number, not like Bobby K's numbers, but everyone's got a version of the numbers. I've been here 28 years. So what seemed to make a difference was local knowledge. So what we got it to do was twofold. Number one, find a local event that they could go to or sponsor every day. So it came back and said," Hey, the Rotary Club are having a party in the park this Sunday because that's where realtors pick up a lot of their business.

(20:00):

"And the second thing it did was it gave them a feel good story from local media. So when they're walking around the house to see if they, to try and get the listing, they can say the sentence such as," Hey, do you see that kid at XYZ high school the other day, won the national award for blah, blah, blah, "which was the number one

Joe Downs (20:21):

Differentiator.What's so interesting is just the evolution since we started this podcast because we talked about that. Well, part of that, the second part of what you just said, we talked about that on our first or second episode. I remember doing a specific segment for realtors and you talked about how you could, if they were moving from one place to the other, oh, look at the conditions of where they live, the local economy, the schools, this, that, and talk about what's right here. And I think the specific example you used was, did you see that they're laying new fiber optics and everyone in this area is going to-

Peter Swain (21:00):

Yeah. We were talking about selling the listing and not gaining a new listing. I

Joe Downs (21:06):

Remember that. Yes. But look at how far we've come here now with routines. So nine months, I don't know how long we've been at this since November, I think. So six, seven months ago we were talking about just using ChatGPT to find out what's going on, where are you from, what's that like? This is where you're moving to so that when you're walking through the house with the potential buyer, you could drop things like that, right? Now we're talking about routines and how realtor can use that to go get more business.

Peter Swain (21:42):

So the way that I put it to everyone to think about this, because what we've seen over the last three and a bit years of doing this is people hear these examples, but they go, " Well, how does this match what I do? How do I make that work for me? "And the way we always try and explain it is AI can get really good at two things. One is this keyboard and mouse, one is the stuff that you do all the time. So what is the stuff you do all the time? For example, we have to create a thumbnail for our videos every week. We create a new Slack channel, a new thread in a Slack channel to discuss what we're discussing that week on the Thursday. So those are things that we're looking to automate away from humans and give to agents. Tiny, tiny little things like create the Slack channel, create the thumbnail at me to discuss, to say, what are we discussing this week?

(22:41):

These are all things that we now automate through. Then the second thing is, well, what should you be doing that you aren't doing? So for example, you've just mentioned Bobby K, right?

Joe Downs (22:57):

And you're going right into point number two here, which is consistency.

Peter Swain (23:04):

Somebody on our team should be messaging in him when this gets released. If we were to do that all year, because we mentioned two or three notable people pretty much in every episode we do one episode a week That means that in the course of a year we mention 110 people, give or take, call it a hundred. If AI was to research the person and craft a message to each of those hundred people, I'm willing to bet quite a substantial amount of money that one of the hundred would mention the podcast.

Joe Downs (23:42):

I agree.

Peter Swain (23:43):

Which would drive a thousand viewers, 2000 listeners, 5,000. I don't know. I don't know what the number is, but there's nobody in the world that would disagree that we should do that.

Joe Downs (23:53):

Nope.

Peter Swain (23:54):

And we should already do it before AI.

Joe Downs (23:56):

We do do it.

Peter Swain (23:58):

Go us. But I think most people would agree and we talked about this when we talked about conferences of how many people actually follow up with everybody. It's the same kind of thing of, yes, you know what you should do, but before AI, the predominant word was "or" — should I do this or this because I do not have the resources to do both. And I think post AI, the predominant word becomes and. Well, I can do this and this because I now have the resources to achieve both at the same time, which I think is a pretty cool future.

Joe Downs (24:40):

I thought you were going a direct hit on the second one, but you're right on the edge of it, you're dancing around it. And the key point, his second pillar is consistency. And again, it wasn't genius, it was specialization and then consistency. He kept showing up, same blocks, same owners every year and you're sort of dancing around that right here, but here's the problem, you kind of just answered it. Problem with consistency is it requires willpower and willpower runs out. It runs out on bad days. It runs out when it's boring. It runs out when nobody's watching and nothing's happening. The results feel a long way off and I don't think the solution is trying harder because I think the road to business failures pave with burned out good intentions. I think the solution's probably building some sort of system that doesn't get burned out

Peter Swain (25:31):

100%.

Joe Downs (25:32):

And that does the boring work for you, which is what I think you're talking about here.

Peter Swain (25:36):

So I went through this, Joe, and I think this is a really relevant example, but I went through this on my weight loss journey because it's very similar. Losing weight is not hard. You just eat less than you move. I mean, it really is easy, but it's relentless. And it's the same thing as business success, how you do something is how you do everything. I remember a conversation specifically with my coach around willpower and food and she said, "You're engineering the wrong part of the system because willpower is a finite resource. It's produced by the right front ventricle something, something. It's literally a part of your brain is responsible for stopping the dopamine messages from somewhere else and it runs out. It has a finite capacity in any given day. So what you're supposed to be doing is not allowing the food in the kitchen in the first place." I'm like, as you just said, it's about engineering the system for success instead of willpowering your way through the system.

Joe Downs (26:40):

So the goal isn't discipline. In that case, the goal is to design the system where discipline is optional.

Peter Swain (26:48):

100%.

Joe Downs (26:49):

Is Claude routine ... I mean, you're talking about trying to get rid of a bad habit. I'll label it a bad habit, right? What about the habits that are not? They're things you should be doing for business. I mean, you touched on it a second ago when we talked about going to the conference and sending the follow-ups to all the people. This feels like, I think you already answered it, so I don't know if the air has been sucked out of this pillar, but is routines just the simple answer to setting up these systems because it's the boring work that kills you, right? That's what drains you.

Peter Swain (27:23):

There's always good, better, best in all these. I want to make sure that we're giving answers that people can take away and work with. So are there better solutions than Claude routines? 100%, like Hermes agents and there's dozens of ways to go about it, but-

Joe Downs (27:37):

Hermes, it sounds expensive.

Peter Swain (27:40):

It's free, actually. But if you're on the lowest rung of the ladder going, "What are these guys even talking about? " Then Claude routines is definitely the way to go.

Joe Downs (27:50):

And you're just using it. Is it easy to set up?

Peter Swain (27:56):

Yeah, 100%. You literally just hit the button that says routines, hit new, say when do you want it to run? There's a dropdown daily, weekly, monthly, you choose daily and then you choose what time and then you type in the prompt.

Joe Downs (28:08):

I think I'm going to ask this question for the, I know you hate it, but for the people like me who show, "That's amazing." And then they sit down to do it and then mental block hits in and go, "I don't have any routines." Meanwhile, I probably have 65 routines a week that I can't identify as routines because of the mental block. How could I tease that out of myself? Can AI help me figure out what my

Peter Swain (28:36):

Routines

Joe Downs (28:36):

Are?

Peter Swain (28:38):

Here's an easy one to start with. A daily routine that looks for when your sports team is next playing and tells you what channel they're playing on and what time they're playing and you run that every day. So let me give you an example. I have a morning briefing.

Joe Downs (28:58):

Do I really want that distraction? That's what I'm thinking. It sounds awesome, but ...

Peter Swain (29:05):

Well, you talked about a system that doesn't require discipline.

Joe Downs (29:08):

No, I know, but I'm joking.

Peter Swain (29:09):

So I would say if you're a sports fan, you should probably watch whatever it is you wanted to watch.

Joe Downs (29:14):

Yes.

Peter Swain (29:15):

And I think you should design your world around it. So let me give you an example. My morning briefing came in this morning. It tells me the weather, the percentage chance of rain. When my first meeting is when my last meeting is, it flagged that there was a clash. It gave me my five highest priority items from Todoist. It gave me the AI news. It gave me Spurs versus everything is on Sunday. It told me how many unread emails I had, how many Slack messages I have and what my current monthly recurring revenue versus monthly recurring costs are. Is

Joe Downs (29:48):

This what you wake up to?

Peter Swain (29:51):

Yeah.

Joe Downs (29:52):

So you have a wake up routine?

Peter Swain (29:54):

Yeah, it comes in at six o'clock in the morning.

Joe Downs (29:57):

All right, that's a good one. Okay. So Oh, I think everyone has a routine they do when they wake up or things they want to know and that's a great way to start your day. Maybe add a little inspirational quote in there. I

Peter Swain (30:09):

Don't know. 100%. Or I know somebody that does this and they have a piece of scripture.

Joe Downs (30:14):

There you

Peter Swain (30:14):

Go. That's

Joe Downs (30:15):

Inspirational.

Peter Swain (30:17):

That speaks to them and works for them. So there's all sorts of different ways to do this. When I'm away, I have a routine that sends both of my kids a dad joke every morning.

Joe Downs (30:29):

Very nice. Are they better than you come up with on your own?

Peter Swain (30:34):

Yeah. No, they make me laugh as well, to be honest. But it literally just connects to iMessage and just sends them both a message. I have another one that reminds me every day when I'm away to check in with the family, because the time difference, it gets quite hard. And we came up with on the last trip, I didn't have time. I was like, "I just don't have time to do this today." So it came up with the idea of using Postmark, which is an app that lets you send postcards. So you can take a picture in the app and you can have a saved address and you can charge the credits in advance. So the AI didn't do it, but the process of the AI reminding me led me to go, "Huh." And either why I just don't have time. So why don't you send them a postcard?

(31:18):

I'm like, a postcard say, "Yeah, there's this app you can do this. " I'm like, "Wow, that's cool." So now when I'm away-

Joe Downs (31:23):

So wait a second. So you take a picture and create your own postcard.

Peter Swain (31:28):

Yeah.

Joe Downs (31:28):

Oh, that's cool. What's it called? Postmark?

Peter Swain (31:30):

And the credits are already loaded and the address is already loaded. When you add the address the first time you save it. So it's literally two clicks to send the kids a postcard. So I take the picture and it flips. It does the visual flip like a postcard and then you type on the other side of the screen and when it prints it, it prints it in cursive. So it prints it in handwriting. So I'll just take a picture of a statue and I'll just send them, check out this guy. He's got a funny note. And then they actually really postcard in the post.

Joe Downs (32:04):

Little tip nobody expected out of the show today. I like it.

Peter Swain (32:07):

That's a good one. But to me, it's these kind of things of ... I genuinely can say AI has made me a better husband, a better father, a better individual, a better businessman, because I'm not handing my life to it. I'm not handing it my discernment or my decision making, but I can't think of a human if I just said, "I just don't have time to catch up with my kids today," that would've said, "Why didn't you send them a postcard?"

Joe Downs (32:33):

Yeah. You're optimizing. You're using AI to optimize your life.

Peter Swain (32:37):

Yeah. And it also led me to the realization that speaking to my kids every day was actually quite selfish and it was actually about me not them, which was a weird one because I was like, "Oh, we didn't get to talk today because I called when there was bathtime or bedtime or something." And I realized actually it was me that wanted to talk to them, not them wanting to talk to me. And while I'm the one that went away, I'm the one that's doing what I want to do. I don't necessarily get the privilege and the right of interjecting in their life again. But what is important is they know that I'm thinking of them. So me sending them a picture or a postcard is actually a better way to do things in some way.

Joe Downs (33:19):

Yeah. Although they still want to talk to you, Peter, you get a couple more years before they don't care. Trust me, I'm going through that now.

Peter Swain (33:28):

So anyway, kind of pulling this all the way back where we're kind of focused on is AI can do three things and the third one I think is quite dangerous. The first one it can do is it can do the stuff you're supposed to be doing consistently consistently without any cognitive load on you. It's like, yeah, it just does it. It just does it. It just does it. The second thing it can do is all the stuff that you're not doing that you should be doing that is really where Bobby K just nailed it. And the third one, and this is the one that most people do and I think it's one of the most dangerous things is to do all the stuff that you can't do. So the amount of Peter Joe you kind of fall into this trap, I fall into this trap.

(34:10):

We invent new products, we invent new businesses, we invent new business plans, we come up with new projects and we don't actually necessarily see an ROI on some of those things. Liz and I were talking this morning about how do you measure the ROI of AI? And most people aren't getting a return on investment on AI because they're not using it to actually do the things in their life that they're already doing better. They're using it to ideate stuff that they're not currently doing.

Joe Downs (34:39):

Guilty.

Peter Swain (34:40):

Which is fun, but is it actually giving you a multiple or is it actually just a subscription that's now costing you money?

Joe Downs (34:49):

Interesting. Pillar number three or key point number three here, and I think this one is massively underused. A lot of people in relationship driven businesses, and honestly almost every business is a relationship driven business. They've got years of results, real results, work they've done, clients they've helped, deals they've closed, problems they've solved. But the problem, Peter, is, and I'm guilty of this as well, it's all scattered. It's sitting in old emails. It's in spreadsheets nobody looks at. It's in their memory. It's never been organized into a story. So when they walk into a room and someone asks what they do, and I'm totally guilty of this, which is a horrible thing to be guilty of while you're launching a business, but they give this generic forgettable answer instead of the best 30 second commercial they could possibly deliver. I don't think Bobby K, whatever we're calling him, I don't think he had that problem because his track record told the story before he opened his mouth.

(35:57):

Peter, how can you ... I could answer this actually because I just did this last night after I wrote the show, but how can you use AI to build that, to take years of scattered proof and turn it into something that closes deals, but before closes deals gives you your elevator pitch or your 30 second commercial, whatever it is, which is authentic to you so you're not even making it up, you're just organizing. How can AI help us do that?

Peter Swain (36:29):

Yeah, I think there's multiple paths. We've gone down this before, the interview path, interview me on, was certainly one of them, but I would probably prefer in this again, using Claude with their connectors and connecting your Google Drive, connecting your Google Mail, just connecting everything where all of these silos of data lives and then asking Claude to go and find them for you.

Joe Downs (36:53):

And create, that's a great point because the prompt you're likely to give is, "Hey, I want you to find me proof that I did all this stuff or whatever." But Claude might in that search through those connections come up with something that you didn't even think of that you were an expert at or something you should highlight.

Peter Swain (37:19):

Yeah. I would tell her to go and look at my Google Drive, look at my Gmail, look at my LinkedIn, look at the website, do a web search for me and come back with a 30 second compelling story of who I am.

Joe Downs (37:32):

And while you're doing that, I got my juices flowing here. Why not compare me to my competitors so I can add that into my 30 second commercial?

Peter Swain (37:44):

Yeah, I would- Meaning highlight- ... Not to focus too much about the competition, but allow it to sprinkle in some seasoning for sure.

Joe Downs (37:53):

Yeah. I don't mean name them. I mean, highlight how I'm different.

Peter Swain (37:58):

Yeah. I think that's the key piece of what is your differential and speaking into that versus speaking ... And just for people that haven't done this before, you don't ever want your competitor's names to come out of your lips, but you do want to make sure you're leaning into your mustard.

Joe Downs (38:14):

Yes, I like it. All right. Now I'm going to put you on the hot seat here for a second. What do you do when someone genuinely doesn't have much of a track record? Is there a version of this prompt for someone who's in those first couple of years, they don't have the Bob Knakal, Knackle, Bobby K, 20, 30, 40 years. They don't even have 10.

Peter Swain (38:43):

Yeah. I think it would be a very similar thing of just a conversation with Claude and just a, "Hey, I need the talk track of who is me and how do I show up in that 30 second commercial, but I don't have any meaningful experience in this area. Help me craft it. Ask me questions in order to gain the juice because the answer is you do. You just do. If you've lived in New York for a decade, you're an expert in New York real estate arguably.

Joe Downs (39:17):

If you lived in New York for a decade, you're an expert in New York real estate

Peter Swain (39:21):

Yeah, you can say the sentence, "I may have never sold real estate, but I have lived in New York for a decade."

Joe Downs (39:26):

Oh, you could make the case. I gotcha. Okay.

Peter Swain (39:29):

Yeah. I mean, you're not going to compete with Bobby K or Charhan or whoever it might be, but you're going to get enough to walk in the door.

Joe Downs (39:38):

Yeah. All right. Well, I think this show resonated with me because of those three pillars. It kind of hit me differently than ... And I know we talked about the mustard business before, but this was in a completely different angle and I love the fact that the secret here is no secret, show up, specialize, be consistent, but I couldn't help but read that with an AI lens and that's why I wanted to bring it up as a show. I don't think it takes 40 years anymore. I think we

Peter Swain (40:15):

Can use AI- Well, just take 40 years. It also doesn't take 20 people. This is why we have this kind of benchmark that we're aiming for of can we create 300 solopreneur millionaires in the next year? And I think we can.

Joe Downs (40:30):

No, I think you're right. And that's an awesome goal and they can do what they're doing and they can specialize, they can be consistent and they can use AI to cook with gas in ways that Bobby K couldn't. He didn't have that. His gas, unfortunately, was just time. It was consistent. It worked.

Peter Swain (40:56):

Imagine somebody with his kind of chutzpah starting today with AI.

Joe Downs (41:01):

If he had AI. Yeah, right. Well, there's people out there. Yeah. I mean, they're going to be game changers.

Peter Swain (41:11):

But that's when you talk to people at that level, and I've had British speaking some of them of when you ask them if you could do one, if you only learned one skill now, what would it be? Every single one of them's like AI because it's leverage. This is unlimited, untapped leverage for sub $100 a month.

Joe Downs (41:32):

And I think that was your point in the beginning, right? Imagine if he had 20 people, 40 people, 60 people, if he could afford them to stand on every corner, AI's just replacing all that, right?

Peter Swain (41:43):

Yeah. You could have literally somebody whose full-time job it is to keep track on City Hall. Yeah. Someone whose full-time job it is to look at traffic patterns. Someone whose full-time job it is to look at the price of food. Someone whose full-time job it is to read every single New York Times, New York Post and you could just replace all of them with AI.

Joe Downs (42:03):

Yeah. And I think that the takeaway here is AI doesn't change the formula. Bobby K's formula is still very much intact. It just makes the showing up faster and more systematic and the willingness to keep going is still entirely on you. It just doesn't have to take 40 years anymore. And you don't have to be drained by the boring, consistent routines that it took to become who Bobby K became. We can rely on ... In a way, we can be lazy Bobby K's is what I'm taking away from this. All right, perfect. I don't think that's the message he wanted me to take away from it, but ... Well,

Peter Swain (42:41):

You can be lazy, but you said it and I was actually

Joe Downs (42:45):

Going to- Smart. How about smart?

Peter Swain (42:46):

Well, no, you said the phrase that everybody's in the relationship business. I would say that everybody better be in the next couple of years because once you've automated and handed over all of the kind of the drudgery to AI, you're in the position to really truly invest in the relationships. And I think that's going to be where people-

Joe Downs (43:07):

Well, you could spend more time on it.

Peter Swain (43:08):

100%. I think that's where people will clean up in the next couple of years, people that have got rid of all the stuff they had to do so they can now just do the connection stuff because connection, community, and trust aren't going anywhere. AI can't do those things. Those are the things that are going to be incredibly valuable because they're the things that humans can do very, very well.

Joe Downs (43:28):

That'll be the new currency, for sure. And you're right. And AI doing all the boring consistent stuff that has to be done frees up your time to focus on that and get better at that. All right, Peter, before we close here, just take a second here just to be honest with you about something. Everything with our listener, everything Peter and I talk about in the show, as I say in my opening, we use AI to optimize our businesses and improve our lives. And Peter said, "It's made me a better father, husband, whatever." Hasn't made him a better co-host yet, but I kid, I kid. But that's truly what we mean. So we're not just two talking heads here. We're actually using it. It's not theory. I'm using it right now AI that is to build storagemoguls.ai. That's my self-storage education platform for first time buyers of self-storage.

(44:20):

Peter has a, he's not just my co-host. He's my consultant on storage moguls and another business I have. He's the guy I call when I need to make sure the AI implementation actually works and doesn't just sound good. He also runs his own mastermind and consulting practice at peterswain.com. So if you're an entrepreneur who wants to actually implement this stuff like Peter and I do both in our businesses and in our personal lives, you might want to start listening to Peter join his mastermind, peterswain.com. He's got an AI audit. Are you still offering the audit?

Peter Swain (44:56):

Yeah, we've got stuff running all the time. So peterswain.com, it'll be whatever we're doing at the time will be on the homepage.

Joe Downs (45:09):

So again, folks, we're not just two talking heads. We actually are using it. We're eating our own cooking here. I felt the need to say that because I wonder, one person I ran into was question, "Well, how much AI do you actually use?" I was like, "As much as I can, not enough was my answer." I learn something new every week, every day and wish I had more time to implement more. We're getting there. But folks, please like and subscribe. It's one button, costs you nothing and it's the only way the algorithm knows we're worth showing to more people, which we are allegedly and share this with someone who's still looking for the shortcut. This episode is the shortcut. It's not just the one they were expecting, right? Keep the emails coming as well. Love reading them. If you have questions we can help you with, send those.

(46:01):

Love the fanfare, the accolades. We sincerely appreciate it, but we'd like to help. So if you've got something, an issue at work in your industry and your business, shoot us an email idiots@successfulidiots.com.idiots@successfulidiots.com. For Peter Swain, I'm Joe Downs. We are your successful idiots. Thank you for listening. We mean it. We'll see you next week.