Stop Prompting. Start Building AI Workflows.

Ever tried AI once, got a "meh" answer, and quietly decided it wasn't for you? Same. 

Joe Downs and Peter Swain explain why most people bounce off AI: they try a prompt instead of building a system. 

Peter breaks down the exact AI workflow that cut three hours off his day and drove $30,000 in two weeks, a daily storytelling email he voice-dictates in ten minutes and hands to his agent. 

You'll learn why you should do the work manually first, then let Claude or ChatGPT turn it into a repeatable skill, plus the "cheat code" that makes your AI suggest one improvement every single day. 

If you're a busy professional craving real AI workflows and a little financial freedom, without quitting your job, this one's for you.

Listen For:

6:30 What's the single most useful thing you can do with AI this week, and why isn't it a tool?

12:00 How did one daily email save Peter three hours a day and make $30,000 in two weeks?

21:46 Why should you NOT try to build your AI workflow the first time you do it?

31:02 How do you turn a one-off prompt into a repeatable Claude skill or custom GPT?

39:31 What's the "cheat code" that makes your AI improve itself a little every single day?

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

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Peter Swain (00:00):

I know there are people listening to this that understand that half an hour, being able to actually take half an hour for myself is a privilege that did not exist two years ago.

Joe Downs (00:19):

She was a high school dropout, no college degree, no connections, no obvious path. She got her first real job answering phones, literally picking up calls, routing messages, making coffee. Nobody was watching her. Nobody thought she was building anything, but she was paying attention. She was watching how the people above her made their decisions. She was listening to what got done and what got ignored. She was taking notes, not for a class, not for a performance review, but for herself. And she kept doing that job after job for years until one day she didn't need to watch anyone anymore because she knew more about how to build a business than most of the people who had hired her before. She eventually built one of the most recognizable brands in America from scratch with no formal training, just relentless compounding observation. The thing she was doing, paying attention, capturing patterns, turning observations into a system.

(01:20):

That's exactly what AI does for you now, but in about 45 seconds. 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. All right, Peter, how are we doing today?

Peter Swain (01:36):

I am fantastic. I'm excited for today because

Joe Downs (01:39):

Robert

Peter Swain (01:40):

Meets

Joe Downs (01:41):

The road. Are you intrigued? What was I talking about? Would you like to hazard a guess? This is a tough one. As I was reading, I was like, I don't know who this is.

Peter Swain (01:52):

I am going to go completely left field. I'm going to go for the lady that built Avon or Mary Kay.

Joe Downs (02:03):

That's a good guess and she was probably ... Well, how old would she be? When was that?

Peter Swain (02:10):

I said left field. This isn't my area of ex, but this isn't my mastermind here of expertise. All

Joe Downs (02:14):

Right. There's a decent chance she was, depending on how old she has, this is a limit of my knowledge here. There's a decent chance though that she was a guest on the Oprah Winfrey show because that's who I was talking about.

Peter Swain (02:29):

See, that was my second guess. Oprah was my second guess. Oh, you should never ... It's like sports, isn't it? When you're like, "That's the bet I'm going to place," you should never doubt yourself. Hilarious. Was that really weird? Worse, is it not it landing and that was the guest. Oprah was the guest. I should have stuck with my gut.

Joe Downs (02:48):

She's stuck with it. Stick with your gut. All right. True or false? The average British entrepreneur has been meaning to get started with AI since roughly the second Brexit vote.

Peter Swain (03:02):

Definitely true. Definitely true.

Joe Downs (03:05):

We

Peter Swain (03:05):

Are so far behind because we're

Joe Downs (03:08):

Such a risk- There's a shot across the ballot at your fellow. It's just

Peter Swain (03:12):

True. We've got like 350 members in our community, Joe, in our paid programs. I think two of them are Brits.

Joe Downs (03:21):

What? Is it because of the time of day they're on?

Peter Swain (03:26):

No, because you're on during the day. I think the older a country becomes the more risk averse the country becomes.

Joe Downs (03:39):

That would imply that the general consensus in Great Britain is that AI is risky.

Peter Swain (03:46):

I think inside this level of change, there is certainly a risk. For example, a friend of mine tried to get funding in the UK for a business and couldn't get the funding because he'd been bankrupt, because he'd failed in a previous business. Nobody would lend him money.

Joe Downs (04:08):

Well, it's not that different here.

Peter Swain (04:10):

He went to

Joe Downs (04:11):

The States

Peter Swain (04:12):

And Silicon Valley, one of the reasons somebody invested in him when he asked was because he'd gone bankrupt and the perception of that person was the following.You took it to the nth degree. You did everything you could. You didn't tap out a year early and go, "Oh, my idea didn't work." You were willing to chase this thing all the way down and that's the level of dedication that we want from somebody if we're going to give them money.

Joe Downs (04:43):

Yeah. The keywords there were Silicon Valley. So it was an entrepreneurial bank, not a-

Peter Swain (04:48):

The wonderful world of West Coast finance versus East Coast finance. It's a very different

Joe Downs (04:52):

World. Yeah. It is very

Peter Swain (04:53):

Different. America is a general rule, in my experience, looks for what the rewards are first and what the risks are second. And in the UK, we look at what the risks are first and what the rewards are second.

Joe Downs (05:08):

I don't disagree with that. I've even seen the difference East Coast to West Coast here in the US. Yeah.

Peter Swain (05:13):

I

Joe Downs (05:14):

Mean,

Peter Swain (05:14):

West Coast is ridiculous. That's not even one of the rewards. That's what could the rewards be in 10 years when we find the greater fool to believe in whatever we're going to do today.

Joe Downs (05:22):

I used to raise money for ... We are off the rails here, but I used to raise money for commercial real estate syndications as 1031 exchanges. And when I would pitch ... Most of my clients were West Coast because it was 1031 exchanges, but when I would pitch the deal, I had to pitch it differently to an East Coast investor than I did a West Coast investor.

Peter Swain (05:42):

100%.

Joe Downs (05:43):

They were interested in different metrics from the deal. When I say pitch it, I highlight different things.

Peter Swain (05:49):

And by the

Joe Downs (05:49):

Way-tension.

Peter Swain (05:50):

AI could reform that presentation for you instantly based on that criteria. I

Joe Downs (05:55):

Completely agree with you. Unfortunately, this was 20 something years ago. Maybe

Peter Swain (06:01):

There's a nice little side hustle for Joe

Joe Downs (06:05):

Downs

Peter Swain (06:05):

There to go

Joe Downs (06:06):

Back to this. Short of a hot tub time machine. I don't think I can go back to using AI there. All right. So today, Peter, we're going to need you. I'm making a request of you again. I'm going to give our listener the single most important thing they can do with AI this week. Not necessarily a tool, but I'm going to give you poetic license here. What I'm hoping to tease out of you is not a tool, not a strategy, a workflow, on prompt or a series of prompts. And I actually think that the listener will be very shocked at how useful it is and maybe a little embarrassed that they haven't done it already. I know I was when I first had that eureka moment, everybody. I've said it a million times before. It's like that first shot in golf, which I know if you don't play golf, doesn't land for you, but it's just that eureka moment where it's like, wait, what?

(07:05):

And then we're going to get into what happens after-

Peter Swain (07:08):

I do need to correct you though. You mean your first clean shot in golf?

Joe Downs (07:13):

Yes. Sorry. I meant that first drive you accidentally connect with.

Peter Swain (07:17):

Yeah. The one you accidentally get

Joe Downs (07:19):

Right

Peter Swain (07:19):

And you're like, oh

Joe Downs (07:19):

My God. Every sequence that you still don't know how to do yet actually happened in a row. That one, yes, that one. Thanks for the correction. After you do that, we're going to get into what happens after you use it because that's where most people I think stop and where I think the real mileage with using AI and the power and the discovery starts. So real quick though, before we dive in, if you've been listening to the show and getting something out of it, I'm going to ask you directly, haven't asked before, could you leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify? Right now would be great because it's top of mind. It takes 45 seconds and it helps other people find the show and it tells us we're doing something worth doing. So Apple Podcasts or Spotify, we would genuinely appreciate it. So Peter, here's a couple things kind of came together, conspired together here to inspire this show for me today.

(08:14):

So one was James Clear. We've talked about him before. Everybody knows who he's author of Atomic Habits and he came across something he said that I've been thinking about for a few weeks now and I'm trying to find the right time to make it in an episode. And after being at Strategic Coach this week, which is an entrepreneurial workshop, I go to once a quarter, started by Dan Sullivan if you're not familiar with it, author of Who Not How and 10X is better than 2X. Anyway, I was there this week and it just felt right based on a lot of the conversations I had with fellow entrepreneurs who were part of Strategic Coach. And so James Clear said, "You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems." And that hit me a while ago and again, I was trying to think about when and where is the right time to create a show around this that I think would land with everybody because I think and it hit me this week at Coach, just in these conversations, I'm in a room of really successful people in whatever business they're in and there's still a level of struggle.

(09:25):

And again, back to that quote, because most people who try AI, and this is what I saw this week in this room, and the ones that bounce off of it, the ones that failed or they don't see, they don't get the mileage of it. I don't think they failed. Well, I know they didn't fail because the tools are bad. They failed because they never built a system. They didn't use AI to build a system. They tried a prompt, got something okay, shrugged and moved on. There was no habit, no workflow, no system where I think the magic actually really happens. So interesting back to the golf analysis that you corrected me on, it's like they didn't connect on that first swing, right?

(10:09):

They chunked it or they hit the ball OB and they go, "Eh, golf's not that fun." Similar thing with AI, whatever prompt it was. I wasn't impressed. It's not that interesting for me. So for the person listening right now who's tried AI once or twice but hasn't made it a regular part of how they work, I don't mean using it for Google searches and personal stuff, but how they work, what is the first workflow they should build? I know that's wide open, but I'm purposely making it wide open because I want your creative juices going here. Walk us through it.

Peter Swain (10:48):

Well, you're referring to, you know that my background was marketing and my approach to marketing was to study the way that the human brain works because we've all had a different version installed because of the experiences that we've had, but we all have the same systems. We all have an amygdala or reticular activators and prefrontal cortex. We all have the same stuff. So I always wanted to work out what drove us to do what we did. And one of the realizations that figures well in here is pain will initiate a change, but only pleasure will sustain the change. So if you want a human to do something, the first thing they have to do is feel pain or loss in order to change their behavior. And I think that's what drives people to AI of they're going, "There must be a better way for me to do what I'm doing." And I'm seeing all this news about all these people doing all this stuff, so they try it.

(11:47):

Now, because of the AI tourists that I rail against and the Instagram NA10 influencers and all of these, I've got to say, just schmucks that are just

(11:58):

Really hurting people. They don't actually, as you said, they don't get the payoff because they don't know how to use the tool, which means they go, "Meh, this doesn't work." Some people are lucky enough that they, just like the golf swing, they hit it out the park on the first thing and they're like, "I'm all in. How do I learn this? " And that's normally where I meet them. So let me give you a perfect example from my world that I've done in the last week that is so simple to do and saves me three hours a day and has already made me $30,000 worth of atributable revenue to this. Okay.

Joe Downs (12:40):

And this is applicable to anyone listening.

Peter Swain (12:42):

Anyone.

Joe Downs (12:43):

Okay. So three hours a day.

Peter Swain (12:46):

Three hours a day down to 10 minutes a day and has made me $30,000 in the last two weeks.

Joe Downs (12:54):

I'm all ears.

Peter Swain (12:55):

That's probably exciting enough.

Joe Downs (12:57):

Yeah, let's do it.

Peter Swain (12:58):

Okay. So let me give you the background. If you have people on your list, whether it's 10 people, 50 people, 1,000 people, 10,000 people, you should be sending them an email and you should be sending them an email every single day. That is marketing fact. There's no such thing as spam, Joe, just shitty emails, okay? So you should be sending them something good every day. Now, if you write 30 day sequence type emails, Google and Outlook will flag you as spam and instead of landing in somebody's inbox, you will land in their best case, their newsletter or promotion tab, but probably you'll just land in their spam. If you go to your spam now and anyone that's listening to this goes to the spam now, you'll find hundreds of things that you did sign up for that Google has decided is just rubbish. Okay. So there is a guy called Daniel Throssel.

(14:02):

He is an Australian and he is an anti-AI, which is very interesting. He is an anti-AI, but he's a copywriter and he writes a very specific style of email and the email is always a story that then bridges into the point that then bridges into the sale.

(14:28):

So I sent out an email a couple of days ago that said the squeak that I earned. That was the subject of my email.

Joe Downs (14:37):

I read it.

Peter Swain (14:39):

Right, because it landed in the right place. And the basic premise of the email was that my very expensive chair has started squeaking when I lean back and recline and that the only reason that it's squeaking is because I now recline a lot because AI is doing the work for me and that's why you should join my deep dive because if you're currently hunched over not reclining back, we can help you with that. Okay. It's a really good email. It's quite hard to explain in short form, but there are

Joe Downs (15:13):

Three bridge

Peter Swain (15:13):

Patterns.

Joe Downs (15:15):

It was very good. I was like, "Where is this going? "

Peter Swain (15:18):

But

Joe Downs (15:18):

It's interesting. And then it talks about your expensive chair or something like that, right?

Peter Swain (15:23):

Yeah. And at the beginning it says, "Yes, I have just emailed you about my chair squeaking. Stick with me.

Joe Downs (15:28):

" Right. What is it? Is it a gaming chair you have or something?

Peter Swain (15:32):

Yeah, Titan Evo Secret

Joe Downs (15:33):

Lab chair. It's

Peter Swain (15:34):

Like

Joe Downs (15:34):

500 pound

Peter Swain (15:35):

Chair.

Joe Downs (15:35):

It sounded like a Ferrari or something like that.

Peter Swain (15:37):

Yeah, it was supposed to. And yesterday's email was about the fact that my daughter and son are in this school play and it's called the Umpire Structure.

Joe Downs (15:48):

Yeah. I get

Peter Swain (15:49):

Your emails. This whole section about Disney lawyers look away, there's nothing to see here, all that wonderful stuff. And that's talking about how the reps are the thing that make you successful. There is no one short win. Now here's what I do to do that. Now we're talking about the workflow. So hopefully I've set the stage because what has happened by doing these emails is they have broken out of the spam newsletter promotion trap because they are stories from me. They are not generic. Hi, the three things, da, da, da, click here, buying. It's not that. It's a very different experience.

Joe Downs (16:28):

Can I pause you for just a technical question? So does Google or whatever, whoever's filtering the email, your system, because it's a story, it's not recognizing it as spam?

Peter Swain (16:42):

Correct.

Joe Downs (16:43):

Interesting. Okay.

Peter Swain (16:44):

So my open rates have quadrupled and my click rates have six X'd.

Joe Downs (16:53):

We could end the podcast right here. That was gold.

Peter Swain (16:56):

That's a 24X increase in performance. 24X. That's not a small number.

(17:06):

24X. But here's how it works. I voice dictate. Okay. So this morning Liz asked me if I wanted this for breakfast and it's something she's never made before. So I said this and she said this and I said this and I think we should probably bridge that into this. So I just voice blah for five minutes-ish and I say, "Oh, that's the funny bit right there." The funny bit is Disney attorney and that will come to me at the end, not at the beginning. "That's the funny bit. The Disney attorney, look away. There's nothing to see here. Confused, you shall be. "I think it said at the end of that little line.

(17:55):

So I just voice dictate for five minutes an observation from my day. Every morning I drive the kids to school, I drive back and in the car I'm thinking," What have I already seen today that's funny? "Because I think anybody with wife, kids, business that just leaves the house. If you leave the house in Manhattan, I guarantee within 30 seconds you have seen something that is amusing. And if you leave the house in LA, I guarantee you've seen it in under a half a second. There is always something in life that's like, " Huh, that's amusing.

Joe Downs (18:30):

"It doesn't even have to be amusing. It's just interesting, right?

Peter Swain (18:32):

Yeah.

Joe Downs (18:33):

I mean, the squeaky chair wasn't amusing. It was just like, " Where's this going? "It was a hook that got my attention. The umpire strikes back I did think would be about baseball eventually, but-

Peter Swain (18:45):

It was about Wimbledon. It's tennis, so it wouldn't have landed until we talked about the sports. So I just voice dictate this thing for 10 minutes and it produces the HTML email that is the way I want it to look with slight brand colors. It's not a branded email that has the PS. Don't forget the thing we always want people to do is in the PS, which is a play on things because my initials are Peter Swain. So I always, as a kid, used to sign things off PS because I thought it was clever and I just drop it into my team and say," Today's email, please. "So this process takes me literally not metaphorically 10 minutes and now we're sending out a incredibly high quality email, which within the first two days I have had dozens of people tell me, " Who's writing your emails?

(19:46):

These are phenomenal. These are fantastic. "I'm getting Instagram messages, Facebook messages from people that have been on my list for three years that I've never managed to reach. And now I'm skipping out of spam, out of newsletters, out of promotions, into the inbox on something I love doing because it's fun and it's delivering real results.

Joe Downs (20:13):

Can I make a comment?

Peter Swain (20:16):

Of course.

Joe Downs (20:17):

And this is for anyone who's already doing this, hopefully they just had the eureka. Literally we just talked about this at coach this week. I'm not this person that journals every night, but one of the things you're supposed to do is talk about your top three wins, things you accomplish, whatever, and journal it. A lot of people like to write it. Some people that just dictate it, whatever you like to dictate. I'm more of a dictator as well these days, but I need to get into the habit of journaling, but all you just described was taking your daily journal, whatever your thoughts were, whatever happened and turning it into a marketing email.

Peter Swain (21:00):

100%. And if you are the journaling person, you could start this entire process with just taking a picture of the page.You could just take the picture and upload it. So now I want to answer the workflow question. I hope

Joe Downs (21:13):

I've explained- And if you are a journaler, think of all the content you already have that's written down that didn't have to happen today.

Peter Swain (21:20):

Lead magnets,

Joe Downs (21:22):

Website

Peter Swain (21:23):

Copy, emails, social, carousels, it's all in there. One of the beautiful things about AI is you only need to create the IP once and the mechanism of delivery becomes the AI's job. Anyway, we should probably talk about that on another. Repurposing is probably another great thing for us to talk about later on. So here's how this becomes a workflow because I want to just make the point because that

Joe Downs (21:46):

Was

Peter Swain (21:46):

Your actual question. What you don't do is try and create the workflow the first time round. That is not what you do. It is a bad way to do it because you don't yet know what you don't yet know. What you do is you work through that exercise that I just said manually the first time round. So when I did this on the first day, I'm like, " Have you heard of this Throssle guy? "And he's like, " Yeah. "Not many people have. I think he's-

Joe Downs (22:19):

Yeah, no, I've never heard him.

Peter Swain (22:21):

And then I was saying that's why I said to the AI, not to you.

Joe Downs (22:24):

What's his name again?

Peter Swain (22:25):

Daniel Throssel.

Joe Downs (22:27):

Spell his last name.

Peter Swain (22:28):

T-H-R-O-S-S-E-L-L, I think.

Joe Downs (22:31):

Okay.

Peter Swain (22:32):

So I said," Yeah. "And it then gave me some examples. And then because I've subscribed to his newsletter, I gave it some more examples. It's like, okay, you got the format? And it's like, " Yeah, can you break down the format for me? "It's like, " Yeah, cool. I want to use this as kind of a template that I want to build from. Do you understand what we're doing? ""Yeah. Okay. So here's what happened today, da, da, da, da, da." And then it gave me the first version. I'm like, "Nah, that's not what I meant. You were too quick to the punch. It wasn't funny enough. You're still trying to write a marketing email. Stop, get that frame out of your head and allow it to flow and develop as a story. The humor is more important than the close." So there's this one hour conversation with me and Jet with me going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth about ... And so I'm like, "That's it.

(23:18):

" And then we produced the HTML for the email. I'm like, "No, you've made it look like a marketing email again. You haven't made it look like I sent it. It has to look like I sent it. It can't look like a generic email, but we need a tiny amount of brand in there to keep people at top of mind." So that whole process probably took an hour and a half. And at the end of that process, I said to Jett, now we're complete. I want you to turn that into a repeatable process. Tell me what we just did and tell me through the interactions we had what we finessed and how we did it so that you can repeat this again without me having to tell you everything I just told you. So she went, "Okay, cool. You asked for this and then you changed this and then you changed this.

(24:18):

And what I understood from what you said is this. " One of the things, for examples, it always does is it uses British references, not American references because I'm British. So I had to, during the process, I'm like, "That analogy isn't going to land in the States because it was a music reference and it used a British band." I'm like, "They're not going to know who the fuck that is. " It's more important- You know who the Beatles are? Yeah, but it was like James the Spin Doctors or something. Both of them. Okay. Well, you're very educated. That's good. But I can't refer to Sainsbury's. I have to say Walmart, which isn't actually true because I wasn't in Walmart in the story, but if I said I was walking around Sainsbury's, you're like, I don't understand what that is.

Joe Downs (25:03):

Can I pause you for a second? So because I'm in the back of my head, this is amazing, but in the back of my head I'm thinking about my opening and the user trying to do this, sorry, the listener trying to do this failing and then not coming back to it. Two things. It sounds like there's a setup first time around, which is what you just described, really honing it in the process, tangent on that, can we produce something and put it in the show notes, a link in the show notes so that we could walk the listener through, right? Because it's a lot. I'm enjoying this, I'm listening to it, but I'm thinking about, I'm being mindful of a first time listener who's newer to AI and trying to listen to you and then figure out how to do all this at the same time.

(25:53):

So folks, show notes, we'll get you a link. Peter will spit out a document and kind of a, this is how you do it type of thing. Secondly, the setup, you did it in an hour and a half, you're a guru. I would expect most of us to take two to four hours, two to three hours, but well worth it, it sounds like in a setup one time,

(26:17):

One time, first time following your instructions. I think

Peter Swain (26:20):

Most people will get it done a bit quicker

Joe Downs (26:23):

Than

Peter Swain (26:23):

This because it's creative writing. It's

Joe Downs (26:27):

Actually- Well, I mean the process, the process by which you're

Peter Swain (26:30):

Setting it up. But one of the things that I found helps people is if we do some four examples. So for example, if I was a real estate agent, I would want to know the average time of a house on market and the average sale price and whether stuff is selling over or under and I'd want to know the local news of in the area that I serviced every morning. So this would be, you would just say, "Hey, can you tell me the average sale price of houses as of today in this zip code?" And I also want to know whether a house price is selling above or below market price and I also want to know how long houses are on the market for, and I also want three feel good stories from the local news. That is going to take a lot less time to finesse than what I was talking about because that's factual information.

(27:25):

It's not creative writing. It's just yes, this, this, this, but what you're going to find when you do it is, "Oh, I said this zip code. What I actually meant was this zip code plus 20

Joe Downs (27:37):

Miles." In your refining of your setup to get your perfect template by which every day, if you're using the real estate example, every day that I'm sending an email, the facts are updated, but the delivery system where we share those facts on these emails, that's not updated once I set it up.

Peter Swain (27:59):

Great. And just walking somebody through a show round at 11 o'clock in the morning, I'd love to be able to say, our latest data shows that houses are staying on the market for around 12 days. As of this morning, obviously yesterday it was 11 and a half, people are like, "Oh, this guy's on it. He knows

(28:16):

Everything there is to know. " That would be a very, very simple workflow for somebody to put in place of like, "Hey, as a real estate agent, I want to know ... " And again, I'm not a real estate agent, but I would certainly want to know how long has it staying on the market? Is the market going up? Is the market going down? And I'd want three feel good stories. So when I was showing someone around us, I could say, "Do you hear about that kid that won the science fair?" They're like, "What?" No, because local market knowledge is a number one driver of real estate success.

Joe Downs (28:49):

So that's the conversation back to the email if I was the real estate agent, I might incorporate all that into my email template as well for my story or my story about the market or whatever flavors. Well, I

Peter Swain (29:00):

Can just be your phase two. For now, we could just have the morning report just land and go, "Okay, we've done something useful."

(29:09):

So yes, I think it might take people a bit longer than it took me, but creative writing is inherently a harder thing to get done because it has to sound like you for you to be happy sending it. But the one thing I was trying to get people to, I guess more than anything else, is before you try and codify the process into a workflow, a better thing to do is just to do the workflow and then codify it afterwards. It's the equivalent of trying to teach an intern how to do something versus saying, "Just shadow me for the day and then tell me what you observed." Because when an outsider shadows you and works with you and then tells you what they've observed, they will Tell you about three times what you would've told them because there's so much that you do that you've forgotten that you do.

(30:10):

It's just muscle memory and just native reaction. Most people are not very good teachers in their domain expertise, because they've forgotten everything that they do to do it. And you are teaching AI.

Joe Downs (30:27):

Yeah, that's a good point. So

Peter Swain (30:30):

Don't teach it, do it. Do it with it.

Joe Downs (30:32):

Do it.

Peter Swain (30:33):

And then ask it to turn it into the code, the workflow afterwards.

Joe Downs (30:37):

That is interesting when you look at it that way. So we've got our workflow, but it's not repeatable. We're still in the, you need to do it, test it out, do it yourself first phase. How do we make it repeatable? How does the AI learn, or is there anything that I need to do to make it repeatable?

Peter Swain (31:02):

So it depends what system you're using. Like the Claude's and the ChatGPTs, ChatGPT has a custom GPT, Claude has a skill. The easiest way to advise somebody here is say to them to ask their AI, how do I make this repeatable? And depending on what platform they're on, it will tell them how to do it. For us, we use agents like a version of Jarvis that we can install the skill in and then we can talk to it via Telegram and it's wild and cool. So you can now say to Telegram, literally I'm on Telegram saying, "Let's work on my daily email." And it goes, "Great, what's the story?" And I just go, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And it goes, "Fantastic. Here it is. Do you like it? " And I go, "Yeah." And it goes, "Should I send it to Tina on Slack?" And I'm like, "Yeah." And it goes, "Done.

(31:54):

Anything else?" I'm like, "Nope, we are good." And I can go back to drinking a coffee whilst the team are now sending out this email.

Joe Downs (32:02):

All right. So I'm trying to put the whole process together. First I build it to your point, less than two hours, less than an hour and a half, whatever, set up. I think through my process, step two, I'm happy with it. Whatever I'm using, I'm Claude or chat or whatever. I'm setting up my process to be repeatable. How can I make sure that I don't skip? Because it started with you sending an email every day or doing something every day or using the AI to help you become better every day, this system, this workflow we're talking through. By the way, folks, this is one system and workflow. Just one to give you a taste of success.

(32:50):

Once you get into one of these types of workflows and you have success, then you're going to start going, "Well, wait a second. Now with this, you said you get three hours back. Now with this time back, what else can I turn into a workflow and a system that AI can help me produce? Or what can I add that I've always wanted to do? " Not this or that. What else can I do that I ... Which is the entrepreneur's problem, at least my problem is now I'm like, "Ooh, I can do even more than I thought I can do. " So we've got to repeat- I follow up with

Peter Swain (33:23):

Everybody that you meet at the conference.

Joe Downs (33:25):

Exactly. So we've got it into the repeatable system and again, that's going to depend on which tool we're using as to exactly the mechanics of how we do that, which not for nothing as in your mastermind is that I should know this, but I know abundance we don't necessarily get that into the weeds, but is that your lower, not lower, your mastermind level is that where you're covering the tools and how to make stuff repeatable and this and that?

Peter Swain (33:54):

Yeah, correct. In Momentum we're covering here's a prompt, here's a workflow and here's how to use it in Claude and which tool's going to give you the right results.

Joe Downs (34:03):

I'm sorry, your mastermind's called Momentum.

Peter Swain (34:05):

Because

Joe Downs (34:05):

They were both masterminds,

Peter Swain (34:07):

So it got a bit confusing.

Joe Downs (34:10):

So momentum into the Abundance Mastermind. Got it. So peterswain.com folks, if you need help, if you're understanding and seeing the magic that we're talking about here and appreciating the power of what this could be and you're looking for just an assistance with it for a nominal amount, peterswain.com and you get your weekly fix of how to keep improving your lives and your businesses like Peter and I do. All right.

Peter Swain (34:39):

Can I quick fire some examples?

Joe Downs (34:41):

Yeah, let's do it.

Peter Swain (34:42):

Because I think it might help people if we just kind of just, for example, if, for example, if ... So some of these are use cases that I've seen people do. For example, I've seen somebody that has a workflow that takes a picture of their fridge and it knows their dietary goals and it suggests recipes. I've seen somebody that says they wanted a piece of scripture to reflect on every morning because their spiritual connection for them was very important. I've seen somebody that runs their own community get a daily brief on their competitors and what their teaching points are and what their social connections were. I've seen people that have daily news coming in from industry sources so that they can do up-to-date social media on the day. You've got my content posting engine. I've seen people that have it clear down their emails every morning and flag important things in their email.

(35:37):

I've seen people have a daily North Star which scans their calendar and ask them if they really need to do that or are they being dragged into something. I've seen another one that says failed Stripe payments overnight so that the customer support team are told who to reach out to. I've seen another one that follows up on any outstanding proposal that isn't answered within five days and just says, "Nudging this back to the top of your inbox and alerts the person." I could carry on and on and on and on and on of just these tiny pieces of intelligent automation, which are buying people back their time, but also therefore allowing them to focus on the thing on their mustard, going back to that earlier example.

Joe Downs (36:26):

Yeah. But not just buying back their time, they're increasing their revenue and it's not a linear path here. It's exponential. So one example you just said, following up on the proposal and nudging, how often if you sent out five proposals, did you follow up it on five and did you do it as well as AI could do it for you if you set up the right system and process?

Peter Swain (36:55):

100%.

Joe Downs (36:56):

And was it a series of follow-ups versus just, "Well, I followed up boss and he didn't get back to me, must not be interested." Maybe it just wasn't a good day for them. And maybe if you'd continued to follow up three days later, two days later when it was a good day for them, you'd be talking about getting that deal done now instead of trying to find a new client, which is taking more time. So it's an exponential effect here or compounding effect is maybe a better way to say it, of productivity from less activity really, because you took the time to set it up and we're not even talking about a lot of time to set it up. Anyway, all right, we've got the first workflow or some workflows, you've threw out a bunch there really.

(37:47):

You're building a context document. I think you said that early on of how you do this. You're running it every week, it's compounding, but here's where I want to push this a little further because, and I've seen it happen, including with myself, you build one workflow and it works, then you kind of stop there, you don't know what the next step looks like and I'm guilty as charged and I keep trying to figure out, I don't know why I try to put a label on it, but I can't explain it. It's almost like you're shocked at the success and then you just kind of like sit back and just watch it without ... And then instead of saying, "Well, all right, well, how do we keep improving it and taking this to the next level?" So James Clear has another line, every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.

Peter Swain (38:39):

Oh, it's a good one. He is a smart chap. He is.

Joe Downs (38:42):

Yeah. And I think every workflow you build is a vote for the kind of operator you're becoming. So not someone who tried AI once but someone who runs on it. So Peter, once someone has the first workflow running, whatever that is, you throw out so many different examples there. What does the next 90 days actually look like?

Peter Swain (39:06):

Okay. First thing is a cheat code for everybody. Here's it. Here it is. You ready? Cheat code. All right. Cheat code. First thing, when you say I'm going to write this, you're going to pull these market indicators like for the real estate guy, average time on market, price is going up, price going down three local stories. Are you ready for this show? You're going to be blown away. I promise you're going to be blown away by this.

Joe Downs (39:31):

All right. I'm buckled up.

Peter Swain (39:32):

What you do is you tell the skill your delivery is time on market where the prices are going up, price are going down and three feel good stories and ready? I wish we had drum rolls. And on suggestion on what you could add to this skill to improve it. And then every day it says, "Good morning, Joe. Prices are up 6%. Average time on market is 12 days and here are three feel good stories. One way that we could improve this skill is X, Y,

Joe Downs (40:16):

Z." Okay. And then you can either say,

Peter Swain (40:19):

"Yes, I agree. Add it or no, I don't."

Joe Downs (40:23):

All right. I talked over you there because I was excited because my brain immediately jumped to, I think we're missing a step that would make it better. Okay. So I shouldn't say missing. I think there's a step that could include it. An enhancement. An enhancement. An enhancement.

Peter Swain (40:39):

An enhancement.

Joe Downs (40:43):

Before, here's one step skill that could improve this. How about it asks me, how did it go yesterday with that client so that I give feedback that would influence the potential enhancements because I can get positive or negative or neutral feedback, but that feedback would certainly then the agent would learn from that feedback and I would think that would influence the suggestions on how to make it better.

Peter Swain (41:21):

I would agree.

Joe Downs (41:21):

I think that's

Peter Swain (41:22):

A great

Joe Downs (41:22):

Idea. Maybe nobody cared how the kid did at the local science fair, so give me some different news, that type of thing. Yeah. What about, you set this up and you ... Well, you're asking for feedback in this process and this workflow so there is constant enhancement going. Do you audit it? Do you just let it run and go its own course? Do you check in with it once a quarter? Your workflow? It sounds like you would do a quarterly review or a semi-annual review with your intern or your employee, right?Do you do this? How would you do that? Would you do that with your workflow?

Peter Swain (42:13):

No, because the difference is the reason we do our quarterly reviews, our annual reviews is because humans have two gnarly little problems. One, they have an ego, you can't tell them they suck every day. It really doesn't work very well because they have to feel physically, emotionally, and intellectually safe in order for them to be prosperous. AI doesn't have that problem. So you can tell that it sucks every single day and it will go, "Sure, I suck and it'll get better." The second thing is the human capacity for change is very, very small. So when you do retros of an existing process, the advice is I believe one change per week. So if you as an entrepreneur can see 70 things that are wrong, the advice is not to give your team the 70 things that are wrong in one go because they can't keep up with it and it will just actually damage the process more than it will help the process.

(43:10):

So you have to hold them back. The reason I'm saying get the AI to tell you one thing it can improve every day is why not just improve it every day? Because if it comes back and says, I think I could ... For example, in this email generating thing, this is going to sound so obvious, Joe. Do you know what it wasn't doing? The subject and the preview line of the email.

Joe Downs (43:38):

What do you mean it wasn't doing it?

Peter Swain (43:40):

I asked if the HGML of the email, I asked it for the ... We worked together on the body of the email. I never asked it. It wasn't creating. To give me the subject line for the email.

Joe Downs (43:53):

Was that an oversight or on purpose?

Peter Swain (43:56):

No, a complete oversight because I was so busy ideating over the text of the email. I forgot that we need a subject. So my team were adding a subject and it came back on day one and said, "I think I could probably write the subject as well." Yeah, you probably could. Let's add that to the skill.

Joe Downs (44:17):

Okay. And the preview line. Yeah. I would think that's

Peter Swain (44:19):

Accepted.

(44:21):

I know that you use GHL, go high level, so why don't I add the merge tags for customer name into the template versus your team having to do that as well? I'm like, "Yeah, that's a good idea. Yes, please do that. Next day I should probably send you a segmented list for East Coast versus West Coast to which I said no, because I don't have that data clearly formatted inside Go High Level." So we ignored that change. I was like, "Okay, fine." Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So each day it's coming back and saying, "Hey, I could probably do this if you want me to do this as well." I'm like, "Yep, go for it. " Next day, yep, go for it. Next day, no, you got that wrong. That's not relevant. Next day, but it's not hurt. It's feelings aren't hurt. This is such a big ... If my team came and said, "Hey, we could do this.

(45:18):

" And I went, "No." We all know that I've got to go, "That's a great idea. Love your vision, blah, blah, blah."

Joe Downs (45:23):

Is this your Hermes agent doing this?

Peter Swain (45:25):

Yeah.

Joe Downs (45:26):

Okay. And so it's making the suggestions every day because it's trying to get better every day.What is your agent using as, I don't even know how to ask this, as its advisor to know how to get better every day? What is the source content that your agent is pulling from by which it's doing its own audit? So an audit's happening, it's auditing itself, where it's trying to measure up just to make suggestions to where is that coming from?

Peter Swain (46:10):

Yeah. So the first week that we provide people with the agent, our instruction to them is don't connect external systems. Your only job in the first week is to take this blank canvas and turn it into a painting. So it's all about having a conversation for 10 minutes. What do you like? What do you dislike? How do you work? What's your disc score? If you believe that everything should be taught through the nature of human design, tell it your human design. Give it all of the context on who you are and how you want it to show up in your world. Takes about the first week of 20 minutes a day. It's actually really fun.

(46:52):

I think we talked about this on one of the podcasts. If we get it to do the multiple choice, what it does is it says you ask it to ask you a question on how you would respond in a real world scenario and it gives you three multiple choice answers. So for example, your food was cold in a restaurant. Do you A, B, or C? And you can put other and D and then it asks another question and then it asks another question and another question. They're all just fun, real world questions. And each question it asks is using to create a personality profile of who you are and how you show up in the world. So you can make these super fun little games. So how do you start? You see the context with the understanding of who you are and how you show up.

Joe Downs (47:45):

Okay. I love this. I'm not usually this quiet, but obviously, can you see the steam coming out of my ears? I'm just trying to process all-

Peter Swain (48:01):

This is in some ways our most exciting episode, right? Because learning this stuff is awesome, but seeing literally the last email I sent, I was at a coffee shop having a coffee and I know there are people listening to this that understand that half an hour, like being able to actually take half an hour for myself is a privilege that did not exist two years ago. It would be drop the kids off, then get back to here, then do this, then do this, then meet with these people, then meet with these people and you get to the end of the day and you have some degree of what is the effing point because the freedom that you try to buy yourself is apparently not happening. In fact, it's going the other way. You've earned yourself a job. I think every entrepreneur fantasizes for half a second at some point in a week about just ... I'll just get a job.

(48:59):

I'm now working five times harder than I ever was for half the money than I ever was getting. I'll just take the job. So having 30 minutes to just tell Jet what I want

Joe Downs (49:14):

To just think.

Peter Swain (49:15):

And then the message just appears in Slack and the team are now sending the email and I can just stop and just watch the world go by for five minutes with a cappuccino.

Joe Downs (49:30):

Well, it's not just you're enjoying the cappuccino and exhaling. In those moments, you're getting your brain back from, "I've got to do this. I've got to do that. I don't have time for this because I've got to check this pocket, do this. " You're getting your brain back to be able to think maybe even about wonder what make a great marketing email or wonder what would make a great sequence for the next time I walk a client through a property.

Peter Swain (49:59):

Remember just in the green room before I said what we're going to do with our MythGat came from this a fundamental change in how I can package my products and my services, which is going to massively change my revenue, came from me having 30 minutes to myself with no guilt because the thing that had to be done was done and the team had what they needed to be able to do what they could so I could just sit and drink a cappuccino. And in that my brain went, ding,

(50:34):

You need to do ... And I'm like, all my days, where's a pad? Where's a pen? I ended up writing on a napkin because I didn't have anything with me. I'm like, I need to get this out of my brain before it goes. Those moments don't happen when we're busy. They just don't happen, which is the most special thing about being a human. So when people, and I know we haven't touched on this, when people say AI erodes our humanity, I apologize for this, but bullshit, AI erodes all the stuff that was getting in the way of our humanity. That's why this thing is so special.

Joe Downs (51:12):

I think it depends on how we use it.

Peter Swain (51:14):

I 100%

Joe Downs (51:14):

Agree. There's certainly a negative way. It's just like the internet. The internet erode our humanity or did it enhance it? Well, it did both. Depending on your view of all the negative sites in the dark web versus all the positivity that came out of it and the awareness for-

Peter Swain (51:32):

I know that I'm

Joe Downs (51:33):

Healthy.

Peter Swain (51:35):

... happier, fitter, a better father and run a better business because I delegate a lot of crap to AI.

Joe Downs (51:45):

Couldn't agree more. And I can't delegate enough. I'm still trying ... Well, I'm trying to get my Hermes agent installed. Speaking of which, your Mifke, is that anything you want to announce now or are you holding off on ...

Peter Swain (52:04):

It's going to be a big announcement in the next couple of weeks.

Joe Downs (52:07):

Okay. Fair

Peter Swain (52:08):

Enough.

Joe Downs (52:08):

I should

Peter Swain (52:08):

Probably announce it internally before I announce it

Joe Downs (52:13):

Externally.That's probably a good leadership decision you're making right now. It

Peter Swain (52:16):

Seems like it.

Joe Downs (52:17):

Yeah. So coming soon folks, there will be a special announcement from Peter Swain. We're definitely going to get the how to workflow in the show notes. Folks like and subscribe. If you don't mind, we appreciate the review as well. Hopefully you've gave us one by now, but like and subscribe as well. It costs nothing and it tells the algorithm we're showing up. But share this. By the way, this is an episode you can share with this workflow. This is why we do this for workflows like that, that are helping entrepreneurs get a little bit of their life back, which by the way, as you just heard from Peter, and I can attest to it as well, actually helps you grow your business, which again, it's this compounding effect. The more revenue with less work, the more of my life I get back. So this is definitely one you're going to want to share.

(53:10):

By no stretch of the imagination are the workflows that we touched on in here anywhere near the tip of the tip of the iceberg, you got to start leaning in. If you have questions, you need help idiots@successfulidiots.com. Idiots@successfulidiots.com. For Peter Swain, I'm Joe Downs. We are your successful idiots. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.