The Difference Between an AI Agent and a Digital Employee

Ever handed a task to someone and assumed they just knew what you meant… only to find out they absolutely did not? 

Joe Downs gets brutally honest about the AI chief of staff he built ten weeks ago and promptly had to shut down. 

Joe and Peter Swain dig into what actually went wrong: not the technology, but the approach. 

Turns out, building an AI automation system with seventeen vague jobs and zero financial stakes is basically asking for chaos. 

Peter reframes the whole thing around a concept that changes everything; your AI agents aren't tools, they're digital employees, each with a specific role, goal, and backstory. 

This episode is for anyone who dove into AI workflows headfirst, got underwhelmed, and needed someone to explain exactly why, and what to fix.

Listen For

3:33 How do you build an AI chief of staff that actually runs the operational layer of your life?

6:08 Why is your AI agent delivering you three-week-old sports news — and what went wrong?

9:04 How do you use Claude as a scratch pad to build better agent instructions before you deploy?

18:15 Why does giving your AI agent 17 jobs guarantee it fails at all of them?

25:06 How can a self-learning AI agent replace a traditional email nurture sequence — and get smarter over time?

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):

And my VP of sales is probably a digital employee that's gathering the reports, instructing strategy, talking to the various, both digital employees and real employees, and communicating what needs to happen to them, not to me.

Joe Downs (00:19):

So 10 weeks ago, right here in this show, I told you all something I fully believed at the time, and I guess I still do. Everyone needs a Hermes agent. It's not that difficult. It's going to change your life. And I meant every word of it. And I built one. Peter helped me build one. Ended up with seven business hubs, Belrose, StorageMogul, StorePro, US Smart, 1210 Properties was my own entity, my personal life. Even this podcast has an agent helping it, all running through a system, sweeping every hour, twenty four seven, supposed to be my chief of staff, coaching me, holding me accountable, handling this stuff so I could focus on decisions that actually needed me. 10 weeks later, the actual message I had to type into it just the other day, stop running everything except the morning briefing. And then a few days later, I told him to stop doing that.

(01:14):

And that's, I don't think, a story about how my AI is failing me. I think it's a story about me falling in love with a fantasy. And I think it's the same fantasy I think a lot of you listening have right now, whether it's about AI or about anything else, any promise just to handle it so you don't have to. And today, Peter, I'm looking for you to tell me exactly what fell apart here on the record and what I need to do to put something back into a place. I'm Joe Downs with these Peter Swain. We're just a couple of successful idiots using AI to simplify our lives and optimize our businesses. Peter, true or false? If my AI chief of staff had been Canadian, instead, it would've just apologized every hour on the hour instead of getting it wrong.

Peter Swain (02:02):

We could set that in the schedule. We could do that. We could give it a personality bug defect. Enhancement. Sory, Canadian.

Joe Downs (02:11):

I meant to say apologize for getting it wrong. Today, Peter, let's talk about what I actually built or didn't build the right way. I know you helped me get me started and then I took it from there. And then - I'd

Peter Swain (02:30):

Like to say it was working fine when I handed it over.

Joe Downs (02:34):

I'm sure it was. I'm sure it was. But I want to figure out what went wrong. And I think talking in the green room a little before we started here, I think I now have at least the direction of the answer. And then hopefully you're going to point me in the right direction here. And when I say me, I mean, I'm asking for everybody. Obviously I'm the GO idiot here. So Peter, before we get into what went wrong, I want to actually give the vision it's due because on paper I thought it was pretty good. I built a system, your agent's assistant, whatever you call it was jet, mine is gritty. It's running on Hermes. And the job description I gave it was run the operational layer of my life so I can focus on decisions, deals, and leading my teams. I have it sweeping across all seven hubs every hour.

(03:33):

It was supposed to check email, cross-reference my calendar, update a dashboard. Also things like remind me to work out. Never let me miss an important family event for a meeting or whatever. It had rules built into it to protect the stuff that actually matters to me.

(03:50):

And I came across this same want in every entrepreneur I talk to. I mean, when I tell people this is what I'm setting up or I set up, they were like, "Oh my God, I need that." And it's not about being lazy. I know some people are like, "Oh, that's pretty lazy." It's not that at all. I'm using this power. The fantasy that I'm living right now is that I'm supposed to be using this power to make me just better in every area and accomplish more.

Peter Swain (04:20):

I've heard this lazy argument a few times and I now have a stock response. I offered to buy their TV remote from them for 10 bucks. Because you can still stand up and go to the TV, right? And they're like, "Well, no." I'm like, "Well, what's the difference?" Removing unnecessary steps from your life is not lazy, it's smart.

Joe Downs (04:42):

Yeah. Well, and that's what I was after, by the way, so it would free up more time so I could do more positive things, both in my life, my kids' life, be a good neighbor, whatever.

Peter Swain (04:51):

Are you a good neighbor?

Joe Downs (04:53):

I think so. I don't know. I'd have to ask my neighbors. They seem to

Peter Swain (04:56):

Like - You just brought that up. I've never heard you say that before. Just thought I'd ask.

Joe Downs (04:59):

We have fences on both sides.

Peter Swain (05:02):

That's a good start.

Joe Downs (05:04):

If they say a good fence is going to be good neighbors, I think our neighbors like us. So look, some would look at this as a fantasy. I look at it as I was trying to create an autonomous chief of staff. Where did this go wrong, Peter? Oh, one of the things, just this is a stupid example. One of the things in it, it had, I don't know how many jobs it was supposed to be running, but one of the things I was supposed to even deliver in my morning briefing is just give me a sports update. I'm so busy. I don't have time to check ESPN or whatever. What's going on with the Eagles, Sixers, Flyers, Villanova Basketball, Penn State Football? That's in Jordan's Beef. That's who I have. It's supposed to give me updates on that and I'll add Totnam to it if you help me.

(05:52):

It's delivering me stuff back that's like three weeks old news. I'm like, "What is going on?" And then I ask it to stop and it's not. I just had to shut the whole thing down. And by the way, it's still going. I'm just not reading the updates.

Peter Swain (06:08):

So let's just walk through it because there's so many different ways to answer this question. The first problem, and I take some responsibility for some of this, because as we spoke in the green room, a lot of my thinking on this has evolved massively in the last couple of weeks. The jobs you asked it to do had no explicit ROI, therefore they weren't worth optimizing, therefore you didn't. That's problem number one. Okay. So we just spoke about Rayden that is now doing my nurture for people that apply for one of my programs, but don't book on my calendar. I name them after multi combat characters just to keep my life interesting. So Raiden. So Raiden's sole job is if somebody applies for one of my programs, but they don't book, Rayden takes over, sends them emails, sends them texts, gets them bookings. This job is worth north of $200,000 a year to me.

(07:05):

So I'm getting it right. When it doesn't do it exactly the way I want it to happen, when there's a 200K carrot on the other side of the equation, you make it work. You make it happen. If this was a 200K check to you, you and I would've already had four phone calls on this.

Joe Downs (07:26):

You know what's funny is I had this, this was the thought I had. And that's why I told it to stop. Maybe I just need to break it down and start over and actually make sure each one works before I add another one.

Peter Swain (07:39):

Yeah. But one of the ways to make sure it works is to make it so that it's financially interesting for you to make it work. Because it's sending you the wrong sports information. It can count on doing that for 20 days. It's annoying, it's frustrating, but you're not losing money. If you were losing money or losing revenue, you would've prioritized this way different. So that's the first problem. The second problem is when you built the skill to send you the news, love you, but your instructions were inaccurate. So let me give you a cleaner. Well, let's stick on sports. Let's stick with that one. Your instruction was what? Just take the Eagles. What would your instruction be? Give me an example of what you'd have told it. That you want to know what's happening with the Eagles. Is that what you said? I

Joe Downs (08:29):

Probably said give me. I'd have to go back and read how I wrote the skill, but make sure I stay up to date on any sports news with. I don't think I gave one for the Eagles, one for - No,

Peter Swain (08:43):

But let's just do it's just the Eagles because I know who they are and just read a dimension. Yeah,

Joe Downs (08:48):

Probably just ask for any breaking news or sports updates or anything like that.

Peter Swain (08:52):

Breaking news and sports updates. Okay. I know where this is going. Qualify on that?

Joe Downs (08:58):

Yeah. I know where this is going. I was expecting it to implicitly understand what I want.

Peter Swain (09:04):

Yeah. So the way you do these better is you go to Claude. And the reason we start in Claude is because we have a subscription in Claude. We don't have a pay per use in Claude. And you ask exactly the same thing. Give me an update on Eagles, any breaking news. And the reason you do that is because you'll get an answer back and you go, "No, I didn't mean stuff from last week. I didn't mean stuff from two weeks ago." So you tell Claude, "No, no, no. Run again. I only want stuff from the last six days." And it comes back and it says it's the off seasons there were no matches. You go, "Yeah, I wanted trade rumors, free agent rumors, any fights in the dressing room. I want these analysts and their specific viewpoints." And it goes again. And then it brings back the analyst and you go, "Yeah, not analysts from three months ago.

(09:58):

The analyst as specific to the Eagles." And eventually after an hour worth of iteration, you'll be like, "That, if I got that every morning, it would be perfect." At that point, you say, "Based on everything we've just discussed and everything we've just learned, rewrite the prompt for me that would've given me this first time round." And you take that to Hermes. So you use Claude as the playground, the scratch pad to go back, forth, back, forth, back, forth, back forth. Once you got that, then you take that, then you take that to Hermes.

Joe Downs (10:34):

You got to get it right in Claude first.

Peter Swain (10:37):

You got to get it to 90%. Right.

Joe Downs (10:39):

And that instruction is in Claude. So I'm having Claude do this. And then when I feel like Claude has it exactly where I want or close enough, then I say, Claude, take this skill that we've just worked on, this outcome and write it so that Hermes can execute it.

Peter Swain (10:58):

Yeah. Give me a file I could drop into Hermes.

Joe Downs (11:01):

And am I dropping that into Hermes? I don't want to get too techie here for folks, but I know I also have Notion in the mix here. So I'm dropping that into Notion and Hermes is going to read the notion for me.

Peter Swain (11:16):

If you're using the specific framework I put together in Claude, you can say, send this to the agent skill sync in Notion, and then you can tell Hermes to ingest it from there. But you could literally just drag that skill into the Telegram chat and say, learn this and it will.

Joe Downs (11:31):

Okay. So anyone listening does not need Notion in the mix. They

Peter Swain (11:36):

Just need to take - They can just drag the file into the chat and say, learn this.

Joe Downs (11:41):

Learn this. Okay. And if someone doesn't even know how to start setting up a Hermes agent, where do they begin?

Peter Swain (11:48):

Peterswain.com/workwithpeterswain.

Joe Downs (11:53):

Look at that little bonus commercial I wasn't expecting.

Peter Swain (11:57):

In the spirit of actually that's genuinely the answer because there's no three-minute answer to that question right

Joe Downs (12:02):

Now. So the hurdle for someone listening, if you want to be able to create digital employees, I like the way you're putting that, is there is going to be one step and that step is you're going to need a consultant.

Peter Swain (12:23):

Yeah, you'll need it for the first one. Because it's learning a different mindset and a different approach. But once you've got that first one up and running, you can then replicate it as many times as you need.

Joe Downs (12:33):

The first agent, the first Hermes

Peter Swain (12:34):

Agent.

Joe Downs (12:35):

Yeah.

Peter Swain (12:35):

Because

Joe Downs (12:36):

There are, I remember, I mean, you obviously walked me through it, but there's a couple hoops to jump through.

Peter Swain (12:43):

Yeah. We've simplified a lot of those now and we've got a nice little video that people can walk through. And we invented a Hermes agent called Luigi. And Luigi, it'll say, "I'm stuck." And you say, "Step one, do this. Step two, do this." And you can send it screenshots and it'll tell you the button to press. So we have an agent that helps people understand how to build out their first agent.

Joe Downs (13:06):

Okay. So I was making it sound even maybe more complicated than it is. So it's fairly simple.

Peter Swain (13:16):

We just put 75 people through it on a course last weekend. And of the 75 people that were in it, all 75 have a working agent.

Joe Downs (13:26):

Okay. Now that's one agent, right? When I'm asking you. Let's use the sports analogy again here. The Philadelphia sports update agent. That's going to be a different agent than the one that's going to read my emails. Is that right?

Peter Swain (13:46):

Correct. I would say all of those sports updates would be the same one.

Joe Downs (13:50):

Right. When I'm saying agent, is this a skill? Because Herbes is the agent, right? Walk me through that infrastructure. How's this working?

Peter Swain (14:01):

So let's go back to Radon. So Rayden's job is to nurture people that apply and haven't yet booked with me. He has one, just count. One, two, three. He has four skills. So a skill to me would be best languaged as a task. So he has four tasks. Task number one, receive a new lead from our CRM. That's task number one.

Joe Downs (14:33):

May I pause you? What might help me and others here is for folks who don't know, in this case, we're using Telegram where the Hermes agent lives. So mine is Griddy, Peter's is Jet, and I'm communicating back and forth just like I'm chatting and text messaging. And you can drop files into that. I can deliver files out. You can download from it. My question, Peter, is you have Jet that you communicate through Telegram, right?

Peter Swain (15:05):

Correct.

Joe Downs (15:06):

Is Radon, Radon Radon? I don't know. I didn't

Peter Swain (15:09):

Play - Radon. Yeah, he was the lightning. He had the hat and all the lightning came down in Mortal Combat. I

Joe Downs (15:14):

Didn't play Mortal Kombat, so I don't

Peter Swain (15:15):

Know. Shame on you.

Joe Downs (15:17):

Thank you. Is that a different Telegram chat or are you in the same

Peter Swain (15:22):

Chat with Jet?

Joe Downs (15:22):

It's a

Peter Swain (15:23):

Different Telegram chat with a different agent.

Joe Downs (15:26):

So it really is a different agent that

Peter Swain (15:28):

You have a

Joe Downs (15:29):

Different conversation with, and that agent in its conversation string has its own skills?

Peter Swain (15:35):

Yes.

Joe Downs (15:36):

Now it's coming together. Okay. Wait a second. So for each role, job, because we're basically, you're trying to help people understand agents are really digital employees and you're going to show them that visually, which I love. And I'm sure we're going to see iterations of this where you're looking at your, what was that? Minecraft? A Minecraft type of digital office you create for yourself. And I'm guessing at some point you'll be able to click on your digital employee radon and have the conversation, I guess, through Telegram, right? So at one point in the green room, you said you could see yourself with 400 agents or sorry, digital employees.

Peter Swain (16:23):

Yep.

Joe Downs (16:24):

Does that mean you're going to have to have. There's no way you could have 400 chats going on. You're going to have to have digital vice presidents.

Peter Swain (16:31):

Well, exactly that. You end up with a marketing manager.

Joe Downs (16:35):

So you'll only communicate. So Rayden will be your marketing manager and we'll have sub-employees -

Peter Swain (16:39):

Raiden will probably work for my VP of sales.

Joe Downs (16:43):

Okay.

Peter Swain (16:44):

And my VP of sales is probably a digital employee that's gathering the reports, instructing strategy, talking to the various, both digital employees and real employees and communicating what needs to happen to them, not to me. So I'll probably be talking to one agent in charge of sales.

Joe Downs (17:03):

This is getting wildly fascinating and could be very weird at the same time. Like you're playing a game at work or something.

Peter Swain (17:12):

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm trying to do. I've asked my daughter for as much advice as I've asked my fellow people that work for me as to what this should look like and how it should feel because why shouldn't it be fun?

Joe Downs (17:25):

So you just have to take the time to build out each digital employee.

Peter Swain (17:29):

I'm loving watching your brain spin around this because the last 48 hours has been one of those moments where I'm pouring myself another coffee to carry on talking and carrying on planning because it all fit into place. Because let's go back to one of those things we just skimmed over. Why does Rayden and Jet need to be separate agents? Because Rayden has a role, a goal, and a backstory. Literally, I've given Rayden your role, your goal, and your backstory. So your role is to qualify and nurture abundance leads for my top tier program that have applied and not booked. That's its role.

Joe Downs (18:15):

Do you think my problem is I've given my agent 17 roles?

Peter Swain (18:20):

Exactly. I 100% do think that's the problem because Hermi's agents are self-learning. I've told him his goal is that 50% of all leads that he gets given, he converts into a calendar appointment. And that's all he does. That's it. All he does is just receive a new lead from the CRM, work out what to say to them, send them a message, and then follow up with them on day two, day four, day six, day nine, day 12, day 18, whatever it might be. That's all he does. So coming back to your question, the tasks or skills that he has. Skill number one or task number one is ingest from the CRM. He can receive a new lead. Skill number two is adding that to the tracking database that he uses. Skill number three is sending the first email. Skill number four is sending the follow-up email.

(19:19):

And skill number five is exiting the lead from the workflow when the CRM tells us they have booked. So if somebody does book, the CRM says, "Hey, Bob just booked." And then obviously he stops the sequence, he stops the communication, stops the message. Now this is where I think I'm going to fry your brain. Rayden's emails include personal anecdotes from me because we use what's called the similarity resonance effect, which is telling stories about your customer, but from the language of you, not from the language of them. Because if you label people in messaging as an entrepreneur, you are. People don't like saying that. But what they do like doing is reading stories about the person that's sending the email that resonate with the experiences they get in their life. It's marketing talk, but basically Rayden needed to be able to send emails and tell stories from Pete Swain.

(20:12):

But Rayden doesn't have those stories, but Jet does. So Rayden can talk to Jet. And this sounds like a small point of semantics, but if you think about running a 400-person employee company or even a 20-person company, the idea that every agent, employee, digital or otherwise would have to come back to Joe Downs to get the information they needed is absurd. It would never work. You need person A to be able to talk to person B without going through you in order to have that conversation. Otherwise, you haven't got any efficiency in your life. You're now managing 400 agents, which is where you ended up. So when Rayden wants to write an email to Bill Smith, Rayden will ask Jet, "Hey Jet, I'm about to send this email. I was looking for a story about this or something about this or I'm trying to prove this point to Bill.

(21:12):

What do you have from Pete that could work with that?" And Jet will go, "Well, he did build Yelp and he told this funny story about how do you build Yelp without Google?" Because when he built Yelp, Google didn't exist. I've watched the conversation. Rayden goes, "Perfect. I'll use that." And then crafted an email. "Hey Bill, I know that you didn't book, but often we find that people get stuck on stuff that they shouldn't necessarily get stuck on and we get it. Pete once told this funny story about the fact that when he was the lead developer for Yelp, he didn't have access to Google because Google didn't exist. I've often wondered, because it's writing from a human persona, I've often wondered what it'd be like to try and build one of the most successful websites in the world without ever being able to look up anything.

(22:03):

And this shouldn't be a problem that you have in your day. And that's why Pete built the abundance program. Click here, join here, apply, blah, blah, blah.

Joe Downs (22:11):

That's fascinating. So then in every Telegram chat, so it's you, Rayden and Jet.

Peter Swain (22:19):

Actually, just Rayden and Jet just talk to each other. I'm not even involved unless I want to be. I can watch it. I can listen in. But they'll just go and talk to each other.

Joe Downs (22:28):

But you said you're watching it, so I was wondering how that -

Peter Swain (22:30):

Isn't this sort of freaky world?

Joe Downs (22:35):

Yeah, but what I'm realizing, and this goes back to probably my Colby index, which is I'm a quick start, but the follow through is low. That's why I said it was a fantasy in the beginning. It's not a fantasy. Everything I am desiring, everything I set out to achieve is achievable. I just didn't take the time to set it up the right way. But it's not a lot of time. It doesn't sound like a lot of time. It just sounds like you need to be deliberate at it and get it to where you want it. So it sounds like there's some reps you have to go through with it.

Peter Swain (23:16):

Which is why my updated suggestion to people is start with one where the juice is worth the squeeze.

Joe Downs (23:22):

Yeah. Now I see

Peter Swain (23:23):

That. Because the sports thing, I've got to be honest with you, my daily briefing doesn't really work either. Because who gives a shit if my daily briefing works or doesn't work? Because I don't actually need it to tell me how many emails I have because my phone can do that for me. I don't need it to tell me when my next appointment is because my calendar does that for me. But this thing that I deployed on Thursday, Friday is mission critical to my business being profitable or unprofitable.

Joe Downs (23:53):

Yeah. You know what's interesting? And this is a moment of self-reflection here is I set out to have it handle all the trivial stuff, which to some extent down the line, there was some good that was happening for a while. It was going through a lot of emails and my inbox was light.

Peter Swain (24:14):

It's implicit ROI, not explicit ROI. Yeah.

Joe Downs (24:18):

Yep.

Peter Swain (24:20):

It's not that that stuff isn't useful or good or wholesome or brilliant. It's well, how much money did it make you? Well, it didn't.

Joe Downs (24:27):

Yeah. I need to look at where the ROI is. Focus on that and just hammer that out one at a time.

Peter Swain (24:34):

Well, for the moment in storage moguls, how many emails are we nurturing from that list?

Joe Downs (24:40):

We're creating a new list because

Peter Swain (24:43):

We previous

Joe Downs (24:43):

List.

Peter Swain (24:45):

Yeah.

Joe Downs (24:46):

Previous

Peter Swain (24:46):

List

Joe Downs (24:46):

Just wasn't very effective.

Peter Swain (24:48):

But we're going to have to nurture and warm that list.

Joe Downs (24:51):

Oh, it's going to be 5,000 to 10,000 a week.

Peter Swain (24:55):

So are we going to do the old way where we put it through an automation sequence or are we going to give it to a self-learning agent where we tell it what its job is? Because that's the thing that you haven't yet experienced. Well,

Joe Downs (25:06):

You're my consultant, so you tell

Peter Swain (25:07):

Me.

Joe Downs (25:07):

Well,

Peter Swain (25:08):

I'm telling you what we're going to do. We're going to create an agent and we're going to tell it what its KPI is. We're going to tell it what it's trying to achieve. We're going to give it its role, its goal, its backstory, its tools. And then it's going to learn how to get better and better and better and better at doing that job. To me, I want to keep saying it until everybody goes holy guacamole because the idea of having. Because humans are learning. That's why we are so amazing. But we also have boyfriends and girlfriends and husbands and wives and sick parents and kids and colleges. We have a thousand human things that get in the way. And we also have an ego. So when you tell somebody they've done something wrong, you and I have done this, how many seminars and workshops have we been on, on how to tell somebody when they screw up?

(26:02):

I mean, it's its own discipline of how to present a human with information that you suck without them wanting to quit at the end of that conversation. Agents don't have any of that, Joe. You just say, "You shouldn't have written this email in this way because that's not going to work. In fact, it's going to do the opposite." And it goes, "Got it. Thanks very much. Appreciate the feedback. I'm on it." Now, does it always take that feedback? No, it doesn't. But neither do humans. But what it definitely doesn't do is get worse, which with bad management or bad communication, humans can do.

Joe Downs (26:46):

Well, let's break that down. Why wouldn't it take the feedback?

Peter Swain (26:49):

Because it's still not perfect. It doesn't have an IQ of 180. You probably haven't explained, one, hasn't probably explained what the point of the feedback was. I just used the phrase, "You didn't deploy the similarity resonance effect." Now that is a very specific marketing copywriting term that if you were a marketer or a copywriter, you'd know exactly what I meant by it. So that is good feedback for an agent because it can understand exactly what that means. What most people do is say phrases like, "I just don't like that email. I don't think it'd be effective." What does that mean? Did you use the letter A too many times?

Joe Downs (27:34):

Yeah. I asked you the question because my guess is, and you're not being direct by saying it, you're dancing around it, but it's a bad instructions, right? Yeah. It's ineffective communication with an agent that doesn't understand or an employee that doesn't understand anything implicit.

Peter Swain (27:56):

I think I told you once that I was in a presentation and somebody actually interrupted me to tell me that AI. I was so grateful for her. AI was rubbish because it couldn't do anything she asked. And then literally she interrupted me mid-keynote type conversation. And her example was, for example, yesterday I asked it what the best car insurance company was in New Jersey and it couldn't even answer that. And I said, "Thank you so much for that question and for proving my entire point in such an eloquent way." And she went, "What'd you mean?" I went, "Best for what? Best place to work. Best from a capital return perspective if you want to invest. Best from a workplace award, best glass door review." I mean, I'm guessing because I'm human and I understand implicit and explicit communication that you mean the best car insurer for you as an X-year-old woman driving Y car that lives in New Jersey.

(29:08):

And she went, "Yeah, obviously." I went, "Not obviously." But furthermore, what is the copay versus the monthly versus even the definition of once we've worked out you mean the best for you as a driver? Even that still has variability next to your personal preferences.

Joe Downs (29:29):

Best customer service if you get into an accident.

Peter Swain (29:31):

Best time to pay.

Joe Downs (29:32):

Lowest

Peter Swain (29:33):

Rates?

(29:34):

Apps. What is the best technical support that comes with? There's so many variables. And we think that we're being clear. And we are phenomenal communicators if you compare us to monkeys and chickens and dogs and cats. But the gaps that we fill in with body language, tonality, I don't know how they work this number out, but isn't there that weird statistic that only 17% of our communication is verbal. The other 83% is nonverbal. So AI is operating on a sliver of the communication that you and I operate on even through a virtual experience like this.

Joe Downs (30:17):

This goes back to the mental block that people have is just learning how to communicate with AI. And now we're saying learning how to communicate not with an agent, but with a digital employee. I do see a potential issue here though, because I love introducing the term employee, especially from a visual standpoint so you can actually see, oh, if I make it even a cartoon animated character, whether it's a Lego looking dude in Minecraft or a Smurf or wherever this thing, this is why this could get interestingly weird. But I think you bridge the gap there 100% because now I can see, oh, there's Bob and Bob's in marketing and this is what I want Bob to do in marketing. Now it's really for us to straighten our own heads out. But how are we going to bridge the implicit versus explicit gap? Because when I make Bob in marketing more human-like, I'm expecting Bob in marketing to understand what I mean.

Peter Swain (31:25):

Yes. I think that's actually quite simple, which is the invention of another digital employee. And that digital employee has a role goal and backstory of getting you to be clear. That's where I'm headed. When you give it the job description, it rejects it.

(31:46):

It goes, "You haven't given me an example of what good means. I don't have a KPI here." Because again, you've probably done more of these workshops than I have, but we've both done a fair few in various different guises. Onboarding an employee is the same. This is what good looks. You don't say your email's there, your Outlook is there, go and sell $300,000, go. You say, "This is what good looks like. This is what bad looks like. This is what a good fit. Here's 300 recordings. I'll shadow you for the first 10. Let's role play." You have all these ways that you understand when it's something important with humans, we have all these different tools. When I was on the call with you on Tuesday about storage mobiles, I brought up an issue from my side and you went into a prescriptive set of questions that I'm guessing came from Strategic Coach, but they came from somewhere.

(32:42):

The way you asked me those questions were very, very specific because you were diagnosing the communication breakdown. And I'm guessing it's Strategic Coach would be my guess.

Joe Downs (32:54):

Yeah. Yes.

Peter Swain (32:55):

Yeah. Go me. Because you went, okay, Pete obviously wasn't explicit because you didn't believe that your team wouldn't do what was asked of them. That was the underlying thing you were saying. Pete, you're a schmuck. My team do what they're told to do. So if they didn't do it, it probably on you.

Joe Downs (33:15):

I believe I blamed myself.

Peter Swain (33:17):

Oh, 100%. I did not.

(33:19):

You did. It was masterful. I have watched the recording back. For my own benefit, I've watched the recording. So I'm like, wow, that was impressive. Because Pete, you're actually quite suboptimal. Joe takes complete ownership of the problem, even though he's definitely not. It's definitely actually you, Pete. We all know it. So thanks for that, Joe. I like the fact I got out of that with my pride. And then with five or six questions, very quickly identifies exactly where the problem was. And the problem was I had given an overview, the detail, I had walked through it, I'd made myself available. I ticked like six or seven of the good boxes, but I'd forgotten one, which is the timeliness of the request.

Joe Downs (34:06):

Yeah, the urgency.

Peter Swain (34:07):

Yeah. I hadn't communicated the urgency.

Joe Downs (34:10):

And to be fair, I didn't tell them when Peter delivers this, it's top of the list.

Peter Swain (34:17):

Yep.

Joe Downs (34:18):

So I do take responsibility for that.

Peter Swain (34:21):

No, no, it was still asked for. Thank you. But can't we have a digital employee do that? Stand in front of this ever appeasing nature of AI that just says yes, sir, no sir, to everything you say and just make it disagreeable.

Joe Downs (34:36):

That's what I'm looking for.

Peter Swain (34:38):

Yeah. We all want that, don't we? We want the Adam Grant, the disagreeable giver.

Joe Downs (34:43):

Joe Downs is a guy who is a visionary. I mean, you should see all of my 17 or so skills I created for the Hermes agent to basically spin itself in circles. They're all individually good ideas from a visionary standpoint. They're probably all poorly written because I'm not a detail person and I didn't spend time with each one, but that's who I am. I am someone who I want to hand something off to my team. And this has been frustrating for me for years. I'm getting better and better and better at it because of Strategic Coach. But I hand something off, I tell you the vision, and I just expect you to have the same vision with me. And this is classic mistake, right? And I do it

Peter Swain (35:36):

Over and over again. As a visionary, I feel that pain. I told you what to do. Why aren't we there already?

Joe Downs (35:43):

Right. And this is the real problem for me is I'm handing it to someone who can implicitly understand, at least has a chance of understanding what I'm looking for.

Peter Swain (35:58):

Well, that's why - When I do

Joe Downs (35:59):

That with AI, there's no chance it understands what I'm looking for from an implicit standpoint.

Peter Swain (36:03):

That's why your relationship with Kristen is so important in that business. And that's why my relationship with Liz is so important in this business because both of those people go, slow down. Slow

Joe Downs (36:13):

Down.

Peter Swain (36:14):

Sit down. What do you mean by

Joe Downs (36:15):

This? Yep.

Peter Swain (36:15):

And finish the other eight thoughts that you've already had in the shower and you forgot to include in this conversation as to what's actually supposed to happen.

Joe Downs (36:23):

That's exactly right. So that's exactly where I was headed. So who is the Liz or the Kristen?

Peter Swain (36:31):

We just are digital employee.

Joe Downs (36:34):

Yeah. Some people like me won't be able to survive without it. Others will be the pilot engineer background to be fine, but you need that.

Peter Swain (36:43):

100%.

Joe Downs (36:45):

Even then, I think they need someone guiding them through this, asking the questions they aren't thinking to ask or to answer for the information

Peter Swain (36:53):

They're

Joe Downs (36:53):

Not thinking to provide.

Peter Swain (36:55):

And this is something that AI is very good at when it's asked and prompted to do it. It can red team. It will agree with you until it's told that the definition of success is to disagree with you. So in the car yesterday, I was talking through a lot of this digital workplace. I had a two-hour drive and I'm ranting. And then in the last half an hour of the drive, because this is where the only place I do use ChatGPT because the real time voice, okay, you've done a great job of working through this with me for an hour and a half. Your next half an hour, I want you to be as disagreeable as possible. Find all the holes and bring them back to me. Let's stress test this. So your job is no longer to agree with me. Your job is now to disagree with me.

(37:36):

Go. And it went, all right, let me put on my hat. And I use this analogy of a red hat and a green hat. Let me put on the red hat. Okay. Pete, you're blowing smoke up your ass because of this, this, this. And we walked through those. So you can get AI to be agreeable at being disagreeable.

Joe Downs (37:57):

Wow. Well, we're going to keep unpacking this in different ways in different episodes, I have a feeling, because this concept of a digital office with digital employees I think is just an easier bridge to cross for most people than going down this very technical sounding agent route, even though they might in fact be the same thing.

Peter Swain (38:22):

I think nothing has changed and everything has changed all at the same time.

Joe Downs (38:27):

Yeah. All right. Well, to recap, I told you 10 weeks ago to get a Hermes agent. I still stand by that, but apparently you're going to need a few more. I

Peter Swain (38:38):

Give it a job that is meaningful.

Joe Downs (38:40):

But it's not a big deal. And yeah, in each one, you're basically hiring employees. Each one's going to have a role goal and a backstory. The fix for me is clearly going to be slow down one at a time. And I'm pretty sure I'm going to be pretty wowed. And I love the thought process of starting with the highest ROI. What's the most important thing? Or what's the number one thing you want to take off your plate that you hate doing? There's an ROI in there, just not necessarily -

Peter Swain (39:14):

Yeah. Where is the juice worth the squeeze to make you get it right?

Joe Downs (39:18):

That's exactly right. So we can get started at peterswain.com. You have something off the shelf, people can -

Peter Swain (39:25):

Yeah. I'm announcing a manifesto literally this time tomorrow, so there'll be some amazing stuff on the website by the time people get there.

Joe Downs (39:33):

Exciting. Folks, please like subscribe and share, especially with the announcement. Is this breaking news?

Peter Swain (39:42):

It is. This is the first time I spoke about it in public.

Joe Downs (39:45):

Wow. Well, there you go. Reason enough right there. Like, subscribe and share. We appreciate it. Looking forward to your stories. Send any emails to idiots@successfulidiots.com. Love sharing your successes. For Peter Swain, I'm Joe Downs. We are your successful idiots. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.