The AI Distraction: Are You Building Tools or Avoiding Sales? EP#399

In this episode, Den  dives into a trap that many filmmakers and creative entrepreneurs are falling into: the "productivity" of building things you don't actually need.

With the rise of AI tools and "vibe coding," it has never been easier to spend hours automating processes or building custom calculators.

But Den challenges you to ask: Is this moving the needle, or is it just "Creative Arrogance" the belief that being busy is the same as being productive?

Key highlights include:

• The Decision Avoidance Trap: Why we choose the comfort of building tools over the discomfort of reaching out to clients.
• The Effective Hourly Rate: A simple calculation to determine if your time spent "tinkering" is actually costing your business thousands.
• Humanism vs. Automation: Why humans can sense "fake" content and why your unique human perspective remains your most valuable product.
• The Difference Between $100k and $1M Businesses: Insights from the Ascend and Elite groups on why high-revenue filmmakers prioritise outreach over perfect workflows.
• Real-World AI Use Cases: A look at how to build tools that actually capture leads—like a non-profit quoting calculator—versus tools that just create more formatting work.

Stop using AI as a convenient distraction. Tune in to learn how to filter your daily tasks through one simple lens: Is this actively getting me in front of a customer?

Upcoming Workshop

Den is hosting a 2-day deep-dive workshop in Central London on June 23rd & 24th. We’ll be building the assets that actually move the needle for your business. Spaces are moving fast and will likely sell out before going public.

Interested? Email Den directly at den@denlennie.com for the details.

Mentoring options : www.denlennie.com

Connect with Den on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/den_lennie

Transcript

0:15

This week I wanna talk about something that's really starting to show up in conversations I'm having and things I'm observing within the filmmaking community, within the wider community in business. And that is the topic of AI and the trap of building things. That you probably don't need, that are not really moving the needle, but is providing a very convenient distraction from doing the things that you should be doing, which is reaching out to clients, building a system for doing so. But that doesn't mean building an ai. What is really happening I'm seeing is, is that most filmmakers aren't fearing ai, replacing their creativity, and I think that's the right thing to be thinking because. In the same way that the Metaverse never really took off, and three D's never really taken off. When something is inherently fake, we humans can sense it. And I'm not saying that there isn't gonna be technology that will make it very believable, but the humanism is the part that we bottle and, and sell and share. But the real problem I'm seeing is that many filmmakers. Who are running a business are just completely overwhelmed and completely scattered and potentially not self-aware enough yet to have a genuine fear about how that might impact their business. What I see between the two groups of people that I work with is the fundamental differences that the group in Ascend are less confident going into sales. And so they're, they avoid them, and that's the one thing that can move the needle and instead go into building tools that they think will speed up the workflows and processes. And there's something I call creative arrogance, and I wanna frame that in the right way. And that is, we believe that being busy is the same thing as being productive. And it's the same in entrepreneurs. You feel productive when you're creating. And so I think when we create. Tools that we think are gonna move the needle. It equals productivity, but it's actually more decision avoidance. And, that's at the core of this issue. So let's start off by talking about the trap of building things you don't need. Now Vibe coding has become very, very popular, but it could be that you're automating the wrong stuff. One exercise to do is the effective hourly rate originally coined by James Frankl, and that is where you calculate your, annual drawings from your business. And you divide it by 1,920, which is the number of hours you work in a year, and that will give you your effective hourly rate. So every hour you spend doing something, let's say it's a hundred bucks an hour, that's costing the business money. And I think what happens is as creatives, we creatives, we don't always assimilate that. We just think we're being busy, we're being creative, we're, you know, we're creating something, therefore it feels productive. But when I look at. The difference between my elite members who are doing 300, 400, 5, 6, 7, 800,000, a million, million plus million two versus the Ascend folks who are sitting more at 100, 200, maybe two 50, who. The one thing that I see being the fundamental difference is talking to clients, actually doing outreach, doing it consistently implementing, and only building tools that actually accelerate that process. So what I wanna share with you is, you know when you're going through these decisions yourself, you're, if you're going alone. You've got nobody to call you out. If you work with me you're going to have someone holding you accountable. And that can be incredibly uncomfortable, but you will get to the results faster.'cause I will be there keeping an eye on you and calling you out when you're going in the wrong direction. And that's really at the core of mentoring. One example being someone in the group this week shared, an example of a workflow they had where they were inputting data to chat GPT, getting it to formulate a proposal, and then connecting it to Canva to build a proposal. Now, in principle, great idea, but where the execution fell down slightly was the formatting in Canva. It didn't format very well, and so the time saved in putting together the proposal will now be eaten up in formatting and rectifying the formatting issues in Canva. And this is a great example of the creative trap. We put a lot more emphasis on how the proposal looks. Then perhaps what it says. And so it's really important that when you're building any tool. You focus on understanding what is the problem I'm actually solving now we've since gone back and forward and there's actually a better solution, and I'm not here to comment negatively on that my members experimented and tried things, and what's great about the Ascend program is everyone shares in the WhatsApp group and then there's a collective of 15, 20 people all giving feedback and implementing their own, insights as well. So it's a very powerful masterminding environment. But I think, on the call this morning we had a conversation about, I was introducing the guys into how to use lovable as an AI vibe coder to build a website. And then we got talking about, lead magnets and particularly, what are some of the challenges or obstacles. That someone might have when, coming to your website for the first time. And one of our clients runs a company that does films for nonprofits. So we decided that building some kind of quoting calculator would be a great asset. Now we did that very, very quickly in Claude, probably 15 minutes. And we connected it to Cenaps, which is our marketing engine, which is built on the high level platform. And then we hit some snags integrating that. But that's to be expected when you're building anything new. But what we were able to do is actually get to the fundamental crux of the issue, which was, what is the problem we're trying to solve? And the problem we're trying to solve is someone who doesn't yet know or trust us discovers our website and they have a need, but they don't quite know what they need. Exactly. And generally speaking, they're looking for a price. So what we did is we built this, quoting calculator based on six questions. We captured the name, business name and email, and then gave them an estimate of what the project would be. Now what this then does is there is a button to then book a discovery call, and the data went into synaps. And clients can then follow up. That's one example of really building something fundamentally useful that's going to capture data and bring that person into your marketing ecosystem. So it really comes down to being very measured about what is the problem you are trying to solve and is building this tool actually going to solve that problem? And so the thing I want to leave you with is. Just be very, very vigilant to the AI trap. There's a lot of rhetoric around people building things. Claude bought, getting Mac Minis and getting right into what is essentially a deep coding in world, but it, it can be a distraction. It's an important tool in your armory for the future. And I am massively a fan of ai. I'm using it across many different aspects of my business, but fundamentally, a business exists to make a profit by providing a service to a customer. And what you've gotta always remember is that filter is what you are doing now, actively speeding up that process of getting you in front of a customer. Are you having a conversation with that customer? And is that customer then leaning into what you're suggesting and paying you for your service? That's the remaining aspect of this. Now, I'll mention here I am about to launch a workshop in London, happening in, june. If you're interested in learning more about that, drop me a message at den@denlenny.com and I'll send you some details. We are selling fast. We are currently selling to our existing clients and also people who've been to previous workshops, and I think we're gonna sell out before we even go public. It's a two day workshop in Central London, 23rd and 24th of June where we will be going into this stuff deep and building things in the room that actually move the needle.