🎙️ Episode 15: AI, Systems, and Staying Sane. A Carnivore Conversation with Chris Poulter

Episode Transcript
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Short Stay Success (00:00):
As entrepreneurs, we're essentially

(00:02):
mental athletes. You know, ifyou want to be good at business,
then in the same way that aninternational athlete needs to
treat their body in the rightway in order to achieve that. As
an entrepreneur, you need totreat your body in the right way
in order to achieve that aswell, most people really
struggle to get enough protein,and protein is super important

(00:25):
for many, many reasons. And it'snot just if you're building
muscles, where clearly it isimportant, but also proteins are
incredibly important for yourbrain and your brain
functioning. So if you're notgetting enough protein, then
actually you're not going tothink of clearly. You're not
going to concentrate as well,and you're definitely not going
to perform mentally as well asyou would do if you're getting

(00:48):
more protein.

KG SHORT STAY (00:49):
Meat is about your nutrition. It's about
protein first. Muscles is allabout strength and having the
the the ability to do the thingsthat that you want to do. And
like said, you know, we'remental athletes as
entrepreneurs, and that's whyour mindsets got to be good. You
need money to make thingshappen, don't you?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And even people who,
you know, say, Oh, I'm notdriven by money when you really
drill into what they want, whichmight be kind of freedom time,
the ability to explore things inone way or another, it always
comes back to money, becauseit's money which gives you that
freedom to do what you want,

basically just focusing on that one thing until
it's successful. Then move on tothe to the next thing. Focus
acronym. Follow one course untilsuccessful. You grant. Hello
everyone, and welcome to thecarnivore Entrepreneur Show. I'm
here with Chris Poulter, and asyou know, my name is Grant. I am

(01:54):
the carnivore entrepreneur, andChris is kindly given up his
time today to talk to us aboutlots of different things to do
with entrepreneurship andartificial intelligence. But I
won't take his glory. I'll passit over to Chris. Chris, you are
our fourth guest on thecarnivore entrepreneur, so

(02:17):
within within the first five soI'll hand it over to you and let
you introduce yourself to ouraudience.

Nice. Glad to see I'm an early adopter as
always. Yeah, yeah. So I guessmy background, I started off in
music, had a lot of fun, enjoyedthe kind of creative side of
stuff, but quickly realisedthere wasn't a lot of money
there, and that, like, I wasgoing to struggle to get by in
life, if that was all I everdid. And interestingly enough, I

(02:49):
kind of started my firstbusiness, proper business, I
guess, around the age of, like,25 and very quickly learned that
it wasn't music that I was inlove with. It was creativity.
And much as people think thatwhen you work in music, it's a
very creative job, actually it'sreally heavily constrained,
because you're working with anartist who wants a particular

(03:12):
sound, they've written a song,and you have a little bit of
creative input in there, butrealistically, not a lot.
Whereas as an entrepreneur, youcan solve any problem for any
customer in any way that youwant with any team, etc, etc.
And I just found it was anamazing fit for me. And so yeah,

(03:32):
the last 15 years or so, I'vebeen kind of, you know, building
businesses and kind of finding,finding what works for me and
what does it as an entrepreneur?

Excellent. Okay, cool. So thanks for the intro,
Chris. I ask this question toeveryone that comes on the show.
So this is the carnivoreEntrepreneur Show. It's all
about meat muscles, mindset andmoney. I want to know what
qualifies you to be a carnivoreentrepreneur.

So, yeah, I think a lot of these things are
very important, and they comeback to the some of the other
things that you talk about aswell. You know, body, mind, bank
account, because asentrepreneurs, we're essentially
mental athletes. And I know thatsounds a bit strange to some

(04:28):
people when you kind of say itlike that, but for me, I think
the breakthrough moment in kindof realising that was when I was
looking to get a kind of visafor the US so that I could build
my startup out there. And I wastalking to a migration advisor
and talking about the differentvisas that you can get.

(04:50):
Basically, what it came down tois like, Okay, you need an
Rwanda. It's like, well, what'sthat? And they're like, Well,
it's a person of extraordinaryability, and it's the kind of
thing. They normally give to,like, international athletes,
yeah. So it kind of, it kind ofresonated with me, like, wow.
Like, actually, you know, if youwant to be good at business,

(05:12):
then in the same way that aninternational athlete needs to
treat their body in the rightway. In order to achieve that as
an entrepreneur, you need totreat your body in the right way
in order to achieve that aswell, you know, okay, I'm sure
we've both seen a lot of the alot the struggle, if you like,

(05:33):
as an entrepreneur, is in thatkind of mental mastery. If we
could just write down whatbusiness we want. It would be
very easy if we could even justwrite down the steps that we
needed to take. It would be veryeasy. But it's actually going
out there and doing thosethings, when things get tough,
when we're tired, when thingsdon't go away, when we get

(05:54):
thrown a curveball, that's thereal that's that's the real
factor

behind success.
So it sounds like you're a bitof a serial entrepreneur, Chris
and and you've been doing it,doing it quite a while. What's,
what is your view on the, youknow, the meat and the muscles
part of of the carnivoreentrepreneur?

Again, I think it feeds into health,
really. So I mean, most peoplereally struggle to get enough
protein, and protein is superimportant for many, many
reasons. And it's not just ifyou're building muscles where
clearly it is important. Andyes, I've had my protein way

(06:40):
this morning already, so Idefinitely a believer. But also,
proteins are incrediblyimportant for your brain and
your brain functioning. And Imean, I don't know a lot about
biology and that side ofscience, I'll be honest, but

(07:00):
like whenever I do look atproteins and how they work, it's
a pretty incredible thing, andit's essentially one of the kind
of building blocks which yourbody uses. So if you're not
getting enough protein, thenactually you're not going to
think as clearly, you're notgoing to concentrate as well,
and you're definitely not goingto perform mentally as well as

(07:22):
you would do if you're gettingmore protein. And you know,
like, hey, what? What more of aglorious and enjoyable way of
getting protein? Is there thanone of those amazing steaks that
you cook up?

Excellent, yeah.
I mean, the whole point is, isthat meat is about your
nutrition. It's about proteinfirst muscles. Is all about
strength and and having the thethe ability to do the things
that that you want to do. And,like said, you know, we're
mental athletes asentrepreneurs, and that's why
our mindsets got to be good. Andyou know, what's the point in

(07:58):
having all of that? If youhaven't got any money, right,
you need money to make thingshappen, don't you?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And even people who
you know, say, Oh, I'm notdriven by money when, when you
drop, when you really drill intowhat they want, which might be
kind of freedom time, theability to explore things in one
way or another, it always comesback to money, because it's
money which gives you thatfreedom to do what you want, and

(08:31):
it doesn't make you greedy. Toacknowledge that and say that
just makes you realistic, right?
This is the world we live in.
So,

yeah, excellent.
So on to some of the otherquestions then. So Chris, we
first met back in 2018 when wejoined the SA Quick Start, and
we've been on a been on ajourney since then, and you've
been with us ever since, interms of, you know, different

(09:00):
capacities, different levels,and you know, consider you a
good friend now. So since then,since back in 2018 where we did
the SA Quick Start and first,first met, what it what has
changed in a big way with you,since then, over the last few
years,

I think, in a word focus, and it's probably
one of the most underused wordsas an entrepreneur, because we
talked earlier about kind ofcreativity, and with creativity
comes passion and excitement.
But the negative side of that,then, is the kind of

(09:43):
entrepreneurs curse, as I callit, which is, you know, always
starting something and neverfinishing. Now, it's
interesting. We met around, youknow, 2018 because I remember
that time pretty clearly. But.
Because of some relativelyridiculous things which were
going on at the time. Now, I hada bunch of different businesses,

(10:07):
and one of my solutions, and Ikind of It's so embarrassing to
look back at it now that Ialmost laugh at myself. But like
my solution at one point was,well, I'll just have Monday for
this business, Tuesday for thisbusiness, Wednesday for this
business, Thursday for thisbusiness. And guess what I did
on Friday? So I had fivedifferent businesses, which I

(10:29):
was doing predominantly, alwaysdifferent people in and around
short term rentals, butnonetheless, my focus was all
over the place, and when that'swhere you're at, then you're not
giving any of those things thetime and attention which they
deserve. And this reallyculminated when COVID hit,

(10:54):
because I went into COVID withmy business partner, Richie,
thinking, hey, you know, we'repretty diversified. We've got,
you know, we've got investments,we've got businesses, we've got
consulting, we've got all thesedifferent kind of revenue
streams, and actually will beabsolutely fine. And what we
quickly realised that was thatwe were diversified in one way,

(11:16):
but in another way. All thesethings were related to short
term rentals, which had justbeen made illegal overnight. So
having been through a lot ofself reflection over that
period, what I realised was whatI did was not actually that
important when it comes tosuccess. Yeah, because if I

(11:38):
picked Monday's business orThursday's business, it probably
wouldn't have mattered. Whatwould have mattered with giving
all that time and attentionwhich it needed to be
successful?

Yeah, they call it inch wide, mile deep. So
basically, just focusing on thatone thing until it's successful.
Then move on to the to the nextthing, the focus. Focus acronym,
follow one course untilsuccessful. So, yeah. I mean,
that's definitely something thatI've, I've learned over the

(12:10):
years. I think, yeah, it's theentrepreneur's curse, isn't it,
of, uh, trying to do too manythings.

It is. And again, I'm very well, I'd like
to say you can give me feedback.
I'm very good at telling otherpeople what to do. I'm not so
good at doing it myself, so Iprobably would have been the
first person to tell someoneelse, well, that's just stupid.
You can't spread your focus.
You're not going to besuccessful doing it that way.
But you know, it's so muchharder to actually apply the

(12:38):
kind of thoughts and ideas toyourself, and it is to other
people, which is one of thereasons why, you know, mentoring
and coaching is, like, reallyvaluable, because you get that
external kind of opinionvalidation mirror, if you like,

Unknown (12:53):
excellent. So you're my AI guy.

I come to you for everything with AI, you helped
me out massively with the bookthat I've just published, and I
think that it would have takenme a heck of a lot longer if I
didn't have aI supporting me.
You know, using AI as that sortof partner, as opposed to a
publishing company, and that wasa game changer for me, because
it allowed me to get things offthe ground really quickly, get

(13:21):
answers when I wanted them, andalso bring context to things
that I might not have spotted.
So that's been massively useful.
What Where do you think AI'splace is with general
entrepreneurs right now, and howdo you see it developing in the
future, because this isdefinitely what

you're passionate about, definitely.
And it's a very good question.
So if I go too far off teeth,then please bring me in, in
terms of where AI is right now,I It really feels like most of
the world hasn't caught up oracknowledged, just some of the
capabilities of what we coulddo. Because if you told me 10

(14:07):
years ago as an entrepreneurthat I could type a few words
into a box and it could comeback to me with a 50 page report
on something really important tomy business, perfectly tailored,
yeah, to with an understandingof what my business does, how it

(14:29):
operates, and how these complextopics might relate to us, what
we could do, then I'd havethought that was incredible. If
you told me 10 years ago that Icould upload a couple of CSVs
into a chat bot, and it would beable to do a data science, and
it would be able to kind ofextrapolate relationships and do

(14:50):
all kinds of things which I hadno idea how to do, let alone
knowing that I could pay a humanto do it really well. I. Then
I'd have been absolutely blownaway. And the kind of list of
these capabilities is prettyendless. As an entrepreneur,
there's just so many moresuperpowers that we have now,
and so much more leverage thatwe have compared to in the past,

(15:13):
where A, you needed tounderstand that something was
possible. B, you need to defineand pay someone to go and do it
for you. Yeah. So that's that,for me, is kind of where we are,
like, right now,

yeah, yeah. And, and I think I think AI is not
perfect. And I think if youdon't know how to prompt the AI,
it, it can be quite frustratingfor people, and then they don't
tend to use it because it, it'snot good at reading between the
lines yet. So that's, that'swhat I've found. How do you

(15:54):
think that's going to grow anddevelop over the future?

Well, what we've seen, particularly
recently, where the modeldevelopment has started to
escalate very, very rapidly, isthat something it's getting a
lot better at, and there is atrend where we can start to
think about the way that we workwith AI in a slightly different

(16:22):
way. So I mean, I mentioned oneexample there, which was doing
some data analysis with CSVs,for instance. Now I started
doing that about two years agowith chat GPT. When they first
launched it, I was very excited.
I used to do a lot of dataanalysis to sales and revenue
and pricing, and still do it'sjust a lot quicker these days.

(16:44):
But I would put those CSVs intochat GPT, and I'd need to give
it nearly a two page prompt,yeah. In order to get it to do
it right, I'd have to go like,first do this, then do that,
then do that. Make sure you'recareful of these things, check
that you've done this afterthat, and it would be a really
long recipe of exactly what Iwanted it to do, yeah. Now the

(17:08):
change now is that I canbasically just tell it, bake me
a pizza, and it doesn't need therecipe, it will go and do it,
yeah. And the latest models aregetting very, very good at that.
We can stop thinking, what stepsdo we need to take, and we can
start thinking about, what's theactual outcome, which I want?

Okay, interesting, yeah, so getting it
to work on an outcome, outcomebasis, as opposed to thinking
that it, it understands you, youknow, the end of the day, it
only understands what you tellit, right?

Yeah. And we're starting to see, for
instance, with deep research onopen AI, if you ask it to go and
do something really long, itwill generally come back to you
as three or four questions,yeah. So clarity, yeah,
clarifying questions, they callthem. So it's like, Okay, what
did you mean by this? Would youlike this? Or would you like
that? So we're starting to see alot of the focus being on intent

(18:10):
and comprehension. And that'sthat's kind of getting a lot
better. Now this will kind of,again, only accelerate as as we
move forward. What's what'sreally critical, which, again, a
lot of people have missed, isthat with the latest models from
open AI, we've gone from we canjust chat to something which can

(18:32):
give us some text back, or maybegenerate an image or something
like that, to actual full blownagents, which, rather than just
being able to talk to us, theycan go off and search the web.
They can write some code, ifwe've asked them to do a
mathematical problem, or we'veasked them to do some research

(18:54):
which involves numbers, wherethey might need to do some
averaging, or any of those kindof things. And it can come back
to us, you know, even a coupleof minutes later, with the
results of what it's gone anddone. Yeah, so the more agency
these models are given, and themore different tools, and I'm

(19:15):
not just talking about thingslike searching the web, but the
ability to have access to yourGmail or your docs, yeah, or
your spreadsheets, or your data,or any of these kind of things,
as that becomes normal thatthese AI models have access to,
that we can think more and moreabout that way of like, what's

(19:36):
the actual outcome I want here,rather than the steps to go
through it. And I think thegreat news for everyone who
listens to this podcast is thatwe as entrepreneurs are
perfectly positioned to do this,because we have to do this all
the time with our teams. Yeah,when you start out, you might be

(19:59):
able to do it. Everything inyour business, but as you grow,
it's just not possible, and soinevitably, as you scale a
business, you end up taking on ateam, right? But what do you do
when you're leveraging yourbusiness through a team? Right?
You're giving them guidance onwhat you want to get done.
You're helping them understandthe best way of doing it, and

(20:21):
you're essentially checkingtheir work regularly to make
sure that, hey, what they'redoing is in line with our
expectations. And so actually,if you follow those same
processes with AI, then you canbe incredibly successful and
generate an awful lot of valuefor your business.

Yeah, excellent.
Okay, cool. So moving on to thepillar healthy body. First
question, AI question, is thereanything you do with AI to
improve your sort of your body,your nutrition, your exercise,

(20:58):
your understanding of how youcan be fit and healthy?

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's
probably not a surprise to manypeople when we say that the
foundation of AI is data, andwhen we think about AI and
health, the big transformationin future is going to be how we
use the data. Yeah, so rightnow, we are very reactive when

(21:27):
it comes to health problems, andit tends to be diagnoses are
three, 612, months after theevent, by the point that things
start getting really bad, andit's actually, you know, that
much more expensive to treat,and the outcomes are much, much
worse. Now, what's likely tohappen in future is that we'll

(21:50):
all be tracking so much dataabout our bodies that we're
going to be able to capturethings potentially before
they've even become a problem.
Yeah, and this is exactly thekind of thing that AI is
incredible about. It's takeingesting huge amounts of health
data and being able tounderstand Hang on, your blood
sugar shouldn't be dropping likethis after you've just eaten.

(22:12):
That's a warning sign for XYZ.
Yeah. So one of the things whichI do now is try and track as
much data as I can, and I don'tgo overboard, because there's
relatively easy and establishedtools which are out there. So I
mean, the first thing I did isI've got whoop Yeah, and this

(22:34):
records all of my kind of bodymetrics in terms of calories
expended every day when I do aworkout, I know roughly, because
it's not exact. I know roughlywhat my heart rate was
overnight. I'm tracking mysleep, and it will tell me what
my resting heart rate was, whatmy heart rate variability was.

(22:54):
And one of the most importantkind of health, health metrics,
which you can use to track ourhealth is our CO two max. And
again, this is something wherethe works really good, because
while it's an approximation, itwill give you a trend over time.
And for instance, I will, I willboth, because I love the data.

(23:15):
But I just yesterday, I waslooking through the data on my
whoop, and I found that my COtwo Max had gone from from 40 to
50 in a kind of six month periodwhere I've been, like, working
really hard on my kind ofgeneral fitness so, like, that's
the other amazing thing aboutdata is it kind of gives you a

(23:36):
feedback loop to know andunderstand what's working for
you and what isn't. So the otherthing that does really well is
you kind of give it a dailyjournal of, for instance, did I
have caffeine today? You trackyour workouts. And it combines
all these things to be able totell you, well, on days you have

(23:56):
caffeine, your recovery is 3%lower, yeah. Or, of course, the
bugbear of all of us, when youhave alcohol, your recovery is
20% lower the next day. Yeah,really, really helped with with
that behaviour as well. Sobetween that and tracking food,

(24:17):
like just general My FitnessPal, what you end up with is a
whole bank of data being beingkind of collected into your
Apple Health, all in one place.
And one little trick Idiscovered earlier this week
actually is that you can exportthat data from Apple Health and
just chuck it straight intochat, GPT and latest models, oh

(24:37):
three, will be able tounderstand the format of the
data, kind of drill into it foryou, give you general trends. It
will be able to give you, youknow, spot things like, okay,
yeah, about once every two weeksyou have a binge and go about
1500 calories over, normally,because of alcohol, right? You.

(24:58):
It can do all of these kind ofthings. And again, we're just at
the verge of starting to seejust how valuable that data is
going to be.

Yeah. So essentially, as long as you've
got these smart devices onmonitoring your data and putting
it into an app, you can exportthe data, paste it into chat
GPT, and it can basically do youa full health assessment.

Yeah, absolutely. And we're not
talking like small amounts ofdata either. I think it was like
a 20 megabyte zip file whichcame out of which came out of
Apple Health. So that'sactually, if you that's actually
a huge amount of data. Butagain, the llms are getting very
good at being able to look atall the stuff which is there and

(25:47):
just pull in the bit that theyneed without being confused,
which is something they're verybad at.

Excellent, excellent. I do find using
multiple llms large learningmodels or language model? Is it
learning or language models?
Language, language. So largelanguage models, using different
ones is really beneficial aswell, because you can do one
thing in one and move it over toanother one. And it makes it

(26:15):
even better. It's almost likeit's almost like they're
competing against each other,but sometimes one can know what
to say to the other one to get abetter result. So almost like
you could get one to write aprompt for the other one, and
then you adjust the prompt andmake it better. And take one bit
of information, like I did thiswith my book, where I would sort

(26:37):
of do, do something in there andthen paste it over to another
learning model to analyse it

absolutely and like it's interesting,
because different models havedifferent characters and are
good at some things and worthothers. So you have some which
are really good at writing, somewhich are really good at coding,
you have some which are kind ofa good mix. And it's interesting
because, yeah, in terms ofprompt writing, for instance, I

(27:10):
almost always use Claude. Itjust tends to write better, more
concise, more clear prompts thanthan the open AI models do. And
the irony is, even if I'mwriting for a prompt for an open
AI model, I will use short inorder to do that. Now, as you
know, I do a lot of technicalthings as well, and use models

(27:34):
to write code. And when I dothat there, it's all about
planning it, right? So saying,like, here's the approach that I
want to take, here's thetechnical things which I plan to
do, and again, you start toreally see that that come
through in a number of differentways. So first of all, I'll take
it in one model, and I'll, like,check it with another couple of

(27:55):
models and go, Hey, look, lookat all the information I've
given you. Look at this plan.
Does it make sense? Can you seeany issues with what we're doing
here? Yeah. So usually, if youtake something across a few
different models, it will picksomething else up, which you
might not have done otherwise.
But the other thing which isreally interesting is that they
have a bias towards themselves,yeah. So if you pick Gemini

(28:22):
content, the Gemini is morelikely to say that that was the
best one. If you put in if youput in Claude content, then
Claude is more likely to saythat that's the best one. So
they are also biassed towardstheir own tone, their own
outputs, probably in the sameway that a human is

interesting, cool. So thank you for that.
Appreciate how we can all startto use AI a little bit better to
actually learn more aboutourselves, as long as we can
collate the data. And I thinkthat's that's really important,
we can get too bogged down withthe data, so I think rather than

(29:04):
you analyse it, you can get theAI to do it, and it gives you
the data that's important,because it analyses trends and
patterns and things like that.
So yeah, really, really goodpoint. So a little bit off of
AI, but what? What daily habitsdo you have at the moment that
helps move your body in theright direction.

I think it's very simple. One really exercise

Unknown (29:31):
daily. Yes.

I mean, it's interesting. You use the word
habit there, because I thinkhabit is probably the most
difficult word in the Englishlanguage, because it's very easy
to say and very hard to do. It'sthat whole kind of behavioural
change is incredibly difficult,and it's something everyone on
Earth struggles with. I think Ispent many years kind of trying.

(30:00):
Trying to fight the way that mybrain works, if you like. So I
mean, for instance, if I had aweekend off, which doesn't
happen that often, but I'd comein on a Monday morning and I
just really struggled to kind ofget going again and get into
work, and I'd be like, Oh,what's wrong with me? I need to
try hard, or I need to be moremotivated, that kind of thing,

(30:20):
whereas eventually I realised,fine, if that's the way that I
feel, then that's the way Ifeel. What's the best way to
work with it instead of fightagainst it? And I realised it's
very simple. If I schedule allmy weekly calls on a Monday
morning, then At first I'll getup, oh, gotta get on calls. By
the by the time it's lunchtime,I've forgotten, I'm back in work

(30:42):
mode and I'm good, yeah. So forme, the moral of the story is
like, don't try and fight likethe way that your brain works,
just just kind of find the hackswhich work for you and make it
work. So when I talked aboutexercise, it's like, it's very
simple. I need to get up in themorning and I need to go

(31:03):
straight to the gym, because ifI don't do that, doesn't happen,
and I know it won't happen, nomatter how hard I try and
convince myself that I will.

That's the atomic habits thing. You use one thing
that you do to have a knock oneffect on the other thing that
you do. So like, I'm the same. Iactually have one of my things
is going to the gym in themorning, but after I've done a
load of stuff, so I get up, Ibrush my teeth. So getting up,

(31:33):
brushing my teeth, then Istretch. So each habit knocks on
to the other one, and if I missone, I potentially am going to
miss the next one, so as long asI hit each one, like, get up at
430 brush my teeth immediatelyafterwards, stretch, drink
water, go downstairs, takevitamins, then have ice bath,

(31:56):
then read book, you know, listento listen to something for 10
minutes, or journal or whateverthat might be, right? And then,
and then it's gym after that.
You know, your triggers are, getup, get dressed, go gym, right?
But if you didn't get up at acertain time and then get
dressed, you probably wouldn'tgo to the gym, right?

Because, yeah, totally knock on effect.
Yeah. And atomic habits is afantastic book. I think habit
stacking is really, reallyvaluable, probably for two
different reasons. So are youfamiliar with Dr Stephen Peters
the Chimp Paradox? Yes, yes.
Yes. So he talks about, kind ofhaving three parts of your

(32:43):
brain, right, the human, thechimp, and the computer. Yeah,
yes. So, and I use this modelfor so much, it's probably not
perfect, but it's a great wayfor you to think about yourself.
So the reason that I think habitstacking works so well is
because it works with both thecomputer and the chimp. Yeah,
and those are probably the twomost important things. When the

(33:06):
human saying, Here's what I wantto do, but it's not working.
It's either the human or thechimp getting in the way. So
habit stacking works because itprogrammes your computer to say,
I do this, then I do this, andthen I do this, but it also
programmed through chimp to say,hey, when you do that thing that
you don't enjoy, you get thething that you do. Yeah. So for

(33:26):
example, when I was firstbuilding the habit of going to
the gym in the morning, you kindof have that natural pushback
of, can I really be bothered?
But because I would alwayslisten to interesting podcasts
or watch YouTube videos, and I'dalways work out the night before

(33:48):
what I wanted to kind of consumeat the gym the next day. When I
got up in the morning, I would,I would switch the carrot with
the stick with the carrot, andI'd be like, Okay, I need to get
to the gym so that I can XYZ.
And again, that's, that's kindof the power of the habit
stacking.

Yeah. Okay, so that's going to the gym that's
getting your body moving. How?
How has your diet and nutritionevolved over the years? Where
are you at with it at themoment?

That's, that's a very interesting
question. I should probablypreface this by saying that when
I went to school, I had twodifferent meals. For five years,
I either had pizza and twoportions of chips I had I had
two pizza and one portion ofchips. They didn't they didn't

(34:40):
believe in nutrition when I wentto school and so, you know,
again, habits, right? So Istarted off with a very, very
unhealthy diet, and because I'mluckily blessed with a very
quiet metabolism, it didn'treally make any impact until I
started to kind of hit my 30s,and. When it did. But, well, I'd

(35:06):
always been, like, skinny, tothe point where, like, you could
see all of my ribs when Ibreathed in, and, you know,
like, very, very skinny. Andthat certainly disappeared as I
started to head into my 30s.
But, but also, it's more thanjust your body shape, you kind
of start to get tired. You haveless attention and focus, and
like a lot of other things,which, which can impact you

(35:28):
really heavily when you're anentrepreneur and your your kind
of mind is your tool. And youknow, for me, I think it's quite
simple. I've never had any realtricks or hacks other than just
tracking, yeah, that's the onlything that I'll do, is they'll
just track it. So I never say,oh, you know, I won't eat this.

(35:49):
So I will eat that. I'm going todo this diet. I'm going to do
that. I kind of treat it likemeditation. It's like I'm going
to observe without judgement.
Yeah, and what that means isthat I don't need to tell
myself, Oh, I shouldn't eatthat. Because the fact that I'm

(36:10):
looking at it and I know I trackevery day means that
automatically, I'll think, is itworth it or not? And sometimes
it is. So the best way I'vefound of that is just by
tracking and being aware of whatI'm eating. Because without
having to set anything out instone like I will do this, I

(36:30):
won't do that. Then, because I'maware of the choices that I'm
making, I generally make betterchoices. And actually, if I do
decide to indulge in somethinglike a pudding that I really
like, then I'll probablyactually enjoy it more, because
I appreciate the fact that it isa treat and I can't do it every
day, whereas before, I mighthave just had it and not even

(36:52):
thought about it.

Okay, interesting. So, yeah, it's
really, really good point. Ithink, you know, we can all get,
we can all get a bit funny withtreating ourselves, tracking
every tiny little calorie. But Ithink, you know, there's an
element of tracking that has togo in with it. And if that's
what works for you, that's,that's, that's absolutely great.

(37:14):
I mean, for someone like me, Ijust need to control my
portions, make sure I eat wholefoods. I'm planning a little
treat every now and again, so Idon't go nuts. So yeah, that's
sort of the important stuff. Butokay, cool. Sounds like you're
on a bit of a journey with withyour body and your health and
fitness, your so let's move onto the Healthy Mind. So the

(37:35):
mindset, what do you do? Anypractices that you do to avoid
getting too overwhelmed orstressed out. Um,

well, I think that that kind of self
awareness piece is just asimportant with the mind and it
is with the body. So knowing andunderstanding where your stress
levels are at is probably one ofthe most important things as an
entrepreneur. And the reason forthat is like we need to

(38:08):
artificially drive stress inorder to get stuff done right,
right, whether it's kind ofinternally to push us to put in
the extra hours, we need to dosomething, whether it's
externally to drive other peopleto push in the same direction
that we want, we need a certainamount of stress in order to

(38:29):
make that happen. Because ifthere was no stress, then we
just sit there in the morningdoing nothing right. But at the
same time, if you have too muchstress, then it becomes very bad
for your mind and your body andyour health. So there was
someone, someone I listened tospeaking once, who I think had
the kind of perfect analogy forthis, which is the elastic band

(38:51):
analogy. Because if you justleave it as it is, nothing's
going to happen. If you stretchit just the right amount and let
go, it's going to go flying, butif you pull it too far, it's
going to snap. So it's havingthat awareness of exactly where
your stress levels are rightnow. Are they in that optimal
zone, you know? Or actually,you're pulling too far to let it

(39:14):
loose a little bit so thatyou're not going to

snap? Yeah, that's a really, really good
analogy. And I think, you know,it's a simple one that is
important to understandsometimes also, when you pull an
elastic band too far, it mightnot snap, but it also doesn't
return back to the way that itwas before, right? Yeah, like
you've almost damaged itpermanently.

Yeah, indeed, because I think there's
too much focus on stress is bad.
Stress is bad. Stress is bad.
And I think we need to berealistic and say we need a
certain level of stress in ourlives to be high achieving, but
we need to monitor thatcarefully.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think the same is
with physical you know, withyour body, when you're when
you're at the gym, or you do.
Doing exercise. You know youhave to put yourself under a
certain amount of stress to getgrowth, but if you put yourself
under too much stress, you getinjuries and pain, right, which
isn't where you want to be. Youdon't want to go to the gym and
every single time break your legor snap something, you want to

(40:15):
go to the gym and do enoughstress that makes your muscles
grow or makes your lungs better,or makes your heart better, but,
yeah, absolutely. And I thinkthat analogy can be used across
body, mind and and bank account.
100% love that. So do you haveany daily practices, morning,

(40:36):
evening, whatever that keepsyour head clear.

Well, I mean the the old cliche, I guess, but
meditation, I think it'sprobably one of the most
powerful, powerful things thatthere is. I naturally found
meditation very difficult atfirst, the whole having the
attention, yes, exactly,exactly. But again, meditation

(41:08):
is like building a muscle forthe mind as well. You know, it's
building that ability to switchoff and to kind of ignore the
noise without judgement. So Ikind of touched on on that
earlier a little bit when I saidthat when I'm tracking

(41:31):
categories, I'm observingwithout judgement, and that's
really what meditation is about.
Because everyone, even the mostprestigious Buddhist monk, when
they meditate, they have allthese little random things pop
into their head. But that's notthe point. It's not about
stopping those things fromhappening. It's about stopping
the way that you respond, right?

(41:54):
So instead of sitting theregetting stressed and going, Oh,
I can't even sit there and focuson my breathing for five
minutes. What's wrong with meand all this kind of stuff
instead, it's it's just, youknow, being aware, not having
judgement and recentering yourfocus again. And while it sounds
like an incredibly simple thing,it like has such a profound

(42:18):
impact on every other aspect ofyour life, because even though
it's subconscious, you stop kindof judging things as much, which
is a very painful thing to do.
You start kind of acceptingwhere they are, but then focus
on and what do I need to do toget them back to work, to where
it needs to be, which is a muchmore productive and practical

(42:38):
way to deal with an issue thanto actually deal with a sense of
frustration and emotion, whichcomes with, you know, well, it's
not how it's meant to be, but itis what you're going to do about
it. Yeah,

yeah. No. Totally agree. Totally agree. So cool.
So onto our onto our thirdpillar, I know you preach very
much, build test scale, makingsure that you systemize first,
then grow. What would be your,you know, advice that you would

(43:15):
give any entrepreneur out therethat wants to grow their
business.

I think the thing which gets overlooked the
most is, is it right for you?
And I say that because I see alot of people with great
businesses who are reallyunhappy, and the reason that I'm
unhappy is because it was neverthe right business for them. So
it always needs to start withwhat's right for you. And

(43:46):
actually, if you find that magicsweet spot, then you are so much
more likely to be successfulthan if you're not. And you
familiar with like a Ganttdiagram, where you have these
kind of three circles, and thenit's the bit in the middle that
you're aiming for, yeah, yes,yeah, yeah. So I mean, really,
the perfect Gantt diagram for anentrepreneur is that it's

(44:11):
something you're good at,something you enjoy, and it's
something that people will payyou money for,

yeah, you can hit and then the sweet spot is in
the middle, yeah,

if you can hit something which kicks all of
those boxes, then, like,actually, everything becomes so
much easier. The biggestmistake, probably that people
make is by doing something thatthey're good at, and people will
pay the money for, but theydon't enjoy, because if you
don't enjoy what you're doing,you're never going to be
successful, even if you makelots of money, because success
isn't defined by unhappiness.

Okay, I think that's a really, really good
point. Is to get that balance.
You know, don't do somethingthat you that you hate to be in
every day. You know you want tohave something that you that you
enjoy, and you know it makes youthe. Money, and it allows you to
serve people at the same time.
So another bank account questionand incorporating AI, can you

(45:11):
share any quick wins or storieswhere an AI workflow has saved
you or a client real money.

I mean, lots. How long do you have? I
mean, I'll give you a small andkind of simple example. So I
have a software business, and itdoes lots of, you know, lots of
spending on softwaredevelopment, and one tax break
in the UK is that you can get Rand D tax credits, right? So

(45:50):
I've worked with R and Daccountants before. They usually
charge about 25% of the claim inorder to kind of look through
what you're doing, work out howmuch you can claim and present
it to HMRC. So this was about 18months ago as well, and so the
technology was nowhere as goodas what it was now. But I did a

(46:12):
very simple process, and what Idid was I went online. Now you
could do this all in one fontwith those three at the amazing
but what I did was I wentonline, I found like the top
five kind of PDF type resourcesfrom accountants on r, d, tax
credits. I put them all intochat, GPT, yeah, I used that to

(46:33):
create, like, a GPT so it knewand understood all the knowledge
and could answer my questions.
And then I gave it myinformation. I said, Hey, look,
here's what I've done. Here'sthe amount of money that I've
spent on these variouscategories. Can you help me turn
this into an R and D tax claim?
And in total, it took about halfan hour and saved about two and
a half 1000 pounds off my taxbill that year. Wow.

Blimey. Why me?
So, I mean, look like these are,I would say, some amazing stuff
that people can do to ensurethat they not only are using the
right tools to create awonderful business for
themselves, but they're alsocreating something that they're

(47:20):
going to enjoy at the same time.
I think that's something that Ican pick up from you, is that
you know you've probably donesome stuff in the past that you
didn't enjoy as much, and nowyou're sort of really leaning
into the stuff that you doenjoy, in terms of wrapping
wrapping this up. Can you giveme some quick fire stuff. So

(47:43):
what would be your three toptips on AI for entrepreneurs?

So I think a lot of it is around mindset and
how you think about AI. So Iused to use it in two ways, and
now I use it in three ways, andthat will probably really help
from a business ownerperspective, right? So first of
all, I use it as an advisor,yeah. So if there's something

(48:12):
that I don't have a lot ofknowledge about, or I want to
sharpen my knowledge, or I wantreally specific knowledge, then
I will use it for that. So let'ssay tax implications, like I
just talked about before, itcould be company law or anything
to do with health and safety orlegal frameworks, or any of
those kind of things. AI is afantastic way of getting more

(48:35):
information, as long as you makesure that it is grounded in
truth. And most of the modelsnowadays will give you a
reference so that you can doublecheck if it's super important.
Thanks so much for that. So thesecond way that I use it is more

(48:55):
like an assistant. So if youthink about a junior member of
staff, someone who's keen, eagerand enthusiastic, but you need
to check their work because theymake some mistakes sometimes.
Then that's also a great way tothink about it, as a business
owner that might be asking it tosummarise some stuff or write up

(49:19):
some documents based on otherdocuments. So the mindset really
here is that we're askingsomeone else to do the task, but
we're going to check it verycarefully afterwards, just to
make sure that it's correct.
Now, the third way, which I'vestarted using AI more recently,
and it's only possible becauseit's got so much better, is more
like a business partner, if youlike, or a coach or a kind of

(49:43):
sanity checker. So when I'mdoing stuff which I already know
that I'm very good at and verycapable at, it's still useful to
be kind of bouncing off someoneelse. And a lot of this do this
a lot of the time anyway. Iskind of peers or business
partners or coaches, but AI cando that really well as well.

(50:04):
Where, where you're just kind ofgoing right? Here's here's what
I'm doing, here's the processwhich I'm planning to do. Just
sanity check me here, I'madmitting anything. Is there a
better way of doing this? Isthere something that I haven't
really thought of while I'mdoing this, yeah, and that can
be incredibly powerful, becauseunlike the other two, where you

(50:25):
either know that you need someinformation or you want to get
something done, this can reallyhelp check your blind spots,
because you know we're talkingbefore about routines, we get
into ways of doing things, andjust by putting the normal
everyday things that we do, wecan actually then challenge
ourselves to say, Well, whydon't you do it that way? It

(50:46):
probably take you 10 minutesless each day.

Yeah, yeah. No, some really good tips there. And
I think, I think if we can, youknow, just level up the way that
we utilise artificialintelligence within our daily
lives. It will grow with it, asopposed to being taken over by
it. And I think that's, youknow, don't be scared of it. I
think is one of my biggest toptips. But I think there's some

(51:15):
really good ones for people toget started. So quick fire one.
What's your favourite book?

I Let's go with Thinking Fast and Slow.
Daniel Kahneman,

cool, okay, cool, new one. Haven't had that one
before? Good, okay, and what'syour biggest goal over the next
12 months?

Well, I'm currently building some open
source software, which is I'mhoping, going to be kind of a
foundational layer of businessand moving forward. So my
objective, really, for 12 monthstime, would be to build quite a
significant user base on thatplatform. In the meantime,
there's lots of other steps,including fundraising and

(52:00):
building teams and that kind ofthing. But ultimately, it's in
pursuit of the goal, which is tokind of create the operating
system which businesses need inorder to start using AI on the
day to day stuff of theirbusiness.

Excellent. Okay, and last but not least, how
would you like people to contactyou?

Well, I definitely don't go on Twitter
these days. I don't know ifyou've been there. It's not very
fun place. So LinkedIn generallyis seems to be having a
resurgence. It's a lot morepopular nowadays. There's a lot
more interesting discussions anddebates going on. So just, just
find my LinkedIn profile,

excellent. Okay, cool. Well, the Your information
will be in the show notes, butI'm sure if they just type in
your name in LinkedIn, they'llfind you look for your face.
Nice and easy. So any, any finalthoughts, Chris, or comments,

yeah, again, I think in terms of where the
world is going and the waythings are going to change, it
can be really hard and confusingto know what that's going to
mean, or even start thinkingabout what we're going to be
doing in five to 10 years time.
The thing which has kept me sanethrough all of this is really
thinking about capabilities,above products and services. So

(53:19):
for me, it's very simple, threecapabilities, which I focus on
every day. The first islearning, so just understanding
what's going on, the latestthings which are coming out, how
they're relative to you. Thesecond is building, which is
more about being able to usethese things in day to day.
We're not talking about goingout and building software

(53:41):
systems here. It's like, youknow, can you find a new way of
speeding up your process, usingchat, GPT, or by using image
processing or doing these kindof things? And the third way is
the third capability of selling.
Because, as an entrepreneur,we're always selling. You're
always going to need clients,regardless of what your products

(54:01):
or services are. And if you cansell something deeper than just
transactional, and start tobuild relationships with a group
of people, generally community,then that's going to send you
really well in long steps, as wekind of come into the age of

AI, excellent.
Okay, cool. Love those finalthoughts. I think there's some
really good stuff there to takeaway. I think if we were to
improve those three things asentrepreneurs, then we'd
definitely be better andprobably enjoy it a lot more as
well. Because the more youunderstand something, the better
you can sell something, the moreenjoyable it is, because you
find it easy. Usually we enjoystuff that we find you know

(54:40):
easier and that we're good at aswell. So thank you very much,
Chris, this has been an amazinginterview. I think we've managed
to zone in the waffling, becausewe both have a tendency to
waffle on but it was mequestioning you, so hopefully
we've kept it as straight. Nine,as we possibly can, some really
good stuff on AI there, andhopefully our listeners will get

(55:03):
something from it, and if theyneed anything, to get in contact
with you. So thank you verymuch. Chris and I will speak to
you soon. Thank you. If thisepisode resonated with you,
share it with someone who needsto hear it. You are a carnivore
entrepreneur. Live life how itwas supposed to be lived on your

(55:24):
terms with strength, energy andpurpose. I'll see you on the
next episode. You.

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