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February 14, 2025 40 mins

HoldCo Bros are back! In this episode, Nik and I discuss the world of controversial self-help gurus, specifically focusing on Dan Pena. We dissect Pena's background, from his early days in Florida to his claims of a massive oil empire and his now infamous $30,000 mastermind seminars. We analyze his aggressive persona and tactics, while trying to understand what makes him successful. We question the real value of his teachings, including his QLA principles, and if his advice is actually useful or just pure motivational hype. We also discuss the difference between gurus that just motivate you versus the ones that have a concrete business plan. Finally, we explore how AI is changing things and whether businesses can be created to protect consumers from all the spam that is going to come with the new technology.

Learn more about Nik here: http://linktr.ee/cofoundersnik

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  • Nik@cofounders.com
  • Chris@cofounders.com

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00:00 Introduction to Controversial Gurus
00:58 Meet Dan Pena: The Trillion Dollar Man
02:09 Dan Pena's Predictions and Background
03:59 Dan Pena's Business Ventures
08:32 The QLA Principles Unveiled
12:55 A Personal Encounter with Dan Pena's Team
17:32 Unshakable Belief in Entrepreneurship
18:18 The Fyre Fest and WeWork Examples
19:33 Alex Hormozi's Tactical Approach
20:14 Sales Gurus and Their Strategies
21:38 Dan Pena's Podcast Invitation
24:36 AI and the Future of Outbound Marketing
26:53 AI Tools and Consumer Defense
35:15 PhD-Level Autonomous Agents
36:45 Productizing AI Prompts
39:20 Exploring Custom GPTs
40:12 Conclusion and Final Thoughts



Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
He founded a company called Great Western Resources which
was an oil exploration company. It sold for $450 million.
Ten years later, his next big great venture is hosting
masterminds to insecure dudes that want to be less insecure
for $30,000. He's made $36 million selling
these masterminds what he's known for buying a castle in

(00:21):
Scotland for $650,000. Supposedly that castles were
32,000,000. Today they use their own AI
voice agent to raise $8 million without ever speaking to an
actual investor themselves. For those that listened, last
week we talked about a guy namedFrank Kern that was a somewhat
controversial Internet marketer.The guy who taught Cardone and

(00:43):
Tony Robbins how to be Cardone, Grant Cardone and Tony Robbins.
I got another guy for you today,Nick, and you know who he is and
you love this guy. You ready?
OK, Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
I love gurus dude. You're a guru, guy.
OK, you ready? Yes.
Dan Pena, tell me what you know about this guy.

(01:06):
Oh my gosh, because I went deep.It's been a while since I've
done research on Dan Pena, but if you've ever seen any of these
Instagram videos of the guys whoare like pumping up the sales
guys, you know, there's like a trend right now where they want
the hardcore guys. Andy Elliott's like this.
Andy Elliott. You're going to have a six pack

(01:26):
to work for me bro. All right, take your shirt off.
Dan Pena is a He's 70 years old.Hardy lives in Florida and is
just always spitting the most dramatic.
He's actually 80 years old, believe it or not.
Is he born in 45? It's very much like Jasper can
do it. What does it matter?

(01:47):
You're lying. He wants.
There's a quote of him on video.He's like, what's him?
This whole Bitcoin thing. I know who Satoshi is.
I can't tell you, but when it's going to, when it comes out,
there's going to be a lot of instability.
I know. I know personally who he is,
like, Oh my gosh, these guys. Anyways, that's Dan Pena.
I'm glad you said that because I'm going to switch up the order

(02:08):
of what I was going to talk about, and I'm going to talk
about Dan Pena's predictions of the future, hosted on his own
website, danpena.co.uk. You ready for this?
Still. Still, someone needs to update
the website. If you're listening to me,
please go update the website. Dan told us that Trump would win
in a landslide victory this year.

(02:29):
OK. OK, OK, OK, OK.
Dan also told us so no one listened.
Dan told you so no one listened.There's a YouTube video to click
on and it the YouTube video has been removed.
OK, not sure what that one was. Bad link happens.
Dan predicted that Rick Scott would be our next U.S.

(02:52):
President. So still holding out for that
one? No, this was years ago.
Still holding out. Hey, it could still happen.
Hey, he's, he's one for two. He's batting 500.
That's a good, That's a great batting average.
That's OK. Dan predicted that cybersecurity
would be a hot deal. That's bold.
That's a hot deal. What, you don't know what a hot
deal is? It's it's going to be a hot

(03:12):
deal. Yeah, that's the bet.
That's the best prediction you could make because it just it
cover, it's so broad. So hey, he's 2 for three though.
I mean, it's a hot deal. He's gotten 666.
He predicted that Iran and Syriawould be flattened by the US.
OK. I mean, Syria's flattened,
wasn't flattened by the US, but OK, it's not there Anyone.

(03:36):
Hey, it's geopolitical. It's not the United States.
He can't be an expert in everything.
And he predicted that the greatest Mexican drug cartel
boss of all time, El Chapo Guzman, would pay for the border
wall. And he obviously did, right?
In his defense, he did. He cut a check.
I'm pretty sure he, I, I might have been all cash.
I can't remember exactly how we paid for it.

(03:57):
So that's Dan's predictions, butwe're getting ahead of
ourselves. So I'm going to give you a
little background on Dan. OK, you ready?
Born in Jacksonville, FL 1945, He threatened to kill his
teacher by dropping a glass aquarium on them.
And he talks about this in all his mastermind seminars.
You know why? Do you know why?
I don't know. Because he was abused by him.

(04:19):
But wait, there's more. Not physically abused, but he
put a dunce hat on him and made him sit in the corner.
Makes sense. OK.
So he threatened. To kill him.
He literally went on a balcony over his head and tried to drop
an aquarium on his head and now he brags about it.
Huh. Stable genius.

(04:40):
He's not even telling that storyis like that.
I'm reformed. No, he brags about it.
It's, it's, it's literally a negotiating tactic, right?
It's like then anybody who negotiates with him, like I'll
freaking drop an aquarium on my head.
Yep. So as I tell you these stories,
I want you to start thinking of some frameworks of Dan Pena that
we can apply for the betterment of ourselves in society, OK?

(05:00):
OK, again, you and I never talk about this stuff.
I have a story for you after this that we did not plan for.
OK, and I've got a boat. Wait, there's more.
So how's that for a rehook? OK, so he founded a company
called Great Western Resources, which was an oil exploration
company in 1982 supposedly. Now there are very few details

(05:24):
or quote proof that he actually did these things, but we do know
that this was a real company. As far as what his ownership was
in it or if he founded it or not, no one really knows.
It sold for 450,000,010 years later.
Wow. Yeah, 1986, four $150 million.
That's a lot of money in 1986. 92 He's founded in 82, sold it

(05:48):
in 92. Oh, OK.
But he was also ousted from thatcompany.
Details are blurry, maybe 91, maybe 93.
We don't know. But it was listed.
This company was listed on the London Stock Exchange.
That is provable. We just don't know what his
ownership was in it other than what he had told us.
OK, this was given it a seminar,one of his many Mastermind

(06:08):
seminars that cost $30,000 to attend.
My favorite quote is if I leave here with anyone liking me, I
have failed. OK.
Can you dive in on that for me? It's a reverse psychology sales
tactic, right? Like you're, you're anchoring
people in the very beginning andyou're getting them to buy into
the kool-aid. Like, Oh yeah, I'm this is going

(06:29):
to be freaking hardcore. I'm going to hate him by the end
of this. It's it's very good framing for
the kind of seminar that he's going to put on, right?
Like he's establishing himself as the authority.
I'm the authority. You're going to hate me so much
by the end of this because I'm going to freaking whip you into
shape, right? And the people who are on the
receiving end are like, yeah, this is going to be so good for
me. Oh my gosh, this is this is this
is fantastic. Like if they're just in this

(06:51):
reciprocal feedback loop that he's setting up.
So anyways, yeah, nut case keep going. 30,000.
Dollars. $30,000 He's known for buying a castle in Scotland, age
39 for $650,000. Do you know what that is worth
today or not? What the castle is worth but
after inflation? 6:50 I'm going to guess 1.5.

(07:15):
Extremely close 1.4 and change. OK, so supposedly that castle's
worth 32,000,000 today. But I just think it's funny
because he this is like his claim to fame is that he bought
a castle and that's like that's like buying like a, a three
bedroom house in Palo Alto today, like at that price,
right? That's bloody great.
That's a great deal on a. Castle, he renovated the castle

(07:39):
and that's where he holds his masterminds, which he has been
holding for 30 years now. So after he makes a half a
billion dollars, he makes. Yeah, it is.
That is after he makes half a billion dollars with AB,
supposedly. According to him, his next big
great venture is hosting masterminds to insecure dudes
that want to be less insecure. For $30,000.
He's made $36 million selling these masterminds.

(08:02):
What? How do you bet?
That is quite provable because he has two or three a year.
He has 20 to 25 people per and they're $30,000 each.
So assuming they're all sold outand he's had that many per year
for 30 years, $36 million. But don't you want to know what
framework he teaches at this mastermind, Nick?
I would love to, yes. What?
What does he teach these people?I'm in the business of saving

(08:23):
all of our listeners $30,000. So you're about to get $30,000
worth of value from the TrillionDollar Man himself.
And I'll get into that nickname in a minute.
And it's the QLA principle and it's these are actually Nick and
all serious and these are mind blowing principles that you've
never heard or thought of before.
So Are you ready for these? I'm yes.
Number one, you ready reshape your mindset.

(08:46):
OK, it's a good place to start. Your success, it starts between
your ears. I'm going to like sit for 10
minutes and let you think about that before I go to #2.
Because your brain is between your ears.
Very good. Wow, you got that quick #2 Set
big audacious goals. Wow, have you ever thought of
that? No, like I usually think to set
really small goals, you know? In his defense, that's actually

(09:09):
that that's a pretty good that'sa pretty good thing to teach.
Keep going. It's.
Good #3 build a dream team, hiresmart people.
I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that before #4
Identify and acquire businesses.We're just like getting
straight. There we go.
We go like be smart, make good decisions, go acquire
businesses. Wait, wait, what?
How'd you get there? I think you skipped a few

(09:30):
things. No, no, It's like, it's like,
all right, I have no money, but I financed everything to come to
this mastermind $30,000. Oh, I'm going to get to the no
money thing, don't worry. What's step one?
Step one. Got to get that grind set.
Can do. I got that.
Got that grind set. Step 2.
Set big goals. Easy.

(09:51):
I'm going to be a billionaire. KK.
All right, All right. What's next?
What do I need to do next? Step 3.
Assemble A-Team. Step 4, Identify and buy
businesses. OK, I can't even pull forward to
pay for the team. How?
How am I identifying and buying these businesses?
Step 5, Cash out refi. Start a course, sell it to

(10:13):
millions of people. But wait, Nick, he does get more
specific. He especially encourages first
time entrepreneurs to acquire businesses.
OK. And they should be distressed
ideally and underperforming. No way this is really this.
Is I swear, yes, OK, OK #5 you're going to finance this

(10:35):
business with no money down. How?
Seller financing obviously and government grants clearly.
Number six. Number six, you're going to grow
the business. You're just going to grow it.
You're going to say grow and it's just going to do it.
OK, that's. How it works?
#7 you're going to create a money machine.
I don't know why that wasn't step one, honestly.

(10:57):
If if that was step one, who could have saved us all a lot of
time? Is it a 3D printer?
Is it like what the money machine is?
Yep, step eight of eight. Repeat and scale.
That's it. Oh, $30,000 in three weeks?
What? Would he do?
What would he do if you're coming to him and be like, I
want to join your course but I can't afford it and he's like,
it's $30,000. You got to figure out how to

(11:17):
freaking make this money. OK, OK, OK.
What if I sell or finance it, Dan?
There you go. Will you hold the note?
Step 4, will you hold the note? Are you going to sell or finance
it or what? No, no, no, That's not what this
means. That's not what this means.
But you're saying it's a $30,000investment in my future, right?
Like it's going to set me up forsuccess.
Absolutely perfect seller. Finance it, Dan.

(11:41):
Do you know why he refers to himself as the Trillion Dollar
Man? I don't know.
Because people that have been through his course have created
a trillion dollars worth of value before or after they went
through the corpse. Before or after?
Either one. Either one.
Imagine how much value JK Rowling created by selling

(12:04):
hundreds of millions of copies of Harry Potter.
Think about it. Think about all the money that
those readers made. Wait, did JK Rowling go through
it? No.
I'm just saying like that framework of like if you made
money, if you shook my hand onceand then you made $1,000,000, I
created $1,000,000 worth of value.
Is there anybody out there who's, like, admitted to going
through Dan Pena's mastermind? There are several YouTube videos

(12:26):
of guys that went through it andmake fun of the entire thing.
It's quite hilarious really. In fact, one guy started
convulsing and urinated on himself and threw up on himself
during the seminar and Dan Pena made fun of him the whole time
as it was happening from the stage.
So. That's pretty funny.
Yep. I mean, in Dan's defense, what's
he supposed to do? Call.

(12:46):
Call a medic? I.
Don't know. So what good can we take from
these principles? In all seriousness, what is
there to learn from? Like why is he successful, Nick?
Well, before we get into that, Ihave a story for you.
OK, Sold. I sold a business a few years
ago and the people that were really interested in this
business were private equity people.
I got a lot of inquiries, a lot of people reaching out, right.

(13:07):
It was a good business. We'd grown it.
It was profitable, It was great.We're exiting.
One of the groups that reached out was Dan Pennies Group and so
They Said. I think I remember this.
Yeah, before the call I get it wasn't even a SIM, right?
Because like the SIM is what theseller would send them.
Explain what a SIM is. So a SIM CIM confidential

(13:29):
information memorandum. Usually it's what sellers
provide to prospective buyers totell them about their business
is how long the business has been around here, the key
customers. This is how much money we make.
These are the contract like justeverything about your business
that a buyer would want to know initially.
And then you hop on a call and you kind of dive into more.
Well, they sent me like a SIM for their investment team and

(13:52):
front and center on their investment team was Dan Pena,
right? So this is like Dan Pena's fund.
And I looking back, I'm like, I don't know if they were just, if
he was just being used as like, hey, this media personality.
You might not have had anything to do with it.
Well, I think he had something to do with it, but I don't know
if it was his money or if it waslike, I'll lend you my likeness
and you can leverage that, right?
Anyways, So I get that and I'm like, I was going to not take

(14:14):
the meeting anyways, but I'm like Dan Penny is involved.
I got to take that. Meeting bro, and this is after
you had been down like the the Instagram reels, Dan Penny your
rabbit hole and we've been sending them back and forth.
Yeah, I, I was calling you. I called you about this and I
because I was so excited. I'm like Dan Penny, so I take
the meeting with their team. Dan, Dan wasn't on.
Probably better if I was like Dan Pena was on, but he wasn't

(14:35):
on. I want you to guess how the
negotiations went. It was a joke.
I don't know. They went exactly like you would
think a Dan Pena negotiation would go, hey, tell us about
your business. Well, we're doing about $6
million in top line, 1.5 millionin bottom line.
Market comps are three to three to five times.
So we're looking between 5:00 and $8 million in of a of a

(14:56):
purchase price. You're not going to get that
like initially out of the gate, you're not going to get that
like what? Yeah, you're not going to get
market's not going to pay that. Here's what we're willing to
offer $1,000,000 financed over Xperiod of time.
And seriously, and you stay on, but you can earn an additional

(15:18):
$5,000,000 if you grow this business.
Twelve, $100 million business and with Dan's brand and with
our backing. And I was like, is this for
real? Is this like just like that I
said on the call like this is this is for real?
Like, are you kidding me? Have you seen what Dan's done it
like? And that that's that's how this
conversation, it was the weirdest conversation.
They thought they could just come in bull in a China shop.

(15:38):
And I'm sure that they do buy businesses like that.
I'm sure there are some idiots out there who are like, OK,
yeah, I guess I'll sell. But I was like, yeah, it went
exactly like I would have thought a Dan Payne Hill head
negotiation strategy would have gone is so dumb.
And tell us what that ended up selling for well.
I can't tell you the exact number, but it's sold for the
range that I that I named in thein the beginning and it didn't.

(16:01):
Take all that long. No, it's sold.
Really. It was a great business.
It sold really quick. Yeah.
So some of these, some of these guys are like, it's just a spray
and pray kind of tactic. What can we take from Dan Pena?
I mean, I think there's a couplethings.
I think the reason I'm so obsessed with gurus is because
I'm infatuated by this level of confidence that is irrational

(16:22):
because I don't have it. I just don't have it.
You have a lot more confidence than me.
But but you know, but you are nowhere near that level, right?
It's these guys who have like this God level complex and they
are so confident that reasonablepeople like us look at them and
say what he's saying sounds unbelievable, but he's so

(16:43):
confident. He really can't be lying about
it, right? It's not a lie if you believe
it. And in that's.
What George Costanza said. In many instances, though, that
fundamental belief in drive has created value for them.
Like a perfect example of this, Jesse Tinsley, he texted me like
2 weeks ago, I'm going to buy TikTok.

(17:05):
And I'm like, you just bought Bench.
TikTok is like a $20 billion company.
And then there was like, he justwills it into existence.
Somehow. He gets a meeting with Mr.
Beast. He's convinced Mr. Beast to help
him buy. Like he's literally in talks.
I mean, I haven't seen the talks, but supposedly he's in
talks with the US government about buying TikTok because you
just spoke it into existence. So I am infatuated by these

(17:27):
people who have an unshakable belief in themselves.
Many of these gurus use it for evil, right?
Because they're just like tryingto extract so much value out of
people. But it's also a very strong
trait in some of the best founders and entrepreneurs,
Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, like these guys that
have just gone on to do great things.
This like self belief that is unshakable.
And you know what? Like you only have to be right

(17:48):
once. Like you could make these bold,
audacious claims and be wrong every time.
And then once you're right, thatreally has carries more weight
than any of the wrong predictions that you had in
yourself of what or what you were building like Elon Musk.
He went and he just said, all right, I sold this company, I'm
going to buy a castle in Scotland.
Like there's tangible proof thathe can point to to say like,

(18:08):
yeah, I'm successful. I got AI, got a castle.
So anyways, I, I think the unshakable belief is, is
something I admire and I'm both terrified of at the same time.
It's true in some of these people.
Like the the firefest guy. Yeah, dude, that's a perfect
example, 'cause so many of us fake it till we make it.
We're like, no, I'm gonna do it.I'm gonna.
Adam Newman, We work like. Adam Newman made out like a man.

(18:31):
Shit. Until the day he dies, he could
raise as much money as he'd everwant, despite his history,
because of that unshakable confidence.
Elon Musk, like you've read his biography, how many times did he
promise a rocket was going to take off for that?
We can have full self driving orwe're going to have robots on,
like whatever it is. He's promised all these things
and while he may not have hit every single timeline, look what

(18:51):
he's accomplished like he's, he's still able to point to some
of these things. So again, it's, it's a trait.
It's a trait that I both fear and in in admiration of.
You know the big differences because like, Alex Bromozi makes
a lot, if not most of his money from conferences.
A lot of people don't know that.OK, the so like they're both
making millions of dollars doingthe same thing, but what makes

(19:14):
one of them? I don't want to come a fraud
because I don't want to get sued, but he has a core
reputation. And the other one, Alex Hormozi,
arguably has a great reputation despite the fact that he's
making millions of dollars selling courses and masterminds
in high ticket XY or Z. In my opinion, it's because one
of them is very specific. Alex Hormozi, he's written

(19:34):
books. His books are extremely
tactical. You're going to go to Meta Ads
Manager, you're going to click on this.
You're going to use Advantage Plus, you can use broad
targeting. Don't tell Mehta what your
audience is. And like, it's very specific,
granular, because he's sat down at a desk for 18 hours straight
and done all these things, right?
Whereas the other guy is just talking like platitudes that are

(19:58):
super broad and high level. Yeah, it's the difference
between the steak and the sizzle, right?
Like it or the, you know, the bark and the bite.
They both are salesman. They both talk a big game.
They both are like, I can changeyour life a little bit, but I
think one of them. Delivers more tangibly for the
target audience that they have. So video is cool, but you know
what's better? Long form audio via podcast and

(20:18):
my newsletter, TKO pod.com. Go there to subscribe for free
to my newsletter. It's one e-mail a week, very
tactical. And then go to my audio podcast,
3 episodes a week. Stuff like this.
You're going to love it all free, no sleazy sales bitch.
TKO pod.com. A lot of those sales gurus
strike me as very motivational. Hey, this is the kick in the
pants that you need. Hey, don't just do it.

(20:39):
Just freaking grow up and do it.You're just being a little baby
and that's needed for many people.
But bro, Mozi is very tactical. It's like you, yes, you're going
to get the motivational thing, but if you go and you pay for
his course or you go and you buyhis book, it's also like, oh,
that's a really good strategy. Oh, holy crap.
Like that you can scale a business this way.

(20:59):
So I like, I agree with you, It's, it's in the product
offering itself. And I think that that goes for
any entrepreneur. You've got to be good at sales,
but you got to make sure that what you're selling is actually
backed up by a good product. Otherwise, you're going to get
the first couple sales and then you're constantly going to need
to be churning through people like there.
There's a reason that Dan Pena puts out content that is

(21:21):
divisive or controversial. It's because he needs his name
out there enough in order for people to keep coming to his
courses. Whereas Alex isn't necessarily
putting out the controversial stuff, hid the word of mouth
from people who've gone to his conferences or the word of mouth
from people who are sharing his posts because of the goodwill is
really doing the work, the legwork for him.
And that, like, that's the type of business that you want as an
entrepreneur. You want the goodwill to be

(21:43):
doing the legwork. You don't want to just be.
Nick Huber is an example of like, I worry about following
down sort of this penny path, right?
It's like, well, I got views, I got clicks.
But is that the best way it is for him right now?
Yeah. You ready for the grand finale
of this segment for Retired Ugly?
Yeah. So during this deep dive, I
learned that Dan Pena will basically go on any podcast that

(22:04):
asks him. And so I emailed his publicist
and invited him on the Holt Cobros podcast segment.
And wait, I I don't have a yes yet, but I'm confident I can get
a yes. And we will have him on here and
ask him all kinds of hairy questions.
At least you will. You like the awkward stuff and I

(22:25):
don't. Look, if he's generous enough to
come on and give us his time, I'm not going to be rude to him.
No, not rude, I'm just talking about like hard hitting
questions. Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, I
will. I will ask him things and he'll
probably, I don't know, a lot ofthose guys like Donald Trump's
like this. He can take a good ribbing, like
he's very conversational. But if he feels like you're

(22:46):
attacking him an adversarial, that's when he's going to start
just like hitting back on things, right.
So I would be curious to see what he's what like Dan is like
in a conversational setting. Well, I think one of the
questions needs to be listen andyou can use the Trump tactic.
A lot of people are saying, and they are on the Internet.
A lot of people are saying that you don't have $500 million,

(23:06):
that you never sold this, but that you didn't have much
ownership in this business at all.
In fact, where you made most of your money is the $3.3 million
lawsuit settlement you got for wrongful termination.
A lot of people say that. Do you have any hard proof, a
document, any sort of evidence, because this was pre Internet
that you actually made all this money to prove the haters wrong.
And he's probably, I don't care about the haters router.

(23:28):
He's probably going to talk around it.
I'd be very curious to hear his answer to that.
The second question is, if you're so successful in
business, why do you make all ofyour money selling courses?
Why aren't you starting other businesses?
See what he says there? I probably wouldn't ask him
those direct questions. I guess I'll have to do it.
I would you, you can do it. I would ask him things like,

(23:48):
because it's so foreign to me, How do you reconcile?
Like not having the things that you say you're having while
you're doing it, even though you've eventually achieved it,
right? It's like it's the fake it till
you make it on steroids where you're projecting this ultra
successful person. But if somebody came in and
actually audited you, they wouldlook at it, sit down and look at

(24:09):
it and be like, it's actually not true.
However, you needed that level of confidence.
Like how did how did you? I don't know.
I think he I know, I'm not sure he's been divorced.
I think he might be. I think he's been married the
whole time to the same woman, right?
Right. I would ask him.
I'd be like, does your wife lookat you and like, damn, that's
not true. Or like, how does that
conversation go? Like that's I, I would be very

(24:30):
curious about that particular piece of it because I could
never do that. I would, I would never be able
to live with myself. But I'm sure he's got his like
his way of convincing himself that it's fine.
So anyways, and. We're going to have to pay a lot
of money to Muhammad to edit that episode because he can be,
he can be a little brash. That's.
Going to be so funny. All right, all right, AI idea of

(24:54):
the week. I was listening to your
conversation with James Camp where you guys were talking
about AI and I really enjoyed it.
I thought it was like an awesomeconversation.
But one of the things that popped into my mind as I was
listening to it was if AI is going to make it so much easier
for us to do outbound to like reach out to people and have
agents that are having conversations, It's probably

(25:16):
going to be a hellscape for you,the consumer in the future.
You're just constantly going to be getting inbound, inbound,
inbound, like people asking you for things.
And I, so I started thinking about it not from the business
perspective of going outbound and generating, but from the
consumers perspective and being inbound and filtering.
Do you think that there's a space for AI products to be

(25:39):
built that assign value to information that's coming in, or
that interact with the inbound such that you don't actually
have to interact with them? My episode with James Camp was
split into two episodes. Did you listen to both of them
or just one? Did you hear the segment where
we talked about AI calling, AI receiving?
Is that what you're referring to?

(26:01):
Yeah. And then you talked about
agents, just having conversations with agents.
Yeah, yeah, this. But this is what I'm getting at
is like, I think that there's a lot of focus right now on
business owners who's like, oh, you can develop your own agent.
This is how you train them. This is how you do it.
So it's almost like the AI business is a services business
to help business owners get up to speed on AI.
Like I did this tweet and I asked who's making real money

(26:23):
with AI right now. There were some decent answers,
like there were some finances, but mostly what I'm seeing is
people are making money off of AI by selling services,
educating on AI, right? Like, hey, I can help you
automate something or I can helpyou implement something, or I
can help you understand something.
And. It's time saving services.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like their consulting services
essentially on educating you on how to use AI and those are

(26:43):
great services, but like actually having AI in your
business there, there are only afew examples.
One of them was answering calls after hours and logging them
into the CRM. I thought that was great because
you, you can't always have people on on call.
One idea that I really like is this crush the memory stick that
Eric Kaiser has. He's going to come on the
podcast and talk about that. But, but by and large, the main

(27:05):
use cases right now for AI are time savings and some
automation, right? Anyways, but it's, it's, we're
largely thinking about it from the business owner's perspective
because we are business owners, but I started thinking about it
from the consumer's perspective.And, and I don't have an answer,
but I wanted to brainstorm with you on this.
Like, how could you create a business around educating the
end consumer, people like you and I?

(27:26):
And when I say you and I, I meanjust regular people on how to
create their own agents so that these agents can become time
savings for them, so that they can become an agent that will
have a conversation with anotheragent, right?
Like, how do you get them to understand what information is
needed to train these agents andthese models?

(27:47):
How do you get them to understand what they're willing
to assign to an agent versus what they're not willing to
assign to an agent? Like, because like I said, it's
going to be kind of a hellscape if all of a sudden agents can be
reaching out to us all day. There's got to be like the
defense from the other side thatis answering these agent
queries. I look at this a lot like I
think about cybersecurity like in the 80s and 90s, I feel like

(28:09):
there's always, we're going to oversimplify it and call the
good guys and the bad guys. Since the dawn of time, there's
been a push pull between the good guys and the bad guys.
Talk about cybersecurity, computers come out, the Internet
comes out. The the bad guys quote were the
party that was the most sophisticated at the time,
right? So these early Internet
companies kept getting hacked because, frankly, randos on the

(28:33):
Internet that knew more about how to hack, they knew more
about it than the companies. And of course, because the
founders of the companies, they knew how to build a business,
how to market a business. They didn't know how to protect
their business against cyber threats, right?
But then as more time goes on, then cybersecurity becomes like
Dan Pena, it's going to be a hotthing, right?
Cybersecurity becomes more of a hot thing.

(28:55):
McAfee comes along, the bad guysstart helping the good guys, so
to speak. And companies are are better
protected against bad actors around the world.
OK, So that push pull becomes a little more evenly weighted.
There will always be hackers. There will always be people
defending again against hackers.But who's first, right?
I look at it the same way in this in this sense, the
marketers and the business guys are first.

(29:16):
We're first, right? So consumers are going to get be
getting spammed first from people like me with robocalls
and emails and texts Intel as you know, enough months or years
down the line when the consumershave enough tools to defend
themselves against the marketersand the spammers like me and
you. So I just think we're so early
on in this that, yeah, for a while it's just it's going to be

(29:39):
a really annoying and I'm also aconsumer and it's going to be
annoying for me. So what you're saying, I think,
is there's an opportunity to create defense against the dark
Arts, right? Defense against all the
marketers out there, they're going to use AI to spam them
with ads and sales pitches at all times.
Well, and the reason I'm, I'm talking to you about it in
particular is because who are going to be the best people to

(30:00):
think up ways to stop the stuff from happening?
It's the same people who are going to think up ways to do
this stuff, right? Like it's, if you're sitting
there and you're like, OK, this is exactly how I'm going and I'm
scraping data. This is exactly how I'm going
and identifying who a good lead is.
You can think of the other side of the equation and think, OK,
if I'm getting this information from here, how would I make sure
my information is not included on this?

(30:23):
So, so in my mind, the supplier and the I, I don't even know
what the right word is, but you're like, you're like, you're
like the pharmaceutical companies, not pharmaceutical
companies. You're you're selling the
disease and you're selling the cure.
You. Know the disease, sell the cure.
Yeah. There it is.
There it is. Yeah, Yeah.
So that's more why I'm bringing it up is because if you're

(30:43):
already going through the process of thinking how can I
automate XYZ things? I think there's also the other
side of the equation of like howdo I stop those XYZ thing from
automating to me? And then in that, is there
something? How can I detect like a caller
that's AI prematurely so they don't waste my time, right?
Yeah, exactly. Because I think those solutions

(31:05):
exist for like text and for things that were generated by
ChatGPT. ChatGPT has their own product
for like educators to use to make sure the essays weren't
written by ChatGPT. And then there's a whole ton of
rappers that do the same thing. I was actually doing research on
this before this podcast. It's still insanely early.
And I don't think that these mechanisms exist for voice or

(31:27):
for video or for other types of AI generated nonsense out there.
Like on Instagram. There's there's people copying
my ideas that are using what is it?
Hey Gen., what the the video avatar creator using?
What you're talking about, but yeah.
They're using AI tools to have these AI people talk about
business ideas on Instagram and they talk like this and it's

(31:48):
robotic. And if you look closely at their
lips, it doesn't match. And you can tell.
Like if you're looking for it, you can tell it's AI.
But then I go look in the comments and nobody, not one
comment is like, this is lame. This is AI.
This is like nobody knows. They don't know.
It's so early. And on Instagram when you go to
post a reel, there's a toggle button there that says like AI,

(32:09):
like tell us that this is AI andwho would ever use that, right?
But why would you toggle that? Why isn't Instagram detecting
it? Should they?
There was news about a month agoabout Meta creating AI avatars
of people. Did you see that?
No, I didn't. Oh man, let me talk about that
real quick, OK? Because this is really
interesting. We talked about frameworks with

(32:31):
AI last week and I talked about kind of my framework as I'm
looking at businesses, but I think I think there's
opportunity to go the opposite way.
Like I was talking to somebody about content right now in
content very popular to like quick, get to the point, zip
ZAP, zip camera angles changes, whatever.
But then you can go the oppositeway and like, all right, I'm
going to talk a little slower. It's going to be a little longer

(32:53):
video and you're essentially, you know, zigging when everyone
else is zagging. So that they're probably
businesses like that where everyone's thinking, oh, AIAIAI,
I'm going to go the opposite way.
And it may not be as big of a market, but it could be a really
great business. Yeah, so Meta created these AI

(33:13):
avatars, basically influencers. And there's a little, there's a
little disclaimer on the profilethat's like, I'm AI, but it's
hard to see. So this was in a Mashable
article. One of them was called Live and
her profile says proud black queer Mama of two and truth
teller. Heart emoji, rainbow emoji, your
real estate source for life's upand downs.
Let's chat. And then all of the pictures she

(33:36):
posts on Instagram are all AI generated.
She's not a real person. Her face, it's all AI generated
and they shut it down after like48 hours.
There was another guy, Grandpa Brian, a black retired
businessman and Carter, a datingcoach.
The discovery of these profiles led to an out roar on Twitter.
Blue sky and Meta owned threads.There was 28 AI profiles and it

(33:56):
ended up deleting all of them because of the outlash.
Backlash. Were there videos or were these
just like Facebook pages? There were Instagram and
Facebook pages. Jeez Louise.
And you can message them, they posted stuff, they would reply
to your comments and it's all fake.
Maybe that's a part of it is like there's a package you could
help someone, you could sell to somebody to help create their

(34:19):
own personal assistant and you use something like, gosh, what
was the software you used that that tracked everything across
your Mac? Oh.
Rewind, rewind. And it's like, all right, record
your conversations for two weeksand then we will take that data,
put it into a system and create your digital assistant.

(34:40):
And maybe it's longer than two weeks, I don't know.
Then what spits out is a digitalagent that works on your behalf.
That's your. That's your assistant.
Did you hear about that startup called Boardy that raised $8
million with AI? No.
Is that the one you posted about?
Yeah, they have networking feature where AI will call you
and, like, ask you questions. Like, my name is Nick.

(35:00):
I live in Boise. This is what I do.
And it's like, hey, I know just the guy for you.
And they'll connect you with real people.
It's an AI voice engine. And so they use their own
product to raise $8 million without ever speaking to an
actual investor themselves. Oh my gosh, really?
Major asterisk. Like I guarantee you they didn't
actually sign the docs and accept the wire before it.

(35:20):
Like I'm sure it was just like, yeah, we'll invest 8 million.
We raised 8 million. You know, it was more of like a
verbal thing, but still pretty crazy.
What we're, what we're getting to.
Yeah, OK. I've been, I've been doing this
thought exercise that I think would be really interesting.
AI is just advancing so fast that by the end of the year

(35:40):
supposedly we're going to have PhD level autonomous agents
working on our Behalfs. Supposedly that's, that's the
thought what I would do if I wasanybody.
I tried to do this yesterday. I'm trying to do it today as
well. And just spend an hour and think
what would I do with somebody who had a PhD level of education
that would work autonomously. What would that like?

(36:02):
It could be your current business.
It could be a business that you want to start, but what would
that do? What would that free up and
start thinking about how you would actually use them, Even
mapping out the processes, because you know this, there's
only a short window of time for you to take advantage of these
arbitrages. Everybody's going to catch up at
some point, but when they 1st come out, when they're finally
available, if that's when you start thinking about how you're

(36:24):
going to use them, what tasks you're going to give them, how
they're going to communicate back to you, what they're going
to do, what the metrics, metricsof success are, how you're going
to communicate with to them whenyou check in on them.
Like all of those things. If that's the first time you're
thinking about it, then you're going to be 3 to 6 months behind
people who are like you And I thinking about it today.
And we are going to be able to exploit the opportunities in

(36:47):
that short window of time. And it's, it is, it's going to
be very, a very short window of time.
So I would be thinking about like, OK, what would I do with
somebody with a PhD right now? What would I, what would you do?
How would you use them either tostart a business or to grow your
business or whatever? Here's another framework that
goes in line with that. Completely agree with that.
Go to your to your ChatGPT thread and ask it to tell you

(37:07):
what all your your prompts have been.
I just did this. Where are all my prompts in this
thread? There they are.
OK, cool. I remember now start thinking of
how can you productize your prompts because I was just
looking at all these AI tools toprepare for this.
And you know, my favorite meme meme is the format of the
astronaut out in space looking at Earth and another astronaut

(37:28):
behind him with a gun pointed his head.
And it says always has been. Always has been.
Yes. So there's one that I saw and he
was looking at the earth and theearth was like split open and it
was cake inside, you know, like,is it cake?
And the astronaut goes, wait, isit all cake?
And he says always has been, OK,so I'm looking at, I'm looking,
I know I'm looking at these thousands of AI tools and

(37:50):
they're they're all wrappers. They're all ChatGPT wrappers.
And really, if you boil it down even more, they're all prompts.
It's all prompts. Productize your prompts.
So go ask ChatGPT what your prompts have been.
Or go scroll and look at what your prompts have been and then
think, how can I convert that prompt to an agent?
Or how can I convert that promptto an app or to a, a tool, a

(38:12):
product or a service? I, I was looking at this AI tool
and they're download, they're getting thousands of downloads
per month. It's an iPhone app.
It's called sugar free. And all you do is you take a
picture of an ingredient panel and you upload it and it's like,
Oh yeah, this, this random ingredient here that's actually
sugar, like it's carbs, but it turns to sugar.

(38:33):
Like these things that you've never heard of.
You can't pronounce that sugar, that sugar, that sugar.
That's literally one prompt. That's it.
I. Was going to ask you.
So I like I've been spending a ton of time on prompt base.
I thought it was super fascinating and I've been taking
notes of like, hey, what are allthe prompts that I'm looking for
that are not currently on promptbase?
And like I could make those my own prompts and sell them on

(38:53):
prompt base. I think that's one easy way to
do that. But these prompts are, are
cheap. They're like between a dollar
and five dollars. Maybe they're $20 if they're
like very hyper specific, but whatever.
But they're they're cheap when you go to buy it, it's like
you'll get 50 free credits with this purchase.
Why would I need any credits if they're giving me the prompt?
Don't I just put that into my own ChatGPT?

(39:14):
Or do I have to continually pay for the credit usage?
Is it like a razor blade razors model?
I don't know. I've never used Prompt base.
I've never bought anything from it.
OK, I'm amplify something just to see.
So take your prompt, you can sell it, cool.
Or you can turn it into an app because it's just like ChatGPT
can do all of these things that these apps getting millions of

(39:34):
downloads are doing. Doesn't matter.
It's 100% true and like I've started getting way more into
GPTS. Like how many custom GPTS do
you? Have not a lot, just three or 4.
3 or 4, I'm at like 3 and it takes a long time to set them
up. And I was talking to Zach today

(39:55):
and he was like, actually, that's not the best use case for
G, for GPTS, like, really? And he starts telling me that,
you know, what's actually a better use case for them and how
to use them. And so I still think there's so
many ways that we don't even know the best way to use this
stuff. And it's because we can't spend
20 hours a day trying to figure it out.

(40:16):
Zach knows a lot more than I do about that.
He's doing some cool stuff, man.He was at my house on Sunday.
Was he? Yeah, we had him over for
breakfast. They were driving to Atlanta.
Oh sweet, no Hotlanta. That's right.
All right. Let's call it.
That's it, all right. What do you think?
Please share it with a friend and we'll see you next time on
the Kerner office.
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