SPI 759: AI-ify Your Business with Rick Mulready

SPI 759: AI-ify Your Business with Rick Mulready

Rick Mulready: I think the first thing that people need to understand and get on board with is it’s here. It’s not coming. It’s happening right now. And you can push against it and that’s all well and good, but your business will be passed by people who are leveraging AI. It is an opportunity to streamline your business, work fewer hours, and increase profit.

Pat Flynn: Today, we’re going to be talking about AI for business, businesses like yours, and we’re going to get specific and we’re going to get into some strategies. And the reason why I wanted to share that is because I actually had an episode come out earlier in the year about AI, but it was more positioning the fact that because AI is here and because we just can’t ignore it, we’re in it now to remember that there is the human element that’s necessary, the personalization to still succeed in business.

Don’t let AI take over your entire business. However, I had a lot of comments from that episode basically saying, Pat, okay, we get that, but what are the good strategies for AI for our business? And there’s nobody better. Then the person that we have on the show today to talk about that because he has actually changed his business He’s actually pivoted from what he was doing before to dive in headfirst and go expert level on AI for business and application of AI tools to systematize to get more time back and all those kinds of things from the tools that we now have access to.

And I’m speaking about none other than Rick Mulready. That’s right, the former host of the podcast, the art of online business. He’s somebody who has now shifted his business model to again, focus on AI. And we’re going to get into some specific frameworks to help you inject AI into your brand in a way that makes sense for you, not just kind of get into all the bright, shiny objects that are out there.

We’re also going to talk about specifically how to prompt AI and tools like Chat GPT to be able to maximize the results coming from them, not just use them right out of the box, if you will, but how to train these systems to be able to work better for you and better for you over time. And then finally we’re going to be talking about specifically the different levels.

There’s four levels of AI. And I found out during this conversation that I was actually just at level one. The way that I was using AI is maybe level 1.5 max. And we’re going to get into how to integrate it into level two and to level three, and then eventually into level four into your business. So also do know before we go into this episode that Rick and I typically have coffee every single week.

And I decided that we were going to try something different today for this podcast episode. We were going to bring you along on one of our walks while having coffee. So you might hear some crunching of the ground. You might hear some car noises. You might hear some goats, we’ll share with you why those goats exist right at the beginning.

But yeah, come on this walk with us. Have some coffee with us. Enjoy the show. Here is Rick Mulready from RickMulready.com.

Announcer: You’re listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, a show that’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, if he could live anywhere else in the world right now, he’d live in Japan. Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: Rick, welcome back to the podcast.

Rick Mulready: Thanks for having me. I’ve actually never done a podcast interview like we’re doing.

Pat Flynn: Like we’re doing? Like walking through There’s literally goats right next to us right now because in our neighborhood, they have goats eat, like, the dry brush so that they don’t catch on fire.

Yeah. Because fires are a thing here in San Diego. The brush, not on fire, not the goats. Right. We don’t want the goats on fire. The last time I did this was actually with Rameet Sethi. Yep. And it was the only other time I’ve done it. And back then, Caleb was with us and he had a backpack full of equipment and it was a wire from that backpack.

He was following us with a microphone and I had to continue to pass the microphone back and forth. A wired microphone? A wired microphone. And it was like 20 degree weather in New York. Oh. So this is much better. Yeah. So what I love about this style is we can just kind of be casual, we’re walking, there’s a different kind of energy.

Yep. And I wanted to start with, the last time you were on the show, you actually had a podcast many people might not know this. Yeah, but you don’t have that show anymore. What happened and why?

Rick Mulready: I decided to sell the podcast.

Pat Flynn: Sell the podcast. Yeah, dude, that’s a wild thing to think about.

Rick Mulready: That’s kind of the reaction that people give me when I when I tell them what you know It’s kind of weird to say what happened with it because nothing happened with it.

It just, it was something that came up in a conversation with somebody who used to be one of my coaches inside of my coaching program. So he was coaching members of my program. He is one of the early members of the coaching program that I used to have. I’ve gotten to know him over the years, just a great person.

And it just sort of came up in conversation in early 2023. And decided that with the move that I was making into AI and teaching AI, which we’re going to be talking about, to online businesses that, yeah, let’s, let’s do this. Like it’s an opportunity that I never, I never in a million years thought that I would sell the podcast.

Pat Flynn: Well, why sell the podcast instead of just talk about the thing you want to talk about on the show that you already had?

Rick Mulready: Yeah, and that’s something I thought a lot about because obviously I had you know, there’s a built in audience that I built up over the years I mean the show is very successful, but I felt like I didn’t want to you know, I’ve been talking about one type of well serving online businesses in all different facets right from you know scaling and ads and team and hiring and all the stuff I want to talk about AI and I right now at this point, I only want to be talking about AI, except if I’m doing like one on one coaching, which I’m doing a few clients right now.

So I didn’t think it made sense to kind of like. Hey, okay, you’ve been listening to the podcast now for, you know, six years, and now I’m shifting gears. I just didn’t think it was the right thing to do. Originally, it was like, well, I can do, I can create another podcast. But I really, instead, wanted to focus my attention on YouTube.

And so that’s sort of what my thought process was behind selling the podcast.

Pat Flynn: Almost like a fresh start for you in this new sort of era of Rick. Versus still having it, having to worry about it on the back of your mind kind of thing.

Rick Mulready: Exactly. You know, am I, you know, are people getting angry? You know, are they just going to stop listening because all of a sudden this is all I’m talking about?

When this isn’t what they quote signed up for when they, you know, subscribe to the podcast. So yeah, it just made a lot of sense. Start fresh. I don’t think I would have sold the podcast to anybody else. Because, you know, this person had been a guest on the show a lot.

Pat Flynn: Oh, so the audience already knew him a little bit.

Rick Mulready: Yeah, and I took a four month sabbatical in 2023. This person filled in. You know, Kwadwo is his name. He filled in a lot of the episodes. And so, you know, the audience was being introduced to him, so it just made a lot of sense.

Pat Flynn: So four months sabbatical. Yeah. What was the reason behind doing that and what did you do?

Rick Mulready: Burnout, man. I was burned out. I didn’t realize, I think I knew like deep down, but I, I wasn’t sort of acknowledging it. Until it was starting to affect me physically. Like what were the symptoms? Like I had this like weird twitching eyebrow, like my left eyebrow would twitch during the day. And it came out of nowhere.

And I don’t think I ever told you about that. No, I didn’t even know about that. And I was getting headaches every day.

Pat Flynn: I just thought you were winking at me the whole time.

Rick Mulready: Well, that too. That’s just the norm. Headaches? Yeah, headaches. And I just wasn’t, I just wasn’t feeling it. I just wasn’t. I was tired all the time.

My, I couldn’t focus. And, you know, it just was like, alright, you know what? Something needs to change. And somebody that we, you know, this person I know of this person, they just one day in 2023 just closed up shop on their seven figure business. And it just sort of got me thinking like, well, what if I not close up shop, but like just took a break.

And that was something that I never had even considered. So my first conversation wasn’t even with, wasn’t even with Amy, my wife. It was with my bookkeeper slash CFO.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, that’s the first thing that comes to mind in my head. It’s like, can, can I even take a break, like financially?

Rick Mulready: Exactly. And that’s what, that’s what I said to her.

I said, is this even possible? And she said, yes. And she said, and she knows me really, really well. And she said, not only is it possible, I highly recommend it. Oh, really? Even she said that? Yeah. Yeah. She said, because. This isn’t something that can really go on at this, this isn’t sustainable, basically what I was doing.

And so, yeah, took a, it was originally going to be a three month sabbatical. I hit the three month mark and I said, there’s no way I’m ready to go back at this point. And so I was really struggling, I was like wrestling with that. And because I had told people that, you know, this was gonna be 90 days and I had people tell me before the sabbatical.

They said 90 days is not enough Oh, really? Yeah, they said At least nine to twelve months. Wow, and I was like, well, I’m not gonna do a year at this point But anyway, yeah, I tacked on another month. Everybody was super Supportive of it. I came back and that’s when the sale of the podcast closed and you know, it was doing the transition of the podcast and then really starting to move into talking about on a more full time basis, if you will, about AI.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, I mean, when we have our coffee like we are right now, we’re not usually recording a podcast during it, but we’re just giving you a little bit of a seat with us as we record this together, which is pretty cool. We’ve been meeting for coffee for a very long time, and also during your sabbatical, and it felt like to me that giving yourself permission to just take a break from everything actually opened up the world to you in terms of what else you can do and what the other possibilities were, and this is where It was during then that I started to really feel from you that your new passion was gonna be all the stuff about AI that was going on.

You were telling me about these tools and you were showing me how to use them and I was like, Oh my gosh, this is incredible. Yeah. I was also like, dude, you’re supposed to be not working. But it felt like this is like the new passion for you.

Rick Mulready: I was also building a, what I call Pick Rick’s Brain. It’s my coaching AI chatbot.

Pat Flynn: So this is a okay, this would be interesting for everybody listening.

Rick Mulready: So this is this is literally a chat bot but it is we’ve trained it. I say we like my team and I have trained it on my 10 years of knowledge Like we took coaching calls. We took Facebook group questions. We took my you know at the time my 720 podcast episodes and we turned all of that Content into Q&A.

Like a database. A database. Yeah. And in AI terms, it’s a knowledge base. And I’ve partnered with a company called Coachbox. And we have built this, I haven’t built it. I don’t know anything about the technical side. But we’ve built this chatbot experience that people can interact with and ask questions as if you’re coaching with me.

Mm hmm the difference here And this was the most important thing for me because it’s super easy right now to take all right, you know take all the SPI episodes. How many episodes have you done?

Pat Flynn: 770 ish.

Rick Mulready: So take 770 episodes upload Literally the the entire podcast and then allow people to ask questions to it. That’s very easy to do.

However, well we did that, but we did it before the capabilities that exist now. Meaning, we transcribed them. We transcribed 700 episodes.

Pat Flynn: Oh really? So it’s all text based? Yes. That you uploaded?

Rick Mulready: So yeah, so it’s very easy to create a knowledge base now, but the difference that we have, that we’ve created with Pick Rick’s Brain is it’s conversational.

So, what I didn’t want is if somebody is coming to the chatbot and you just say like, Rick, you say, who should I hire next in my business? There’s a general answer that you can give, right? But to get a, like, true coaching experience, there’s questions that I want to know. Like, well, what does your team currently look like, right?

How are you spending your time during the day? What revenue level are, like, et cetera, et cetera. And so this PickRx Brain Coaching AI asks those questions to, so it’s a conversation to get to a personalized answer. That’s neat. That’s most helpful. And so, we’ve created a monthly membership. It’s super inexpensive.

And It’s blowing people’s minds.

Pat Flynn: Huh? So even though you’ve quote unquote moved on to talk about and teach AI and you have your YouTube channel now. Yep. You in fact have essentially cloned yourself and, and, and the way that you coach. Yep. So you kind of are still there. Using AI. Using AI, yep. Are you, are you upfront with people that this is a bot?

Rick Mulready: It’s not me. Very much so. Yeah. I am, this is, I’m very clear. Like, look, this is. I call it my brain, but it’s not me typing. It is literally my answers. It is how I would coach somebody. But it is not me, and I’m very clear about that.

Pat Flynn: That’s cool. Yeah. Now, AI obviously is something that everybody’s talking about right now.

This is the, I had a podcast episode go live. It was the first one of the year. It was called The Year of AI. And my episode was about how because it’s the year of AI, the human parts of what you do are going to be that much more important. Yep. Actually, I had a lot of people disappointed in that episode because they wanted more info about AI.

Yeah. Because it is here, it’s coming, and it’s, it’s something you can’t ignore and you should embrace. So, when it comes to your philosophy on AI, especially with related to our businesses, like, what is your philosophy with AI? How, how are we to use it. It changes so quickly. What are some tips and or strategies that we should use just on a high level as business owners related to what this thing is now available to us.

Rick Mulready: I think the first thing that people need to understand and and get on board with is It’s here. It’s not coming. It’s not something that’s gonna be happening. It’s happening right now. And you can push against it and you can, you know, just say, ah, I don’t, you know, I’m not going to be using this.

I don’t agree with it, whatever. And that’s all well and good, but you will, like your business will be passed by people who are leveraging AI. It is an opportunity to streamline your business. It’s going to allow you to, or it allows you to right now. Work fewer hours and increase profit because things are getting done so much more quickly and so much more cheaply.

Just as a simple, simple example, I just did a, uh, this morning I recorded a YouTube video. I was talking about nine AI productivity tools that hardly anybody’s talking about. One of those tools I talked about was something that I told you about in late 2023 was Opus Clip. It takes long form video and will cut it up into short form clips for you.

And the AI does it for you. In the beginning of 2023, I was paying 1,000 a month to an agency to have that done. And there was a limit to the number of long form videos that I could, you know, submit to have clipped if you will. Well, Opus Clip does that for example, and there’s a lot of AI at video editing tools and I’ve tested a lot of them.

And Opus Clip does the, what I feel like is the best job at capturing and engaging video.

Pat Flynn: And you know, wait, so what, what exactly does it do for you versus what do you have to teach it or train it to do?

Rick Mulready: The only thing that you’re training it to do, if you will, is you’re just telling it what format of video you want and like what type of text that you want on the video for it to come up.

So you upload, it’s really for any of these AI video editing tools. You upload the long form video, let’s just say it’s a YouTube video or a video of your podcast or what have you. You upload that video, the AI tool will, in this case here that we’re talking about is Opus Clip, the AI will take that long form video, find engaging clips within that video all by itself and do the editing and cutting for you.

Pat Flynn: So it has some sort of definition of what is most engaging or most interesting, and maybe that’s the part that’s, that it’s continuing to learn and hone in on.

Rick Mulready: Yes. And that is the opportunity, I think, for these AI video editing tools, for example, is, I think there’s still a big opportunity to improve. Now, because, it can grab a clip.

And it can seem great, but it might not have the context that it needs from like an earlier piece or earlier part of the video. But Opus Clip, for example, is sort of the best one that I’ve found.

Pat Flynn: Just to vouch for that, because of that recommendation, I’ve experimented and used it and it is like magic. I mean, I was also paying somebody at one point a couple years ago, thousands of dollars a month.

Yeah, yeah. To repurpose these longer form videos in our podcast episodes. And Opus Clip took a one hour podcast and with video, right? It was a video that was recorded using Squadcast. So I had the video part of the of the podcast to go along with the audio. And it magically just selected ten different parts of it.

Yep. And I would say Three or four of them were pretty spot on, right? This is six, six of them were like, well, this doesn’t make sense. Or a person who just sees this on social is not going to get it. But, but the ones that it did get, I mean, I just used it. Mike, I put them on social, you know, and that’s it.

I, that’s all that I had to do. So saving hours of time, like you said, saving loads of money. And now it’s just a matter of, and this is where I want to get to. It’s not just like, and I appreciate that recommendation, but we keep seeing a lot of recommendations for, oh, use this tool for this, use this tool for that, use this for this.

It’s when you can, and you’ve taught me this, when you can bake that into how you do what you normally do in your systems, right? The system system IT, systemization of it, that’s where the magic happens, right? So, so where do we go from there?

Rick Mulready: Yeah, this is where, for everybody listening that has resisted creating SOPs, Standing Operating Procedures in their business, this is where, the use of AI, this is where, Creating SOPs is critical.

So, how do you, just as an example, how might you write an email? Like, what’s your process for that? What is your process for putting together webinar slides? What’s your process for writing a blog? You know, like, what is the process for that and having it documented? Because then you can figure out where within that process can AI maybe help you out.

And so, so that’s a little, like, that’s a little micro. If we go a little bit more macro, people are always like, well, I don’t even know where to start incorporate, I don’t even know where AI could help me in the business. Yeah, so where do we begin? So, yeah, so I put together this, I’ve created this like acronym.

I call it the APPTT framework. And A is assess. So basically looking at your business and figuring out what are all the things I do in my business, like literally writing them out. Like we send an email, email newsletter, we do a podcast, we do a YouTube channel, et cetera, et cetera. Then from there, the first P is prioritize which of the things that you’ve just listed, listed out.

Are the biggest pains in the butt, if you will, that if you get off your plate would free up the most energy, the most time for you. Then the next P is plan. So, okay, great. We prioritize what, what would be the biggest opportunities for you. Now let’s plan meaning, okay, how do we do those things? How do we, you know, do that podcast episode, putting it together?

How do we write those blog posts? Whatever it might be. Then, after that, and within that plan, it’s what AI tools could be most helpful for accomplishing these things. Is it ChatGPT? Is it Claude? Is it Firefly? You know, whatever it might be.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, people listening don’t even know what those things are, so.

Rick Mulready: And I, and I’m happy to give an example. Okay, yeah, yeah. So, then, the first T is to test. So, alright, we’ve identified something that we want to accomplish in the business, that we want to start using AI for. And, now, we’ve identified which tool or what that process might look like. Now, like, okay, let’s test it out.

Let’s see if this works or not. And, then. The last T is, let’s just say that, okay, cool, this is working. It’s, we’re watching it. It’s evolving. Meaning like, we want to make sure it doesn’t work just once. That it works multiple times. Meaning like, oh, this is something that I can incorporate into my weekly workflow in the business.

And then the last T, for everybody who has a team, and this is the key thing is you teach people on your team how to do this so that they take it over. So, perfect example. If you’re a coach, you do coaching calls. So, you record the calls on Zoom. Okay. And then you send over notes to your coaching client afterwards.

And then you want to email them to them. Okay. Well that could be It’s a pretty time intensive process, because you’re either taking notes during the coaching call. Right, and not focused. And not focused, right. Or, afterwards, you’re going back through, taking notes, and then going through and sending them.

Yeah, that’s what I usually do.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, that’s taking way too long.

Rick Mulready: Okay. So, you can record, obviously you’re recording with, with Zoom. Well, one way to do it is, Zoom has transcription. Already built into it, as long as you’re recording to the cloud. Or, you can use a tool like Fireflies.ai, which joins your coaching call.

I’ve seen that before. Quote, joins a call. I mean, it’s like a member of the call. Yeah. But it’s transcribing everything. As it’s happening. Yeah. So then, you have that transcription, and Fireflies has other functionalities in there, like it’ll highlight sentiment from the transcription or from the call and other things like that.

I’ve never been a big fan of, of it outside of just the transcription. Okay. But from there, you could have that transcription saved to a folder, like a Google Drive folder. And maybe all this is set up within Zapier, right? So, when the transcription or the video file hits the Google Drive folder, there’s an automation that takes that transcript and sends it to ChatGPT.

ChatGPT takes that transcript now, and you’ve trained ChatGPT in this case to give you, to kick out whatever it is that you want from that call. A summary. Action items. Deliverables. And it will give you that output. Where does it give it to you? Well, that’s where you tell it to. So you could say, you could tell it, this would be in Zapier, right?

Yeah, yeah. Or Make or whatever you want, Make.com. So, once it does the kick out of the output there, of your notes, then it, you can have it send it to Slack. It can Slack you to let you know that the notes are ready. It could notify somebody on your team, to have the team member send those notes to your client.

Pat Flynn: Could it hypothetically slack my coaching student who isn’t Slack?

Rick Mulready: Absolutely. Like, it just does it. Yes, however, this is where I would definitely recommend having that human be checking the notes. Okay, just to make sure. Just to make sure that, you know, what, what ChatGPT took from it is what you would like to pass on.

So I wouldn’t necessarily send it directly to your coaching client.

Pat Flynn: That makes sense. For a coaching student who’s paying you, that makes sense. Exactly. But there are instances where you would want something fired off immediately to a team member without having to review it and, you know, saving a little bit more time that way.

Rick Mulready: So the only thing that you’re doing in this whole thing is, you know, either, you’re obviously doing the coaching call. Right. But then you set this process up once or somebody on your team sets it up and you now have this process that is running in the background of your business, which is saving you a ton of time.

That’s really cool. And so, that’s the idea. It’s like looking at where in your business are you doing things, especially those repetitive things that you’re doing all the time. That you can leverage AI tools to help you with that. And that’s just one example that we just went through.

Pat Flynn: Could I hypothet I’m just gonna make this make this up on the spot.

Yeah, go for it. When I do a coaching call and finish it, it sends the notes or whatever to a place where I can then review them. But it also adds like a ticker or you know, adds to an Excel sheet that I have as far as like tracking how many of these that I do per week. Yep. Then can I have it like text message me and say, good job, Pat.

Keep going. Sure you can. Yeah. How would you do that? I would do all that in Zapier. Okay. So Zapier is sort of the, the, the magic sort of connector between different tools and how they talk to each other.

Rick Mulready: Zapier is what’s setting exactly. It’s setting up the automation. Okay. What most people are thinking about in terms of AI, they’re thinking about just the individual tool. Yeah.

Pat Flynn: That’s how I think about it.

Rick Mulready: And that’s fine. There’s a ton of benefit, but it’s like, look, if there are things that we do in the business every single week, how could we automate a lot of that? And when I say automate, I’m not removing the personalization. Hmm. I’m just saying, how can we set this up so that It becomes so much faster, frees up your time, and thus frees up your energy.

What a lot of people are using ChatGPT for is pretty basic writing stuff.

Pat Flynn: That’s how I mostly use it. Hey, ChatGPT, give me ten ideas for a YouTube video about blank. Yep. Or, you know, write a description for a thumbnail, or even create a thumbnail now, because DALL E is connected to it for the pro plan.

Exactly. Yep. And then I, I like, get the thing done that I needed, and then I just, that, like, I got it. Like it doesn’t automatically put it somewhere or, or anything like that. Yep.

Rick Mulready: And that’s, I kind of look at that as sort of Level one, if you will. So I’m on level one? You’re, you’re higher up. Like 1. 5?

Yeah. Okay. So, level one would just be exactly what you just said. So you’re, you’re using, say, like a ChatGPT, to come up with ideas, write something, expand on something, do research, come up with contrarian views to what something that you’re, like a topic that you’re talking about, that sort of thing.

Which is great, because, you know, that, in and of itself, saves a ton of time. Now, there’s different, I like to look at it like different levels within that. Something that not a lot of people do, in how they use ChatGPT, for example, is, let’s just say that you had this framework. That you, like, let’s just say Blue Ocean Strategy.

Most people know Blue Ocean Strategy. And it’s basically just like, Creating something that sets you apart. So, let’s just say you’ve heard of it, but don’t necessarily know exactly what it is. Alright, so you can ask ChatGPT like, can you please explain to me what the Blue Ocean Strategy is? You can then take that and use it within your prompt.

So let’s just say you’re trying to come up with a lead magnet idea. And you can use, obviously, ChatGPT to come up with lead magnet ideas. But taking it a step further is you can tell ChatGPT I want you to come up with like in basic, we could go through the prompt format, which I think would be really important.

Okay, we’ll finish on that. In simplicity’s sake though, for simplicity’s sake, you can tell ChatGPT I want you to come up with five different lead magnet ideas. You know, this is my audience, this is my this is what I do in my business, etc. But I want you to come up with these ideas through the lens of the Blue Ocean Strategy.

Here is the Blue Ocean Strategy. And you’re just using what ChatGPT just told you that the Blue Ocean Strategy is. So, you’re asking ChatGPT to help you through the lens of something.

Pat Flynn: So this, level one is just using, level two, if this is called level two, is training.

Rick Mulready: Exactly. And so, this is where you really start to get into some really cool outputs, if you will, that ChatGPT can, can give you.

Pat Flynn: Oh, I’ve actually done something like this. So, I’ve taught In one of the chats that I have at ChatGPT, I’ve taught it my writing style. You know, I’ve uploaded several different emails in my own words. And every time I have an email idea now, and sometimes that idea comes from ChatGPT, sometimes it comes from me, sometimes it comes from somebody else, I tell ChatGPT, Hey, here are the five points I want to make in this email.

Write this email in the style of Pat Flynn. That is that kind of like what we’re talking about? Yeah. And then it writes it out, and then I double check it. It doesn’t automatically get sent, but it saves me a ton of time, and I just have to change maybe a few words instead of write the whole thing from scratch.

Rick Mulready: So, you use Slack in your business. I do. So, what if you set up, going back to the, like, taking it a step further, you set up an automation. You’ve trained ChatGPT right? And now it has learned your voice. Yeah. Let’s just say you set up a new channel in Slack that says, email ideas. You put your idea in that Slack channel and you, you know, you send the message that triggers the automation.

So that, it does all that for you that you just described and writes your email for you.

Pat Flynn: All in Slack. I don’t even have to go to ChatGPT.

Rick Mulready: Nope. Amazing. I mean, that’s still very basic, but that’s sort of next level stuff. You’re like, Pat, you have no idea what’s going on.

Pat Flynn: This is what I love about what we’ve been talking about.

I always seem to learn something new from you like this every time we chat. And this is what people are able to learn on your YouTube channel. You’re showing people the connection pieces between these tools that we all see.

Rick Mulready: Yep. Yeah, like the whole goal with the, with the YouTube channel and my newsletter, I’ve started a, like a quote, official newsletter.

Oh really? Yeah. Where are those things at? It’s called, the newsletter is called AI-ify. AI-ify so I call it like, this is what we’re talking about is like AI-ifying Your Business.

Pat Flynn: I like it. And the YouTube channel is?

Rick Mulready: YouTube channel is Rick Mulready. Okay. AI-ify newsletter, just go to my website, RickMulready.com.

Either you can opt in for the ChatGPT prompts lead magnet, or there’s a button right at the top that says free newsletter. That’s every week. My whole goal with this is to, and hopefully what, what I’m doing here is like just trying to simplify this. Cause it can be a very complex topic. Yeah. And my goal is just to simplify this.

There’s a ton of people out there, like really well respected. Who report on AI. Yeah. Shout out Matt Wolf. Yeah, Matt Wolf is great. He’s just reporting on this stuff though. Which is, which is awesome. Yeah. I want to take it a step further and say, okay, whatever.

Pat Flynn: You know, the like this tool that Matt talked about would be perfect for like a coach or a writer.

Rick Mulready: How do you actually use this stuff and implement it, integrate it into your business?

Pat Flynn: That’s so needed right now. It’s just Okay, that sounds cool, but how do I use this?

Rick Mulready: Right, exactly. Or, on the flip side of that, Hey, everybody’s talking about this tool, this is why I don’t think it’s a good idea. And that’s really what I’m talking about on the YouTube channel.

Taking that approach of, you know, implementation and actually how do you use this in your business and where it can fit. But in a simplistic way. We’re not trying to add complexity.

Pat Flynn: I love that. Well, I think it’s definitely needed. I think it’s exciting and I don’t see the topic of AI or the amount of tools that keep coming out slowing down anytime soon.

So I think, I think you’re setting yourself up really well here and complimenting these other people who’ve, you know, were quick on the jump, which is really neat and, and definitely useful for those of us listening. Now, before we finish up, I want to talk about the prompts because prompts are very important.

Not just for Chat GPT, but for everything Is there, how, how do we go about thinking about something other than just like, make me a clown. You know? How do, how do you , do you do that a lot with your no. Come on, I misquoted that . That’s supposed to be make me a bicycle clown, or something like that from Wedding Crashers.

Right. Anyway. What are the best practices for prompting?

Rick Mulready: Yeah, so I, what I’ve learned about prompting, I gotta give major props to Rachel Woods over at the AI exchange. She taught me a lot about prompting. I’ve kind of added my own stuff to it as I’ve gone along. So there is, you will get better results when you’re using ChatGPT or Claude or Bard when you follow sort of a format.

So number one, the first thing you want to do is tell ChatGPT who you want it to be. I want you to act as.

Pat Flynn: To literally tell it you are a…

Rick Mulready: World class, I love world class for some reason. Okay. You are a world class podcast script writer. Okay. You write scripts for some of the top podcasts in the world.

Now you’ve given it context. You’ve given it a reference point to start with. Okay. Because if you don’t start with that, you’ll get an output. It’ll be okay, but it’s not through that lens, right? You are a business strategist. You are a world class conversion copywriter.

Pat Flynn: You’re a CMO. You are a writer. You are a You name it.

Whatever. Yep. Okay.

Rick Mulready: So that’s the first thing. Tell it Who you want it to be or how you want it to act. Can you give it a name? Totally. I mean And by the way, here’s a little side tip. I always say please and thank you.

Pat Flynn: Dude, me too. Always. It’s like a, it’s like a, a superstition. You never know.

Rick Mulready: You never know.

Pat Flynn: You didn’t say, you asked so much of us, and now we’re here conquering the world. You’re, you’re cool. You said please.

Rick Mulready: I will, I will spare you. So, I always say thank you and please. Okay. So, tell it, you know, how you want it to act, who you want it to be. Okay. And And you can put a little bit of context in when you do that.

Then the next section is the context section. This is where you would put your, the tone of voice. Like if you’ve taught it to write or speak in your voice, this is where it would go, in the context section. If you are giving it your target audience, context section. So the context section is super important.

Because you are setting ChatGPT up to give you the output, whatever the output that you’re looking for, through the lens of these things. Got it. And your context might be one bullet point, might be seven bullet points. Just whatever you’re asking it for. The next section is the criteria. Is this all in one prompt?

This is one prompt. Okay. All in one prompt. So, just as an example, for criteria, I was using ChatGPT yesterday to help me write sections of a YouTube script. So I was giving it criteria of the output needs to be able to be read within a minute. Ooh. So that is a criteria.

Pat Flynn: And that’s important because you know, as a YouTuber, that you need to be concise.

Rick Mulready: That is my biggest thing I’m working on right now. Having been, having podcasted for 10 years, I can be very long winded. So that is something I’m working on, and I, but I’m, I’m using ChatGPT for example, to help me take something and pare it down. So I’m giving it criteria to, to work with. Again, that’s just one bullet point for this example.

And then the, the next thing is the instructions. What most people want to jump right to. This is where you’re telling it what you want it to do. So. I want you to write a YouTube script based on everything I’ve just mentioned, you know. And, again, you’re just telling it what you want it to do at that point.

Context could be the topic of the, or how it might be used, how it might be used. It could be like, if you’re creating a lead magnet and you want ideas, the lead magnet idea must be able to be consumed and give the person a win within 15 minutes. The last part of this is in your, in the context, and you can reference it below, actually really anywhere in the, in the prompt, except for maybe criteria.

ChatGPT works best when you give it examples. So when you have an example of something that you really like, so maybe it’s an email that’s been written or an article or whatever it might be, you’re giving it something to sort of model. Your results will be way better when you do that. So now you’ve got your complete prompt.

Now for everybody listening, they might be like, well, that is a lot, Rick, in one prompt. That is where you’re going to get better results. Now the mistake that a lot of people make with this. Is that when ChatGPT or Claude or what have you gives you that output, they’re like, cool, I’m done. I’m going to take that and I’m going to use it for whatever, and don’t do that.

Number one, I’d recommend just does it pass the test of like, is this what I was looking for? Is this good? And then if you’re like, okay, yes, this is good. I can use this. Then take it and put some personality into it. This is where you’re putting your own personal touches to it. Now the idea is the better at prompting that you get the less editing you’ll have to do.

But it’s, it really is an art of doing this. This is not just like a one and done. Most people get frustrated after they, you know, they prompt it and then they’re like Oh man, this didn’t, this didn’t work. Yeah, what a waste of time. Yeah, you know, like what’s everybody talking about? I’m not going to do this anymore.

Yeah. It’s just an art. It’s just like getting better at it, like with everything. It’s just practice. And if you, if for everybody listening, if you’re ever stuck at what you should be asking it it’s going to get super meta but ask ChatGPT what what should the prompt be if I want to get an email written, for example, and if you’re not sure what to include in the context, for example, ask it, what questions do you need to know or what things do you need to know in order to accomplish X and it’ll tell you.

And then you just give it that information and it’s helping you get the best results from it.

Pat Flynn: Got it. Do you have a place the audience can go to to kind of see this in action or, you know, any copy paste type things, resources?

Rick Mulready: That’s the PDF I put together. Okay. And depending on when this goes live, I’m going to just create a mini course out of it over five days, so people can download the PDF, but I’m also going to deliver it over five days, like a prompt each day. Cool. So I have prompts in there about like, how to teach ChatGPT to your tone of voice, your style, how to ChatGPT to write an SOP. It can do what you can do super, super fast.

How to write an email sequence. Like other things, I have, I think it’s seven ChatGPT prompts that are going to be really helpful for any online business owner. Nice, so they can just go to my website.

Pat Flynn: So, RickMulready.com. Okay Well, you heard it here and Rick, I appreciate you coming on the show and going on this.

I don’t know how many, I should have kept track of how many miles we walked. I know. Typically my watch goes on.

Rick Mulready: I know, mine didn’t either.

Pat Flynn: Maybe we weren’t going fast enough.

Rick Mulready: It means I didn’t, I didn’t walk today. Yeah.

Pat Flynn: No this, this was really cool.

So Rick, thank you so much. Congrats on the new direction. I’m excited to see where it takes you, especially being on YouTube, which I think is perfect for the subject manner that you’re obviously very passionate about and we should all be paying attention to.

Rick Mulready: So we’re just scratching the surface here today.

Pat Flynn: Oh, I bet. Yeah. I bet. Yep. So I appreciate you, man. Thanks so much. Appreciate you.

All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Rick Mulready. Definitely check out Rick Mulready and his podcast, his YouTube channel will have all the links on the show notes at smartpassiveincome.com/session759. It’s definitely got my mind going. I mean, I know that I use AI and I have used it very successfully on a level 1 to 1.5 basis.

I’m ready to level up and start these automations. I’m gonna dive into Zapier and Rick has a lot of examples on his YouTube channel, which is pretty brand new. I’ve just been very encouraged by how he has delved into this and I’ve been helping him out as well as far as utilizing YouTube and he’s, he’s going all in on it.

And I think the fact that he’s niching into specifically not just AI, but AI for businesses and the application, or as he says, the AI-ification, I love that. Go ahead and check him out. And thank you for listening in. I appreciate you. I hope for those of you who were looking for those AI strategies, this is a great starting point.

And definitely check out Rick and his YouTube channel for more applications for you and your business. Because there’s definitely going to be some stuff that is there that’s useful for you and there will be some stuff coming out, I’m sure, stuff that we can’t even think about or don’t even know exists yet that will be applicable to us as well.

So here is to The Year of AI, but not just randomly getting distracted by it, but rather using it, utilizing it and getting some great value from it too. So cheers, take care and I’ll see you in the next one.

Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. Our senior producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media, and a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. Catch you next week!