Show Notes
Jacob asks: "I'm part of a mastermind. Everyone is talking about AI. I'm not using it and feel like I'm being left behind. I don't know where to start. What do you recommend?"
In this episode, Scott diagnoses Jacob's real issue (FOMO, not a tech gap), shares the actual AI adoption numbers (only 2% are paying), and gives a grounded framework: "Can a person or tech do this better?" You'll learn the "reverse prompt" technique, hear Scott's 50-group upload story (hour task done in 2 minutes), and get permission to ignore the hype without falling behind.
The bottom line: You're not being left behind. Start with a reverse prompt when curious. Explore before you implement. You have plenty of time.
Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask
📜 Full Transcript (Click to expand)
Scott Todd (00:00)
Welcome to Fix My Business, the show that helps you fix your business. And we do that by answering questions from our audience, the people who are brave enough to submit them. And I always appreciate you. I appreciate your questions and your dilemma. I'm Scott, your host. And today we are taking a question from Jacob. Jacob says, hey, I'm part of a mastermind. It seems that everyone is talking about AI in their business. I'm not using AI and I feel like I'm being left behind.
I really don't even know where to start. What do you recommend?
Okay, look, I see this a lot right now. I see this a lot because what's happening is FOMO. You got FOMO, Jacob. You got fear of missing out. And it's happening in the business community. Look, it's happening in society. Forget the business community for a minute. It's happening in society. Some people feel like they're missing out on the AI opportunity, if you will. Like, oh my gosh, these opportunities only come once in a lifetime. Well, they don't.
there's always the chance to start learning something and applying it to whatever it is that you want. But what you're experiencing is basically the business edition of Keeping Up With The Joneses. That's what you're experiencing right here. And I think that it's important to understand that, you know, can you can you do AI? Can you do AI or use AI in your business? Absolutely. Should you? That's a different question. You see, the one question that I would encourage you to
constantly think about is this question right here. This question, I think, is the decision for everything that you need to do. As you're doing a task or as an employee of yours or team members doing a task, you and them need to get into the ⁓ rhythm of constantly asking yourself this question. And this isn't just for you, it's for everybody. Can a person or tech do this better?
Notice what I said first, can a person do this better? There's stuff that I have to do in my business or that I need to do in my business that I'm no good at. And that's the reality. There is stuff in our businesses that tech frankly can do better. Seriously, there's stuff that technology can do better than what we can do. And if you find the answer to either of those, can a person or tech do this better? If the answer is yes,
then as the leader of the company, you have a duty to explore. That's it. Explore. I'm not telling you to implement. I'm not telling you to go down the rabbit hole. I'm telling you to explore. And I think it's critical to understand this and reframe everything that you're feeling. It's important to reframe this. There are a lot of tech curious people. That is the key word right there, tech curious people. And maybe you're not one of them and that's okay.
It's truly okay. It's okay not to worry about this stuff. Here's what's even more important. When you look at, and I saw this number last week, ⁓ I have not vetted it out yet, but it came from a reliable source. Here's the number, about 2 % of the population is paying for AI. That's it. And poor number. I didn't say they were paying hundreds or thousands of dollars a month. I said that they were paying for AI.
very small portion of people are even paying. About 30 % of the population has even downloaded or used an AI model. So you have extremely smart people running businesses that they're just not using it. They might know of it. It might be on their radar, but they're just not there. Now, it sounds like your group of people that you're hanging around with
that they are tech curious. And look, that's not gonna hurt you. But I think it's important that you use caution here because just because everybody else is doing this doesn't mean that you have to do it either. Now, if it's something that's of interest to you, by all means, go explore it, right? And if it's not interesting to you, but you're still curious about it, well, there's lots of people who can help you explain this, right? Like there's lots of people who can help you explain
options and AI options and maybe potential to leverage AI in your business. There's also a lot of hype. Look, there's there's so many people I watch on YouTube, Instagram, that are basically hype machines for AI. And there's like, that's their that's their that's their deal. Okay, no problem. mean, there's one guy I love his content. There's one guy. I love his content. But you know what he talks about? If you're not doing this, you're in the permanent underclass and you know,
We got six months, 12 months. I don't believe that. I don't believe that. I think that AI will change every business. I think that AI will eventually change the way that we work. But I don't think that you have to worry about being left behind. I don't think that you have to worry about your competitors leaving you in the dust. What AI is really, really good at right now is basically helping to streamline some of the things that might be in your business that aren't streamlined.
And that is the whole point of being tech curious. Now, if you are tech curious or if I've just even pete your interest a little bit, what I would say to you is go, go jump into your favorite AI model, whatever it is, and understand this concept of a reverse prompt. Now, for a long time, everybody's been talking about, you know, prompting, prompting, telling it what you want, prompt engineering, et cetera. A better way of doing this is to say, hey, here's the problem I'm dealing with.
How can you help me? What do you need to help me? Help me think through this in a different way. And it's quite interesting because within my business, I've done that. I know people on my team have done that as well is, hey, here's what I'm seeing. Here's what I'm experiencing. This is where I'm not sure or I can go figure this out, but it might take me 45 minutes to go figure this out. But maybe you can see a faster, better way of doing it. And that becomes game changer.
give you a deeper dive into this. Okay, so part of one thing in my business that happens, I don't know, once a year, we go in and we've got about, I don't know, 50, about 50 groups that we have to update and we provide, you know, an annual update for. And to go do this, it's a manual process. We upload the file, we have the file in a folder, we go.
upload, we're on a website, we go upload, we name it, we hit submit, we wait, we move on to the next one, we choose it. Just out of curiosity, I asked AI yesterday, I said, hey, this is what we do. How can you make us faster? Now, it would take a team member to do 50 about an hour. That's what it would take. It's mundane work. I said, how can you do this? I gave it the links that it needed. I gave it the folder. I said, just
What can you do? I'm curious. And it him and hauled for a little bit. It tried something, it didn't work. It tried something again, it didn't work. Now, I launched that whole thing while I was driving home. was in the office. I just turned around and left. was driving home and the last thing I said to him is, go see what you can do. Within a 20 minute commute home, I get a response that says, okay,
It's done, they're all done. I was like, what? How is this possible? I was assured it was gonna fail. I was convinced myself that it was gonna fail. Now it took 20 minutes and you're like, well, it's half the time of the employee. It's a little bit more than half the time, but okay, no problem. But here is the story. I asked it when I got back home. I said, hey, how did you do that? How did you, it seemed like you sputtered for a while.
But then when you actually did it, it was like a two minute deal. It did it in two minutes by the time it got going. Once it got going, it two minutes. I said, how'd you do it? What'd you do? It said I had to figure out all the things wrong first. But then once I figured it out, I was able to rapid fire them. Okay, so it did, that's what it did, is it laid down all of them in an instant. It was so fast, two minutes to do 50 of them. It said, by the way,
we can convert this into a skill that we can do it again next year or whenever you need it again. Do you want that? Yes. So the first time around, it wasn't it? Yeah, it saved my team time, but you know what it did is it learned from that. created a skill that we'll use in the future. All of that came from being tech curious and really all of it came from that reverse prompt. And I think that's the thing that you really have to think about is how
how are you using AI in your business? But at the same time, going back to your question, where do you start? I would start with a reverse prompt. If you're tech curious, but do not fall for the hype and don't feel like you're missing out because you got plenty of time. Plenty of time and this technology is just at the beginning.
It will be years and years and years before it becomes more and more mainstream. And that is the assurance that you should give yourself and to your teams too, if they have FOMO too. All right, I appreciate the question. If you have a question, head over to scotttodd.net forward slash ask. I wanna help you keep growing your business and I'll see you in our next episode.
Welcome to Fix My Business, the show that helps you fix your business. And we do that by answering questions from our audience, the people who are brave enough to submit them. And I always appreciate you. I appreciate your questions and your dilemma. I'm Scott, your host. And today we are taking a question from Jacob. Jacob says, hey, I'm part of a mastermind. It seems that everyone is talking about AI in their business. I'm not using AI and I feel like I'm being left behind.
I really don't even know where to start. What do you recommend?
Okay, look, I see this a lot right now. I see this a lot because what's happening is FOMO. You got FOMO, Jacob. You got fear of missing out. And it's happening in the business community. Look, it's happening in society. Forget the business community for a minute. It's happening in society. Some people feel like they're missing out on the AI opportunity, if you will. Like, oh my gosh, these opportunities only come once in a lifetime. Well, they don't.
there's always the chance to start learning something and applying it to whatever it is that you want. But what you're experiencing is basically the business edition of Keeping Up With The Joneses. That's what you're experiencing right here. And I think that it's important to understand that, you know, can you can you do AI? Can you do AI or use AI in your business? Absolutely. Should you? That's a different question. You see, the one question that I would encourage you to
constantly think about is this question right here. This question, I think, is the decision for everything that you need to do. As you're doing a task or as an employee of yours or team members doing a task, you and them need to get into the ⁓ rhythm of constantly asking yourself this question. And this isn't just for you, it's for everybody. Can a person or tech do this better?
Notice what I said first, can a person do this better? There's stuff that I have to do in my business or that I need to do in my business that I'm no good at. And that's the reality. There is stuff in our businesses that tech frankly can do better. Seriously, there's stuff that technology can do better than what we can do. And if you find the answer to either of those, can a person or tech do this better? If the answer is yes,
then as the leader of the company, you have a duty to explore. That's it. Explore. I'm not telling you to implement. I'm not telling you to go down the rabbit hole. I'm telling you to explore. And I think it's critical to understand this and reframe everything that you're feeling. It's important to reframe this. There are a lot of tech curious people. That is the key word right there, tech curious people. And maybe you're not one of them and that's okay.
It's truly okay. It's okay not to worry about this stuff. Here's what's even more important. When you look at, and I saw this number last week, ⁓ I have not vetted it out yet, but it came from a reliable source. Here's the number, about 2 % of the population is paying for AI. That's it. And poor number. I didn't say they were paying hundreds or thousands of dollars a month. I said that they were paying for AI.
very small portion of people are even paying. About 30 % of the population has even downloaded or used an AI model. So you have extremely smart people running businesses that they're just not using it. They might know of it. It might be on their radar, but they're just not there. Now, it sounds like your group of people that you're hanging around with
that they are tech curious. And look, that's not gonna hurt you. But I think it's important that you use caution here because just because everybody else is doing this doesn't mean that you have to do it either. Now, if it's something that's of interest to you, by all means, go explore it, right? And if it's not interesting to you, but you're still curious about it, well, there's lots of people who can help you explain this, right? Like there's lots of people who can help you explain
options and AI options and maybe potential to leverage AI in your business. There's also a lot of hype. Look, there's there's so many people I watch on YouTube, Instagram, that are basically hype machines for AI. And there's like, that's their that's their that's their deal. Okay, no problem. mean, there's one guy I love his content. There's one guy. I love his content. But you know what he talks about? If you're not doing this, you're in the permanent underclass and you know,
We got six months, 12 months. I don't believe that. I don't believe that. I think that AI will change every business. I think that AI will eventually change the way that we work. But I don't think that you have to worry about being left behind. I don't think that you have to worry about your competitors leaving you in the dust. What AI is really, really good at right now is basically helping to streamline some of the things that might be in your business that aren't streamlined.
And that is the whole point of being tech curious. Now, if you are tech curious or if I've just even pete your interest a little bit, what I would say to you is go, go jump into your favorite AI model, whatever it is, and understand this concept of a reverse prompt. Now, for a long time, everybody's been talking about, you know, prompting, prompting, telling it what you want, prompt engineering, et cetera. A better way of doing this is to say, hey, here's the problem I'm dealing with.
How can you help me? What do you need to help me? Help me think through this in a different way. And it's quite interesting because within my business, I've done that. I know people on my team have done that as well is, hey, here's what I'm seeing. Here's what I'm experiencing. This is where I'm not sure or I can go figure this out, but it might take me 45 minutes to go figure this out. But maybe you can see a faster, better way of doing it. And that becomes game changer.
give you a deeper dive into this. Okay, so part of one thing in my business that happens, I don't know, once a year, we go in and we've got about, I don't know, 50, about 50 groups that we have to update and we provide, you know, an annual update for. And to go do this, it's a manual process. We upload the file, we have the file in a folder, we go.
upload, we're on a website, we go upload, we name it, we hit submit, we wait, we move on to the next one, we choose it. Just out of curiosity, I asked AI yesterday, I said, hey, this is what we do. How can you make us faster? Now, it would take a team member to do 50 about an hour. That's what it would take. It's mundane work. I said, how can you do this? I gave it the links that it needed. I gave it the folder. I said, just
What can you do? I'm curious. And it him and hauled for a little bit. It tried something, it didn't work. It tried something again, it didn't work. Now, I launched that whole thing while I was driving home. was in the office. I just turned around and left. was driving home and the last thing I said to him is, go see what you can do. Within a 20 minute commute home, I get a response that says, okay,
It's done, they're all done. I was like, what? How is this possible? I was assured it was gonna fail. I was convinced myself that it was gonna fail. Now it took 20 minutes and you're like, well, it's half the time of the employee. It's a little bit more than half the time, but okay, no problem. But here is the story. I asked it when I got back home. I said, hey, how did you do that? How did you, it seemed like you sputtered for a while.
But then when you actually did it, it was like a two minute deal. It did it in two minutes by the time it got going. Once it got going, it two minutes. I said, how'd you do it? What'd you do? It said I had to figure out all the things wrong first. But then once I figured it out, I was able to rapid fire them. Okay, so it did, that's what it did, is it laid down all of them in an instant. It was so fast, two minutes to do 50 of them. It said, by the way,
we can convert this into a skill that we can do it again next year or whenever you need it again. Do you want that? Yes. So the first time around, it wasn't it? Yeah, it saved my team time, but you know what it did is it learned from that. created a skill that we'll use in the future. All of that came from being tech curious and really all of it came from that reverse prompt. And I think that's the thing that you really have to think about is how
how are you using AI in your business? But at the same time, going back to your question, where do you start? I would start with a reverse prompt. If you're tech curious, but do not fall for the hype and don't feel like you're missing out because you got plenty of time. Plenty of time and this technology is just at the beginning.
It will be years and years and years before it becomes more and more mainstream. And that is the assurance that you should give yourself and to your teams too, if they have FOMO too. All right, I appreciate the question. If you have a question, head over to scotttodd.net forward slash ask. I wanna help you keep growing your business and I'll see you in our next episode.