Build Your AI Dream Team with Natalie MacNeil

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today, we'll be breaking down how to build your AI dream team. To drop these vibe bombs, I brought Natalie McNeil into EO Fire Studios. Natalie is a futurist, Emmy award-winning media producer and best-selling author. She's currently focused on helping entrepreneurs grow with ease using AI. And we'll talk about the AI misstep, frameworks that win, authenticity in the age of AI, building your AI dream team, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Natalie and our sponsors.

0:38Fire Nation, are you ready to make 2026 your best year yet? I believe it's time to start your transformation by attending the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies. Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software.

1:15Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Natalie, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with? Ooh, hey, Fire Nation. Now, I believe that one of the things that leads to success is letting go of perfection, letting go of facade, and stepping into what you believe is your personal genius, your essence, your uniqueness that you are here to share with the world. So I think sometimes we think that we'll land on the perfect niche or the perfect brand message.

2:13And we keep trying to fit ourselves into other people's success stories or paths, what worked for them. And especially with the time that we're in and where we're headed in the future, I really believe that success is going to come from leaning all the way into what makes you, you. And Fire Nation, I mean, that is just also so real when we see how quickly the world is changing. I mean, when Natalie and I talked, and get ready for this, Natalie, 12 years ago in two days, it was, it was December 20th, 2013. wow that is wild i mean things change fire nation i actually would challenge you to go back and listen to natalie's first episode back in 2013 with us just to see what she was chatting about then which of course was awesome stuff but i can guarantee you it wasn't about building your ai dream team which is what we are focusing on today so i do want to dive in because we have so much talk about around this.

3:15And let's just start with the AI misstep because we have to be honest with ourselves, Natalie, we all make mistakes, but what's the biggest mistake that you see entrepreneurs make when using AI? There are two big things that I'm seeing all the time, every day. One is that people still don't know how to prompt effectively. So that's a really big mistake that I'm still seeing even now, even though we've had these tools for a few years and they've been really, really powerful, especially in the last one to two years. But a lot of people don't know how to prompt effectively so that you can actually get the output that you want and an output that is usable right away and that's going to drive a result in your business.

4:12So I want entrepreneurs to be working with AI in a way that's actually driving results, like really using it as a collaborator. And that's the other big mistake that I see. So many people are still using AI as a tool instead of as a teammate or rather a whole collection of teammates. And they need to be specifically trained to fill roles in your business. So I've created an AI dream team, for example, that is doing over half the work that I was doing just a few years ago. And I have about 40 roles at this point, and I didn't build them all overnight, but I have 40 roles that I've built in chat GPT, custom GPTs, and Claude Projects, and Gemini Gems, and they actually fill a role in my business, and they give me a team that actually can help me scale with so much more ease.

5:20And what I personally find is that when I have all that AI support, it keeps me in my zone of genius. And when I'm in my zone of genius, like that's my greatest joy. And going back to the first question you asked me, like, that's what I think is the biggest success driver today as well. I love that. And you've already kind of mentioned the frameworks and I want to dive deeper into them. I mean, Claude Projects, Gemini Gems. Let's talk about frameworks that actually win, Because as you mentioned, you've developed a research-backed AI prompt framework. And Fire Nation loves framework. They love systems.

5:57They love processes. So how can we use frameworks to create unparalleled outcomes? So like I was saying, a lot of people still don't know how to prompt to actually get the output that is usable and will drive results. So the first framework, the biggest one that I want everyone to have today is my three C's prompt framework. And it's backed by the latest research in prompt engineering. And the three C's are clarity, context, and cues. So remember those words as a loose framework when you're prompting, whether you're typing, whether you're doing a voice prompt. and clarity is making sure AI knows the role that you want it to play and the goal that you want it to achieve and you need to be really clear about the format of it as well so like what is the exact output what's the word count what kind of style does it need to be what is your brand voice, who is your ideal customer and being really clear about what it is creating for.

7:15And the role, when you're putting in the role that you want AI to act as, don't just say like act as a copywriter, right? You have an opportunity here to have AI do things that aren't even in your zone of genius. It knows what you don't know. So it can take you so much further. So for example, instead of, I want you to act as a copywriter, I want you to act as a world-class copywriter who is known for high converting copy in this industry. And you've worked with these clients and you've won these awards, like actually create this role that is world class. And having that kind of team member, right, used to be very inaccessible to a lot of business owners.

8:16Like you have an opportunity now to build an AI dream team of people who are like top-notch hires that you may not have been able to bring into your business in the past. And I think that that's one of the coolest things that we can do. So clarity is the role and the goal. The second C is context. So AI really needs the bigger picture. A lot of people leave this out. Where does your prompt fit into your business strategy? Who do you serve in your business? What are the biggest challenges of your customers and your potential customers? And what other context does it need? If you were giving this to a human team member, what are all the things that they would need to know in order to do this task and exceed your expectations in it?

9:06So like if I'm working on a part of a launch, let's say I'm working on my ads for a launch campaign. It needs to know the entire launch plan. It needs to have all of that and the context for what it's creating within. So always zoom out to that bigger picture and provide that. And then the third C, and this one, I still see so many people leaving out. The third C is cues. So you need to provide cues like documentation and examples to actually help it do its job and do its job really, really well. And the documentation and examples can include a lot of different things. So if I'm creating a prompt and I often work inside of my custom GPTs at this point and projects, which I'm sure we can talk about too, but you want to make sure that the cues are included in the prompt.

10:12So things like a brand voice guide, I almost always include my ideal customer avatar. I almost always include a summary of my business and what I do and what makes us unique. I almost always include that as a cue. So make sure you're providing a pretty extensive collection of cues. I find that the more of those you provide, the better the output that you're going to get. And then once you've been prompting effectively and you see that you can enter a prompt and you get that incredible usable output that you can use right away in your business and that's going to drive a result that like actually did complete the task according to your standard, that's when you're ready to take that prompt and take the all take all the core pieces of it and turn it into a custom GPT, turn it into a Claude project.

11:13And I think it's best to automate after you already have seen that you can get a result with that prompt that you've created. I mean fire nation how many times have we said I wish there was more than one of me I just wish that there was more than one of me to do all these different things I need to do There's never enough hours in the day. Well, you can create multiples of you and by the way multiples of your dream Assistant your dream fill in the blank I mean that is just an opportunity that's there for you when you do it the right way And we have so much to talk about authenticity building that ai dream team and so much more when we get back from thanking our sponsors.

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15:12So visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial and see why thousands of businesses are switching. That's highlevelfire.com where marketing, sales, and automation finally come together. High level, join the revolution. Natalie, we're back and I want to talk about authenticity in the age of AI. And there's something that I've been saying for years now is that nobody wants a pale, watered down, weak version of somebody else. Like that's when people copy other individuals. They're trying to be that person's personality. They try to copy who they are, what they're doing. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants a pale, watered down, weak version of somebody else.

15:51They want the true, authentic version of you. So how do we hold that authenticity down in the age of AI? I mean, with so much automation that's available right now, I mean, how can AI actually amplify our voice, amplify our work without losing authenticity? I love this question. So one of the number one things that I think all entrepreneurs need to be contemplating right now in the age of AI is what are the things in my business that AI actually can't replicate? Like, what do I do that AI can't do? And you really need to be focusing your energy and your resources on that right now. And also, you have to train AI to be an expert on you and your authentic voice, especially if you're going to be working with it for anything related to content and marketing.

16:51you want to make sure that it understands your conversational voice. So one way that I do that is by training my custom GPTs on my conversational voice. And you can have AI interview you. So tell it, I really want you to get to know me. I want you to know my values. I want you to know my beliefs, my patterns, how I speak conversationally. And I want you to ask me 20 questions that will help you to understand me deeply so that you can work from that place whenever we're collaborating on a task and actually take some time with this. I recommend that you use voice mode for this one so that it actually is getting your conversational voice.

17:44And I find that I'm more conversational when I'm moving around. So I like to have my headset on and I'll walk around and I'll answer these questions. Now, I recently did this again as a test. I did this 20 questions again as a test and I took an hour to do this. So if you're going to do this, actually create the space for it because it does take a little while to answer 20 questions. Don't rush it because you're going to get gold here. And then once you've done this, you take that transcript, the transcript of the AI interview with you, and you upload it as a cue, the third C in the prompt framework.

18:28So you can do that in a prompt. You can do that in a custom GPT or in a Claude project. So put that in there. Now, Natalie, just to stop you for a second, just because I want to be clear for myself and for the listeners here, like within ChatGPT, which you've mentioned a few times, I know there's also Claude and Gemini, which are awesome. And of course, a ton of others as well. But let's just maybe stick with ChatGPT for my question right here is like, do you make this a new project? Because you said like project a couple of times with Claude, but is it a new project in ChatGPT or is it something else?

19:00In ChatGPT, I would include this 20 questions interview in a prompt. I would also include it in a custom GPT if it is applicable. So for example, if you're creating a custom GPT as your marketing strategist or as your content creator, you're definitely going to want to have this as one of your cues. So you're uploading this to the knowledge base of your custom GPT, but it's a cue that can be used in other places as well. And actually one of the things I love about Claude right now is that Claude has something called skills. And if you go into your personalization settings in Claude and you use skills, you can think of these as giving it standard operating procedures.

19:52And it will actually use those skills across all the work that it does for you, which is really cool because now you're eliminating those redundancies. You don't actually have to put all the cues into every project. And And by the way, Claude projects is different from ChatGPT projects. So Claude projects are the equivalent of the custom GPTs. Okay. And how do you get to custom GPTs? Because I want to really break it down for the core level for our listeners who maybe are just like on the, you know, the high level stuff. Like they've just jumped in here and they see, oh, there's new chat. There's search chats.

20:25There's new, I can create a new project or I can just, you know, start typing away. Like, where do you go to create this custom GPT you're talking about? So you want to be on the pro plan of whatever tool you use. And I'm a big fan of choosing one tool, getting the pro plan of it, and then really using that. And by the way, if you're going to be using it for a lot of things that are like the human parts of your business, so content creation and marketing, I do highly recommend Claude. it does by a lot of different tests come out sounding most human. So that's one thing to consider. But if we're focused on chat GPT, you need the pro plan.

21:07And then you're going to go to chat GPT.com slash GPTs. So GPTS. And that's where you can actually create a custom GPT. Now Now the custom GPT, it is like creating a role. So what's great about this is that the GPT for anyone who hasn't already created one, it maintains an instruction set. So it has a core prompt that it always uses so that you don't have to be re-prompting. So it's great to have a GPT for anything that's a recurring task in your business because you set it up once, you give it all the context it needs, you give it all the cues that it needs, and then it's ready to go. And then you can keep iterating and making it better, but then you don't have to go and create this comprehensive prompt from scratch every time you need to do something.

22:03Got it. And so within Claude, what you really like is just a project. That's how you would create this persona of yourself. That's right. It's called projects. And I, I actually think you should be going in 2026 beyond just creating one GPT. That's like the replica of you, which I have seen a lot of people doing, but what I want you to do in 2026 is get even more specific and create GPTs for individual roles in your business. Just like how you wouldn't bring somebody onto your team and be like, okay, you're going to do everything for me. I know some people do that, but we don't want to bring someone on and be like, okay, you're now doing ops and marketing and you're responsible for all my admin.

22:54So I think it's better to create a custom GPT for one very specific objective instead of trying to train one to be able to do everything for you. because that's where we can start seeing more hallucinations or answers get a little muddied up and are not as usable and won't drive the same result as when you create a GPT and it has one core objective and it's acting as that world-class version of whatever its specialty is, whatever its role is. And I think that's how you can really start to save a lot of time as an entrepreneur. On this segue, and let's keep this next section tight because we're coming to an end here.

23:38And I know that Fire Nation, we can give a call to action for them to learn more from you, to connect with you, to really flesh this out more of people that really know they want to when they need to. Give a real quick, brief rundown of what you were just talking about, about that dream team that we can be building out with different custom GPTs or projects, et cetera. What does that look like? And then where can Fire Nation go if they want to connect with you to maybe even learn more about how to do that on a bigger way? And then we'll say goodbye. I recommend everyone starts with a time audit.

24:10Audit your time for a week. Where do you spend most of your time? What are the things that are in your zone of genius? You want to keep those things. But if you're doing a lot of things that are just competencies that you have, and it's not the work that really lights you up and the work that you're here to do in the world, that's the work you want to start delegating to your AI dream team. So based on what I've seen with clients, some of the highest leverage things that they end up building AI roles for are a marketing strategist. So clarifying messaging, creating higher level campaigns, what your focus should be for a month.

24:46I see people creating their content creator that can really sound like them, sound like their authentic voice and help them to create content, whether it's email, social media content, advertising campaigns. One that I've seen more recently is a business operating system too. So creating your own OS and having it trained on all the standard operating procedures in your business. It's like the brain of your business and it is trained on the way that you make decisions. And it's trained on how to actually delegate a plan. It's trained on project management. So you can then take those projects and you can put it right into Asana or right into Notion.

25:34That one is really cool. So I think that the AI dream team you build has to be aligned with that time audit and where you personally need to save the most time. And if you want to build this with me, you can come find me at nataliemcneil.com. And I would love to support you in building your AI dream team as well. I've got some resources over there, some freebies that actually put everything I've been talking about today into a guidebook for you. And then if you want to go deeper, I have my signature program, AI Dream Team, where we can build all of this out together and you can access my AI Dream Team as well.

26:15Wow. I mean, Fire Nation, there you go. There you have somebody who's doing it every single day at a high level because you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And it's kind of crazy to think. But besides myself and Natalie, a lot of people right now, their other three people might be their AI individuals that they're creating because that's just a world that we're moving into right now. And guess what? That's okay because they're going to be great people and then just make sure to allocate a lot of time to friends and family as well. And life can be good. So Fire Nation, I want to say thank you for listening.

26:46And Natalie, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks, John. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Natalie for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation question. Are you an entrepreneur on Fire, who is looking to share your amazing message with the world. If yes, we are now accepting applications for EO Fire, Entrepreneurs on Fire. To learn more about becoming a guest, visit EOFire.com slash guest. And I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Fire Nation, are you ready to make 2026 your best year yet?

27:23I believe it's time to start your transformation by attending the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Again, request life changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Are you ready for the ultimate all in one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies, build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today.