How to Get AI to Actually Do Your Work, Not Just Talk About It with Ethan King

0:01John Lee Dumas:Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by HighLevel, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. And today we'll be breaking down how to get AI to actually do your work, not just talk about it. To drop these value bonds, I brought to Ethan King and the EO Fire Studios. Ethan is a three-time bestselling author and keynote speaker on AI automation. He helps non-tech businesses build reliable AI employees so they can grow profit without growing payroll. And today we'll talk about the six levels of AI autonomy. Will AI replace jobs? Your first AI win, scaling without burning out, and so much more.

0:40John Lee Dumas:And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Ethan and our sponsors. Sleep impacts everything. Your energy, focus, and performance. FitNexus Somnipods 3 are ultra-comfortable sleep airbags that block distractions, track your sleep, and deliver personalized insights to help you rest and recover. If better sleep is a priority for you, visit fitnexa.com and use code EOFire10 to save$10 on Somnipods 3 today. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more.

1:22John Lee Dumas:Visit highlevelfire.com, highlevelfire.com. Ethan, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up, Fire Nation? Ethan King here. And this is something that I'm seeing today that I believe most successful people do, that people who aren't as successful believe about automation in particular, that it is too difficult or it requires coding knowledge or that automation actually takes more time than it's worth or it's more expensive than it's worth, that the juice isn't worth the squeeze, or even that the quality of the automation can never be as good as a human.

2:04Now, what I found is that the most successful people have a delegation first mindset. We already know that, John. But automation is just delegation. You're just delegating to a machine or to a system or to artificial intelligence. And the reason I believe this is because there's an image that sticks with me from my childhood. When I was 10 years old, I lived in West Africa. My mother was in the Peace Corps. So we went over there to volunteer. And one thing that I remember is seeing the villagers washing their clothes by hand in the river, the Niger River, every morning. They would be out there all morning washing their clothes by hand.

2:44And it made me very thankful that we had washing machines back home in the U.S. And I thought to myself, man, how inefficient are we in people? If you bring this to today, in our businesses where we do the equivalent, We wash garments by hand. We do the same repetitive task in our business over and over again when we could just have the washing machine for that process. And now, today, more than ever, you have the ability to build the washing machine if it doesn't already exist.

3:17John Lee Dumas:It's crazy. And I will say that I've worked a lot in the past years with Water Is Life. And it's just a great organization. They're doing some wonderful things around the world. And a stat that blew me away, and I don't remember the exact number off the top of my head, but it was like some crazy percentage, like 40 to like 45 % of some people's days in certain countries in Africa and like other third world countries, um, are spent just collecting water. And, you know, they had to like walk like four miles and then fill it up and then walk back and do that sometimes a couple of times. And like, in comparison, it was like 0.1 % of people in the first world countries time is spent collecting water, AKA turning a faucet, you know, on your sink.

3:59John Lee Dumas:So it was such a discrepancy. And you're just like, you think to yourself, what could these people do productively with literally being given half of their day back? I mean, that's actually why I personally always hated commuting time. I've always felt like commute time was just such a waste of time. But by the way, Ethan, before you comment on that, I actually, I actually don't hate commuting time anymore because that's when a lot of people listen to this show and I'm like, okay, now they can listen to great stuff. Like Ethan King is talking to them as they're stuck in traffic right now, giving them genius, giving them thoughts, knowledge, expertise.

4:32John Lee Dumas:So I don't talk bad about commute time anymore because people can actually use that effectively. So good for you, everybody listening. And I want to talk about why you wrote Done, Ethan, because you've actually written two bestselling books on AI. I mean, your latest title is just that one word, Done, D-O-N-E. So why that title? And what message are you trying to send to entrepreneurs, to Fire Nation, who are just overwhelmed by all this AI hype. Well, John, the full title of the book is Done. Let AI Do Your Work So You Can Live Your Life. And that's the message I want people to get. The world has been caught up in this AI buzz for the past three years, ever since ChatGPT came out.

5:11And we forget the main purpose of it. It's to enjoy our life, to live our lives. Earlier, we were talking about how we're spending the summer with our kids out of the lake, out of the pool. I was just on vacation. My family and I were big into roller coasters and we have this family goal of riding the top 40 roller coasters in the world together. And we've conquered 14 of them by the way. So it is an amazing thing to be able to do. And listen, John, I was in line for the roller coasters, engaging with my family. And every once in a while, I would just send a message to my AI agents who were just actually doing things for me back home.

5:50I message my agents, my AI agents, like I talk to human employees. And they actually, they have their own computer where they go and do things for me. They were closing deals, responding to emails while I get to be there, engage with my family living life. And that's what the book is about. I call it done because AI has evolved from just chatting to actually doing tasks, executing tasks from start to finish. And the quality's there. You train them and you give them feedback just like you do a human executive assistant, and they can actually do things for you. And most people have no idea the power that is at our fingertips today to be able to do things like this.

6:32It goes way beyond just the hype of chatting with ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini.

6:38John Lee Dumas:It's so crazy. And I will say, I thought that you got back to me pretty quick a couple times on email. So good job, Ethan AI. Very impressive. Now I want to talk about the six levels of AI autonomy because you actually introduced the concept of the six levels of that, of the AI autonomy. So walk us through the framework and then share with us how founders can actually use it to scale their businesses without adding unnecessary complexity because that's one of the problems I see, Ethan, is like people are doing all these things, but it's just adding complexity and overwhelm and craziness to their life.

7:10John Lee Dumas:So how do we avoid that? Yeah, for sure. So the six levels of AI autonomy at level one, it's just chatting with AI that in this, if we use that same metaphor of washing your clothes by hand in the river, that's the equivalent of washing your garments by hand, but then you're, you have a genius standing next to you that you can chat with. And that genius gives you great tips, but you're still having to do the work and wash the clothes my hand, right? All right. Level two is, I call this your widgets. So inside of apps like ChatGPT, you have custom GPTs and Gemini, you have Gems and Claude, you have projects.

7:46These are tools that help you handle repetitive tasks within the LLMs, but you still have to do the work by hand. So if you help it draft an email for you, you still have to copy and paste like the result into your email program and send it or the social media, whatever it is you're doing, it still requires some manual work. As we go up the stair step to level three, where your automated workflows. So using the laundry metaphor again, this is like having a washing machine where you have your input, like your messy garments go into the machine. And then the machine itself is a trigger based workflow that does a system, you build the system, and then the output is your desired result.

8:28And you use this machine over and over again for whatever repeated repetitive processes you have in your business so these are trigger-based sequences at level four you have an ai agent which is an autonomous agent that can handle a task from start all the way to finish and think of this as if you had a dedicated laundry person who owns the whole job like they come in you don't ever have to touch laundry the the laundry person grabs your dirty garments out of the hamper puts them in the washing machine folds them, puts them back, and they handle it from start to finish. That's what an AI agent does for you in the business sense.

9:06And then level five, you have your orchestrator agents. So this is where you can have AI managing other AI. That's its role is to delegate to other sub-agents and other agents to get the job done that you assign it. In the sense of the laundry metaphor, this is like having a butler at your house who manages all of your other household staff. So the butler manages the pool boy and the gardener and the maid, and you just communicate to the butler. Then level six is proactive AI. So this is when your AI systems know you so well and so integrated into your life and your systems and your business, your calendar, your email, everything.

9:49It knows you so well that it can take action on your behalf before you even know that action needs to be taken. So that's where we are. I'm doing some of that right now with my clients and in my own businesses. And that is the horizon of where we're headed in the future. That will just become normal in the next few years.

10:08John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, will AI replace jobs? What is your first AI win look like? Scaling without burning out? And more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. One thing I've been dialing in for over a decade now is sleep. Not only am I in bed every night by 9pm, but I've really perfected my sleep environments. And one thing that's helped me do that is Fitnexa. Fitnexa is a pair of comfortable sleep earbuds designed specifically for a great night's rest. They're built to minimize pressure on your ears, even if you're a side sleeper like me, and their active noise cancellation helps block out the distractions that can keep you from falling or staying asleep.

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11:18John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, ideas are exciting, but systems will allow you to create freedom. That is where High Level comes in. High Level allows you to build and run your entire business from one platform. Website builder and hosting, funnel and landing pages, email marketing, automation and workflows, calendar booking, payments and subscriptions, even course and membership hosting. Everything works together seamlessly. Plus, award-winning 24-7 support, so you are never stuck. And when you go through my link at highlevelfire.com, you unlock my full bonus stack, a 30-day free trial of High Level with full access, a private 50-minute coaching call with me, weekly live office hours with me, a digital copy of my book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, my 50 Days to Something execution roadmap, and more.

12:03John Lee Dumas:Stop piecing tools together. Start building momentum. Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. Ethan, we're back and be straight with us. Will AI replace jobs? Because one of the biggest fears around AI right now with Fire Nation and really with a lot of people is it's gonna replace everybody's jobs. So how do you respond to that concern when you hear it? And what do you think business owners should really be preparing for? AI will obviously replace some jobs. It already has replaced some jobs. But what AI does is it really replaces friction, not people. So it's going to eliminate a certain tier of jobs and elevate all of us to do things that require more human thought, more human interaction, things that only humans can natively do.

12:53So, for an example, I went through a nasty legal battle years ago. I've been in automation for the past 15 years to help my own businesses. And I have non-tech businesses, embroidery companies, e-commerce. and I'm not a coder by nature, John. I was an art major in college. So if I could figure this stuff out, anyone can. But I remember 15 years ago, I was going through a nasty legal battle, almost bankrupted our company. And I taught myself marketing automation. And it was like, whoa, we came out of this situation after automating our email sequences, social media, even handwritten cards going out in the mail.

13:33And we just adopted this automation first mindset in our company. And that's what allowed us to double our revenue with half the staff that we had going into the situation. Now, nobody got, I didn't fire people, but people left the company. I didn't have money to replace them. So automation literally saved my business and allowed us to scale. And now 15 years later, I mean, the power is enormous. Like we've just layered on these AI systems and everyone can do the same thing. So yeah, your next hire may not be human, but the humans that you do have, you don't fire them, you promote them. When I go out and I train companies and I do these AI implementations and I train the staff there, I see people having a lot of fear around, am I just learning the thing that's going to replace my job?

14:22But by the end of the session, what the employees and the managers embrace is that, no, I just got a promotion. I'm a robot manager now. And that's what we're all going to be. It's just robot managers. I'm a robot manager. Just like I told you, I was standing in that roller coaster line, talking to my robots, managing them to go do things. That's what we're all going to end up being. So it's not a replacement of our job, but that's our new job. I see it as a promotion.

14:49John Lee Dumas:Let's talk about our first AI win. I mean, if somebody's listening today and they could build just one automation this week, what would you recommend? Automate the thing that you dread the most. And what I see with most entrepreneurs is email, your inbox, and your follow-up sequences. I have yet to meet anyone who just loves email. I don't know if you have, John, but it seems to be the bane of our existence. It's that necessary evil. So for most founders, automating the inbox and follow-up is the first thing that we approach. I'm an agent. My agents, they draft email replies for me in my voice because it's trained on how I speak.

15:32It manages my calendar. So it handles all of the inbox triage. And I just get a report in my text messaging application. And I can use Telegram, iMessage, WhatsApp, whatever. But I just I just read a report of what's in my inbox, what's urgent, what fires need to be put out. But the agent is proactive and says, well, I've already drafted replies to these emails. I already handled this thing because I've given it permission to just handle certain things. And then follow-up sequences. How many times do we just get overwhelmed? We drop the ball. We don't get back to that person who reached out to us and now a month has gone by and the lead has gone cold.

16:10Well, if you have an AI agent who helps you keep on top of that, that's very low-hanging fruit so you can get ROI from your AI investments.

16:18John Lee Dumas:See, I love that. But I will say, Ethan, you now can never say you've never met anybody who doesn't love email or who loves email because you're talking to him right now his name is johnny dumas his name is jld so give me a shout out every time you can be like i only met one dude that loves email ever and it's me i don't know why it is it's always been the case my my wife she's been working the business forever um she's like most people she really hates email um or dreads it at least and i am always inbox zero Like she cannot get over the fact that I'm always at inbox zero. And I think that that's one of the reasons why I, I actually kind of like email because I'm always so on top of it.

16:55John Lee Dumas:I never get any spam email. I never get any, cause I have filters for everything. Like if it's not from a real human with a real message, like I'm not getting that email. So I actually, I'm probably filtering out some AI messages cause my, my inbox can, can understand or can understand when, when AI is potentially composing an email. And I get a lot of those like automated on a daily basis. so am I missing some emails? Maybe, but if it's really important, guess what? Ethan's going to be like, huh, I haven't heard back from John from my AI messaging, so I'm actually going to send him a real message and then guess what?

17:25John Lee Dumas:Then I get it and I respond right away. So I love it. That's just personally me, but I want to move to scaling without burning out because a lot of people scale, Ethan, but they burn out. You seem to be everywhere, bro. You're creating content. You're building businesses. You're educating entrepreneurs on Entrepreneur on Fire right now. How are you using AI to expand your reach while protecting your time and energy? I mean, getting after all these roller coasters. Let's go. So, John, I literally run a team of AI employees. They have names, like people names. They have job descriptions. They have roles and tasks that they do every single day.

18:02They work around the clock for me 24-7. And to be honest, John, I could not do the things that I do without this team of AI employees. Now, I have human employees at my company, too, that I've been running for over 22 years. They are amazing. So this has not replaced them. This has augmented my human team. So, for example, one of my AI agents, Henley, he runs my speaking pipeline. Another one helps me draft content, which, by the way, you said that you have the filter set up on your email where it can detect AI written content. I have my agents trained so well on my voice and my memories and my actual personal stories that I lived so that when they write for me, it is truly authentically.

18:47Oh, that's good. It's like having a ghostwriter. And one thing that I do in my AI workshops, I go all around the world and teach AI workshops to business leaders. And I train them on how to train their AI to speak like them. And right there in the workshop, We'll have them write a piece of content, take it through an AI content checker. And several people, several of the students in my workshops, it comes back 100 percent human generated content, even though AI just wrote it for them. So there's so much power in the context and using it ethically and having it weave in your authentic memories and stories and experiences.

19:26And we can go really deep on that. But I wanted to touch on that because a lot of people reject AI because of this AI slop. And I hate it too. I think it's the wrong way to use it. But there is a right way to do it. And having all of these agents, it just allows me to be omnipresent without being overwhelmed. My goal is never more hours. It's just more me without taking up more of my time.

19:53John Lee Dumas:I want to end by talking about where ROI lives and not just any ROI, but real ROI, because a lot of people, they focus on saving time with AI, but you've actually said the biggest return comes from something deeper. Where does the real ROI in artificial intelligence in AI actually come from? And how should we be measuring success? Yeah, everyone looks at hours saved time or money, right? But I believe that's the wrong scoreboard. I think the real ROI is what you do with the reclaimed life that you get. I measure it in evenings with my kids, spending time with my family, getting my books written, fulfilling my purpose, getting my message out to the world, being on stages.

20:41I love being on stages and public speaking and making a positive impact in people's lives. So that's the real ROI, being able to do what it is that you feel purposeful in doing, like really living your life. Time saved, it's only ROI if you spend it on something that compounds. So I believe that automation is like compound interest for your time. That's why the book's subtitle is So You Can Live Your Life. We're not doing AI so that you can do more work. It's so that you can live your life. That's the real ROI, John.

21:15John Lee Dumas:Two big questions. Number one, what is the scariest of the 14 roller coasters you've been on? the scariest oh um i would have to say and it was only scary at first but not after like my eighth time writing it but siren siren's curse in uh cedar point that's a tilt roller coaster so they take you over the edge and they turn you 90 degrees and you hang there for a few seconds i've seen the highlights yeah that's crazy it is so good yeah and doesn't actually like connect to the track too like it's like clicks in or something yes oh man what is because there's there's still what 26 more you're having to do so what is it when you're you're you're scared of the most looking ahead uh i'm most excited about falcon's flight in saudi arabia whoa uh it is currently the the world's fastest and tallest roller coaster so i can't wait to get over there And how many kids do you have?

22:16Two kids.

22:16John Lee Dumas:Do they both love roller coasters or does one like it more than the other? Oh, they both love it. We're in a girl. And our whole family. It's something that we all do together. That's so good. My wife, too. Yeah, I love it. Give Fire Nation a direct call to action. How can they connect with you, Ethan, and read your book? Awesome. Just connect with me on my website, EthanKing.com. It's just my name, EthanKing.com. and I have a special gift for listeners of EO Fire. If you go to etanking.com slash fire, you get a free chapter of the book done, sent right to you. And I'm sure Ethan will be doing that himself personally, Fire Nation, because he has his amazing AI team delivering that great content to you, as he should, by the way, because he'll be on a roller coaster somewhere, maybe in Saudi Arabia.

23:05John Lee Dumas:Now, Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with EK and JLD today, So keep up the heat and for links to everything, not some things, but everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Type Ethan, E-T-H-A-N in the search bar and the show notes page will pop up with links to his book, to his website, you name it. Ethan, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we will catch you on the flip side. Thanks, JLD. It's been a pleasure. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Ethan for sponsoring today's episode.

23:39John Lee Dumas:and Fire Nation, are you an entrepreneur on fire who wants to share your amazing message with the world? If yes, we are now accepting applications for EO Fire. So to learn more about becoming a guest, visit eofire.com slash guest and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Sleep impacts everything. Your energy, focus, and performance. Fitnexa Somnipods 3 are ultra comfortable sleep airbags that block distractions, track your sleep, and deliver personalized insights to help you rest and recover. If better sleep is a priority for you, visit fitnexa.com and use code EOFire10 to save$10 on Somnipods 3 today.