What 7-Figure CEOs Know About AI That You Don’t with Rick Mulready

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0:32I can't wait to see you there. Welcome to the Jasmine Starr Show, where today we're going to be talking about business, we're talking about growth, but specifically leveraging AI. Wait, wait, it's only getting good. Why? I have a particular guest here who's not just going to lay the foundation because around here, we've talked a lot about how we're using it in our business and how we're using it to grow, but specifically next level strategies on how we can start implementing it in our business to not just save time, not just save money, but get more done with a higher threshold of productivity, organization, and a lot of hell-bentiness on getting it done.

1:06And did I just make up that word? Of course I did, but nobody better is allowing me to make up that word than Rick Mulready himself. Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show, Rick. Thanks for having me. It's good to be here. Okay. So Rick and I, we go back. We go back many years. We were in masterminds together. We have grown our businesses together. I've seen Rick grow and evolve and being able to have conversations with you around AI. And I actually think I'm an early adopter, but But me and compared to you is just like child's play. So I wanted you on, I know, listen, no, no, no, no, I'm creeping. I'm creeping.

1:36I'm creeping, you know. So Rick walked in and I said, oh, I've, I've been seeing you lately. And he's like, we haven't been around each other in a while. I was like, don't you friend my pet. He said, I've been watching you. I've been watching you. So I haven't seen you. So I'm like CIA status creeping and following what it is you're doing. And so to say objectively, the amount of work and knowledge that you have with AI and implementing in business. It's unparalleled. I'm inviting you to speak to my mastermind around that. But today, I really want us to walk away. The goal for the show is always action.

2:08Action begets more action. And I think what we'll do, if it's okay with you, is we'll lay the foundation of basic AI conversations. Because there's a lot of people having basic AI conversations, but just to make sure we're all on the same page. Then we're going to get a little bit into what has lit you up so much around AI because this is positioning you as the authority why you're so good at what it is you do. I got you. And then the main part of it is like, let's cook with gas. Let's talk about like predictions. Let's talk about how we're going to use it. Let's talk about ways that we can up level and specifically next level prompting for AI.

2:42That's been like where I've been kind of like growing a muscle. So we're going to hit the ground running. So talk to me about the typical shtick that we see a lot of people talking about AI. This is how you use AI for a business owner. Let's just start there. Let's lay the foundation. I think a good place to start with that is the problem that people go to or the problem that people have is they look at the tools. They look at, ooh, ChatGPT, ooh, Claude, ooh, Gemini or whatever. And they start there rather than understanding the thing or the problem or the challenge they want to solve in their business.

3:18So they're like... So pause. Yeah. Yeah. It's we go to what does this thing do? Yep. And what we need to ask is what do I need to get done? Exactly. So they say, yeah, like chat TPT. OK, cool. I've heard of it. What does it do? And then they try to like it's like fit something into their business or from their business into it. I love that. Rather than the other way around. I love it. Just being like, oh, my email newsletter takes me four hours a week. I wish there was an easier way to do that. then how do we use AI to solve that? And it forces us to think in solutions, operational thinking, which like most business owners don't want to do, but it's almost kind of come full circle where it brings us back to like, oh, we have this task to do.

4:09What are the things that go into doing it? Okay, so we're going to get super granular here because for somebody who's literally on this journey, who said, I've tried Gemini, I've tried ChatGPT, it's just okay. Fine. We're not here to argue. We are here to make a case and you can do whatever you want with the case. However, okay. So let's say operationally, there are things that people are doing. And so you say, go through and make a list of everything you're doing and of the things that you are doing that feels like it takes a very long time or it feels very heavy. Now, how many of those would you say we start off with?

4:41Are we starting off? We focus just on one. Yeah. Focus on one. Okay. Because it's the big reason why people, I mean, you talk about foundationally, foundationally, people are scared of AI for a variety of different reasons. The biggest one is that I don't even know where to start. I hear about all these tools and I don't even know which one to start with. And then, you know, ChatGPT obviously is sort of the OG. And they're like, well, OK, cool. I don't know how to even use it or I've tried using it and it doesn't work, doesn't work. I don't get the results that I want. And then I give up on it because I don't have time to learn it.

5:20Okay. So let's say we've listed all the things that we get done. And let's go back to the example of a newsletter. We know that communicating with our audience is important. And so traditionally what I have seen is somebody will go to chat GPT. We'll use chat GPT just as a general benchmark, the godfather of AI, right? They go in and they're like, I need to write a newsletter about marketing. and then it comes back with very vanilla copy 18 000 emojis yes uh the wrong this doesn't sound like me and then we say this chat gbt thing not not my thing so you know that like i started out with ads and it was hold on time out time out what rick isn't saying was he's basically the godfather of ads this guy did it for over a decade this is how we initially met he's so brilliant he went from agency work to starting his own business to becoming a business coach to teaching the ads professionals about ads.

6:15This guy knows so much. That is how our paths intersected. Then there was a bit of him taking a step back and saying, what do I really want from life? And the minute this guy just went in after a sabbatical of four months, a deep dive on AI, he emerges as this new being and creation. And I'm just like, this is you. This has always been you. So carry on. Thank you. I still remember, by the way, sitting in a hotel room and you being like, what's a webinar? wow wow i just say nice things about you i know i know do you remember how pathetic you were in san francisco in 2015 of like look how far like where are you thank you no i love that i love that so yeah i don't remember what we're talking about but going back we were talking about how ai doesn't really work and i've tried it oh i was making the yes with with ads so people used to say oh i tried like my ads don't work and i would say well how long did they run for like what did you How much effort did you put into it?

7:09And they're like, well, I ran it for two days and it doesn't work. This is sort of the same thing. It's like you have to be willing to put the effort in to test and to play around with it. The cool thing is, is that it's free. You can do it for free. And it's very easy to mess around with. Meaning like I can open up ChatGPT and I can just start talking to it. Literally, you can use the advanced voice mode, which is just basically just talking to the chat GPT on your phone. And it's your therapist. It's your coach. It's your, I had a crappy day today and it will just talk to you. So that's a really important thing that I want to make sure that people get is like, you need to be willing to get in and start using it.

7:54Okay, but let's still, before we get into that, to me, that's a mid-tier conversation. Let's go back to the basics and get us still off the ground. somebody is here and says okay i want to learn how to make it a part of my workflow so that the four-hour newsletter turns into a 20-minute so we take that newsletter and we say so so can i use my newsletter as an example great so it has four sections so it has a news section at the top so like i filter out the ai news for online businesses because there's you know i don't care about stories about i mean i do robots making coffee you know ai robots but not for online business.

8:30So there's a filtering process of that. So it's, that is one section. And then that section has steps in order to get there. Meaning, okay, this is what the newsletter section is. This is what, how I get the news. So these are the steps to do that. So you break it, you just write them all out. It's like, it's like a mini SOP for that section. Okay. Pause, pause, pause, pause. Hold on. So what Rick is doing right now is outlining the overall framework of his newsletter. Newsletter is broken into four sections. He's only talking about section number one. He showed an example in section one. He begins sharing stories about AI, but in order for him to share the stories about AI, he himself is using AI to organize that section.

9:14What he is just describing right now is the organization of section number one. Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. And how are you organizing that? How are you putting it into AI to organize that for you? Well, with that specific section, I've developed a prompt that will, I mean, this gets next. Let's keep it basic now because then we can come back to this for the advanced conversation. We'll leave that section alone. Great. And then we'll go to the next section. So I have what I call AI insights. So it's just a little paragraph. It's whatever, three, 400 words that is about something I'm thinking about or something that maybe has happened in the past week or two weeks and I give my thoughts on it.

9:52Great. So it's, so it's okay. I need to figure out what am I talking about? So topic, and then do I need to do any kind of research on it? That's another step. Or it's okay. Outline, right. So we'll call it four steps. So I simply do that for each of the sections of the newsletter. So going back to the AI. Oh, So then the other one was actually probably better to talk about. The main section is the AI use case of the week. So I take a common online business challenge, putting together a newsletter, and I break it down step by step. So it's basically this conversation here in the newsletter every week.

10:35And so it's, okay, what is the use case going to be? What are the steps that are going to go into doing it and then writing it out? So AI can help with all that with coming up with the idea of the use case. I can have it outline what that use case is going to be. I can have it do any kind of research if I needed to. Then I can have it write the whole thing. And then there's always the human element, always. And that is a misnomer that people have is like, well, I'm going to use AI to write whatever it is and it's done, but it's never copy paste. Like you shouldn't be caught like taking what AI gives you and like copy this in my whatever, my blog, in my podcast, whatever it might be.

11:22So I'm just breaking each thing that I need to do down into the steps and then figuring out, okay, where can AI help me with these steps? Okay, I'm going to repeat back what I heard. So you went through and you're like, what feels very heavy, hypothetically, in my business that I would like to leverage AI? we've identified for this example, it will be writing a newsletter. Your newsletter, which you can find at rickmulready.com. You absolutely want to be getting these updates for somebody like me who cares deeply about AI, who is using AI, but does not have the opportunity to stay with my pulse on the ground.

11:55Getting this newsletter is so helpful because I can skim and I know where I want to go, but the use cases are so phenomenal. If you've ever said, I don't know how to think in these terms, just subscribe to the newsletter and use the case studies alone. They're powerful. So he went through and said, I have sections of my newsletter. He uses AI to aggregate news and data. He uses AI to have what type of things should I be talking about insights based on my perspective. And then he uses AI as a thought writing partner to help break it down and outline. Then he has a different section for use cases of AI and is using AI to ask it questions so that it pertains not to the world using AI, but to business owners using AI.

12:34So here is a person who is asking everybody here to do the same thing in your business. First, outline what do I need help with? Secondly, what tools would help me get the thing I want? Third, how do I build this into a system so that when you go back to your ads days and you were sending newsletters, how long was that newsletter taking you? And now that you've really systematized your weekly newsletters, what are we looking at right now, apples to apples? Well, I can go from where I was with this current newsletter, which was literally five hours a week. That's how long it was taking me. To, I mean, we do it now in 45 minutes, 30 minutes.

13:11Yeah. And we know that the more you do it with the new tools that are coming out, it'll get faster. Yep, absolutely. Okay. Yep. So that's the framework. The basic framework, if you've ever heard an AI podcast, that's basically what people are saying. They're applying this to newsletters. They're applying this to podcast episodes. They are applying this to social media. They are applying this to building out SOPs, standard operating procedures. This is most of the conversation that I love. It's been so helpful. So before we get into the next level, let's just brainstorm. And for people who are not completely intimidated, I want to pull you in a little bit more.

13:47So Rick, how did you get started with AI? And then what has been your learning curve? And how have you really positioned yourself as a leading authority in the field where it seems pretty saturated for people who want to be breakouts? Yeah. How did I start? Well, you mentioned before I went through, I did a four-month sabbatical in 2013 and I just burned out 2013 was it wasn't it 2013 2013 that you went on the four-month sabbatical yeah what was I'm sorry I thought about the sabbatical after you sold your podcast so I went on the sabbatical and sold the podcast in September of that year of 2023 2023 you just said 2013 oh I did yes 2023 brother I was like wait how many sabbaticals You're going to be done, dude.

14:34Okay. I think I need more. We all do. We all do. And as a side note, as a side note, the fact that just as a fellow compatriot, as a fellow entrepreneur, the fact that you took four months off, that you'd set your business up, that you set your family up, that you said four months is the thing that I'm going to do. It is such a gift. And it's also so empowering to see that you built a business in that way. I don't take that. I mean, I know that it was a privilege to be able to do that. I don't take that lightly, for sure. That's amazing. And I originally said, okay, I'm going to take three months off.

15:01and I had people who were in my audience at the time who were like burnout, like that's what they do. They write and all like, and they were like, it's not long enough. And I was like, I'm going to start here. And I knew like, I remember getting the last week of the 90 days and I was like, I need at least another month. So. So this is 2023. 2023. And you start at that time. Is there that crossover where AI starts just kind of calling you? Yes. because everyone right now is coming out with like, they think it is a big deal, but they think it's like this new thing where they're coming out with coaching chatbot versions of themselves.

15:44Well, that's what I spent my four months sabbatical on, building my own. So I was working with a company and I still have it. It's Pick Rick's Brain, coaching AI, because everyone's always like, can I pick your brain? so I this was brand new right like Chachi BD had just come out in the end of the previous year and I got approached about like hey there's this you know why don't you take all your previous 10 years and create like this brain of all this knowledge and so it's much easier now but I had four full-time VAs we did it for five months working full-time aggregating all this information and at that point I could see the opportunity with it and people were like oh this is going to be a great lead magnet I was like I'm not giving this away this is like my 10 years of knowledge and for that specific company I was like no I'm going to use this I'm going to do this credit membership out of this and they're like you're going to sell this and I was like yeah absolutely so it was at that point I started to see the opportunity with it and because I remember very specifically January of 2023, ChatGP had just come out.

16:58I mean, quote unquote, just came out like the previous month. And I had people in my mastermind at the time like that were using it and they were sort of talking about it a lot. And I remember telling them, I said, don't be distracted by the shiny object. I remember at the time. And I mean, obviously now I look back and I was like, good for you guys because you were ahead of the time at that point. So anyway, it was kind of the, all right, I need to take a break. But I knew I could already see on the other side of that sabbatical what was coming. So I had been in discussions to potentially sell the business, was going to sell the business that fell through.

17:39And then I ended up selling the podcast. And it was great. That was a smart move at that point. People were like, what are you doing? Like you have 700 episodes or whatever. And like, what do you, so anyway, when I came back from the sabbatical and sold the podcast, that transition lasted until about the end of the year. So 2024 hit and I was like, boom, let's go. And then I was trying to figure out, okay, what am I going to do in terms of content for AI? I had podcasted for so long that I was just like, you know what, let's try YouTube. My friends had, were like, dude, you've been, need to do YouTube, need to do YouTube, like for like two years prior to that.

18:17and I never listened. Then finally I started and I was just starting over. I was reinventing myself with it. And so I just did what I always know to do. Like, all right, what's my offer? How am I going to help people? How am I going to let people know? What's my offer? Who is it for? And how are you going to get people talking about it? This is a classic. And so the reason why I want Rick to talk about the origin story is because yes, he is a leading authority. in AI, but specifically what I wanted right here on the show was AI for online business owners. Okay, so now we're just niching it down, which is beautiful.

18:55And then I wanted to talk about baseline, the most of the conversations that are being had right now for business owners, which are not really inciting people to a lot of action. Then I wanted to talk about the origin story because he is a founder who is starting over. He's had success. He sold out part of his content media and he's starting over now. And he's facing many times the same questions that you're asking yourself. He's asking himself, even though he has a ton of experience and success behind him. So what are we selling? Who is it for? And how are we going to get people talking about it?

19:24Yeah. And I wanted to choose online businesses because that's who I'd been serving for 10 years at that point. So that was an easy part. Okay. How am I going to help them with AI? Well, at the time it was like people, I mean, still is like people didn't understand how to use it. So I said, okay, well, I'm pretty good at explaining complex things to people so that they get it. And then how am I going to let people know? Like, all right, let's do, I had, I had a little bit of people left over on the email list. And I let them know, like, this is what I'm doing. Like you can unsubscribe now. So I had a little bit of the email list, but then I went all in on, on YouTube.

19:59Yeah. And of course I'm using AI in that process as well. And it was, you know, the, the, the membership, it started off very slow. And I actually am not a fan. I've never been a fan of memberships myself. Okay. Because it's constant work. Okay. You know, but I knew that if I was going to be teaching AI and talking about AI, a course is not, like it changes tomorrow. Yes. So it has to be a membership. And so, and then people are like, why aren't you doing, you know, a high level offer with it? Because that's what you've done in the past. And it's like, I don't want to do that right now. Good. I've done that for years and I want different.

20:40Good. And so I have one offer. I have the membership. That's it. And it's great. Okay. So a couple things. A couple things. For people who just want to start dipping their toes and seeing how they can start applying AI to their online business, rickmulready.com, free newsletters. There's also a lot of other freebies there that you can get in and specifically prompting. We're going to get into that in a second. And then if you go to jasminestar.com forward slash Rick, you can check out his membership for seven days free. And so definitely check that out. If you know that what you want is constant education strategy on the inside of a community, very proud member of it.

21:18And our team has been watching it. So prior to you getting on the podcast, hand to heaven, prior to getting on the podcast, one of our team members, Katie, we actually did a podcast around AI. And she's like, Rick's membership looks like creme de la creme. and she's like when you meet him can you tell him can you tell can you just and I was like Katie yes I gotta play cool I gotta play cool she's like no no I've been checking out memberships his looks like the best I was like okay Katie okay so just being able to sit here and see the entire inception and then the reasoning behind the membership and then seeing how much value is derived in there because AI is changing so fast my concern Rick is that the episode I recorded with Katie and this very episode we this will come out in a few weeks yeah not months in a few weeks and I actually think that the stuff we're going to talk about is going to be old by then That's how fast it's changing.

22:01And so when you're in this membership, what are the common pressure points? Because in my mind, which is where I want to take the conversation is next level strategies. The people who are going to be in this membership are people who are serious about it. You're not paying this every month just to kind of be a casual watcher. We want to start implementing now. And so what are you seeing as the common kind of pulse on these higher level AI business users? I mean, it's a very natural progression that I see. They come in, the people that are just beginning, it's overwhelmed. I don't know where to start.

22:28I don't know even what's possible then they learn what's possible and then they start getting into it and they're like holy cow this is a lot of fun meaning like I can make this easier I can cut 10 hours off my work week like within a very short time yes then it becomes organization like how do I organize all of that how do I organize my prompts how do I organize my tech stack how do I How do I keep track of all this stuff? And what's been your solution for that? So we have a Notion database that has a prompt library. I have a library of roles. Like when you're putting it into a prompt, we're building out our tools database.

23:08So it's the more organized that you can be, the better. Like a central, this is something we should definitely talk about, but having like a central repository in the business, whether it's Google Docs, whether it's Notion, doesn't care what it is as long as you have it. So that like this is gonna be the differentiator and it is already. The businesses that are gonna be winning, if you will, with AI will have an aggregation of all of their information, call transcripts, all that stuff in one place so that you can give AI access to it and that it will help you do any number of things, create content faster, come up with ideas, customer service.

23:54So to me, like I'll pause just from like a business strategist perspective, Rick. When I hear that, it absolutely should have never have been a course. It actually should not have been high level because then they're going to be super specific around their business. And it's going to become more of like an agency deployment. Can you do this for us? An abdication, which is fine, just a very different structure. So the fact that you have a group of people who are have these common pressure points and then you're filling the gap to me, that leads to the next business. the next business would be to streamline how one creates a repository based on what that business is high five are we going there are we going there are we going there are we going there that's literally what we're talking about that's right and you only get that on the back of quick feedback and on the back of what are the where people commonly get stuck and then once there is a churn not that anybody would ever want to leave the ai playbook community ever but if there is a churn we understand that the hurdle yep became too high and the cost of using it so we're like okay how do we then fulfill as an added benefit and as having that person pay that?

24:51So right now, I will say on our team with how much we're leveraging it, we have disparate sections, and we need to understand how do we aggregate all of this so that it becomes the repository that you're talking about. This is sort of the next, you talk about like the different levels, like this is, and I don't know if you noticed, like I perked up a little bit with this conversation, because like this is where it's at. This is sort of the next level of, I wouldn't even say technical because it's not technical. It's not. It's just in how we think about it. And that's where I did this video on the YouTube channel and it is all the tech bros comment the hate.

25:27And they're like, oh, this is clickbait, all this other stuff. Bring it on. And the video is the end of prompt engineering and the end of prompt engineering, prompt engineering. We'll find it on Rick's YouTube. So they're like, they're like, what you're doing is prompt engineering in this and and maybe so and yes i want to get eyeballs on it but the point of that whole thing is that the people who are going to be successful with ai have to change how they think about it pause for people who are still with us and uh ai is maybe not at that level but what happens is it's content fatigue yes ai is going to increase content fatigue and so even though you and I are using and deploying AI, we haven't reached fatigue.

26:14We haven't reached market saturation. So if everybody's using, let's say, ChatGPT or Claude to write their newsletters, people are going to stop reading newsletters unless we go through. So this is like a different philosophical. So when I say, are you still with us? It's like, I have to make sure that people are coming along being, okay, I understand this. I could take a smaller bite. I could take a smaller bite. So when we talk about the end of prompt engineering, basically a prompt is what you are asking chat GPT for or any other, any other AI, what you're asking for, that is called a prompt.