Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the channel.
In this video, we're gonna go through my entire AI workflow as an entrepreneur.
So hopefully there'll be something in here that's useful for you.
And just as a heads up, this video is very excitingly being sponsored by Anthropic.
All right.
So before we go into the workflow, I would like to zoom out a little bit and opine about Work.
What does work actually mean?
Well, in very general terms, work happens when we take an input, we do some stuff to it, ie we process it, and then we get some kind of output.
So for example, in the agricultural era, your input would have been seeds, for example.
The processing is done by sunlight and water and nature and stuff like that, and your output is that you get your wheat or whatever as your harvested crop.
And so, back in the day, the work of the farmer was to take the raw input of seeds and do the processing to it, along with nature and stuff, and then harvest the output.
Then you go forward a few thousand years and now maybe your input is trees.
Your processing is, I don't know, a chainsaw or an ax or whatever.
And then your output is like sticks of wood.
And then maybe someone else might take those sticks of wood as an input.
Maybe their processing is doing like woodworking and stuff.
And then the output might be a table or a desk or a chair or whatever the thing might be.
And generally the value of the outputs, if you're doing it properly, is greater than the value of the inputs plus the labor cost of processing.
And therefore you have created value because someone else is gonna pay more for that table that you created compared to the raw material cost of the wood.
So we have the agricultural era, which is all about creating food.
Then we get the industrial revolution and the industrial era, which is all about creating stuff in the real world cars and trains and railroads and all of the fun stuff.
But over the last 75 years or so, we have all basically like if you're watching this, you are probably not a farmer and you're probably not a woodworker, or you probably don't work in a factory.
You probably do some kind of knowledge work, which is still work in the sense of input becomes processed, becomes output.
But now, instead of it being like physical real life stuff that we're taking as inputs and turning into outputs for the most part, We've got a new kind of system whereby the inputs is kind of ideas from our brains and maybe data and like ones and zeros on a computer.
The processing is that we are using our brain and our skills to type away keys on a computer, probably.
And the output is also some kind of digital thing, but still the output has more value than the input and therefore we're able to charge money for the thing.
Now, I say all of this because I find it very useful to understand this context as it relates to AI workflows in the modern world, because obviously AI is changing everything.
And we, as knowledge workers, as entrepreneurs, as sensible people in the world, we need to find ways to adapt.
And the cool thing about AI tools is that they can help us in every aspect of this input process and output situation.
And so now I'd like to show you kind of what my workflow looks like with this overlaid on it.
All right, so these are the various different AI tools that make up my current AI workflow as an entrepreneur.
We have three-ish things in the input column.
We have VoicePal, which inputs.
We have Grain, that inputs.
And we have SuperWhisper, that inputs.
Then we have processing, which is almost entirely done by Claude.
Claude is my favorite AI large language model.
I now use it for everything.
It's basically replaced all of my ChatGPT usage, because I just think Claude is way better.
And so Claude is sort of like the processing hub for absolutely everything.
And then the outputs are either Google Docs or, if it's a video, it goes output it into Firecut, which is the sort of AI tool that helps you save time as a video editor.
If it's like content or stuff for the business, it goes into Notion.
We kind of use Notion and Google Docs somewhat interchangeably.
And if it's a presentation that needs to be made, it is made using Gamma, because Gamma is like a really nice sort of AI powered presentation builder, which is very good.
Okay, so I'm gonna give you a quick run through of all of these different apps that I mentioned.
There's gonna be links down below if you wanna check them out.
And then we're gonna go through the three specific kind of areas of my own work and how these apps fit into the workflow for each one.
So firstly, we have VoicePal.
This is an app that my team and I have built over the last like 12 months or so.
VoicePal is a conversational AI writing type tool where, if you want to write anything, you basically speak into VoicePal on your phone.
VoicePal then asks you follow up questions based on what you've said.
And you can go back and forth as much as you like while you're on a walk, while you're in a coffee shop or wherever.
And then, when you're done, you can either export the raw transcript of like literally everything you've said, including the ums and ahs, or a cleaned up transcript which sort of just gets rid of all of the verbal diarrhea and umming and ahhing and stuff.
And you can export it into Claude or any other tool that you want.
Next up, we have Grain.
Grain is one of the many apps that lets you record Zoom calls.
Essentially, we've been using Grain for absolutely years.
And then we can often take the transcript of Zoom calls and chuck it into Clot to do various things.
And then finally, we have Super Whisper.
Super Whisper is a really nice Mac app which basically is a better version of dictation when you're on your Mac.
So, like most computers have dictation built in, but on Super Whisper you just sort of hit the hotkey and then you speak into your computer and then it will basically just sort of dictate, sort of type out whatever you've said.
And then, so this tends to be how I interact with Claude if I'm on my computer.
If I'm on my phone and I want to interact with Claude, I'll just use the straight up Claude app.
But if I'm on my computer I'll use Super Whisper to dictate into Claude and then go back and forth, because it's way quicker to speak than it is to type.
And so these are the various different sources of input.
Claude, of course, is the large language model general AI tool by Anthropic.
As a heads up, this video is sponsored by Anthropic, but it's because we reached out to them saying that like hey, we want to make a video and we use Claude all the time, and we've been paying for it since, like for the last like two years.
So can you guys partner with us on a video?
And they were like, sure.
But why not?
And so this video is technically sponsored by Anthropic, so take that for whatever it's worth.
But Claude has genuinely replaced basically 100 of instances of ChatGPT, especially because they now have memory.
The memory feature was the only reason why I was still using ChatGPT for a little bit of stuff, because ChatGPT had memories of all my chats.
But now Claude thankfully has memories of all of my chats, which means that for the last week since this feature came out, I actually have not had to use ChatGPT for anything, because Claude now has memory built in.
So yeah, Claude is basically my 100 go-to processing large language model, and I generally prefer it to ChatGPT because its personality is a little bit nicer, it's more interesting, it's more engaging.
I feel like its writing is better than the stuff ChatGPT comes out with.
And it's also less of a sycophantic yes man than ChatGPT is these days.
So that's why I absolutely love Claude.
And then in terms of output, you all know what Google Docs is.
Firecut is a Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve plugin that I've actually partnered with a friend of mine Sahil, and it saves video editors time.
So if you are creating videos, you can save time editing using Firecut.
You probably know what Notion is.
It's our project management plus everything kind of workspace where basically everything we do in our business kind of happens through Notion.
And Gamma is a very nice sort of slide builder where you can basically just input a bunch of text.
Gamma AI will generate like pretty looking slides for you.
I use it for some of the lessons that we do for our courses.
I use it if I'm doing a pitch deck for a brand or for like a book proposal or something like that.
It's super, super nice to be able to just generate pretty looking slides automatically, rather than having to manually drag and drop stuff around, like on Google Slides or on Keynote or on PowerPoint.
But now, having introduced you to all these different apps, I wanna show you the sort of three different areas of my work life.
And then we're gonna go through exactly kind of what the workflow is for AI tools in each different area.
All right, so this is me and there are broadly kind of three areas of my life as an entrepreneur.
Strand number one is the content creator personal brand side of the business.
So this is things like making YouTube videos and Instagram reels and writing my email newsletter and like posting on LinkedIn and yeah, basically the content creator stuff.
The monetization for this is basically YouTube ads and sponsorships.
In fact, there's sort of a fourth, which I'll put in brackets over here.
Then we have strand number two, which is the online education business strand.
Now we have basically two small online education businesses that we have within our portfolio me and my wife.
One of them is our Lifestyle Business Academy, where we help people start and grow lifestyle businesses that get you to financial freedom.
And the other thing is our YouTuber Academy that's been running for the last five years, where we help people start and grow YouTube channels.
If you're into that sort of thing,
So we have these two sort of small online education businesses.
Each of them sort of has their own teams and stuff, but like I'm still very involved with them.
My wife is getting increasingly more involved with them.
That's like the second strand of the portfolio of stuff that we do.
The third strand of what we do is that we are building a suite of productivity and personal development and creator apps.
So, so far, two of them, two maybe three, depending on when you're watching this, are public.
The first one is VoicePal that we talked about.
We made that about a year ago.
The second one is an app called Momentum, which we launched a couple of weeks ago.
That's a habit tracker with accountability squads built in to help you stay consistent with energizing habits.
There's a few other things we're working on.
The next thing that is launching that might have launched by the time this video comes out is called Creator Grid.
And that is a free platform that allows creators to grow and monetize by connecting them with brands and getting brand deals, regardless of how many followers you have.
And then the fourth thing is books.
So so far I have written one book, Feel Good Productivity, which became a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller.
And I sold a few hundred thousand copies and it's been translated into like 35 plus languages.
So if you haven't checked out my book, Feel Good Productivity, you might like to check it out.
But I put this one in brackets because this is not like a day-to-day thing.
This is more like when I'm working on a new book instead of trying to do it alongside all this other stuff.
I generally take, like I say generally, I've done it once so far.
But for the second book I'm working on, I am planning to take like a four week or two week or three week kind of sprint and just focus on the book.
And then that's how the different stages of the book are gonna be done, rather than it sort of weaving into everything else.
So in a way, these are like the four aspects of the brand.
We've got the content creator, we've got the online education business, we've got the software stuff and we have books, which happens every few years.
And this is sort of like a portfolio of lifestyle businesses.
Now, just as a quick thing, this is probably suboptimal.
If I was trying to maximize revenue or maximize money, I would pick one thing and just stick to that one thing and just do that one thing really well.
This is quite a lot of stuff going on.
But I'm not really in the business of trying to maximize just revenue.
I also want to have fun.
That means none of these things is going to get to like a billion dollars or become absolutely huge, but it's kind of nice having like a portfolio of small businesses that are each very profitable and each have their own teams.
And it sort of gives a variety to my life because some of the days of the week I focus on content or books.
Some of the days a week I focus on the online education business and figuring out like curriculum and student success and like operations for that.
And some of the days of the week I think about software and apps and sort of design stuff and draw things out and use various AI tools to help me, sort of, with software design.
So for the rest of the video, i'm going to show you what the exact workflow is for each of the different strands of this business and how these various ai tools, when it comes to input, processing and output, really help, in particular with the content creator stuff, with the software stuff and with the online education business stuff.
Cool, Alrighty.
So we are here on the iMac in our new little office that we have just moved into, hence why everything is all a bit all over the place, but we are still working on it.
So anyway, I wanna show you exactly what the workflow looks like.
And we're gonna start off with the software side of things.
By the way, there'll be timestamps underneath this video, of course, as you know, so you can skip around the video if you feel like it.
Now, first thing to say is that we have enabled various features in our Claude account.
So we have a team plan for Sparkle Studios, which is the name of the business.
And so we have artifacts, which generates code snippets, text documents, and website designs.
That's super, super helpful for everything.
We have AI powered artifacts enabled as well, which lets us create clickable prototypes and things like that.
We have location metadata, We have memory, which is a new feature, which is so glorious.
When they announced that feature, I was like, yes, hallelujah.
It's incredible.
So we've enabled the memory feature so that Claude can then reference all of my past chats.
And also Claude can remember personal context from the chats, to make the conversations more interesting.
And we've also got this experimental upgraded file creation and analysis tool, which is cool.
Claude also has various connectors.
So we have connected it to our Notion workspace, which allows Claude to access basically all of the stuff we've got in Notion, because we've been using Notion since like 2019.
So we have tons and tons of stuff in Notion.
And we've also connected it to Canva and Google Drive so it can like, add and modify files and do all the fun stuff.
So now we're here in Claude's project section and I have a project for various different things I'm doing.
And the whole idea behind a project is that you can then reference the same kind of files from a particular project.
And so Claude then has context over what specifically you're doing within that project.
If you're context switching between, like software and content and courses, or whatever your situation might be.
I have a quick flag before you continue watching this video.
If you are at this point in the video, thank you so much for watching so far.
Basically in this video and I've only just realized this, having just watched the whole thing because I'm showing you my specific workflow for our specific products it runs the risk of the whole video basically feeling like an ad for our various products.
Like, for example, for the next 10 minutes, I'm gonna talk you through exactly how I build a new feature from Momentum, which is an app that we've built.
Then I'm going to show you how I use this other app to build the curriculum for our Lifestyle Business Academy, which is another one of our products.
I'm flagging this right now that if you are allergic to anything that feels like advertising or any of that stuff, please feel free to skip the rest of this video.
It's impossible for me to show you what my actual workflow looks like without showing it to you in the context of products that we are selling.
So i hope you will forgive me that i by, by definition, in order to show you the workflow, i have to talk about the products that we are selling.
I don't want you to ideally, i don't want you to think that like well, the only reason we make this video because he wants to talk about his products or any of that kind of stuff.
Like you can, you can take whatever conclusions from that you like, but this is a flag that, if you will, if you, if you will find it offensive, please feel free to leave the video at this point, because for the rest of the video, i'm going to be talking about our products, while showing you how I use AI to work on our products.
So hopefully that makes sense.
So the project that we've got here is for Sparkle Studios.
Sparkle is an app design and development studio.
Our goal is to build delightful productivity and personal development apps that help users build a life they love.
It's spearheaded by me, Ali Abdaal, and my wife, Izzy Seely.
We both have strong personal brands in the personal development and productivity space.
So this is just a little bit of context so that Claude has context around this.
Now I'm going to show you a bunch of different ways that I actually use this in real life.
And so hopefully you'll get a feel for what I'm doing and then maybe you can figure out how to tailor that to what you're doing.
So right now, when it comes to the software, one of the things I need to work out is we're planning out new features to add to Momentum, which is our habit tracking and accountability app.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to screenshot a bunch of different aspects of Momentum.
Let's look at Sparkle Fitness leaderboard.
And I'm basically giving Claude a feel for what does Momentum, the app, actually look like right now.
And I'm basically gonna take those files, airdrop them to my Mac.
Now, what is good about this is I can basically chuck all of those straight into Claude.
And now I can use Super Whisper to say okay, these are some screenshots of Momentum, which is the habit tracker and accountability squad app that we are developing.
I want you to help me create a challenges feature.
So I want the challenges tab to be one of the tabs at the bottom of the app.
And the whole idea behind the challenges feature is that users will be able to join a challenge to focus on staying consistent with one of their habits.
So, for example, we wanna host a challenge that's sort of the final 100 days of 2025 challenge, where people pick a single habit and then they aim for daily consistency with that particular habit.
But we also want the option of people being able to join like a monthly challenge or like a meditation challenge or a reading challenge.
And we want users to be able to browse challenges and also to be able to join a challenge.
Cool.
So as you can see, super whisper has basically just written that whole thing.
And now I'm just going to hit enter.
We're going to see what happens.
Okay.
So what it's doing is creating a challenge feature specification.
Okay.
Fantastic.
So Claude has designed basically the specification for this, all of which sounds quite reasonable.
Uh, now the most exciting thing about this.
Okay.
Please create a clickable prototype for this.
Okay, so this is what Claude has generated.
So we've got the existing habit screen, we've got the existing scored screen and it's created this challenges feature.
And What I'm doing here is I'm not really trying to vibe code the feature.
I'm using Claude basically as a prototyping tool.
Now back in the day, before we had AI tools like Claude and Lovable and vZero and things like that, in order to do prototypes, I would have had to back in the really back in the day, draw boxes on a piece of paper and then turn them into Photoshop files.
And then a few years later, an app called Sketch came out for the Mac and it was sort of like you were able to draw boxes and quickly design prototypes of stuff using Sketch.
And then Sketch sort of went behind and then Figma came around where it basically allowed you to do prototyping in the browser and like shareable with teams and stuff, and that was amazing.
But even though Figma is amazing and we still use Figma all the time the problem with Figma is you still have to draw the boxes.
Whereas with Claude, as you've seen over here, I've just described what I want, or what I think I want, and it has mocked up a clickable prototype of what the feature would actually be.
So let's look at this final 100 days of 2025.
End the year strong, daily consistency, yup, nice.
Recent participants yup, join challenge um, and then i can choose one of my habits.
So, let's say, i want to run every day.
Join challenge with run, great view my progress.
And man, this is freaking incredible, because this would have taken me hours and hours, and hours and hours to figure out if i was just trying to do the stuff in figma and what the end result of this is.
It's not that like this feature is exactly going to be what is now in the app, but immediately I get a feel for what might the feature look like if it was built into the app.
Now, what I would generally do here is that I would kind of go back and forth with Claude a little bit until the feature is, sort of like directionally, at the level that I want it to be.
And then I would record a loom which I would send to our co-founder Pablo, who's our co-founder on the software front and also the lead developer on Momentum.
His name is Alex.
And so I'd record a loom to send to Pablo and Alex and be like Hey guys, I've just been talking to Claude and I feel like I've got a reasonable mock-up of the challenges feature that we want to build into the app.
Here is what I think it might look like A B C D E F G, And then I would sort of talk through the feature and why I think it's good and what it might look like.
And then Pablo and Alex, being the actual developers, would then figure out okay, how much of this do we want to incorporate into the app?
What do we need to change?
How does the database schema need to change?
How do we then release this feature without like, disrupting the existing users of the app and all of the fun technical stuff which I thankfully don't have to deal with because that's not my role in the software stuff?
My job is basically to figure out what are some cool features that I would really want that I think users would benefit from, given the goal of the app, and then try and do my best to mock it up using Claude or any of these other AI tools.
The other major thing that I do on the software front is part of my role is to get people to use the app.
So I'm trying to do the marketing.
Now the way we mostly market the software is through short form social media content.
So here's something I might do in Claude.
Okay, based on what you know of Momentum the app, this idea of habit tracking with accountability, I want you to help me generate 50 different hooks, like one line hooks that I can use when I'm filming Instagram Reels that provide value to the audience, but then also sort of casually show Momentum the app being used on the Instagram Reel.
All right, so I've got these different hooks.
Now the way that we normally do social media content is we create what we think of internally as a hook book, ie basically just like a Google Doc or a Notion page that just has loads of different hooks.
Hook meaning like the first line of the thing.
And then usually I'll have a look through and I'll just sort of pick which are the ones that feel legit.
Like obviously I'm not actually gonna film all 50 of these, but I find that by generating 50 I can usually find like five or 10 that I think oh, actually I have something good to say from sort of building off of this one liner.
One of my least favorite parts of social media content creation, whether it's on like Instagram TikTok, any kind of social media platform, even YouTube the hooking people's attention aspect.
So on long form YouTube videos, it's the title and thumbnail.
I really don't enjoy thinking about title and thumbnail.
Similarly on Instagram and TikTok, it's like, what are you saying in the first three seconds?
I don't enjoy having to think about that stuff, because really what I'd love is to just be able to say something that provides value.
But no, you gotta hook people's attention and make sure they stop scrolling and all of that stuff.
So I quite like using AI tools to do the work for me in that regard.
And then I can just sort of see which of these things, as I read through them, gives me a dopamine hit of like Ooh, that sounds interesting.
So I'm sort of looking out for this, that internal feeling of resonance, of like yes, I think there's something here.
There's this one, the secret to never breaking a habit again.
But I kind of prefer this is the.
This is the secret to never breaking a habit again.
I'm going to say to Claude, these are my favorites.
Give me 50 more along these lines.
And so what I'm doing here is I'm sort of like, it's generating the first draft of the thing.
I'm testing for resonance in terms of what I feel like is going to hit.
And then I'm feeding that back to Claude so that it like improves its stuff, basically.
Okay, cool.
So now of these 50, which have been improved based on the data I gave it, I like 11 of them.
So, you know, we've got a just over 20% hit rate for this.
This is one mistake I see a lot of people make when it comes to using AI tools for, like creativity type stuff.
It's that like, you look at the list of things and you're like, oh, that's cringe.
Oh, I don't like that.
Oh, I don't like that.
Oh, I don't like that.
And then you're like, oh my God, the AI sucks and can't replace humans, and like all of that sort of stuff.
But if you generate 50 to 100 things, they're probably going to like 5 of them, 10 of them, maybe 20 of them.
And then you can just use those rather than trying to get the AI to do all of the work for you.
What we're basically doing is getting a feel for resonance, and But now what I have here in Notion is basically my momentum hook book, which means next time I get around to sitting down and filming social media content for Instagram TikTok, YouTube Shorts that tries to actively or casually plug momentum.
I have a long list of hooks.
And usually the way I do that is I look at the first one.
This is why 90% of people fail at building habits.
And then I'm thinking okay, what's the value that I can give to the audience based on my own knowledge from that specific hook?
So I can say that, for example, 90 of people fail at building habits because they don't stay consistent beyond like the 21 days that on average, it takes to build a habit.
And so really those first 21 days are absolutely critical.
And usually people fail at that.
And usually people fail at the thing because they don't keep the streak going and because they don't have accountability to make the thing happen.
Then that segues nicely into talking about the app.
So this is sort of like the process that goes through my head when I'm thinking about making short form social media content.
Now, at this point, if I really wanted to, I could say to Claude write me a script, but I don't like using AI tools for scripting my stuff because I prefer to do that stuff myself.
I find that if you outsource too much of the creativity of a process to AI, then there's some soul that gets lost.
And especially when it comes to things that I'm saying on camera.
I don't want a large language model to be putting words in my mouth.
I don't mind it at all if it's for the hook, because often I'll be like okay yeah, that's reasonable.
But then I kind of make it a point that I'm the one actually generating the stuff from within for the content, for the piece itself.
There are a few other things that we do on the software front.
So, for example, we send out surveys every now and then to our users and that survey generates a csv file with survey results from people giving feedback about the app.
That goes into Claude and we ask Claude to basically sort of parse what people have said about the app.
And that lets us basically figure out what should we prioritize on the roadmap.
And on the backend as well.
We also do some tracking around.
You know fully anonymized data obviously, but it's more like you know what's the critical mass of things that the average user needs to do on the app in order to see value.
So we found with VoicePal, for example, based on the data, that if someone downloads VoicePal and creates at least three recordings, then their chances of converting to a paid user and then sticking with the app are, like drastically higher.
And so then we know that, based on that, that really the point of our onboarding for the app is to get people to create those first three streams.
And then that's kind of nice.
That's data that we got from basically analyzing the CSV files, of looking at the data, checking it to Claude, and that really helps guide us on our roadmap for the software, because otherwise there's like an infinite number of things you could be doing when you're building apps and when you're building a business, but really the trick is to try and prioritize the ones that are gonna move the needle most for your users, because if you can add value to the users, then you're also gonna add value to your business.
Okay, quick flag.
This bit that's coming up might seem very boring.
We were gonna cut it out and then we felt like, do we cut it out?
Do we not cut it out?
We're gonna leave it in just because I know there are some people who will get lots of value from like literally seeing the conversation that I'm having with the AI.
And hopefully that'll give you some ideas about what kind of conversations you can have with the various different AI tools.
But if you don't care, all the timestamps are down below.
So please, by all means, feel free to skip this bit of the video, because this could get kind of boring, unless you just really want to see me interact with the AI and talk about our Lifestyle Business Academy.
Now Lifestyle Business Academy is a brand new product.
We ran like a six week challenge for it that went really well.
People vibe with it.
But now we're launching like a proper kind of online business school for lifestyle entrepreneurs.
Now, whenever I do anything new or Whenever I'm going zero to one on something, I always like to start with a voice transcription, where I just get as much of the information out of my head.
And so I'm going to be using VoicePal for this.
I am trying to figure out what is the offer for our Lifestyle Business Academy.
Now Lifestyle Business Academy.
The whole goal of it is to help people build 100000 a year lifestyle business in under 12 months.
And really what I want is almost like a better version of an MBA, like an MBA for lifestyle business owners.
So it's like, you know, an MBA is like a two year program or one year program or three year program.
I'm kind of imagining, like the Lifestyle Business Academy is a three year program where we take someone as a complete beginner and within about three years we get them to a million dollars a year in revenue with ideally like 500000 in profit.
Now that's going to be hard and there's going to be like a whole roadmap for that.
But I want it to feel like like I really want to build this as a kind of online business school, that kind of thing, but also have some offline components.
Um, Yeah.
Okay.
So now VoicePal is asking me what specific skills and knowledge will participants get from the LBA that they wouldn't get from a traditional MBA?
Good question.
How will the curriculum be structured to ensure that beginners can progress to a million dollars in revenue within three years?
And what offline components do you envision incorporating into the program and how will they enhance the learning experience?
Now I could just click on any one of these, but actually I'm gonna use.
There's a new feature we added to the app, which is sounds like you're aiming to create a comprehensive, multi-year transformational program.
What would you say are the core mindsets or skill shifts that someone needs to make between hitting 100 a year and scaling all the way up to one million dollars?
Okay, this is a good question.
Um, i think the zero to 100k revenue thing will take 12 months 12 to 18 months, depending on whether they have skills or not.
Some people will do it sooner, some people will take a bit longer.
Um, and we kind of want to encourage people to go at their own pace, but we also want to set like a, a standard pace, that sort of like kind of kind of like a recommended pace.
Because if someone has, if someone really hits the ground running, then they can probably get to 100k revenue within six months.
But if they want to take the time with it a bit more maybe they want to be a bit more chill, maybe they've got other things going on in their life then it'll probably take longer than six months probably maybe 12 to 18 months to hit 100k in revenue.
And then really, I think zero to 100k is like a specific thing.
And then 100k to a million is like kind of going deeper on the same foundational kind of skill sets.
That timeline you described is really interesting.
Can you walk me through what specific habits or routines someone needs to adopt during that first year to build momentum towards that initial 100K, and how those change or evolve as they aim for the million?
Okay um, so initially like to be honest, i think the habits and routines are actually fairly similar.
I think for someone to do this properly, they need to put in uh 10 to 15 hours a week, possibly more than that at the start, i mean.
But again, it's a sliding scale like right.
So we're trying to build a lifestyle business where the whole idea is that you're able to put in as much time as you want to.
So someone could build a lifestyle business in four hours a week.
It's just that it's going to take longer obviously, compared to someone who's putting 40 hours a week into building the lifestyle business.
So in a way, the key habit number one is actually devoting some time to making progress every week.
That's like a key focus here.
Number two they've got to fill out their.
We've got like a whole curriculum mapped out for them, including like tools and things where every week they're going to need to fill out their weekly kind of metric scorecard thing.
And also where they attend our accountability squads every single week to set goals and to make progress.
And so really as long as, As long as students are making progress week to week, even if it's a tiny incremental amount of progress, that will drastically accelerate their chances of being able to hit the 100k in revenue and then also being able to scale to a million a year.
That accountability structure sounds crucial.
How do you help students stay motivated and overcome periods when progress feels slow or they hit unexpected setbacks?
That is a good question.
Okay, so I think a key part of this will be the squads and the coaches.
So every student will have their own kind of coach that they can contact one-on-one for any help.
They'll also have their own squads, squads of six people where they'll be meeting with them on a weekly basis with like WhatsApp group and all that kind of stuff for motivation.
I will also be doing kind of weekly live sessions that will include some breakout room components and where we're also going to have like mindset office hours, mindset and motivation kind of like group coaching sessions, because honestly, mindset and motivation is a huge, like one of the biggest hurdles when it comes to building 100k a year business.
I think, given our target audience and the sorts of people we're going to get in the program, they shouldn't find the technical side of it too hard.
But the most difficult aspect is going to be the emotional and the emotional side and actually staying motivated consistently to see results over the long term hurdle.
Can you share a story or example where someone's emotional breakthrough or shifted mindset made a clear turning point in their business journey?
What did that look like and how did it impact their results?
So then, as you can see, here I was using the conversational interview mode, where it's sort of my voice with a weirdly Australian accent.
And so through that, I've now got this whole transcript.
And then what I can do is I can just take the entire transcript, chuck it into Claude and then do other things with it.
And so yeah, I find this method of interviewing myself to be a really good way while I'm out and about, while I'm standing up.
Sometimes I have my AirPods in, sometimes I'm just like going for a walk in the local park and I'm sort of being interviewed by myself for a thing that I need to work on.
How do you plan to incorporate offline components into the Lifestyle Business Academy and what value do you think they'll add?
So we want to have.
And I can keep going like this forever and just generate thousands and thousands of words in my transcript.
How many have I got so far?
This one is currently 1,130 words, which is quite nice.
I generally find that if I can get at least 800 words, that's a good amount of content to then put into Claude, to then process it.
So we're going to stop on VoicePal now and then we're going to switch to Claude.
Okay, so now what I'm gonna basically do is take the transcript I've just generated through VoicePal and I'm gonna hit copy transcript and I generally prefer the raw version of it and I'm gonna just paste it straight into Claude, thanks to the universal clipboard on Apple products,
There's a chap called Donald Miller who has a very good book called Building a Story Brand and He has a framework called like the brand script framework, which is my kind of go-to first port of call whenever I'm designing a new product.
So, based on this transcript I've created in VoicePal, I'm gonna say I want you to help create a story brand, brand script based on this.
And let's see what Claude does.
So we've got the character, the hero a professional with valuable expertise who wants to build a 100K a year lifestyle business that gives him freedom, fulfillment and financial security without sacrificing the life in the process.
Yes, this is perfect.
This is actually a little bit better than it would have been purely with that transcript, because this is within my Lifestyle Business Academy project, where I've already got chats that talk about this stuff.
But this is pretty spot on.
So it has a problem.
The external villain is the traditional employment trap trading time for money with no path to freedom, while watching expenses consume every paycheck.
Yeah, sure.
Internal, so internal obstacles.
I don't know what business idea to pursue.
Why would anyone pay me for anything?
I'm not an expert at anything.
I can't find myself out there on the internet imposter syndrome, overthinking analysis paralysis, fear of leaving the security of a quote.
Real job.
Any of those things resonate with you?
They resonate a lot with our target audience, hopefully.
Philosophical, you shouldn't have to choose between financial success and living the life you want.
Yes, work should enhance your life, not consume it.
Everyone has valuable expertise that can help others.
They just need the right system to monetize it.
100% agree.
So then they meet a guide.
So the whole idea is that you, the customer, are the hero, and then you have a problem, which is that you have a job and you probably don't want your job.
You want freedom.
So then you meet a guide which is sort of me and my team and our faculty for the Lifestyle Business Academy.
I understand the fear of starting something new.
I've been there the other day thinking, yep, yep, yep.
Most people don't realize they're already expecting it.
Yep, nice.
It gives them a plan.
So identify your craft skills, find your people, choose your solution.
Okay, this is where the plan It's not quite the plan, but whatever.
This is fine.
Okay, so the elevator page.
Most people are stuck trading time for money with no path to freedom.
With the Lifestyle Business Academy, we help complete beginners build 100000 a year business in 12 to 18 months using the expertise they already have.
The weekly accountability squads, proof of frameworks and personal coaching.
Our students create lifestyle businesses that give them freedom, fulfillment and financial security, without sacrificing their lives in the process.
That is a good elevator pitch.
That is better than anything I have ever come up with.
Man, I love it.
Well done, Claude.
This brand's composition to your students as the heroes of their own transformation story, with user experience guide.
Yes, perfect.
For that create urgency without being overly dramatic.
Yes, I like that.
I really, really, really like that.
This is really, really good.
Okay, awesome.
We're pretty much there with the brand script.
We already have people who have been applying for the Lifestyle Business Academy.
So I'm gonna whack out the data that we have from our applicants.
Okay, so we have 346 applications so far within the last few days.
And we haven't really talked too much about this, but really the goal, like all we're looking for, is 30 people for the founding case study cohort.
Hypeform does have these interesting kind of qualitative analysis.
So how did you first hear about the Lifestyle Business Academy?
So a bunch of people, positive sentiment.
Positive sentiment from Ali's YouTube video, from the 1K challenge, through one of Ali's emails, all of this sort of stuff.
But anyway, I've basically downloaded the CSV file of all of these student responses and I'm going to chuck the CSV file into Claude.
Okay, these are all the students who have applied to join the case study.
So I basically just typed it out.
So, with that roadmap laid out, I want you to give me a feel for what issues students are likely to face at each stage.
Okay, cool, so design phase.
Primary issues you'll face.
Analysis, paralysis around niche selection.
100%, of course this is gonna happen.
This is what we see every single time I speak to anyone who wants to start a business.
It's just like, what the hell should my niche be?
And it's a good question.
This is why we are offering this as a mentorship package, because I think people just really struggle with this.
Many applicants list three to five different potential niches fitness business mindset, relationships.
Several explicitly say they're not sure or still exploring.
You'll have students constantly guessing, but what if the other niche would be more profitable?
Classic, yes, 100%.
Imposter syndrome despite clear expertise.
Even applicants with 10 plus experience are saying things like, I'm not an expert yet.
Common phrase, I want to help, but I don't know if I'm qualified.
Yep, classic.
They'll need constant validation that being two to three steps ahead is enough.
Agreed.
Trying to help everyone.
Multiple responses show reluctance to narrow down.
Entrepreneurs and professionals or anyone who wants to improve.
Yep.
Fear that specificity will limit the income potential, but I could help so many people with resistance.
Yep, nice.
This is so far fully gelling with all of the experience that I have around this specific niche and this particular audience of people, with my own experience of having helped people like start their first lifestyle businesses.
So the last few weeks, as I've been kind of iterating on this whole process with the Lifestyle Business Academy,
Claude has been like my primary thought buddy with this.
And I have also spoken to loads of coaches signed up to a bunch of mentorship programs from people doing offers like this.
So, for example, one thing I also like to do is take basically my Zoom call recordings from coaching calls that I've had and chuck them into Claude to be like okay, what are this person's recommendations for how we can make the program better for our students?
Because really for us this is kind of like the first time we're doing something explicitly in the helping people make money on the internet space, which feels very scary.
And so I'm doing a lot of preparing, me and the team, to really make sure we can deliver results.
And Claude has been a very very, very useful thought buddy for this whole process, as have been the coaches that we paid tens of thousands of dollars to to try and get this program to be really good from day one.
So this is a transcript of a conversation with one of my mentors, Scott.
Based on this and the application data and the roadmap I gave you, wanting to create a detailed roadmap document that explains the entire roadmap along with likely issues that people are going to have that I can share with my team.
Lifestyle Business Academy is a 12-month group mentorship program designed to help students build 100000 euro annual revenue.
Yep.
Students progress through three distinct phases with the ultimate goal of achieving consistent 8300 a month.
Yeah, exactly.
Divine stage.
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
Analysis paralysis.
Imposter syndrome.
Trying to help everyone.
Money mindset blocks.
Yep.
Build phase.
Daily content creation, discovery call, clients, testimonials, paid clients, et cetera, et cetera.
DM outreach resistance, yep, yep, yep.
The ghost zone, I like it.
Yeah, all of this is very, very good.
Most students won't hit 100K in year one, but they'll still be thrilled if they see the path clearly and feel supported.
Success is defined by progression, not just the ultimate destination.
Yeah, I agree.
Obviously, I want students to hit 100K in revenue, but realistically, a lot of them won't.
But even the ones that won't, we want them to make a massive ROI from the program and also feel as if it was totally worth.
It is going to be going to be an interesting challenge.
Okay, nice.
Now, based on the roadmap i gave you, give me a table of contents of what the modules and lessons in the curriculum could be.
Um, and again, i'm just i i've already done quite a lot of this stuff um, but i'm what i'm.
What i'm looking for is i'm getting a feel for, based on this new information that i've given claude via voicepal and also i hadn't previously added in the csv from our applicants, because we have a bunch of applicants now.
Is there anything here that I should?
Um, that changes the way that I'm going to structure the course or the curriculum?
Rather welcome and orientation.
Yep.
It's called system or I guarantee how it works on a great.
Yep.
Nice.
Yep.
I like it.
Well, this is good.
Finding a people craft skills.
Yep.
Niche definition, market validation.
Yep.
Crafting it off.
Uh, yep.
Offered dark, simple sales system.
Yep.
To be honest, a lot of this is what we are doing already, but this is useful to see.
So all of this sort of stuff, all of this use of AI tools, is basically just fundamentally, what it comes down to is input, processing and output.
And whether it's software that we're creating, or whether it's content, or whether it's our, like this online education business that we're trying to build, like a better version of an MBA.
It all just fundamentally comes down to input, processing, and output.
And there are various different AI tools that can help you in the input stage and various that can help you in the processing stage and various that can help you in the output stage, if you want.
One thing that I used Gamma for, Gamma is a really good way of making slides.
So when I was doing like a video for the applications and you can check out the video, it'll be linked down below.
Ooh, Gamma 3.0, that's new.
This one, I think, was what it was.
And so this is basically sort of creating the slides for me automatically, which is really nice.
The roadmap to 100k a year.
Who it's for the three part system for lifestyle business growth.
What success looks like?
ROI guarantee, founders cohort, all of this sort of stuff.
And so I recorded a loom as I was talking through this, which is what encouraged people to apply.
Okay, so at this point we've kind of talked about how I use AI tools for the software side of the business, how I use various different AI tools for the kind of academy courses programs, mentorship side of the business.
We have a third part of the business, which we haven't really touched upon yet.
We did a little bit in the software, which is the content side of things.
And that will be in this video over here, which is a step-by-step walkthrough case study of how I actually make a YouTube video, kind of step by step, and exactly how I use AI along the way, in addition to all of the other things that goes into us creating content for YouTube.
So that will be linked right over there.
Thank you so much for watching.
I hope you got some value out of the video and I will see you hopefully next time.
Bye-bye.
