Amanda (00:00)
Hey, hey, you're listening to the Level Up Creators podcast. Amanda Northcutt here, founder and CEO. We help creators and digital thought leaders like you turn their knowledge and experience into rock solid recurring revenue businesses. And we're so glad you're here. Welcome. Today, my special guest is serial founder, fractional CMO and AI enthusiast, Dan Cumberland. Dan specializes in helping overwhelmed founders reclaim their time and sanity through AI and smart systems.
A former minister turned serial entrepreneur, he's launched three SaaS companies with two successful exits. Very impressive. And through the meaning movement, he's connected with millions of people through his podcast, writing and newsletter, bringing a unique blend of psychology, personal development and AI to help founders and creatives build lives and companies they truly love. And very importantly, Dan is a father of three, an avid trail runner, crossfitter,
and traveler and is joining us today from beautiful Merida, Mexico. Welcome, Dan.
Dan! (00:56)
Thank you so much, Amanda. I am just stoked to be here. Thanks for having me.
Amanda (01:01)
Yeah, it feels like the conversation is a long time coming, which is ironic because you and I have not known each other for very long at all, but we were introduced a couple of months ago or so by a mutual friend and quickly realized via LinkedIn that we have about a dozen mutual friends and not just like internet friends, but in real life friends. And so this totally weirded me out because I've never been introduced to someone.
Dan! (01:25)
You
Amanda (01:27)
in all my 40 years who, I mean, you know someone, at least one person who has been instrumental in my life in every stage beginning in childhood. So I truly can't believe our paths had not crossed much sooner, but I'm super grateful they did. Shout out to Tony DiLorenzo, yeah, for introducing us.
Dan! (01:39)
Yes. Likewise. Yeah, I promise I have not been stalking you your whole life. It just happens that we know a lot of really fantastic people.
Amanda (01:48)
That's good.
That's very true. So that was just so fun and fascinating to connect with you and talk about all those people from the past. And yeah, I'm interested to see if we get into that in our conversation all today. But I'm to throw everybody for a loop here. And we're going to start by talking about traveling with young kiddos. You and I, yeah, I know, right? You and I share a love of slow travel with the family. And.
Dan! (02:13)
my gosh.
Mmm. Mmm.
Amanda (02:21)
My understanding is that you're in the process of doing what my family and I did about eight years ago, which is travel around and live places temporarily to see if we actually want to move there. So, Dan, how did y'all end up in Merida?
Dan! (02:32)
Yeah. Yeah. What a boy. How far back do we go? I'll try. I'll try to give you the fast the fast version. So a family family of five. We're in Merida, Mexico for the twenty twenty four twenty twenty five school year. The impetus of this. We love travel. Like you said, we've flirted with extended travel in like four weeks since we go to San Francisco to a house, trade some friends in San Francisco every summer for.
Amanda (02:37)
You
Dan! (02:59)
three to five weeks, depending on the summer, we spent a good chunk of COVID in Baja. And I've always wanted to spend longer, longer time outside of the states, but it just hasn't ever made sense for everyone in the fam. But we've just, we're coming up on a transition with our kids' schools. They're nine, just turned nine, six and four, my three kids.
And needing to make a transition there. We also, live in Seattle and it's just very expensive and we're rapidly outgrowing our house. We live in 800 square feet, which is a lot for a family of five. And so we were like, we need a different school. We probably need to move, but where do we move? Feel a little bit priced out. Not sure if we want to spend a million dollars on a home right now.
because we don't have a million dollars to spend that we want to spend on a home right now. And all of that combined with, we've run the gamut with education. And my oldest has been in school, homeschooled, hybrid homeschooled, online. And over this last year, our youngest was at a Montessori preschool. And we've felt like of all the iterations of school we've seen, Montessori has been the most appealing for all.
to us and to our kids and their interests and personalities. And so all of that kind of culminated with my wife saying, what if we didn't go to school? What if the move situation, we felt really stuck on that, what if we could just punt that? And what if the school conversation that we're having could be resolved by looking outside of the border? And so being an AI enthusiast, first my wife and I brainstormed, mostly she brainstormed,
all of the places that sound interesting. And we had like 50 cities, which is a lot of cities to research, but we had a handful of questions we wanted to answer about those cities, which is, do they have a Montessori, Waldorf, outdoor, know, alternative education school there that, you know, starting with that. And then also things about the cities, like we're familiar with Merida where we ended up, but a lot of the other cities, Valencia, Spain, other places that like were interesting to us, but we didn't know that much about. like,
Are there mountains there? Is the city walkable and bikeable? Is it like, you how far is it from water? Some of those kinds of questions. We made this list of all these cities and then I designed an an AI agent that researched all of these cities and answered all of these questions for us, put it all into a big, beautiful spreadsheet and it shortlisted us down to like five or six. And so then we were able to go from 50 to, okay, these are cities that are interesting. Check the major boxes for us.
And then we just get to go and look at the schools there and see what feels right, also has space for us, et cetera, et cetera. So that's the short-ish, too late for short version of how we made the decision to end up here.
Amanda (06:00)
Okay, awesome. I love that story. And I love your AI scoring algorithm. Travis and I, Travis, my husband, we made a scoring algorithm in 2015. Okay, so now almost 10 years ago. AI was not available, by the way. So we thought we were like being pretty smart and slick and cool at the time. You we had all of our studies listed on the left. We had all our criteria. We had a scoring system and everything. We went and visited.
Dan! (06:17)
No, sad.
Yes, but I love this.
Amanda (06:29)
all of these cities over the course of several months and ended up, obviously, we live in Fort Collins now, but we traveled around and lived in number of places to make sure we were really dialed in here, because that is a big decision, and we did buy the million dollar house. we wanted to be sure. Yes, for sure. But I had never, never in my life heard of another human.
Dan! (06:42)
Yeah.
There you go. Well, if you know it's where you want to be, then it's great. Yes.
Amanda (06:55)
who had built a scoring algorithm trying to figure out where in the world they wanted to live. And yours is AI and totally puts ours like, it makes ours look like it was made in the ice age or something like that. so I think you.
Dan! (07:05)
Well, maybe 2025, maybe 2015 is the Ice Age, Like technology just moves so fast. It's just, have different tools now.
Amanda (07:13)
That is very, true. But I thought that was pretty cool. Clearly, we are like kindred souls. And I would love to meet your wife sometime as well, because she must be wonderful.
Dan! (07:18)
I think so.
I thought you were gonna say I would like to meet your spreadsheet, my wife is fantastic.
Amanda (07:30)
I bet your wife is cooler than this spreadsheet, I have feeling.
Dan! (07:33)
She's way, way cooler than the spreadsheet. She's absolutely the best.
Amanda (07:35)
Awesome. Okay, well, and I think that the travel piece is important because lifestyle architecture is such a huge part of entrepreneurship or running a, know, creator first business or a solopreneur business. And just remembering that like, you don't need permission to go and live your life in the way that you want and to design it and to move out of the country and do what's right for your family.
Dan! (07:48)
Yes.
Amanda (07:59)
and that you can build a business around your life. It doesn't have to be the other way. And we all know at this point, know, the traditional nine to five is not the only path. So I just wanted to double click on that one for self-indulgence purposes, but also because we need other people to know that you can do this and it's okay and your kids will be okay and actually better for it, in my opinion.
Dan! (07:59)
100%.
Yes!
Yes, yes. My kids are meeting all so many just really fun friends from all over Mexico that have moved here. Like lot of the people have moved here for the school. And so they have friends from Monterey and Mexico City. it is incredible. But I think about the lifestyle thing, I think it's easy for people to listen. I'm trying to imagine what it would be like for me to listen to us having this conversation and not know the ins and outs of my life.
Amanda (08:27)
Mm-hmm.
Dan! (08:46)
And I think it's really easy to idealize it and say, wow, well, Dan's such a successful entrepreneur and blah, blah, blah. It's really tempting to put off our dreams to some time in the future when we've checked all the right lifestyle boxes and we have a certain amount in our bank account or whatever, for most people that amount isn't even defined to begin with. But I think a lot of this comes from, and I imagine it's the same for you, just a desire to like, let's not wait for life.
to happen and let's live the life that we want to live now, even if it feels hard and even if it is a stretch and even if it is hard to travel with kids, which it is, but it's also wonderful, but it's chaotic and it's messy. Sometimes it's expensive, but it's also wonderful.
Amanda (09:25)
You
Yes, we could just end the podcast right there or do the entire show about this. And maybe I should have you back in a few months and we could just like unpack what this is like because lots of people are interested in this lifestyle but are so intimidated by the process. And so that could be a very interesting next combo. So I'm gonna keep that in mind actually. Yeah, that'll be fun. We could have Travis and your wife on as well. We can have a panel discussion on this thing. See, that's, I'm gonna force.
Dan! (09:37)
I know, right?
Yes.
Yes, yes.
I'm 100 % here for it. Yes.
let's do it. I would love to get my wife on a podcast. She's never been on a podcast. Here we go. You'd love her. You'd love her. You will love her on that podcast when you meet her.
Amanda (10:01)
I'm going to force my ability to meet your wife.
Yeah, I think that would be super fun actually. Okay, we're gonna do that. All right, and also you just joined creator school a couple of weeks ago and we are super excited to have you. How are you finding it so far?
Dan! (10:16)
I did. I'm so excited. Yes. So far, I've loved, you know, I came to a coaching session with you last week, which was super helpful. It gave me some really specific direction as to where to go next with planning out next steps for my business. Beyond that, I really need to sink my teeth in and start learning. But just the early insights, the early connections have been really fun so far.
excited to get fully integrated into the community.
Amanda (10:50)
Awesome, and we're so glad to have you, you're a fantastic addition to kind of the level up family. And I was so sick last week on that call. I need to go back and listen to the advice that I gave you to make sure that it was sound. The flu went through my house last week and I was like, I gotta do this call and I'm gonna do my best. woo, that was interesting. Okay, let's back up a few steps. Walk us through your entrepreneurial path and what I would call your creator journey.
Dan! (11:02)
Okay, well let me know.
You did great.
Yeah. Yes.
Amanda (11:20)
that's led you to this very specific niche with AI and marketing. I I said in your intro that you're a former pastor and you've started three SaaS companies, exited two. How did we get here?
Dan! (11:28)
Yes.
I know. Yep. How did we get here? Sometimes I ask that question, but I'll give the overview and then we can dive deeper on any of that. I went to school for ministry. I could even go further back, which I think is important context. I am the youngest of two. My father is an engineer. My mother is an accountant. My brother is a programmer. And I went wanted to study.
I went and studied music. I wanted to be a musician and studied music composition and ministry. Ended up going into ministry. But I give that context just to say, there wasn't a template for me in my family. the creator, even joining creator school, even having lived a creative career for, you know, since early 2000s, I still have a hard time really even doing myself that way. And I think that's just because of
Amanda (12:13)
Hmm?
Dan! (12:28)
of the family of origin, of that context. But ministry was really hard for me. I wasn't a good fit. I really struggled in that role to, I don't know, to fit into the mold. And I was there for five years, but during those five years, had many dark nights of the soul, questioned everything about who I was and what my purpose was and why I was here, who God was, why we're doing any of this.
And along the way, as I was having this very much an existential crisis, was finding a lot of joy and connection with our students, built an incredible student community. And some of our students are still close friends to this day, but followed that thread of helping these students figure out what to do with their lives was like where the juice was for me. And I wanted more of that. So went to grad school, studied psychology and theology. In one part it was
Amanda (13:08)
you
Dan! (13:23)
That's the only thread I had to follow and others is a really great excuse to leave ministry. And in that program found, I think some permission that I just like starting things. I like trying things. I like learning things. I like making it up as I go. And that's where I'm best. And so after grad school started the meeting movement as a platform to help people with these big questions of how do we navigate these unknown transition spaces and answering the questions about what we want to do.
as well as photography company. And it was just trying to figure out how to make stuff happen. Was very influenced at that time. was 2012 by Michael Hyatt and platform and like kind of the creator space was, especially kind of led with blogs at that point and tried to follow that model and did, had an online course that did decently well. But then somewhere along the way, I...
was I did an internship with or an externship, you could call it partnership with a SEO company, just trying to learn. Learning is a theme in my life. I love to learn. Learning SEO, launching some projects, and they pivoted to start acquiring software companies and other digital assets. As they asked me to come alongside them, work with them, run this company while they held it, the plan was to hold it for 18 months and then flip it.
And so I jumped into the deep end of software in the mid 2010s. And I saw it as just an opportunity to learn, opportunity to come along a team that was doing some really cool stuff and just see where the journey took me. And did really well, grew that team from a team of six to a team of 25. I was the CEO, got it through a successful exit, and then wanted to take that idea of building software and launching things. were in a market.
that required us to launch a new product basically once a quarter. And so it was exhausting in that regard. We're building software very fast, but got really good at that and building MVPs and all of that, running really tight sprints. I wanted to take that idea and run with it. I, with a business partner, two business partners started a venture studio, meaning we had a core group of really 12, if you count all the contractors, but it's a pretty small group.
And we were building software, launching it in marketplace with the idea of, let's see what sticks, what works, and let's double down on those, and let's kill off the ones that don't. And did that for a couple of years before we wrapped it up about two years ago. And at that point, transitioned into consulting. And that's when AI was starting to become available in the ways that we know it today, chat GPT leading the way. And started.
using AI at a high level, because I'm a technologist, because I love learning things as an early adapter. And I compare now what I'm doing for my CMO clients to what I was doing with the software company and the venture studio. And I'm able to cover so much more ground, so much more efficiently, and get so much more done because I'm able to leverage AI at such a high level compared to where I was just a few years ago, which is why I'm so excited to help others do.
the same. So that's the long version. I tried to make it short. I didn't succeed, but that's how I got from ministry to where I am today.
Amanda (16:49)
Yeah.
Amazing. So you are of the insatiably curious variety. Big time. That's awesome.
Dan! (17:00)
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, it's kind of an addiction, I think, sometimes. I think the problem is, well, I have ADHD, if you didn't figure that out from my story. But I think some of that is that I don't think that there's anything that I can't learn. I think that's both biggest, one of my superpowers and greatest weaknesses, right?
So of course, I could try that, I can do that. And then sometimes I get into it and end up hating my life because it's so hard or whatever. But it all kind of stems from that, I don't know, false sense of self, I'm not sure.
Amanda (17:43)
Let's call it a growth mindset and go from there. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And I appreciate the confidence as well, as long as you're like increasing your competence along the way and you're testing what you're learning. I mean, that's like our formula here for confidence and combating imposter syndrome is like learn and do, and you will become confident and proficient. Okay.
Dan! (17:46)
There we go. That's a much more positive way to spin it. Thank you, Amanda.
Yeah. Yes.
Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that that's also like why, you know, why I wanted to join your level up school, a greater school, because I know that like my bias is to do a little bit of this and learn a bunch of stuff and do a little bit of that and learn a bunch of stuff and be a little bit all over the place sometimes. And it's like I need I need you and the team to help help keep me on the path. And so that's part of why I made the decision to join.
Amanda (18:38)
Cool, yeah, accountability is a big piece of it. It's like, what is the next right thing to do given my specific circumstances and the environment that we've created is for one-on-one coaching in a small group environment. So great, that's good to know, the accountability piece. will file that away, that's great. What is the most random subject you have endeavored to master?
Dan! (18:53)
Yes.
man, that's a great question. Yeah, I mean, the first thing that came to mind is dog training. When we had a dog, I was like, okay, I'm gonna be a dog trainer. And she was incredibly well behaved and trained and she was fantastic. That was the first one that jumps to mind. The other thing is that they end up being kind of revolving around a theme. And over the last nine years, so nine years ago, I ended up in the hospital.
out of this crazy thing happened, emergency surgery, it was really traumatic. And went into surgery not knowing what was gonna happen when I woke up. They were gonna take out, possibly remove a good portion of my intestines if not, know, like last words, one of the last words I heard the doctor say was bowel death. And came out of that,
Thankfully, they did take my intestines out and rearrange them and put them in, but didn't lose any. And have an eight inch scar across my abdomen. And it took a long time to recover from that. My son was born a month later after that, that incident. And I, since then, have just had this, once I was able to build a little bit of ab strength, hold myself up again,
Amanda (20:03)
Whew.
my God.
Dan! (20:26)
I've just had this insatiable desire to like, just use my body and fitness is, is, has been a quest over those nine years, just to see what my, see what my body can do as you read in my intro, you know, CrossFit. I just love it. I love learning so much about it. And, and so that's, that's, you know, it has taken a couple of different manifestations, related to the fit in the fitness realm.
But that's another direction that my curiosity has taken me.
Amanda (21:00)
Holy moly. I'm glad that they were able to put everything back in, close you up, and that you woke up afterwards, and your eight-month pregnant wife with your first child's probably also very relieved by that. What timing, man, when it rains it pours.
Dan! (21:07)
Yes, 100%. 100%.
Yeah, yeah, it's not the baby moon that we had in mind. Hospital stay. Yes, yes.
Amanda (21:24)
No.
Wow, thanks for sharing that. That is incredible. No.
Dan! (21:29)
Yeah, I hope it's not too much. If it's too much, you ever just say, let's, let's, it's too much, Dan.
Amanda (21:34)
No, all good. I talk about my chronic health stuff pretty much all the time. So no, it's all good. And that's part of life. And I think another aspect of entrepreneurship is that this addresses the whole person. And again, you get to make your own rules. And if you have weird health stuff going on, like I have forever, you get to design your own way and find a path forward that works for you and accommodates your lifestyle. So I think that's an important piece of it. All right, we got to talk about AI.
Dan! (21:45)
Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Amanda (22:04)
some more. So we're recording this in November 2024 and AI's capabilities are in this like crazy fast and drastic improvement cycle like you're saying. I mean, where we've come in the last two years, it's completely insane. It's unthinkable to our 2020 brains even. So as of right now, what are AI's highest and best uses for marketers and creators?
Dan! (22:04)
Yeah.
Yes.
Yes.
I love it. The highest and best use is the first thing that comes to mind is content. Using AI to speed up your content production, whether that's social posts, whether that's email, blog, any type of communication. But beyond that, I like to think about where is the friction in your workflow? And what are the areas, the things that you're doing that are
repeat it repetitive that you're doing, whether it's once a week, once a day, that you just don't like. Because my thesis is that our businesses that we're building should give us life. They should fill us up and they should leave us at the end of the day. Sure, we worked hard, but we had fun. And AI, in my opinion, in its best use case, especially for creators, is an opportunity to free us up from all the cruft.
or not all of it, but a lot of it that can clog up our work days and free us to do more of the things that only we can do. So I think it starts with content, but it can apply to many other things. Once you put a little bit of thought into designing systems and designing workflows, that can accomplish those things.
Amanda (23:49)
Cool. All right, so content creation, obviously that's huge. I mean, to level up, we teach like source content maximization. So we'll take a podcast transcript and have ChatGPT help us turn it into blog posts, newsletters, social, whatever, action workshops. You you take the transcripts and make it into, okay, so is that what you mean specifically? Do you mean yes and or?
Dan! (24:02)
Yes, that's right.
Yes, yes, yes, and. There's so many different directions this could go. But there's seven different steps of your workflow that you can apply AI to. One is preparation and context setting. don't know if I have my, let me just take a quick aside and pull up my notes on workflows because,
Amanda (24:38)
Yeah.
Dan! (24:39)
think this would be
So yeah, so the first step is framing. So when you're tackling a new project, just ask, using AI to answer the questions of what is it that you're creating? What does it look like? And giving you examples, thinking of like the pain that we can sometimes feel as creators staring at a blinking cursor. We don't have to do that anymore because we can use AI to prime the pump and help frame up.
give us a canvas to create on, to put some constraints on what we're creating. We can use AI in the brainstorming process, which is the next step. These aren't necessarily sequential. People work in different ways. But you're leveraging AI for ideation, for enhancing divergent thinking, for taking something that you're already developing and then infusing different thoughts into it.
Outlining, which is for someone like me, super helpful. I'm very much a network thinker. Everything is related to everything else. so sometimes it's really hard for me to put my thoughts into a into a line for an outline for a presentation or workshop or whatever. So it's really helpful to be able to just word vomit all of my thoughts and use AI as a way to
to tidy them up, give them direction, and give them structure that I have a hard time giving to myself. For research, you can use AI. There's some specific AI research tools. You can use ChatGPT, Cloud, Gemini for research. But there are better ones, like Perplexity or the GigaBrain, that cite their source material. The reason for that, a lot of people know this, but AI can sometimes make stuff up. So you want to make sure that your model is grounded and not
Hallucinating is a technical term for that. Drafting, know, drafting content, that's often where people start is just thinking about, okay, AI make this thing for me, which it can absolutely do. But the way that I like to teach people to do that is it's an iterative process. AI isn't your employee or your writer, it's your collaborator, it's your co-thinker, it's your writing pal or co-pilot to help you develop your ideas and make them.
and make them better. And then editing and refinement, and then publishing completion and repurposing, as we've already mentioned. So those are seven areas that you can apply to whatever it is that you're creating.
Amanda (27:21)
Cool. That's a great framework. Good framing on your framing plus six other things. OK, that's awesome. That's a great way to think about it. And it's helpful that you dropped a couple AI models as well to use. So what are your favorites right now? I'm hearing a lot about [Claude.ai](http://claude.ai/). We use ChatGPT right now. But what's the best right now?
Dan! (27:26)
Yeah.
Yes. Yeah, Claude is for sure my favorite. Though I use different models for different things. I use ChatGPT a lot for anything that's code related. Claude can do this as well, but coding related. Often if I'm writing scripts, the other day I was wanting to train an AI on some specific parts of a client's website. So I wrote a script, a Python script to
scrape all of that content so that then I could feed it to AI. I am not a developer. I'm technically proficient enough to get into the code and break some things. But just asking, talking with ChatGPT was able to execute on that and write a script, download all that content, and then train up the model. ChatGPT's voice conversation mode is amazing and so realistic.
I often use that just to get clear on my thoughts, I've already talked about. Linear thinking and structure is not my strong suit. So sometimes I'll go on a walk and I'll just talk with ChatGPT and say, hey, I've got a lot of things on my plate and I'm having a hard time really clarifying my priorities for this day, for this week. I'd like your help setting my priorities and organizing my calendar. Here are all the things. And I just, you know.
go through all of them and then ask it to help me organize them, even ask it what different methods of organization I might use to tackle this. And then choose one, and then it can organize it for me. So that's, the audio version, the audio voice mode is really fantastic for ChatGPD. And also the desktop and mobile app for ChatGPD is really nice because you can just quickly.
ask a question, do something simple. I'm often using ChatGPT for troubleshooting. like, you know, need to figure out how to do this one random thing in HubSpot and I can't quite figure out where it is, rather than go into the HubSpot documentation, I'll just ask ChatGPT. And often it gives you the right answer. So I mean, could double click on all of that. But my favorite is Claude. And the reason is because Claude is, I do so much language, content.
Amanda (29:45)
Yeah.
Dan! (30:00)
primarily blog posts, emails, social, and Claude does such a good job of, with, with human language. And so the, the end product in my experience is just a little bit better, a little bit more natural, a little bit more human than, than what I get from, from chat GPT.
Amanda (30:19)
Cool. And what's your process for keeping up with the ever-changing landscape that is AI right now?
Dan! (30:27)
Yeah, yeah. My process is, I mean, it's kind of messy, but it's just consume a bunch of AI, follow AI. A bunch of people who are interested in AI get the news from them often. I follow the models and as new models come out, especially from ChatGPT and Anthropic, always interested in what's coming down the pipe. Agents are kind of the next big thing that I know a lot of people are talking about, which is,
a chat interface that also has extra powers that can control your computer and go do things for you, which I can't wait for those to become more user friendly. Right now they're mostly dev friendly, but just powerful things. But all that's to say, those are my main ways is taking a look at what's out there and then also filtering it through my experience to know what's most useful to me and to the people I work with.
Amanda (31:20)
Cool, all right, fair enough. For some things, there are no shortcuts. You're finding people who are curating the right content for you that you trust, and I mean, that is the future of learning. Okay, so what do think the future highest and best use of AI is for marketers, solopreneurs, creators? What's coming?
Dan! (31:25)
You just.
That's exactly it. That's exactly it.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that we are in a shift right now that's very similar to the dot com era. Whereas before every business was done offline and then after business was done online and before business was done online and then after business is going to be done with AI. And what that means is that AI has been, you know, for the last two years, like this cool thing, this neat toy.
We're seeing it more more integrated as like, you know, co-pilots and things, all of our, all of the major tools you go into HubSpot, you know, now, and it has, has the helper on the side, you enable it in Google workspace, you have Gemini right there. And more and more, we're going to see AI enabled everything. And so it's no, it's going to be less a shiny, cool, new thing and more just like, it's an assumption. If you're not doing with AI, you're, you're not, you know, you're not doing it at all.
And so I think that's the, that's the, at a high level, the major, the major shift that's happening. I think your question was mostly more about the highest and best for, marketers specifically and for, for creators. And I think the, see AI as an opportunity for all of us to, of course AI will take our jobs. It will impact people. People will lose jobs because of it. And that's, that's, that's hard. Transitions are always hard.
The upside of that, you can have been into a good light for creators, people who are making their own way, is that as AI takes our jobs, we're able to find better jobs. And so as AI takes my job of editing, I'm able to spend more of my time creating. And as AI takes my job of repurposing, I'm able to give more time to the other things that I want to spend time on.
When I started the meaning movement back in 2012, I was really focused on how do I help people figure out where the meaning is in their life, where they can find fulfillment, and how they can do more of that. And a lot of people think about this transition that we're in with AI as a real kind of movement away from human interaction. Soon, soon we'll be in this dystopian future where only AIs talk to each other and we're just in the matrix powering them or something.
Amanda (34:03)
You
Dan! (34:04)
And you know, the transition isn't only gonna be good, but I think that the good that comes from it is the opportunity to move back towards the work that matters most to us and do more of that. And I see that a, that AI is moving us to, allowing us to be more human, to spend more of our time and energy on the things that make us.
come alive that make us unique, that speak to us and speak to each other. And so when I think about marketers, I think about creators, and I think about AI, beyond just tactical things, I paint in broad strokes, that's what I'm excited about. And I hope that everyone can see it that way and really embrace that, that an AI-first mentality is going to be the way to get to that future.
Amanda (34:56)
Yeah, I mean, and this is not optional, right? Like you're already behind if you're not using, you know, AI to enhance your workflows and to become more efficient and to stop doing things that humans no longer need to do. Like we have computers to do that. But let's, on the flip side of this coin, what are some of the most realistic dangers of AI? You know, and we can speak just to like in business or go broader. I mean, you and I both have
Dan! (35:18)
Yes.
Amanda (35:26)
children and so there's a lot to think about in the future. And we think about like generational changes between, you know, boomers and millennials. And now this whole situation is just like, it is a different ball game entirely. So yeah, I'd love your thoughts.
Dan! (35:29)
Yes.
I know.
It's a totally different point of view. I'd love your thoughts on this as well, but I'll give mine. I know you have things to say on this, especially as the parent piece. It's super interesting. The thing that worries me when I think about my kids and I think about AI is just how easy it makes everything. you know, there's in the news, you'll see the AI tools.
that high schoolers are using to write their essays and all of these things. I have a friend who's a high school teacher and I was talking to him about this and I was like, how do you keep them from doing it, using AI? He's like, you make them write in pencil. I that was, like, I hadn't even crossed my mind that that was an option. But even then, they could just be transposing it. But like,
Amanda (36:36)
I
Dan! (36:38)
There is like this dependency that I think could arise from a tool that's as powerful as this, that then could remove some of our capabilities, our survival. I don't know, you think about like, fast forward 50 years, you take a kid out of that reality and drop them into the middle of the woods, but they even know what to do with themselves. I don't know. I don't really think that's where it's going, but if I put on a doom and gloom lens,
That is concerning. But I'm curious about, tell me what your thoughts are.
Amanda (37:14)
Yeah, I mean, the first thing I thought of, honestly, when you're talking about this concept of an AI agent and being able to like remote into someone's computer, my first thought, which I'm glad for, I guess, was how revolutionary for elderly people who are trying to use their computers and can't fix it and like can't explain what's going on and are frustrated and flustered. And then I was like, and elder fraud also. I mean, like that's such a massive, massive problem already. I'm like, no.
Dan! (37:30)
yeah.
100%. yeah. yeah. Fraud, phishing, all of that. It gets scary. It gets real scary. That's one thing that I don't like about Claude is that sometimes I'll ask Claude to, the other day I needed some Google ads data just to try, I was building a Google ads profitability analyzer for a client and I just needed some data and I didn't want to take the time to go and get, so just asked it to make me some example data.
Amanda (37:43)
somebody's gonna fall for that and you know.
Dan! (38:08)
And it wouldn't do it because it was basically saying, I won't make fraudulent data for you. ChatGPT did, so I just went over there and went to the other guys. But I see that as like, I see that they're trying to put in some boundaries. But if you're technical enough and if you're smart enough, there's always a way to jailbreak it.
Amanda (38:17)
hahahaha
Yeah, yeah, and so it's just raising our kids so that they're using their power and leverage and access for good and still knowing how to communicate with other humans, how to solve problems, how to think critically, how to harness creativity. Yeah, but it's very interesting to sort of shape shift as technology moves and how do we parent effectively what still matters, what is going to matter long-term going forward.
Dan! (38:40)
Yes.
100%.
Amanda (39:01)
There are infinite opportunities for terrible, terrible behaviors. mean, all the like video deep fakes and audio deep fakes and everything that like that's scary. That's scary. Especially for people who are vulnerable and believe what they see on the internet, no matter what.
Dan! (39:10)
Yes, yes, yes, yes, it is scary, it is scary.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yes, yes. Well, and think that is like, I do worry about like, so my oldest, my son is nine, he loves video games. Right now it's Lego Star Wars, he's super into Lego, which is very innocent and it's fun. But I also see the games that older kids play. And I think of how much better they're gonna get from a generative standpoint, as soon as AI.
gets makes its way into games where you're able to have more in-depth conversation with the characters in these beautiful worlds where you have these beautiful powers. It's like, worry about things like addiction. And I worry about, that world is so good, what's the motivation to spend time in the real world? Things like that. It's wild. Yeah. I've not.
Amanda (40:09)
Have you seen the movie Idiocracy?
Okay, you and your wife and everyone listening to this need to watch that movie. It is like this dystopian future environment where, yeah, we've become completely dependent upon technology. Everyone is as stupid as it gets and like Gatorade called Brondo in the movie comes out of like the water fountains, the water fountains and the faucets and the crops are watered with Brondo.
Dan! (40:16)
Okay, okay.
Rhonda.
The faucet? Yeah.
Amanda (40:41)
And it's like everyone is starving and stupid. mean, wildly stupid. And it's, I mean, it's super funny, but also it's a little bit terrifying as well. But it's a fun, it's a fun weekend watch. you know, go for it. All right. Well, you, mentioned one-on-one work, this thing you're building for a client. I know of, you know, another one of your clients you built something cool for. seems like you're kind of doing all sorts of stuff, but what is it like to work with you one-on-one and what types of projects are you doing?
Dan! (40:41)
geez.
Mm.
Wow.
Yes, yes, yes. I love it. I love it.
Yeah.
Totally, yeah. So my one-on-one work starts with I come alongside business owners and I basically just figure out where in their business can we apply AI to get the biggest ROI for their business. Often I measure that, I talk about that in terms of time. It doesn't have to be time. It could be value, could be anything else. And so that engagement usually starts with
an audit of their business, try to understand what their processes are. I've done a lot, I've seen a lot, I've run a lot of companies. And so I've got a pretty wide breadth of experience and that overlay that with my experience with AI. And I'm able to much more quickly see the application of the tool to their business than a lot of people. I think of AI as a parallel to like a, it's like a wood shop with all the tools and
You could build literally anything with it. But if you don't know how to apply the wood to those tools, it's not going to do you any good. If you don't know how to use a joiner, if you don't know how to use a planer, those tools are meaningless to you. And so what I offer is, I have the woodworking skills, to use that metaphor still, that I can say, if we get you a joiner and a planer, you're going to be able get a lot of value out of this thing. So we start with an audit of the business.
Then we agree on where we want to invest time. That usually looks like, I'd say, here are some things we can do. This is what the result would be. Maybe give them a couple different proposals. And then we build something. Some of the things that I've built are content repurposing tool that takes podcasts and makes them into TikToks. For our mutual friend, Dustin, built [Dustin.ai](http://dustin.ai/), which is a, he's a coach and took his.
hundreds of hours of his coaching material and made a technical term as a rag of retrieval augmented generation. But is that AI trained up on his framework so that people who are part of his community can ask questions of the AI instead of him. Built email automations, took one client's inbox from 17,000 emails to zero in an hour and gave her the processes to
Amanda (43:32)
Well.
Dan! (43:34)
and tools to keep it there. I built client onboarding processes to basically take all the information that an agency needs to serve their clients and make it accessible. I've built tools to help people write. And that's one of the things I'm most excited about right now is training tools to write and to brainstorm and collaborate on the writing process with you and for you in your own voice, using your styles, using
using who you are and all of that, giving all the context and all the data on you. Add profitability, analyzers, marketing workbenches, lead qualification systems, and on and on. So that's a high ticket engagement, very much like high touch, very much involved. My hands on, I do have an automation engineer I also work with as well to help with some of the building parts of it.
And then I'm also developing a cohort model, which is more of a done with you education model, where I'll be educating, teaching, then basically problem solving and brainstorming and designing alongside owners. So that's coming out in the new year.
Amanda (44:50)
That's cool. I'm so excited for that. And what an interesting business model. It seems like a great opportunity to get like follow on business from each of your clients because you have so much context for the goings on of their day to day operations. Like, and next we'll do this and then we'll do this and then we'll do this. So I think that's super cool.
Dan! (45:02)
Yes, totally. Yes, yes, after we do this, we'll do another. Exactly. And as long as they're seeing the value, as long as I'm delivering on the promise, and I have a really solid guarantee that if they don't get 10 hours back from their week or an equivalent amount of value, then I'll keep working with them till they do. So if we just keep doing that on repeat, then I can't say I'm going to free up.
Amanda (45:13)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dan! (45:28)
all of their time because they should then go find a new job, right? A higher and better job. But I can continue to help them be more leveraged in the things that they do.
Amanda (45:34)
Yes.
I love that. All right, well, if our listeners can only remember one thing from this episode, what should it be?
Dan! (45:48)
man.
The one thing that I come back to is that you have something to say. And one, you should find a way to say it. And two, when it comes to AI and it comes to this conversation, find a way to use AI to help you say it better, easier, and more clearly.
Amanda (46:16)
Yes, perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Dan. This was a wonderful part one of our conversation. Again, we'll be hosting a panel discussion on family travel in the new year.
Dan! (46:21)
Yes.
I love it. do have a little freebie I'd like to give to the audience. Can we do that? Yeah. totally. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. So I have this, as I said, this whole audit process that I go through. And I just wanted to make that available to people. Obviously, it's not going to be as in-depth as if I was doing it for you, but at least get you started in thinking about
Amanda (46:33)
yes. Yeah, yeah. I was about to say if you have a parting shot and like where we can find you online and we'll link up anything you want in the show notes for sure.
Dan! (46:54)
AI and your business. And so I would love to offer that. I just got the domain. This is brand new. It hasn't been linked up yet. But by the time this goes live, it will be, which is [AIflowaudit.com](http://aiflowaudit.com/). [AIflowaudit.com](http://aiflowaudit.com/). yeah, would love for you to have that. yeah. Beyond that, I guess as far as if you want to connect and
Amanda (47:10)
Nice.
Dan! (47:22)
Follow me in the interwebs. You can find me at [TheMeaningMovement.com](http://themeaningmovement.com/) or on LinkedIn. I write three times a week there.
Amanda (47:29)
Cool. Well, we will link all that up in the show notes. And again, Dana, it was such a pleasure having this conversation for you and thank you again to Tony for introducing us. And I'm so excited for our paths to continue to cross into the future.
Dan! (47:40)
Yes, and I can't wait for part two. Let's do it. Thank you so much, Amanda. Yeah, so great.
Amanda (47:43)
I know it's going to be fun. And thank you listeners. Yeah, we know that your time is so precious. We're so appreciative of you would spend a little bit of time with us. We help creators like you and Dan at [levelupcreatorschool.com](http://levelupcreatorschool.com/) where our team becomes your full stack team of advisors and also includes no fluff creator courses, a vibrant creator community and more all on a subscription basis. See the show notes for more information and a suite of high value free resources from both level up creators and Dan Cumberland. We'll see you next time on the level up creators podcast.