Pod Insights The Startup Ideas Podcast The Golden Age of AI is happening right now (Here's Why) About this episode Join me as I chat with Jonathan Courtney to discuss how AI tools are transforming business operations, allowing small companies to achieve the output of much larger teams. We explore practical applications like content research, ad creation, and workflow automation, while emphasizing that founders should personally master these tools rather than immediately delegating.
Episode Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
04:17 - AI Tools Inflection Point
09:44 - Building an Audience with AI
15:06 - The Role of the Human Editor
16:26 - Taste and Intuition in AI
18:36 - Execution with AI Tools
22:06 - Vibe Marketing
24:12 - Best Way to Learn how to use AI Tools
29:12 - The Future of AI Costs
30:14 - Mastering AI Tools
34:31 - Startup Idea: AI Automation Agency
40:14- AI is a Tool, use it
Key Points:
• AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and specialized platforms can dramatically increase productivity, giving small businesses the output capacity of much larger teams
• Business leaders should personally learn AI tools before delegating to their team, mapping repetitive tasks that can be automated
• There's currently an "arbitrage opportunity" with AI tools being relatively inexpensive while delivering significant value
• Content creation, research, and ad generation are key areas where AI can replace manual processes
LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/
BoringMarketing — Vibe Marketing for Sale: http://boringmarketing.com/
Startup Empire - a membership for builders who want to build cash-flowing businesses https://www.startupempire.co
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AJ&Smart: https://ajsmart.com
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Okay, you know I've been on your podcast, you've been talking about AI stuff and I've been kinda like, eh, it's interesting, but also I'm not using it that much.
0:08 Greg Isenberg? Yeah.
0:08 Speaker 00 I think since O3 came out, it's completely changed my entire like perception of what AI can do for my company, for like my clients' companies, and I'm actually kind of like getting a bit worried, but it's also really cool, but also overwhelming, like I don't know where to start.
0:26 Greg Isenberg? Instead of hiring your first employee, you should probably just hire ChatGPT Pro. Like, the mistake that a lot of people make is they pay five, 10, 15K a month for their first employee, when they should just be paying $200 a month for ChatGPT Pro.
0:44 Speaker 00 It is crazy. And I mean, again, I said like, you know, eight weeks ago or something, I didn't really think that was true. And now a lot of things have changed my mind. And one of the main things is just using the tools in my business and seeing like, great example is we spent $35,000 to get a white paper created three years ago. It took them like three months. Um, we basically recreated that study just by doing deep research in O3 in probably 10 minutes last week, and it was better.
1:15 Greg Isenberg? Like, that sounds impossible. That sounds like science fiction. But if you know how to set up the machine,
1:21 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:21 Greg Isenberg? if you know how to set up the factory, then all you have to do is open the door at 9:00 AM and keep the lights on. And that's why I think this is such a great time to be business building.
1:36 Speaker 00 But I'm still wondering, from your perspective, like, what separates person A, who's going to have a one person, the first one-person billion-dollar business, and person B, who isn't, when both of them have the same tools? Like, what is separating these people?
2:02 Greg Isenberg? Jay Ice Cream, Jay Scream, JC, Jonathan Courtney, the man who needs no introduction.
2:08 Speaker 00 You gave me like four introductions then.
2:12 Greg Isenberg? What do you want to talk about today?
2:13 Speaker 00 I want to talk about this thing. So we're here in San Francisco and I think what I need to bring from Berlin is something you guys haven't been talking about for like at all.
2:22 Greg Isenberg? WhatsApp?
2:23 Speaker 00 AI. So we're going to talk about AI today. I think it's going to be a crazy, crazy thing.
2:28 Greg Isenberg? Okay, let's, yeah. And by the end of the episode, what will people get if they stick around?
2:34 Speaker 00 Honestly, like for me, the last six to eight weeks, okay, you know, I've been on your podcast. You've been talking about AI stuff and I've been kind of like, eh, it's interesting, but also I'm not using it that much.
2:47 Greg Isenberg? Yeah.
2:47 Speaker 00 I think since oh three came out, it's completely changed my entire like perception of what AI can do for my company, for like my clients' companies. And I'm actually kind of like getting a bit worried for the first time, like worried, but in a good way.
3:04 Greg Isenberg? So.
3:05 Speaker 00 Good worried.
3:05 Greg Isenberg? Are you saying that by the end of this episode, people are going to get worried?
3:09 Speaker 00 I think, okay, okay. Here's, here's the thing. At the end of this episode, you'll, if you're running a small business, if you're an individual entrepreneur, my hope is that from the, what the two of us can give to your audience is like how you can essentially feel like you have, you know, a 10 person team. If you're a one person company, a 50 person team, if you're a 10 person company, and just keep making those numbers bigger and I'll just big, very big numbers. So like a lot of productivity hacks.
3:39 Greg Isenberg? How to be big, even if you're small.
3:41 Speaker 00 How to be big, even if you're small.
3:45 Greg Isenberg? Yeah, you know a lot about that, don't you?
3:47 Speaker 00 My girlfriend's in the back of this shoot here and she's already like trying to say, yeah, you know, yeah.
3:53 Greg Isenberg? Yeah, yeah.
3:53 Speaker 00 Also, I'm going to be using this a lot. Guys, this, if you're watching this podcast here on YouTube, you do not realize how warm it is right now. It's sweaty. It's very sweaty.
4:04 Greg Isenberg? I don't know, but I mean, if it was so warm, why am I not sweating?
4:08 Speaker 00 Why are you not sweating?
4:09 Greg Isenberg? Really?
4:09 Speaker 00 I don't get it.
4:10 Greg Isenberg? You just started sweating when you started talking about small versus big.
4:13 Speaker 00 That's true.
4:14 Greg Isenberg? All right, let's get into it.
4:16 Speaker 00 So AI stuff, but can I read a tweet for you? Like, let me, let me give you a tweet here. So you know Tiago Forte?
4:21 Greg Isenberg? Yes, I do. I've had him on the pod.
4:22 Speaker 00 At Forte Labs? You had him on your pod, all right, very much.
4:25 Greg Isenberg? Yeah.
4:25 Speaker 00 Okay, he wrote, "I'm now paying $200 a month for ChatGPT Pro, $100 a month for Claude Max, and $20 a month for Notebook LM." Didn't know about Notebook LM until I read that. "And that $320 per month gives me the productivity equivalent of many hundreds of people. What a time to be alive." And that's just, that's like, encapsulates the feeling I'm feeling. Like, which is a mixture of, it's kind of scary in a way that things have scaled up so fast, but it's also really cool, but also overwhelming. Like, I don't know where to start. Like, I'm kind of like, jumping into all these tools. I'm trying to learn them. But I'm looking at my business, we're like 14 people,
5:08 Speaker 00 and I'm wondering like, how do I even analyze what we're doing to figure out how we scale things up? And maybe that's even an interesting, like, starting point. Like, how would you do that? Like, what are you doing? Like, maybe what are we actually using our tools for? That could be interesting.
5:24 Greg Isenberg? Okay, do you want to start, or you want me to start?
5:26 Speaker 00 I want you to start.
5:27 Greg Isenberg? I see you want me to do all the work.
5:29 Speaker 00 Yeah. I want you to, I want you to tell me stuff.
5:31 Greg Isenberg? Okay, so.
5:32 Speaker 00 While I drink this lovely drink here.
5:34 Greg Isenberg? So, how am I using AI in my business?
5:40 Speaker 00 Yeah. And like, what are the effects of it? Like, first of all, actually, do you have that same feeling that now the tools are at the point where, you know, I don't know how many people are working with you, but it feels like, I think a lot of the narrative was, everyone's freaking out about being fired. Everyone's talking about like downsizing. But now I'm thinking about it differently. It's not about downsizing. It's about like, dramatically maxing out the people who are there already with these tools.
6:09 Greg Isenberg? It's also about downsizing.
6:10 Speaker 00 It's also about, no. But I think, but I think it's a, the narrative is a little different.
6:15 Greg Isenberg? I, I actually, I actually think that we should be real about that, because I think a lot of people say that it's not about downs, ah, it's not about downsizing, but like, from the CEOs I speak to, I mean. They're looking to get more done with the same or smaller team.
6:34 Speaker 00 Yeah.
6:34 Greg Isenberg? So how is that not downsizing? Quick break in the pod to tell you a little bit about Startup Empire. So Startup Empire is my private membership where it's a bunch of people like me, like you, who want to build out their startup ideas. Now, they're looking for content to help accelerate that. They're looking for potential co-founders. They're looking for tutorials from people like me to come in and tell them, how do you do email marketing? How do you build an audience? How do you go viral on Twitter? All these different things. That's exactly what Startup Empire is. And it's for people who want to start a startup but are looking for ideas, or it's for people
7:17 Greg Isenberg? who have a startup, but just they're not seeing the traction that they need. So you can check out the link to startupempire.co in the description.
7:27 Speaker 00 I mean, it's, you saw what Duolingo posted, the Duolingo CEO, which is that they're not going to hire any more like external contractors. That's a pretty huge thing. And they're also, both Shopify and Duolingo came out saying, basically, all of the employees have to learn all the AI tools. Plus, they're not going to hire people who don't know how to use the tools anymore. So it's now an entry requirement. So I think that maybe automatically starts to downsize or like restrict the amount of, even if it's just contractors that these companies are working with. Which is kind of like crazy that in the last two weeks, Duolingo, you probably saw the Fiverr one that happened like two days ago, which was a bit more aggressive, which was
8:09 Speaker 00 more like, if you don't get really good, you're basically fucked. And I think it's a, these people are usually, these types of companies, especially Shopify, are usually the first to come out and they're willing to get like shat on by the media a little bit. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. And like you're saying, you're having like private conversations with CEOs who are saying this. So yeah, I agree, obviously downsizing is going to happen. But for me, I'm looking at this and thinking, okay. I don't want to fall behind. I want to make sure that my company is using these tools. And yeah, I want to know what you're doing. That's that's exciting to me.
8:48 Greg Isenberg? I mean, I'm honestly looking at like every aspect of the business. Like if you if you take a business and you look at like, okay, what are all the moving pieces? So it's customer acquisition, marketing, uh, sales, you know, fulfillment, engineering, design, and just looking at what are all the repeatable things that we're doing? And then plugging in every single AI tool to get the team to start using it. But I can just talk about like one sliver of it, just to give you a sense of like how anyone could use AI and how instead of hiring your first employee, you should probably just hire ChatGPT Pro.
9:32 Greg Isenberg? Like the mistake that a lot of people make is they pay five, 10, 15 K a month for their first employee, when they should just be paying $200 a month for ChatGPT Pro. So if you're starting a company, what is the one of the first things you should do? Build an audience. Why should you build an audience? Well, you know, you'll have customers waiting for you. You'll be able to iterate on the positioning. So you know, like what, what you, what language they speaks and um, in order to do that, you need to actually put out content on a consistent basis because of the fact that um,
10:14 Greg Isenberg? followers don't count that much anymore. And it's about like hitting the for you page, hitting the algorithm.
10:23 Greg Isenberg? Where it where it, you know, where it hurts.
10:28 Speaker 00 How do we hurt the algorithm?
10:29 Greg Isenberg? So the way to think about it is how do you hurt the algorithm the most?
10:33 Speaker 00 Yeah, most useful clip of this podcast so far.
10:37 Greg Isenberg? But it's true, right? It's like, how do you? How do you like hit a homerun, right? When you hit a homerun and you make contact with that baseball,
10:49 Greg Isenberg? I wouldn't want to be the baseball. I'd rather be the bat than the baseball, right?
10:54 Speaker 00 But it's interesting because I think-
10:55 Greg Isenberg? You wouldn't understand this. This is an American analogy.
10:57 Speaker 00 I don't know what the baseball is, but you're saying the first thing you would do is related to audience building, but in my mind, when I'm thinking about my business, that's not actually even remotely part of what I was thinking of using it for. Cause I thought that was one of the spaces where it's very human. So actually like, what are you using it for? Like, how are you, is it to develop ideas and then like create loads of clips? Or are you still the person? Are you still going to be the face of it? Is the founder still the face? Like, how is this happening?
11:28 Greg Isenberg? So if you're going to build an audience, the first thing you need is content ideas.
11:33 Speaker 00 Yeah.
11:34 Greg Isenberg? So obviously human beings could come up with content ideas, but it's hard to come up with banging content ideas every single day. So you can use, so, okay, how would I use ChatGPT Pro?
11:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, like exactly how you'd use it.
11:51 Greg Isenberg? So I would say, I would prompt ChatGPT Pro and be like,
11:58 Greg Isenberg? well, we can talk about your business.
11:59 Speaker 00 Which model would you use for the like initial prompt? Like oh, three or?
12:04 Greg Isenberg? 4.5.
12:05 Speaker 00 You'd use 4.5 for the initial prompt?
12:07 Greg Isenberg? Yeah. And let's just talk about facilitator.com. Your thing. So which is a training program?
12:14 Speaker 00 Facilitators. Yeah, yeah. Training consultants on how to add the skill of facilitation to what they're already doing.
12:21 Greg Isenberg? Okay. So what would be helpful if you were, you know, obviously you have
12:28 Greg Isenberg? an epic domain. So you would probably want to start with facilitator.com.
12:32 Speaker 00 No, we had like ajandsmart.com forward slash facilitation for a while.
12:37 Greg Isenberg? So first step is you'd, you know, register your bad domain and you'd get a handle. And then you would prompt Pro to basically be like, I'm building this new company. This is my dream. Here's my goal. I want to make a million dollars every year and I want you to scour Reddit. And tell me, what are the most interesting stories from the facilitation world? So that I can create content around it. So it's gonna like basically tell you interesting, validated stuff, because I would actually include in the prompt, only give me results
13:19 Greg Isenberg? that, you know, maybe it's 100 upvotes or more, 40 comments. Basically, what you're trying to do is create a database of interesting content from that niche, and then you can add your spin to it. So the, you know, I think that's the mistake a lot of people, actually, what you talked about is kind of the mistake a lot of people make is say like, oh, I'm not going to use, you know, ChatGPT Pro to come up with content because it's going to come up with bad content.
13:47 Speaker 00 Yeah, or generic content that anyone else could just read.
13:50 Greg Isenberg? Yeah.
13:51 Speaker 00 That would be my worry.
13:53 Greg Isenberg? ChatGPT Pro is basically just like a junior researcher.
14:00 Speaker 00 It is. It's ridiculously good.
14:02 Greg Isenberg? Yeah. So you just say like, hey, go search some stuff, bring it back to me. And then I would add it to this database. And then I would basically, I mean, I would either write it, I write stories myself, film stories myself, like maybe I'm taking, maybe I say, you know, create a script, that's 30 seconds, that is in the style of Mr. Beast. And, and then you start recording, right? So the, but the first step is look on social, see what's worked already, and then add your spin on it.
14:35 Speaker 00 Mm hmm. So you're first, you're basically saying, okay, ChatGPT, find me angles, find me ideas, like go out and do the research. And then you, as a human, are kind of using, you know, your intuition, looking at other stuff to get like the angle for it and the feel for it. And the thing that also makes it, you know, not, you know, I guess, ownable and special is the way you deliver it. Because you're human, and you're going to deliver that different to other people.
15:05 Greg Isenberg? A hundred percent.
15:06 Speaker 00 It's interesting, you said like, ChatGPT is basically like a junior researcher because my worry is like, oh yeah, but if everyone has access to this, then it's all going to be just generic vanilla content. But everyone does already have access to that. It's just slur. You know, when you ask a junior researcher when at AJ and Smart, when we're researching content ideas, I guess it's the same thing. It just takes way longer, which is like that you tweeted today that, uh, you know, Y C are looking for companies that can turn a 40 hour work week or 40 hour task into a 40 minute task. And I think that's the thing, right? It's not about everyone's getting the same data. It's all going to be vanilla. It's just
15:47 Speaker 00 everyone's going to get their stuff done much quicker now. And you get to the point as the founder or as you, the content creator, where you're just doing the thing you're good at, which is then presenting it and selling or talking instead of having to do all the research or wait for the research.
16:04 Greg Isenberg? Well, the other way to think about it is like, you're now the editor. You're not, you know what I mean? So an editor of a newspaper doesn't write a lot of the actual articles.
16:15 Speaker 00 Yeah.
16:15 Greg Isenberg? Like basically, you have a bunch of journalists that are giving you all these articles. And as the editor, you're like, this is good. This is bad. Double down on this. You know what? Go research this piece. That's exactly the role of like the billion dollar solo founder, like this dream that we all have around like, how can I create a one person company that makes a billion dollars with the help of AI?
16:42 Speaker 00 So what makes the founder in this case special? Like, does the founder, do you think that there's going to be a situation where it's so democratized and like, you know, the AI becomes so good, you know, we get to AGI that every random person is now just going to be able to generate ridiculous amounts of money? Or do you think there's something inherently special you have to have or have to learn to be good at being able to control these tools? Do you know what I mean?
17:07 Greg Isenberg? Have you ever read, uh, Rick Rubin's book, Creative?
17:11 Speaker 00 You know, one of these books that's laying on my desk and I've like, looked at little bits and pieces of it.
17:17 Greg Isenberg? Have you ever seen a video or photo of what Rick Rubin looks like?
17:20 Speaker 00 Yeah, he's like sitting there, you know, he's just, it's just intuition. It's all about intuition with this guy.
17:24 Greg Isenberg? Yeah. And he looks like Santa Claus a little bit. That's how everyone needs to be in front of their AI tools is no matter what niche you are, you have to be like, okay, I'm going to get. I'm gonna use these tools and I'm just gonna be getting a bunch of really interesting ideas from it.
17:42 Speaker 00 Yeah.
17:43 Greg Isenberg? And then I'm gonna say, that's a bad idea, that's a good idea, double down on this and just Rick Rubin.
17:48 Speaker 00 Which is the taste thing, right?
17:49 Greg Isenberg? Taste thing and you know, even, you know, this might be controversial, but even asking ChatGPT, like, what does taste look like in the facilitation world look like? Like, what do these people actually want? What actually drives them? The reason I said, start with Reddit is because obviously the posts that have a lot of upvotes and comments, there's something that's triggering in those posts. So it's kind of like you're learning taste as through Reddit. And Reddit is basically this microcosm for any niche ever. And that's why I love it so much in terms of like coming up with startup ideas, validating
18:34 Greg Isenberg? your startup ideas and stuff like that.
18:37 Speaker 00 So do you think like, okay, so I'm starting a new business or mybusinessfacilitator.com. One of the obvious things here is idea generation. What about execution? Like, are there things that you're using AI tools for to move from this, okay, it's giving me ideas and I'm curating and editing, but now we also usually have junior employees to execute things. And that also seems to be something that a lot of these companies are saying, okay, if you don't level up, you're going to be taken over by the AI tools. Like, are you using AI tools for any sort of execution and output?
19:13 Greg Isenberg? Yes.
19:14 Speaker 00 Like what specifically?
19:16 Greg Isenberg? That's like asking Rick Rubin if he, you know.
19:19 Speaker 00 Looks like Santa Claus.
19:20 Greg Isenberg? Looks like Santa Claus. He does.
19:23 Speaker 00 So what, yeah, what you're, you're using it for idea generation, brainstorming around the content thing. What sort of execution tasks are now getting? And what's, so that's replacing, I guess, the first thing is replacing you digging around for hours on the internet to get ideas, right? Or having a researcher find stuff for you. So that's now like fully replaced by you being good at prompting the machine. And what, yeah, so then what sort of like practical execution tasks has it taken over for you?
19:54 Greg Isenberg? Well, then, you know, there's a, there's a great tutorial we did on how I write with AI with Nicholas Cole, which is basically like, okay, how do I? Let's just say I want to write a long tweet. It's like, how do I get the main points across? Now that I have, okay, these Reddit posts that are giving me insight and are giving me ideas. I can go and like write an outline, like a human being can write an outline. And then how do I prompt ChatGPT to actually like write the content and spit something back to me and then edit it? So that's like a whole thing that I do. But I think in general, uh, you know, I do a lot more writing than I do video stuff.
20:36 Greg Isenberg? But I actually think there's a huge opportunity to do like script writing. And then, uh, like faceless video, we've, we've actually, like, we've talked about that a lot. But like, for example,
20:54 Greg Isenberg? once, I mean, you can just take me, like, I have thousands of ideas, thousands of pieces of content that I've posted on X. Why wouldn't I take that and just automatically create faceless video from that?
21:07 Speaker 00 Yeah.
21:07 Greg Isenberg? So for example, like, uh, the tweet I did today around the YC startups that YC wants to invest in in 2025. I posted it on X. In the last two hours, it's gotten like thousands of likes. I know that it's resonating. So why don't I just put that into ChatGPT? Ask it to script write it's something that's 30 seconds. Say I'm doing it faceless. I wanted to resonate with this audience, maybe founders, solo founders, bootstrap founders, or venture scale founders. And then the creation of the actual, uh,
21:51 Greg Isenberg? video might be something like using like hendra.ai or some of these other tools. And then you, you do it manually at first and then eventually you literally automate the whole thing. And this is what, you know, people call it, people like me call it vibe marketing. What is vibe marketing? Well, vibe marketing is when you've figured out the manual process and
22:14 Greg Isenberg? And then you'd basically automate it all. So then eventually it gets to the point where you don't have to do anything, really. You
22:22 Speaker 00 Just press the go button.
22:24 Greg Isenberg? You press the go button.
22:25 Speaker 00 I know you're an influencer.
22:26 Greg Isenberg? And it's a machine.
22:27 Speaker 00 Yeah.
22:28 Greg Isenberg? And it sounds crazy, right? Like, that sounds impossible. That sounds like science fiction. But I actually believe that that's where we're going. If you know how to set up the machine.
22:39 Speaker 00 Yeah.
22:39 Greg Isenberg? If you know how to set up the factory, then all you have to do is open the door at nine AM and keep the lights on. And that's why I think this is such a great time to be business building.
22:53 Speaker 00 It is crazy. I mean, again, I said like, you know, eight weeks ago or something. I didn't really think that was true. And now a lot of things have changed my mind. One of the main things is just using the tools in my business and seeing like, great example is we spent thirty five thousand dollars to get a white paper created three years ago, which we used in a lot of marketing. Basically, we wanted this company to go and research all of these things that were happening in businesses so that we could have all of these crazy quotes and, you know, whatever, we could pull from the study. Thirty five thousand dollars, it took them like three months. We basically recreated that study just by doing deep research in oh three in probably ten minutes last week, and it was better.
23:37 Speaker 00 And this is really crazy. This type of stuff is really, really crazy. And even things like creating Facebook ads, you know, we love Facebook ads, but they are, you know, they take a long time to create. You need designer, videographer, you need like the person to put the ads on Facebook. And one of the things that works really well with Facebook is having crap tons of variations. And now with chat GPT and just also the new imaging tools that came out, I can just like prototype, you know, hundreds of Facebook ads before we have to go and maybe shoot them or put me in them and just figure out what's working. And even figuring out like recently what color one of our products should be by messing around with having chat GPT generate ad images
24:23 Speaker 00 and looking at which ones were actually standing out the most. It's just things like this were very manual before, would take us weeks, months even. And now it's like, Now it's like the creativity is in the creation of the products themselves, just to make the product special and human, but also in just coming up with the prompts. Like, that's the thing I've realized is like, a bad prompt gets me really crappy results. And I think that's what kept turning me off using these tools. And I also think that's what, I'm sure there's a lot of people listening to this podcast, who've repeatedly tried using these tools and they're like, that doesn't work for my business. But it's probably because they didn't really learn how to use the tools like I didn't.
25:08 Speaker 00 And now I feel, now I feel I can get the like 10 times better results just because I understand how the machine is working. And like, understanding how to like, teach it things and add stuff to memory. And it's just really crazy.
25:21 Greg Isenberg? Yeah, I also think that there's a lot of people who play with these tools and get like, for example, they use ChatGPT Image Gen and they ask it to create a Facebook ad and the,
25:34 Greg Isenberg? the words are wrong. Like, it said, spell face and it spelled face F C E. So they look at it and they're just, this is dumb.
25:45 Speaker 00 Yeah, this sucks.
25:45 Greg Isenberg? This sucks, doesn't work, so dumb. There's all these people like us hyping up AI.
25:50 Speaker 00 Yes.
25:50 Greg Isenberg? And then they make fun of us.
25:52 Speaker 00 That's what I thought.
25:52 Greg Isenberg? Yeah.
25:53 Speaker 00 Even.
25:53 Greg Isenberg? You were making fun of me.
25:54 Speaker 00 I was watching your podcast.
25:55 Greg Isenberg? I was crying myself to sleep.
25:57 Speaker 00 I was watching some of your podcast episodes and I was like, I don't know, like if Greg is actually, like what, like the people you have on talking about the AI stuff, I'm like, I'm not getting any results like this. Like the stuff that I'm getting looks, looks crap. And like the, the text that I'm getting out seems really, you know, ChatGPT-y. And then I just dug a little further and started to realize I'm just doing it wrong. Like even the image generation thing, like I only, I only learned last week, like a great hack for Facebook ads. Just this is a complete game changer for me, which I'm sure I could have learned if I just Googled it or ChatGPT it. That if I find an ad I like the look of or an image I like the look of and I'm just like screenshotting it and asking chat GPT to recreate it's not working.
26:42 Speaker 00 And if I just ask chat GPT to reverse engineer the image and tell me exactly the prompt it would take to get that exact look and feel and then use that when I'm making Facebook ads, it's completely different thing. It goes from like, you know, a person holding a product and it looks completely fake to indistinguishable from reality with like perfect text and everything.
27:03 Greg Isenberg? Are you talking about image ads specifically?
27:05 Speaker 00 I'm talking about image ads, yeah.
27:06 Greg Isenberg? So this is interesting because you've spent many millions of dollars on Facebook ads promoting, Facebook and YouTube ads promoting video, videos.
27:17 Speaker 00 Yes.
27:18 Greg Isenberg? Like, you know, you're, you might walk down these streets in San Francisco and someone might recognize you from.
27:25 Speaker 00 They recognize me, but they don't know why.
27:27 Greg Isenberg? Yeah.
27:28 Speaker 00 They're like, they don't know that they've seen hundreds and thousands of Instagram and YouTube ads with me in them, but they don't know, they, it's like, it's in their subconscious.
27:37 Greg Isenberg? So I think that we're getting to the point with AI where you can use a tool like Arc Ads or icon.com.
27:44 Speaker 00 What's Arc? So that's something I don't know about. What is that?
27:47 Greg Isenberg? Arc Ads? Arc Ads is basically chat GPT image gen, but for videos. So you can go like, I'll just pull it up.
28:01 Speaker 00 I'm just getting a free lesson here from Greg.
28:07 Speaker 00 Is this the one everyone is posting about having like an ugly landing page?
28:10 Greg Isenberg? No, that's icon.com.
28:11 Speaker 00 That's icon, yeah. Okay, that one I like that.
28:13 Greg Isenberg? Create winning ads with AI actors.
28:15 Speaker 00 Okay.
28:16 Greg Isenberg? So.
28:17 Speaker 00 What's the like legality around this? Like, do you have to say the person is not real in the ad? Not yet?
28:24 Greg Isenberg? Not yet, but probably soon.
28:25 Speaker 00 Soon, yeah.
28:26 Greg Isenberg? Look at these.
28:28 Speaker 00 That looks 100% real.
28:32 Speaker 00 This is not real.
28:32 Greg Isenberg? Not real.
28:33 Speaker 00 Holy shit.
28:40 Speaker 00 That's scarily realistic.
28:43 Speaker 00 Yeah, we're not even that far yet. We're still doing still images like that's didn't know about this. That's what I mean. It's kind of like, I feel like when you, if you don't know about this stuff, like, okay, the way I was being ignorant about it. It feels like instead of accepting that for now, I can have like double the size of the company. I'm just not doing it that like, I've just decided I'm not doing that.
29:06 Greg Isenberg? Yeah.
29:06 Speaker 00 Because I'm too ignorant to look at these tools.
29:08 Greg Isenberg? Well.
29:09 Speaker 00 Which is seems ridiculous. And on top of that, I want to ask you just separately, in case I forget. People on X are saying right now is like, you know, this golden time where everything's subsidized and cheap. But like, these tools might cost a lot more money later, a lot closer to actual like employee costs. That's, that's like one of the theories that it might go in that direction.
29:34 Greg Isenberg? I think that's probably right eventually. Like, I remember taking Ubers.
29:38 Speaker 00 Yes, exactly. Yeah.
29:40 Greg Isenberg? And it would go, I'd go from like West Hollywood to Santa Monica.
29:43 Speaker 00 And they were nice.
29:44 Greg Isenberg? And they were nice. And it was like $8, like a 45 minute drive. And then now you go from like West Hollywood to Santa Monica and it's like $800.
29:51 Speaker 00 So do you think this is going to happen and that like now, this is what I'm trying to figure out, like, should I? Drop everything and really get my entire team to learn this stuff and like go hardcore on it? Like while there's this almost, you know, special period where it's ridiculously cheap? Or will it be cheap forever? Or will it even get cheaper?
30:12 Greg Isenberg? Well, the first thing is, I think we have to acknowledge that this is like an insane arbitrage opportunity.
30:19 Speaker 00 It seems ludicrous.
30:21 Greg Isenberg? So.
30:24 Greg Isenberg? You know, things like Arc Ads and Icon, you've never even heard of, and you spent millions of dollars on Facebook ads.
30:30 Speaker 00 Yeah, I never heard. I heard of Icon. I didn't even, I didn't even try it. I just saw like people talking about it. And I was like, oh, that's interesting, but I'll, I'll check it later and never checked it.
30:39 Greg Isenberg? And you know how important having a winning ad is to creating a business, right?
30:43 Speaker 00 It's literally our entire business.
30:46 Greg Isenberg? You know, and, and a lot of people's business, right? Like, if you have the right ad.
30:50 Speaker 00 Yeah.
30:51 Greg Isenberg? Then that could be the difference for, you know, it could be, it could generate millions of dollars a year, right?
30:56 Speaker 00 Yes.
30:57 Greg Isenberg? So.
30:59 Greg Isenberg? Of course, using these tools makes a lot of sense to do it now. So I think the mistake a lot of people make is they.
31:09 Greg Isenberg? They, well, there's a few mistakes people make. One is they tell their teams to look into it.
31:13 Speaker 00 Yeah. And the founder is like, yeah, that's, that's kind of what I did.
31:17 Greg Isenberg? Yeah.
31:17 Speaker 00 Like it's, yeah.
31:18 Greg Isenberg? You shouldn't tell your team to do anything until you understand it. So the thing that you should do is map out all the boring repetitive tasks that people do in your business from, by each function, and then try to do those tasks yourself. But use chat, chat GPT to start. And then if chat GPT isn't giving you the result, ask chat GPT, "Hey, I'm not getting great image ads out of chat GPT image gen. Can you recommend five AI ad image gen tools that are highly rated? One, two, three, four. Oh, I never heard of ARC ads. Oh, I never heard of this."
32:04 Greg Isenberg? Right? So the way to think about it is chat GPT is like the top of the, the triangle. But there's gonna be a hundred other tools that you're gonna be using that are more specialized for individual use cases.
32:19 Speaker 00 And I know one of them, which is Claude. Like, that's the level I'm at. Like, I'm using chat GPT extensively and then just Claude and nothing else.
32:30 Greg Isenberg? Yeah.
32:30 Speaker 00 It's ridiculous.
32:31 Greg Isenberg? And, you know, well.
32:33 Speaker 00 For now.
32:34 Greg Isenberg? The good news is like you've acknowledged that you have a problem. And this is an intervention?
32:41 Speaker 00 Yes.
32:41 Greg Isenberg? This is an AI intervention?
32:42 Speaker 00 I mean, being here in SF is also a ridiculous wake up call. Just like being in every cafe, listening to the conversations that people are having. Last night, just all the different conversations that came up. I'm like, okay, it's happening now. This isn't like, I don't know, I, maybe I got a bit burned from the crypto like wave. And I was thinking, maybe this AI thing is also a bit of a hype trend. And I, maybe that's also a good way to just like not have to think about new things. But yeah, now I think I've 100% realized that it's not.
33:12 Greg Isenberg? Well, I'm not saying AI is perfect.
33:14 Speaker 00 Yeah.
33:14 Greg Isenberg? By any stretch.
33:15 Speaker 00 No, that's what you did say.
33:16 Greg Isenberg? Yeah, AI is perfect.
33:19 Greg Isenberg? No, I think it's not. And.
33:24 Greg Isenberg? You're the human editor, right?
33:26 Speaker 00 Yeah.
33:26 Greg Isenberg? So you can make it perfect. Eventually, we're going to get to a stage where I believe
33:33 Greg Isenberg? it is going to be perfect in some cases.
33:36 Speaker 00 Yeah.
33:36 Greg Isenberg? But we're probably like 95% now, 92%. So it's like, pretty close. You're getting really, really good stuff now. And you're right, the prices of these things are going to go up. They're going to go up just because VCs subsidize the cost of a lot of these products. Also, people are going to see that like you'll have some of these products. You're literally sweating, that's how excited you are.
33:59 Speaker 00 I should have worn way less.
34:05 Speaker 00 VCs subsidize the products, they're going to get more expensive.
34:08 Greg Isenberg? You're going to integrate things like Arc Ads and Icon into your workflow.
34:13 Speaker 00 Yes.
34:14 Greg Isenberg? And they're going to see, oh, my God. Facilitate.com is making $8 million a year. And we're charging them $200 a month.
34:22 Speaker 00 Yeah. That's how it feels right now. Like the tweet from Tiago, it feels like, okay, there is some sort of arbitrage right now. I was actually thinking as well, like of pitching you a business idea. Like, because this is a Startup Ideas podcast that I think you and I could do. And because we probably won't do it because we've got a lot going on, maybe your audience can steal it. If you like the idea too much, you can just cut it out of the podcast. I think a very short term, like I think a business that probably a lot of people should start in the short term, maybe in the next three, like for the next three years, that I think would make a lot of money, if you know how to run a business, is a business that helps other businesses, especially small businesses,
35:06 Speaker 00 use this shit properly. Like, you know, I'll come into your company and do like a six week sprint of diagnosing all the places where you can use AI, setting all of that stuff up so that your, you know, I'm just thinking of the ads for it. Your 10% team is now 100% team. I think you could, I think that as a service would be very highly needed at this point. To the point where even my company, where we're relatively like savvy, we would probably be willing to spend 50, 60, 70K. If someone was like, we'll just come in and do this over two weeks and give you a big like dump. I think it's a, I think we should just do this business now.
35:47 Greg Isenberg? So.
35:48 Speaker 00 Or you already have it. Are you actually already doing it?
35:51 Greg Isenberg? Well, boringmarketing.com does like the vibe marketing setups and automations and stuff like that. But I do think that
36:01 Greg Isenberg? this idea is, is, is basically the equivalent of starting a social media agency in the era of social.
36:07 Speaker 00 Exactly. It's going to be really profitable for about two years and then it will be like diminishing returns. And then maybe you just don't, you move on to something else.
36:16 Greg Isenberg? But like, let's, let's talk about the social media era for a second.
36:23 Greg Isenberg? Who started a big social media agency back then? Gary Vaynerchuk. And then, you know, Gary, like VaynerMedia, I think is maybe a thousand employees. They work with all these big companies, Pepsi and stuff like that. Well,
36:39 Greg Isenberg? one of the things I think that Gary learnt, uh, running a social media agency was, well, actually, how do I grow on social myself? He created a personal brand, YouTube channel. Now he's like a celebrity, basically. And the number one reason it's interesting for people to start AI workflow agencies and AI agencies and service-based businesses that help implement the stuff is actually not, not because you can make millions of dollars a year from that, but it's to learn the workflows and learn the tools so that you can implement it on your own software product or your own product.
37:20 Speaker 00 So doing it for other people, seeing all the different cases that it can be used. Essentially having the pressure because you're getting paid to learn it and paid to getting, being paid to get very good at it. And then use that power for yourself.
37:34 Greg Isenberg? Exactly. And I will say that you need a niche. You can't be AI for everyone, agency. So.
37:40 Speaker 00 It's like for finance, for like.
37:42 Greg Isenberg? Lawyers.
37:42 Speaker 00 Firms. Yeah. Yeah.
37:44 Greg Isenberg? And if you need ideas for that, like go to chat GPT and be like, hey, I want to target a niche. I want to build a product. I want, you know, I want it to be high value.
37:57 Greg Isenberg? Give me 10 ideas around niches I should go after that are high value, that have boring tasks, that are repetitive, that would be open to someone with not a lot of experience. You know, starting, because you know, if you're a kid out of college and you're. 21 years old or something like that, a law firm might not be the right niche for you.
38:19 Greg Isenberg? But small businesses might.
38:22 Speaker 00 I think you could make a lot of money just with small businesses.
38:26 Greg Isenberg? Yeah.
38:26 Speaker 00 Just because they probably, especially small businesses where the owners are like, you know, older than 50 or something, where they maybe haven't looked into how this stuff has been developing. And it can be pretty overwhelming looking at this stuff for the first time and being like, what the hell is AI? You know, like it's moved so quickly. I think there's a huge mass of, I don't really want to do it, but someone should do it. Like your audience should be doing this.
38:50 Greg Isenberg? I think it's a really good business to learn, you know, do it for 12 months. You're getting paid to learn. It's a good like $10,000 a month business.
39:00 Speaker 00 Absolutely. I mean, at a minimum, if you know how to, if you already have like an agency and you know how to get clients, if you know those types of flows, if you're a consultant who helps companies do anything related to efficiency already, it's a no brainer.
39:14 Greg Isenberg? Yeah. I think that's the episode. So how to be more productive with AI, how to build a one-person business, startup idea, and...
39:29 Speaker 00 There's going to be, one thing just to end this on, there's going to be people in the comments, just because I know what the comments are like, and I know this general topic of AI where people are going to be like, okay, you know, we're saying this on this podcast, everyone can listen to this, so why doesn't everyone just do it? And, you know, then basically there's no advantage, there's no arbitrage. I'll just say my part. First of all, not everybody watches, you know, if you look at the numbers, it's not like 8 billion people or whatever. It's a very small sliver of society is watching this. The second thing is most people don't do any of the things. Like people watch things, they will hear us saying, do this, this will make money, but it will be a small percentage
40:10 Speaker 00 of people who actually really dig into it and really nerd out about it. But I'm still wondering from your perspective, like what makes someone?
40:20 Speaker 00 What separates person A who's going to have a one person, the first one person billion dollar business and person B who isn't, when both of them have the same tools? Like, what is separating these people? Is it an inherent thing? Like, is it something about they're like, they were born with more intuition or creativity? Or do you think it is actually learnable?
40:46 Greg Isenberg? I think it's 100% learnable. I think that the difference between person one and person two, person A and person B is that the first one, the person that ends up building the billion dollar one person startup is okay to use these tools, realize that they're not perfect. But by the time that they're perfect, is a master at it. It's really about mastering the tools, knowing them extremely intimately, uh, because they're highly nuanced. And
41:21 Greg Isenberg? using the tools such that
41:25 Greg Isenberg? the first person gets such incredible outcomes, but the second person doesn't.
41:30 Speaker 00 Yeah.
41:30 Greg Isenberg? I could play the guitar and, uh, Jimi Hendrix could play the guitar if he was alive. A dead person can't play guitar.
41:38 Speaker 00 That's true, actually.
41:41 Greg Isenberg? But, you know, it's the same instrument, but Jimi Hendrix gets obviously a lot more than an amateur guitar player like me. So I think it's the same thing with musical instruments, right? And I think the only difference is you, you can speak any language in this AI world. You don't need to speak just English or just Mandarin. You could be anywhere. And there's like no gatekeepers anymore because you just build audiences to get customers or pay for Facebook ads to get in front of people. So I think, uh,
42:20 Greg Isenberg? The tools are out there, but it's it's hard work. You know, it's hard work to get good at the guitar. It's hard work to get good at understanding how these tools work.
42:28 Speaker 00 You think it's like a thing you have to intentionally say every day? I'm like, what I'm doing now is like every single task that I'm doing from now on, I'm going to use ChatGPT to do it. I'm not gonna like bang my head. I'm just gonna at least see if this tool can do that and improve that. And that's like building it into my, it's just becoming a habit now that I just open this, that I have this tool open next to what I'm doing all the time.
42:56 Greg Isenberg? Yeah, it's kind of like if you're working at your desk and you always have water in front of it, you'll probably drink more water. But if you don't have water and there's no, and maybe, you know, you don't even have water in your house or the water is downstairs. Like you're just gonna drink less water. So just making it a part of your workflow, seeing it, having a tab open always.
43:18 Speaker 00 Just having it open.
43:18 Greg Isenberg? Yeah.
43:19 Speaker 00 Yeah. Yeah, that's what I've been doing. That's my practice now.
43:23 Greg Isenberg? Cool. Maybe you'll come back on again and share your screen.
43:26 Speaker 00 My one person, one billion dollar business.
43:28 Greg Isenberg? And be a billionaire. Maybe you'll come back again and be a billionaire.
43:31 Speaker 00 Well, you know, eight weeks from now, we will launch our first, like we will have launched our first funnel, which is every team member at AJ and Smart having the ChatGPT tab, Claude tab, whatever else they're using, open the entire time as like an internal requirement. So I'm curious what's going to happen with that. And it's our first like attempt at using these tools completely integrated into building a funnel. So I'm curious.
43:58 Greg Isenberg? All right.
43:58 Speaker 00 Worst one ever. Makes one dollar.
44:01 Greg Isenberg? We'll see. Thanks for coming on, man.
44:03 Speaker 00 Thank you for having me.
44:04 Greg Isenberg? Yeah.
Previous I figured out how to get 5x better results from ChatGPT (Full Tutorial) Next Learn Vibe Marketing in 40 mins (n8n, MCP, Claude 3.7) Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
