AI Systems That Help You Scale Smarter, Not Harder with Dan Cumberland

Dustin: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Seven Figure Leap podcast. So today we're gonna talk about ai and not just like, you know, ai, everything, but some really practical examples of how I'm using AI and how my amazing guest is using AI with a lot of different clients and, and he's much more on the cutting edge than I am.
Dustin: But we've actually built a tool together that we're gonna build to open up and, dissect and talk, about with you guys too. So Dan Cumberland is my special guest today, and Dan is one of 11 people who can say they were a founding member. Of the Podcast Profits Accelerator way back in 2022. So we've got almost three years of history and we've done a lot of cool stuff together, including this project that we're gonna talk about today.
Dustin: So Dan, I'm really grateful to have you as part of the podcast. Finally, it feels like I should say. thank you for being here. And please just introduce yourself however far back you think is relevant to your backstory and let people know what you're all about.
Dan: I love it. Thank you so much for having me so pumped to be here and Yeah, just what a journey. I, I'll go all the way back to ministry. I started my career in ministry and I remember that was one of the things [00:01:00] that. I told you this the other day, Justin, that like attracted me to working with you is like, you're not just in it for the money, but for the relationships, for connecting, for helping. And that really, is a big foundation of, who I am and, and how I do things. after a few years in ministry, it got burnt out on that and, went through this big pivot of like, what's next?
Dan: And started my journey into entrepreneurship kind of entered that through a degree in psychology and theology really with. Questions, existential questions about what it means to be human and like all these heavy things. After grad school, I was like, I had two choices. Like either become like a therapist or like a, you know, a psychologist or I wanted to like, reach more than just you know, one-to-one people, you know. wanted to, reach the masses. Sounds, you know, a grandiose way of saying it.
Dan: But also really discovered that I just like starting things. I like trying things. I like learning and new endeavors and entrepreneurship just spoke to me and I think I found permission to, to pursue that. So spent the better part of the
2010s, building a online business and doing a few other ventures, which eventually opened the door for me to get into software.
Dan: [00:02:00] Ran a software company for a PE firm. Ran a venture studio for a few years. Building marketing technology software. And that's about where we met, I didn't know it at the time, but hindsight is 2020. That was coming to an end. And I was desperately trying to hold it all together and, joined the program really to, think about like, I.
Dan: you know, as things are kind of shifting on the, venture studio, can I, you know, build my consulting and, you know, maybe thought leadership around purpose and meaning those kinds of things up, as a meaningful income. And it, did some of that. But then the venture studio kind of, I wouldn't say crash and burn, but.
Dan: It just ended more abruptly than I, wanted it to. And was a big period 20 22, 20 23 of just identity shift for me. Having to figure out, you know, I thought that I was gonna be running the venture studio for a long time. Was doing it with a few partners. The reason it came to an end was, one of my partners left and we tried to bring another partner in and it just was not a good match.
Dan: So started like picking up the pieces after this, you know, existential crisis of like, am I actually an entrepreneur? Who am I what, like, having to [00:03:00] let go of so much. I feel like I could tell that that's a whole nother podcast of like, this whole shift. But, started picking up the pieces and, started doing some marketing, work, on contract for software companies and.
Dan: Discovered kind of through the back door, I guess. I guess I'm a fractional CMO, I guess that's what they call this, but wanted to do it differently. When I was running the venture studio, I had a team of about 12. I was kind of the core team running across three different projects or more at a time.
Dan: And I was the hub, CEO, holding it all together and just was, you know, burnt out, just, you know, herding cats all the time and wanted to build my systems better and at the same time. AI was becoming a consumer facing product. That chat Tip T was out. And so wanted to see like, how far can I get using these AI tools to stay more lean and develop some methodologies around how to use these well.
Dan: And found that, it got me really far and soon had people asking me questions about, you know, how are you doing this or that, or how do you do this or that? And to really discover that I have a pretty unique perspective on.
On it, and maybe as an early adopter, [00:04:00] maybe as part of my background as, you know, a tech founder and also because I've, you know, spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to be human.
Dan: And and that's one of the, I think, forcing functions of AI is that it forces us to ask where's the line between what we as humans do and what, we have the robots do. And started building projects for people, consulting with people, giving direction and insight. And now I'm, you know, AI consultant, helping founders scale with authenticity, without losing their soul.
Dan: So doing a lot of, on that side of thing, which, we'll get into more, but that's a, high level overview of, where I've been and how we got here.
Dustin: I love that. I love that recap As someone who. I lived through a little part of it with you. it's especially interesting because I had, I knew you had a ministry background and like I knew in my, somewhere there's a fact in my brain that you had a theology degree and a psychiatry degree. But then I've been focused more on the, Dan of present day and we obviously got the project we've been working on that we're gonna talk about and.
Dustin: It totally makes sense now that yes, you're like the technology guy and you ran, you know, [00:05:00] you worked with, VCs and were doing software development and, investing and all this stuff, and you got this ministry background and theology and these deeper questions about what a soul is and what humanity's for, and it's like what a perfect intersection to, work in with respect to ai.
Dustin: And I feel like there's this sort of like AI camp right now. It's like you either feel like it's the most exciting thing ever and it's gonna really help you grow your business or it's doomsday and I might as well just give up business.
Dustin: And this whole idea of meaning And purpose, we're definitely at a really interesting kind of inflection point and all that.
Dustin: So I don't know if you have any kind of.
Dustin: We'll talk, I think.
Dan: The philosophical ' cause I geek, out on that stuff. Because we're on a huge shift and it's a painful shift as all shifts are, and it comes with the positives and the negatives, right? Like the negatives that like, there is material impact on people.
Dan: There are jobs that are being replaced by robots, you know, [00:06:00] McDonald's just in the last couple weeks, rolled out AI across all their locations. Like, we're gonna be going through drive-throughs and talking to robots now and not humans anymore. Like, so there is, That happening.
Dan: But then there's in tandem with that, there's for, the people who have, access and the privilege to be having these conversations, people like you and me. I think that there's a huge upside, which is that we get to reclaim some of our humanity. And since we're talking philosophically, I'll, I'll put it in those.
Dan: Those terms because we can give more of our time and our effort to the work that really matters to us and brings fulfillment, and is most, meaningful. And to put in like the context of, jobs, I like to think about it in, the shift from.
Work being a function of the home and a homemaker and a farm and, you know, to being like the industrial revolution in the factory took people outta the houses, into the factories where, where they're going.
Dan: They're contributing you know, in one very small, small sliver to this product that they're building. And, there's a quote by Henry Ford that says, like. the problem with every, pair of hands I hire is that it comes with the brain [00:07:00] attached.
Dan: it's just gross, like saying that, but like the factory mentality, the owners of the factory like, their goal was to make sure that you didn't have to think, so that they could have the lowest common denominator of employee. That's easily replaceable. And what we're able to do now with AI is to take those functions of our.
Dan: Work and hand at least some portion of that off to ai. So then we can do the job of the factory manager who gets to do the design, who gets to do the higher level thinking and who gets to move closer to the, fire is how, I like to think of the fire of like meaning of purpose and fulfillment and like the thing that like gets you.
Dan: Fired up to get outta bed in the morning it's not in the mundane and the details and all the checking, the, you know, crossing the T's and dotting the i's, but it's in the impact and it's in, the creation. And AI is a tool for us that can allow us to do more of that good, meaningful work and less of the other.
Dan: So it's not without pain and it's not without, a struggle along the way, but they're, I get so excited about, the upside.
Dustin: [00:08:00] Yeah, last philosophical statement and then we'll move on Practic. But I think to talk about how I see this also and the magnitude of what it means, and I'm sure this is really cutting it short, but I was invited with my. Our middle child is a senior in high school, and she's in this really cool program called CEO, and it's, like an entrepreneurial program, within the high school system.
Dustin: And so they have all these crazy projects and they're creating a business and it's really fun, as you might imagine. I, I'm like, this is so cool. So I went and spoke and I brought, the StoryBrand book, and I gave that to all the students and it kind of dawned on me when I stepped into this room. I'm like, wow.
Dustin: Like you guys are all 17 years old, 18 years old. And I reflected back on when I was 17 or 18 years old. I'm like, when I was a senior in high school, was in a really unique spot where I had one foot in the pre-internet age and one foot in the internet age. You know, I'm 45 years old, so.
Dustin: We kind of used computers a little bit like internet, a little bit in high school, but it wasn't really till college. And of course, my whole adult life has been complete tech adoption into the [00:09:00] internet age. And I was like, you guys are in the same spot with ai. You know, like there's this before and
after line and they're straddling it and they're gonna be in a really unique position where they lived without AI completely.
Dustin: And they're gonna probably live with AI completely just like we did with the internet. was kind of a profound thing. I don't know that they appreciated as much as I did, but I was there like kind of to think about.
Dan: it is totally wild and I'm so curious for educators, like how they're helping, embrace that. I think it's a, complex, problem, but I think it's exactly the right, great parallel and it's exactly how I see it. Soon. Everything's gonna be, you know, it's already happening.
Dan: A AI is everywhere. So much so that soon we won't even be talking about it because it's just gonna be an assumption.
Dustin: Awesome. Well, obviously we could talk forever about AI in, this sense, but I think it'd be fun to talk about this, AI project that you and I worked on, and we're still, I'm still using very, very actively in our community. I think that'll kind of bring people a very practical example of how I'm using it, how Dan sees it, and.
Dustin: I know you've even evolved in the past several months because AI has like beyond that, doing some other cool stuff. So we'll [00:10:00] definitely talk more about where you're going with this in the future. But I think let's camp out for a little while and talk about Dustin AI and I, say that with a grin, it's kind of a tongue in cheek, funny inside joke feeling thing.
Dustin: So this was just, you know, several months ago. So I've got, just to give a little bit of context, you know, I've got a circle community, so that's the platform where our community's at. So if someone's in our accelerator program or mastermind or they're an alumni of one of those things, we've got Circle.
Dustin: And so you can imagine if you haven't been in circle, a lot of forums and dms and courses and like, there's a lot of cool stuff happening, a lot of activity. And then we do a lot of live calls. Like I've literally done well over a thousand hours of live calls, coaching people, teaching q and a, all that kinda stuff.
Dustin: So I got this huge library of live interactions with people that have been through our podcast Profits Accelerator for the past three years. Plus all the other stuff we do with trainings and workshops and all that. And so I kind of had this vision. I'm like, it would be really cool if like. In our community, you could sort of have a, my [00:11:00] brain in the community available 24 7 where we got all this material that is kind of searchable, but not really searchable.
Dustin: Right. What if we could like, suck all that into a central brain and then people could query it just for the things that I could help them with so that, you know, I'm still there live sometimes, but like, you know, it's midnight on a Friday and I'm not available, and they're like. Write my podcast pitch or help me with StoryBrand, and it was just there and it could be a proprietary ask.
Dustin: So I, I'll talk more in a minute, Dan, about like why I did it from the standpoint of marketing, positioning, all that sort of thing. But like from a utilitarian standpoint, what it is is a sort of, think of your chat GBT avatar that's been really trained with your voice. It's like that, but a special version of it that's me and all of my material only inside our community and privately accessible.
Dustin: So hopefully it gives people a little bit of context of what Dustin AI is. And I'd love for you to talk more about like how you thought about this when I came to you and was like, can we build something like this?
Dan: totally. I loved it [00:12:00] because it, it is a great challenge. Like how can we build it? And, and what's, you know, from a product standpoint, that's how I put my product hat on as a tech founder of like, what is the job, to be done, the job to be done as a framework.
Dan: Very similar StoryBrand in a lot of ways. Like what is the solution that people are looking for, that they're gonna be coming for to just an AI. For, and that's, you know, as Justin and I, kind of got clarity on this, is like, what are the problems? what are the common queries?
Dan: And we even, I think, brainstormed around some of these, like, help me with my podcast pitch. Help me with my customer transformation. Like, what are the things that, Dustin is already, that you're coaching people on, you know, in live calls? And then let's really. Aim, this tool, those pieces of your brain, right?
Dan: Because there's a lot of things you could ask Dustin for recommendations on, you know, the best wrecking or whatever. And he would, have something to say, but, but that's not why people are coming here now to, do that. So, So then
the challenge was, okay, so we have the solution, we have, have the problem that we're trying to solve for people.
Dan: How do we go about solving it? Which is, you [00:13:00] know, we start by, let's get all of the best of Justin's content, of your content. I keep talking about you in the third person. Like I, I'm talking, to the listener. But could you get the best, get the best of your content? And then extract from it all of your, frameworks, your, kind of the, best of highlight reels, if you will, that are relevant to all of these topics.
Dan: And then train an AI up on that and giving it parameters on how to direct, redirect and structure a conversation. So that's really helpful, for the user, which includes things like if you do ask it for rucking backpack, it might tell you something about it, but it's gonna redirect and say, I don't really wanna talk about that.
Dan: Let's talk more about your pitch or whatever, whatever might be,
Dustin: Yeah, I think so as far as, what I thought was important and what you helped inform to make important, yeah. I think when I describe this to people, I talk about boundaries a lot. And it's like, you can go to any chat GBT and say, what would Dustin Reman think about this? There's enough interviews and YouTube videos and this podcast, you can get some pretty good answers, but.
Dustin: This is [00:14:00] different because it's relying on a lot of that same data plus a lot more proprietary data that's not publicly available, and it's structured in a coaching format. So if you say like, write my pitch, it will write a pitch, but it's not gonna just say, here you go. It's gonna ask you for context and it's gonna ask you some, the same things I would ask you if we got on a call and you're like, Hey man, write my pitch.
Dustin: I'd be like. Well, who are you trying to reach and what are your goals? And tell me about your business. Like, so it's not just spitting out answers, it's, creating a coaching conversation that then results in an answer that eerily, simulates what I would say. And it gives more context to that.
Dustin: So it may say like, here's the thing you asked for based on what you gave me. Dustin would also make sure that you're aware of. This additional thought or this context, or you should also be thinking about this, like you didn't ask really a complete question. it's a pretty nuanced tool, I think, in that way.
Dustin: And I think that's one of the things I.
Dan: Yes. Yes. I think that that is, you know, a lot of the [00:15:00] opportunity for, whether you're a founder, whether you're running a brand for leveraging ai. I. To scale your business. And, you know, I talk about like that I'm passionate about helping people scale their voice authentically is to take, AI and give it the right instructions like AI is always going to try to default to its training, right? the way that AI works is, is functionally a very sophisticated auto complete, it's guessing at what you want it to do based on what it's seen before. And what it's seen is everything on the internet, which means that.
Dan: It's going to bias itself towards like generic marketing speak, which as marketers, we know that doesn't work, right? The, best thing about marketing is if you talk to everybody, you, talk to nobody, right? And so to give it the right context and the right instructions so that it's not guessing and filling in too many gaps as to what you want it to do, but instead you're supplementing you're biasing it toward the right material so that it fills in those gaps with a better, you know, more sophisticated response that are more on [00:16:00] brand and more in your voice.
Dustin: Yep. And we'll talk more about different ways to, you know, not everyone needs a dust in ai, but.
Dustin: I would like to talk. So we talk most, I think people get an idea of what the function is and kind of the role it plays. So like now we're running through a
cohort of the accelerator. We still go through the same training, but we may we do in a live workshop setting.
Dustin: Instead of saying, here's a Google template, start writing your pitch. It's like. Everyone opened us an AI and it's already got the template built in. You know what I mean? So it's, a shortcut live, but it's mostly used as an asynchronous coaching tool. But I, think it would be incomplete if I didn't talk about the, sort of marketing reason to do this.
Dustin: Right. So, I'll start very philosophical and I'll go very zoomed into like my thought pattern when I wrote the check to Dan and we did this, I mean, philosophically there we're quickly approaching if we're not already at a time where information is sort of worthless, right? It's like, because it's so ubiquitous.
Dustin: you can go have me write a pitch using chat GPT probably right now, right? But, there's lots of other reasons to join a program, a [00:17:00] community, and a coach. And I feel like Dustin AI serves a really important role there. And it's basically a, moat around my information because this is the only place you can get it in this way.
Dustin: It's a very complete version of my knowledge base and it is nuanced and coaching you and has boundaries around it. So you get a very. I don't know, Dustin AI trademark. You get a very like certified response. This is like, this is really how I would respond and how I would have a conversation with you about this.
Dustin: It's not the generic, publicly available part of my knowledge base, so that's more of that philosophical, thing. and so I wanted that tool and I did want the utilitarian like resource for our community. But I also really wanted a slide in my pitch deck that says. And it includes dust in ai.
Dustin: You know, and like to be able to like show from a marketing standpoint that imagine you can have my brain 24 7 available to you and it can do everything from StoryBrand to podcast pitching to interview skills, to offers to lead magnets. 'cause all that's fed into it. And [00:18:00] I've been on the receiving end or giving end or whatever of a sales call so many times since I added that where it's like, you know, here's our normal, Program, here's our bonuses. And then I have a whole slide that's like, and we have this dust in ai. Here's all the things it can do. And people are like, whoa. Like, that's really cool. And so it's very much a differentiator. Like
Dustin: It's not the program, but it's a very important bonus, I guess you could say, in the way that I positioned it.
Dustin: So, again, and it's proprietary. We don't let anyone have access to it outside of our community. You gotta be a member of Circle, which means you've paid for one of our programs, and so it's got a, you know, a bit of a status or distinction that like, this is the only way you can get access to it.
Dustin: You know, with my marketing hat and my offer optimization hat, I felt like it really checked a big box of like having another proprietary almost done for you, piece of our offer that I didn't have to deliver, like a tool could deliver it. So that, I just wanna kind of share that part of it. Yes.
Dan: I love it. I love it. Well, I think it's like exactly what people are paying for, right? Is your knowledge, but not just your knowledge, but like I. They want [00:19:00] personalized feedback and like what a cool way to be able to scale, that, right? They're still getting your frameworks, but they're also getting it applied to their specific problems and their specific challenges.
Dan: Which before ai, the only way to do that is you're either coaching them or your. Paying someone else to coach them who's trained up and spend enough time with your material that they can give that kind of insight. All of which are great valid ways to do it. But it's so cool to have this new method of delivery.
Dustin: Yeah, and, You know, maybe my mind will change at some point, but for now it's like I only want it to be private In our community, it's like, you know, you can go pay a subscription for Destin ai 'cause I still want the human element involved. So I want you to go use Destin ai, get like the best version that it generates, and I still wanna have a conversation with you on a live call and show other people how I might tweak that or have you thought about this?
Dustin: Like, there's still a human element that overlays it, so I, wouldn't feel comfortable giving it complete independence and speaking on my behalf. But it's a great 80 90% tool that is a huge, [00:20:00] not only saver of my time, but it's actually a great resource for the clients because they're not dependent on my availability and me trying to squeeze in a two minute answer at the end of a call if that's all we have.
Dustin: Like, they can take time and space with it and show me the version that only needs two minutes to respond to as a kind of a final, review. So I think it's a really cool tool. So if anyone does have a coaching expertise. Group coaching framework, one-on-one coaching community. I think it's a really cool thing to
take your knowledge base, wisdom, experience, examples, suck it all up into an AI tool.
Dustin: I have someone like Dan who knows what they're doing, put the right parameters around it and the right interface to make it really elegant, plug it into the community that you serve. And I can speak from personal experience. It's been a huge, actual useful thing and it's been a great marketing tool to talk about how we're different than many other coaching options.
Dan: I love it. I love it. And I think that just like what you're saying about like keeping the human aspect, you know, and I think that that's, you know, one thing I really respect and love about how you do business is. relational. That's all about [00:21:00] the relationships, and I think that when I encounter people who have a negative opinion of, especially AI marketing or you know, scaling with ai, a lot of it assumes that we're, sacrificing that human piece, that humanity.
Dan: In order to achieve that, which is true, some people do that, like they just use AI to automate everything. And then, you know, then we can just let the robots go take care of it. So then I can go sip pina coladas on the, beach or whatever. But my philosophy is that like AI is a tool to reduce the friction and to free us up to do more of the good stuff, which for me and for I think a lot of your listeners, it's, the people part.
Dan: It's the connections, it's the relationship. So how can we inject AI into our business in ways that. Don't, diminish our humanity, our connection, our authority and trust, but actually enhance it and give people more of that and allow us to, do more to show up better and to spend more time really in our, zone of genius.
Dan: And I think that for you, this is such a great way to do that.
Dustin: Well, thank you. [00:22:00] obviously agree. So let's conversation beyond Dust ai.
Dustin: Kind of where you're at now, where you see this going, obviously you're doing this AI consultancy. it's a really exciting time because it's a moving target all the time with the technology. But you know, it's also a challenge when you're moving along with the technology. So, yeah, I'd just love to know, kind of close out here after this, talking more about like what founders should be thinking about.
Dustin: For AI for them, but Dan, kind of with your own business right now, what's your focus? What types of things are you working on? What kind of offers are you cooking up?
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. And the business, yeah, the business is evolving. It's, a big year. I, I'm a part of a accelerator with Amanda Northcutt and, level up creators this accelerator called MRR Accelerator is what, they call it. It's all focused on monthly reoccurring revenue guarantee. So, you know, I'm building in public as much as I can, my path toward $40,000. MRR, which our, goal is to hit that, later this year, We've got a long way to go still early in the year at the time of this [00:23:00] recording, but, that's a big, thing right now. And as we're building you know, a lot of the offer and the product ladder and ICP, all of that's coming to focus. But right now what, my core offers are is I have an AI mastery cohort where I'm basically, it's like a, community and, a community driven.
Dan: education cohort and education and coaching cohort. So I'm basically showing as much as I can about how I build things like Dustin ai, but really focus more on what do you need in your business? What are the tools that you're, trying that, that would advance, the value creation and transformation that your business does, and how can you go about building that?
Dan: So laying a foundation, kind of knowledge sharing, and then it's open. Office hour coaching, which is just super fun because when you start seeing the problems that people are solving in their business and how they're applying ai, it, just sparks your imagination for what you can do in your business.
Dan: One of the biggest problems that I hear over and over from people is that, as far as why they're not doing more with AI is that they feel like. they know that there's more, [00:24:00] but what actually looks like is so hard to actually like envision. And so just to be a part of a community that's doing that is a big, thing.
Dan: So that's one, piece of my offering is, and kind of the next step up is, more of a done for you service, which is, building tools for founders, to help them scale their, voice. And that kind of comes in two different directions. One is, I have a package of, core.
Dan: The founder voice package, that, I build and install in, a founder's, business to help them scale. It all comes back to the same idea of how do you make AI understand who you are, what you're trying to do, and be able to create content in your voice, but not just in your voice, but also in the specific context and syntax of the platforms.
Dan: In which you're communicating so that you don't have to ask it to, you know, take this idea that I just shared on this podcast, and then write a LinkedIn post. And then you have to go back and format the whole thing. But it knows how you write on LinkedIn, so it knows your voice. You can feed it other information to get it, to [00:25:00] draft things for you to be a thought partner for you or strategy partner, and also then formatting the content in the right way.
Dan: Because we communicate differently when we're talking, when we're writing on LinkedIn, when we're sending emails, when we're you know, in Slack with our team, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So building out a suite of
tools that takes your voice and, puts it in a scalable, package, and then beyond that, that's, you know, custom, projects where I could come alongside, a team, and build more, things similar to Dustin ai that'd be more bespoke. So right now I'm working with consulting team helping. AI enhanced their process of all their kind of core deliverables that they do with their, the businesses that they work with.
Dan: Done similar things with coaches, with their, part of their coaching process to help enhance their methodology, enhance their deliverable by using AI so that they're, again, still focused on their zone of genius, which is that transformation with their clients, but then giving their, clients a better deliverable.
Dan: Product of the, you know, whether it's after a session or at the end of their sessions, in order to really advance that experience and just take it, to that [00:26:00] next level, where they can take the insights from a session and apply them for example. So it could take a lot of different manifestations, but that's, the high level overview of where I am, where I am
Dustin: That's the, the peak inside Dan's brain today, which, you're in like the fastest moving, I don't know,
Dustin: offering,
Dustin: vertical or whatever you wanna call it, ai. But yeah, that, makes a lot of sense too. I like that you have in, at least in the current mix, you've got the AI mastery cohort, where you've got that kind of human to human interaction as well as insight and to see what other, how other people are using
Dustin: it.
Dustin: you get to see applications and maybe suggest ideas and let other people try 'em and see how that works. And then you've got the other arm, which is more like consulting done for you service where you get the more productized with the founder's voice.
Dustin: And then you, you know, still can do the bespoke one-off kind of custom, cool, innovative projects, you know, like what you and I worked on, for individual needs. So.
Dustin: That's exciting and more to come. 'cause over the next six to nine months you're transitioning, to see what's next there.
Dustin: [00:27:00] But I think your current snapshot is really awesome. All right, so with our last several minutes here, typically I'm like, Hey, teach us a strategy and someone tells us their framework. That's a little harder to do with, ai, but, I guess the way I pose this question, Dan. You know, our audience, you're one of our audience here, you know, it's a solopreneur expert going from six to seven figures.
Dustin: They're AI aware for sure, and probably using it in some form or fashion, but maybe don't really get it fully. I think the way I would pose this question, having you here as a resource is like What should we be thinking about? what's kind of the table stakes? Like what do I have to be doing right now with AI to not be completely lost in this world?
Dan: Yeah. I think the, two things that come to mind. For us, as you know, like literally, you know, before we started the call, you mentioning, circles, like rolling out some AI features and I was mentioning Zoom just rolled out like agent, everywhere.
Dan: It's like, every time I open, open the news, it's more agents how do you even keep up when things are just continually evolving? And so, two things that, I think are really [00:28:00] important for founders right now, and will probably always be, is, one, to have a clear understanding of where you want AI to fit in your business, which I think goes a little bit back to like, how to stay human in the age of ai, and then secondly, how to use ai In your business, but also in a way that allows you to be agile. and so, On the first point of, where AI fits in your business.
Dan: What I like to do, and this I do this with the, cohort as, thinking about AI as a colleague. a recent hire, maybe after you really get really good training
data, maybe it's a, a mid-level, you know, hire. But thinking of it as a, partner, thought partner, collaborator, I.
Dan: What are the things in your business that you would have a junior member do and be responsible for, and to really like think about every aspect of your business and how you would delegate work to people in that different parts of a process. So maybe you have a copywriter who's.
Dan: Drafting emails for you, you know, or maybe you're ideating and then sending them to, [00:29:00] someone, and then they send you back a draft. Or maybe you have an editor that you work with, or maybe you have, you know, someone who helps you with analytics on your PPC or whatever. like, when we think of it in terms of like.
Dan: What would I be comfortable having a human do who might not know everything about that I know about running a business, but how could they save me time and effort and also not sacrifice, authenticity or quality? Like that's a really good proxy for how we should think about using AI in our business. And for those points of where I'm like, yeah, I'm not really comfortable, you know, having someone you send emails to my list without me having read them.
Dan: Like, okay, then maybe that's a good line for you to be like, okay. Right now, this can always evolve, but right now I can use AI and I would love for my team to use AI for all of these things up until this point. And then I need a human to do this part to really kind of clarify what the role is and regardless of the size of your team, and the bigger your team, I think the more this should be in writing and given to your team so that people aren't wondering and like being like sneaky, like, okay, can I use chat PT here?
Dan: Because like we wanna play by the rules, but we also wanna be [00:30:00] able to do our job well. So to be thinking of around those terms, I think that, can help us define like what is the role of AI in our business. And then as new tools
come onto the landscape, it will really help us understand where that fits in our business so that we're not having to like, reinvent the wheel.
Dan: Like every time something comes out of like, oh geez, there's a new, a Manus agent tool. Like, do I need that? and so then you're like, okay, now there goes like two hours of my day, like. Trying a new tool or whatever. So, at a high level and a thought is strategy level I think is, really, really important.
Dan: And then the next piece, that second point just about,
Dan: Again, an agile is, to be clear on your training documents.
Dan: A lot of tools now, more and more are promising that they'll do things for you and sound, like you, which is good and many of them can. But the problem is that the deeper you go with these tools, they're usually some sort of a black box, which means then you're stuck in their platform.
Dan: And as new tools come out with new capabilities, you don't have the ability to access them and utilize 'em at a high [00:31:00] level. And so to as much as possible. Get clear on how to utilize ai, how to train AI on your voice, and don't just hand over the reins to any one tool so that if some new, you know, this is a month or two ago when, deep Seek came on the market and everyone's like, oh my gosh, it's this new thing and it's so good, like.
Dan: You could, if you want, go start using that tool. Take your training data that you have. And also, I'm a big, proponent of creating training documents that you can, attach as files, context files in any tool. And you can use those to make custom gpt in, OpenAI. You can use them to make projects in cloud.
Dan: You can use them in literally any, any model so that. As new tools come about, you can take advantage of them. Or if you have different needs, like if you're working with proprietary, ideas or, private HIPAA compliant, material with on behalf of a client or whatever, you can take your same training data and put it into a different, tool and it will know, still retain, you know, know everything it needs to know about you and what you're trying to [00:32:00] do, in order to accomplish your goals.
Dan: And so part of that is, Understanding how to train, a model and, how to upload, you know, not just throw all your content in, but distill that down into like really what really matters. But that's, you know, I think that's the other piece where I think because things are changing so fast, I.
Dan: Well, I don't wanna be overly invested in any one platform. I think especially like I was driving in San Francisco and saw like, billboard for, Claw, that was like the no drama AI company or something like
Dan: that. Which is like, a dig on, OpenAI, right? 'cause like so many of the founders have left and blah, blah, blah.
Dan: Like, we don't know, you know, a couple years from now we don't know even who, which of these companies is still gonna be around. And so all that's to say, like, to be able to, be adaptable and agile,
Dustin: I like that. Yeah. 'cause you said Agile. I was like, I wonder what he means by that. But I totally get it. Like basically re remain independent. So if you're gonna go through the work to assemble your feed data or whatever, like keep that as the separate resource and then attach it to the tools you need it versus all your stuff's uploaded one time in the chat GBT and that's the only tool you [00:33:00] can ever use because it's all stuck in there.
Dustin: That makes a ton of sense. Well, Dan, this is, fire hose of information, but I think we and you to tip the hat. You, manage that really well. Like it's still very, to me, very practical and didn't feel overwhelming at all. So hopefully people can take that last five minutes and sort of create a game plan for how they're gonna use as a thought partner, realizing that they get to choose how it fits into their business. And they get to make be dec decisive about that. And then I really like that last point of don't get married to one platform. Like, stay independent and be able to feed in what you need to feed in at any given time. That's really smart.
Dustin: All right, well I think the last thing we wanna do here is make sure people know how to get a hold of you. Any resources or next steps that they should have if they're wanting to go AI with a creator and a founder, who gets it, because that's what Dan is.
Dan: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Well, you know, I was talking about AI training, a very robust guide that walks you step by step on how to build, a voice training document, that's available@aitrainingguide.com. Just [00:34:00] opt in there and then you'll be able to get that resource.
Dan: It's also what I teach in. In my cohort, and also part of what I, I do for founders. So if you, don't wanna do it yourself and go through, my guide. Happy to support you along the way. You can find me, right now at, LinkedIn is the best place to find me. Or just jump on my email list@aitrainingguide.com and hit reply and I.
Dan: Respond to any, any of your emails there. I have a new, brand that we're launching shortly, but it's not, live yet, but Dan Cumberland Labs is, coming soon, but I, doubt it'll be live by the time this, episode goes live, but shortly thereafter.
Dustin: Probably not. Although I will say I had pause. I'm like, that's gonna be a really valuable domain name, AI training guide.com.
Dan: right? I could not believe it was available. I only bought it like, I don't know, two or three months ago. So, yeah. I was pretty stoked to own it.
Dustin: That's amazing. So, you can go falling over his domain, real estate, but the main reason is to go there, to actually use it. And so yeah, go to ai training guide.com if you want to, you know, see what this is like and do it for yourself and follow the guide. And if you get [00:35:00] into that and you're someone more like me and you're like, I really need someone that knows what they're doing.
Dustin: I'm never gonna actually get this done. Hire Dan and, and then maybe you guys can talk about a really cool project that you can do to serve your, your clients and your community the same way that we've, created this Dustin AI tool that I'm really proud of. So, Dan, thank you so much again for all the things over the years, your support of my work and, both as a client and then, you know, in our part of our community, and now with Dustin ai, which kind of serves our community on a daily basis.
Dustin: Like I'm really grateful. For our relationship and our friendship. yeah. Now thanks for being, part of the, crew here as a podcast guest too.
Dan: Yeah, well, you know, I just wanna echo that back to you. I'm just so grateful for just the way you continually show up and, and give to me and, you know, having me on the show is just one small piece of that. So appreciate you and appreciate, you know, just your value first way of, being in the world.
Dan: It's, really inspiring. So thank you.
Dustin: I appreciate that. Well, thank you and I hope everyone gets a ton of value. Go to ai training guide com.