171 - Dinosaur Park, AI Thoughts, A Cool Tool, and Summer of SaaS

Caroline: Welcome to What Is It All For? A podcast designed to help you grow your online business and pursue a spacious, satisfying life at the same time. We are your hosts, Jason and Caroline Zook, and we run Wandering Aimfully, an unboring business coaching program. Every week, we bring you advice and conversations to return you to your most intentional self and to help you examine every aspect of your life and business by asking, What is it all for? Thanks for listening. And now let's get into the show.

Jason: And I'm here, too. Hello there. Welcome to our podcast. This episode... Whoa. Th-episode is going to be up for two months.

Caroline: Wow.

Jason: Because we are taking our summer sabbatical.

Caroline: We really got to bring our best.

Jason: From our podcast. So we got to do a good job. So that little flub that I just did...

Caroline: Didn't exist.

Jason: No, it existed, but it was part of the, like, Ooh, that was style point.

Caroline: Style point. Okay.

Jason: Okay, we have a lot that we want to cover here. So do we want to start with the pramble tops here, or do you want to start with the happy note? Do you want to start with the overall happy note?

Caroline: No, let's talk about the happy note.

Jason: The happy note first. Go for it.

Caroline: Happy Pride month.

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: Everybody. We just wanted to give a special shout out to our LGBTQ+ listeners, of which we have... Well, if we have twelve listeners, we imagine a good portion of that.

Jason: I mean, at least some.

Caroline: Definitely some.

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: And we just wanted you to know that you are loved and we're glad you're here. And we just got to celebrate Pride.

Jason: Absolutely. We appreciate you so much, and you're awesome. Thank you for being here.

Caroline: Stick around. Be here.

Jason: All right, let's move on to the pramble.

Caroline: Let's move on to the pramble.

Jason: Really big news here. I have baked, I think, the best batch of chocolate chip cookies I've ever baked.

Caroline: That's pretty big news.

Jason: I think they're the best I've ever had.

Caroline: Okay.

Jason: Now I think they got ratcheted up a notch because we went to the Dino Park.

Caroline: We did go to the Dino Park.

Jason: And we brought some for our friends that we were meeting at the Dino Park who have a child.

Caroline: They do have a child.

Jason: Because if you go to the Dino Park as adults, a little bit weird. And they said the cookies were amazing.

Caroline: They did. I thought I was kind of, like, talking them up a little bit too much because I was saying they were mall quality.

Jason: Oh, yeah. You did say this.

Caroline: As a compliment, because, honestly, I had this cookie, babe, and I was like...

Jason: Shout out to our listeners, our US listeners, who know what walking through a mall smelling Mrs. Fields or Annie Ann's, they had cookies for a little while and just, like, going up to one of those stalls and just buy one of those.

Caroline: There's a very particular sugar smell.

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: And I don't know how much sugar you put in these, but... okay. All right.

Jason: Not none.

Caroline: Okay.

Jason: They are cookies and they are delicious.

Caroline: And so I tasted one and I was like, whoa, this tastes like a mall cookie. And I told our friends that and they had them and can confirm they thought they were delicious. So great job, babe.

Jason: They're really good. Yeah, I feel really good about that. I'm also today, currently in the oven in its bulk ferment right now, we have some sourdough bread with some rye flour. So... Don't yawn, don't yawn while I'm talking about bread here.

Caroline: Honest to God, that yawn happened in my brain. Like, I thought it was an inside yawn, but it was an outside yawn.

Jason: Hey, man, that's not cool.

Caroline: I just was like...

Jason: I'm excited to see... It's been very quick to rise. It's been very fast and aggressive. More so than the regular flour, more so than the high protein flour, which is very interesting.

Caroline: Okay.

Jason: So we'll see the way it turns out.

Caroline: The reason I'm yawning.

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: Is because I'm tired. And the reason I'm tired is because we went to the Dino Park yesterday.

Jason: We had a full multiple hour trip. There are... Just so everyone knows, we live in Lourinhã, which is a very small town here in Portugal on the Silver Coast. There was a prehistoric discovery of the largest land predators...

Caroline: Well, the discovery wasn't prehistoric.

Jason: There was a discovery of a prehistoric land predator tooth, a dinosaur tooth, which came to be known as, like, the largest land predator in Europe overall.

Caroline: Right.

Jason: And they have since found a ton of other fossils.

Caroline: Yeah, Lourinhã is basically just a gold mine of dinosaur fossils. And so this tiny town of like 6,000 people, last time I checked on the Wikipedias or whatever, has decided to basically adopt just this identity as the dinosaur capital.

Jason: And we've talked about this a bunch, so you can feel free to go back to many previous episodes of us talking about Portugal, but the thing that we have mentioned before that we hadn't done it was go to the Dino Park. So imagine this, it's a zoo, except there are dinosaurs, and the dinosaurs clearly are not alive.

Caroline: Yeah, imagine the setup of a small zoo, but instead of animals, you just have to scale replicas of dinosaur statues.

Jason: Like, there's one, that's the Supersaurus, which is like the... it's actually like a Brontosaurus cousin, and it is to scale and it is gigantic. Like, I'm six foot five. For those of you who understand non-metric numbers, in centimeters, that's a lot. And I go up to the kneecap of the Supersaurus. That thing is absolutely enormous.

Caroline: Which was so fun. And we went in with very low expectations because we were just expecting it to be kind of sad. We'd heard from a couple of people that they were underwhelmed, and so we were like, oh man, is it going to just be...?

Jason: People are underwhelmed because they're not realizing, like, you're going to a museum that's outside.

Caroline: Exactly.

Jason: This is what it is.

Caroline: It is a museum.

Jason: You have to understand, everybody who's going, there are no real dinosaurs right now.

Caroline: You do know that, right?

Jason: All of them are dead.

Caroline: Yeah.

Jason: As far as we know.

Caroline: And so, thankfully, our friends who have one and a half year olds... We would have gone by ourselves. But let me just tell you, going with kids is, like, so much more fun.

Jason: Well, yeah, I mean, so there are 180 dinosaurs on display, but there's a whole marine area where you have a Megalodon, which is very exciting.

Caroline: Very exciting.

Jason: There's a whole new Ice Age exhibit where you have like a very... It looks like a bear, but it has kind of like a dinosaur face, which is just bizarre to look at. And then you just have like, the gamut of dinosaurs. So you have, like, T-rexes. You have the Stegosaurus.

Caroline: And they're giving you fun facts.

Jason: Yeah, there's all kinds of signs you can read. Boy, if there was not an 18 month old...

Caroline: I know.

Jason: You would have read every sign in the park.

Caroline: I was much more focused on chatting.

Jason: I was really nervous because I was like, we're going to see seven dinosaurs because you're going to read all the signs and where the park is going to close.

Caroline: Well, yeah, that was also, like, when you have a toddler, like, you just got to go. I'm getting a preview of life, and I'm not going to be able to read signs anymore when we have kids.

Jason: No, you're really not. But I will say the Dino Park for us exceeded expectations, would go back because we didn't see everything. There was a whole section. It's also really nice. It's like a gravel trail. Ton of overhanging trees, so it wasn't too sunny. There are some sunny spots, but it didn't get too hot.

Caroline: Several playgrounds.

Jason: Yeah. Tons of things for the crianças and the...

Caroline: So many things for the crianças to do.

Jason: Children.

Caroline: So, w yeah, all in all, so fun. We went to one of our favorite little beach restaurants afterwards and just watched, like, late in the day, the sun was going down over the water. Just a perfect friend hangout day.

Jason: There are people... I don't know if people who listen to this podcast have this, but I know that there are people who live ten minutes from, like, Disney or Epcot or like a water park or anything else. We live ten minutes from the Dino Park. And I just think it's funny that we could just swing by whenever we want. It's right there.

Caroline: It's right there.

Jason: And I will go back, for sure.

Caroline: We'll go back.

Jason: We will go back. I think it is more fun with kids, though. So we'll have to see if anybody has kids they want to take.

Caroline: Yeah. Second important thing to the pramble is, as of recording this, tomorrow is a very important milestone in our Portugal journey, which is we have been leading up to this moment. We are going to the SEF office, S-E-F office, in order to get our official residency card that says we are permanent, well, permanent residents.

Jason: For two years.

Caroline: For two years in Portugal. And this is the appointment that they give you when you apply for... our visa, is the D7 visa. And once you get approved, they basically tell you, hey, in a few months, you need to go to this office on the Portugal side.

Jason: The appointment is actually a URL stamped in your passport.

Caroline: Yes.

Jason: That's how you know where it is.

Caroline: And then you do the appointment. They basically check all your documents, make sure that you are who you say you are, that you don't have a criminal record, and you get your official card and they mail it to you. And then it's like we did the immigration process.

Jason: Yeah, we've heard anywhere from four to eight weeks that you get the residency card in the mail. And then that just basically like... It's essentially like you have a temporary passport in the EU, so you can travel freely throughout the EU as you would as you're an EU citizen.

Caroline: Is that true?

Jason: Yeah, absolutely.

Caroline: I didn't know that.

Jason: Yeah, absolutely. The only part for us is to make sure that we retain that, is that we have to stay in the country. This is the weird, like six months out of twelve months or eight months.

Caroline: But if we were traveling, let's say, to another country in the EU, we would still go through the US passport line, don't you think?

Jason: Yeah, but we have our card, so we would show our card as well, but only if we were going to be there longer. So it's like if we wanted to go somewhere for longer than three months, that's in the Shengen territory... This is where it starts to get really tricky. But we're not planning on doing that anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Caroline: Got it. If... right.

Jason: But it does give us the ability to do that.

Caroline: That rule of the 90 days doesn't apply to us anymore.

Jason: It doesn't apply to us with that residency card.

Caroline: Interesting.

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: Anyway.

Jason: Something you learned in our podcast.

Caroline: And also tricky bit of news. They are dissolving the SEF office, actually.

Jason: The day after we're there. No, just kidding.

Caroline: No. And they're wrapping it into a new part of the government.

Jason: They'll figure it out. They'll figure it out.

Caroline: I just read an article that says what the new body is called. So it seems like they have actually figured out what it's going to be.

Jason: What's their new body called?

Caroline: I didn't commit it to memory. It's like the A-I-M-A or something.

Jason: Cool. AIM. Nice. Cool. By the time we come back to the podcast in August, because by the way, we're taking a break until August. We'll talk more about our summer sabbatical here in a moment. But we can just shout about our residency cards and we'll tell them... Describe them to you.

Caroline: We can shout about it.

Jason: Yeah, we'll shout about it. Be like, whoo. I'll run over to the other side of the room. Like, oh, we got them.

Caroline: Sometimes you say stuff that I'm just like, what? And then I know I do the same thing because what comes out of my mouth...

Jason: Sometimes you say a lot of stuff.

Caroline: Yeah.

Jason: And then the last bit of pramble news. Well, let's go two things. One is Patty's coming for three weeks. We've mentioned this. Your mom's going to be here.

Caroline: Patty's my mom. And we're very excited. She'll be our first official visitor.

Jason: This is part of why we're taking a break from the podcast because we don't have a third microphone. That's really what it is.

Caroline: And we don't want her to feel left out.

Jason: No. So we'll be hanging out with Patty. We're going to go up to the wine region and spend a day there.

Caroline: The Duro Valley.

Jason: Show her all of our favorite little spots around here. And then the last thing I wanted to share in the preamble because this is the last preamble that I get for two months now. Tears of the Kingdom. You can yawn again if you want. I just want to let everyone know I am not finished with the game. The game has been out as of recording this almost a month.

Caroline: Has it worn off? Has the luster worn off?

Jason: I can't wait to get up to pick up the controller and play. That has worn off.

Caroline: Yeah.

Jason: But I have so much of the game left to play. Like I've mentioned a couple of times, there's basically, like, three worlds. Like, there's the underground world, the main level world, and the sky world.

Caroline: So many worlds.

Jason: And I am maybe, like, 30% through the underground world. So I just have so much left to do there. The sky world I'm pretty much done with because it's not that big. And then the main world, I'm probably, like, 50% done with. But I've been saving the major quests and the major quest line. I'm just kind of going to do that last because I want to soak everything. I don't want to find all the shrines. I want to find a ton of corox seeds. I want to unlock everything and the underbelly of everything. So it's just, like, so much fun stuff to do. The game is just incredible. I also love how many people on YouTube are just doing ridiculous things with the fusing of materials, like building robots and things. I should show you some of these videos. People are building robots that literally, like, walk.

Caroline: No.

Jason: Yeah. And, like, shoot cannons.

Caroline: How?

Jason: Oh, just through...

Caroline: What's the engine that makes them walk?

Jason: Oh, there's just all kinds of like a piece of wood will break and it'll take a step forward, and then another piece of wood will break. It'll take a step forward because there's like...

Caroline: Oh, they're using physics.

Jason: Oh, yeah. It's ridiculous.

Caroline: My goodness.

Jason: Some of it's absolutely ridiculous. All right.

Caroline: Okay, that's... advanced.

Jason: Let's get into the episode. We've got a little bit of a grab bag here for you because there were just a handful of topics we wanted to go.

Caroline: Yeah, this episode is giving sort of like last week before summer break of school where you're just like, your teachers are like, we're not learning things, we're just going to show a video, we're going to play a game.

Jason: I would say it's also kind of like a listener mailbag, except there were no questions that we asked.

Caroline: It's sort of like a podcaster mailbag. Sort of like an us mailbag.

Jason: Yeah, exactly. So it's just some things we want to chat about. So first things first, why do we take a sabbatical and what does a sabbatical look like? So when we say that, it doesn't mean that our laptops are closed for the next two months and we're doing nothing. It really means that we're taking a break from the things that are like the...

Caroline: Content.

Jason: Content, like have to show up every single week and do stuff type of thing. So in the past this would have been Instagram and other things, but for now it's just our email newsletter and this podcast. So for the next two months, we won't be doing that. We will basically not be thinking about it all, which is just a great time for us to recharge our mental batteries. But it's also really good too, just as like a pro tip and now doing this for multiple years, is to have you guys really, as listeners and subscribers of our podcast, appreciate the thing that we make. And we know that from now doing this for years is that people... You get used to it. You get into a rhythm of getting something in your inbox or getting something in your podcast feed. And then when it doesn't show up for a while, you're like, oh, I really actually do enjoy it. And I'm not saying that to say our show is amazing. I'm just saying that because I know when people take breaks, I'm like, oh, I don't think I appreciate that as much when it's going every single week as to when it stops for like a month or two or whatever.

Caroline: Yeah. But for me, the primary reason behind it is just we have seen this now when you are on the constant content creation machine and you don't ever take a break to take a step back, it can be really hard to think strategically about the big picture of your business, to see things from a different perspective, sort of a higher level perspective, and to really just get reinvigorated for doing it, right? Like we talked about, that fatigue can kind of wear in. And so the breaks have been so crucial for us to get re-energized, to take some much needed rest. And really for me, what I like about it is it gives me time and space to think and see our business in a new way, which is always going to add more ideas and more energy and everything.

Jason: Yeah. And if you're wondering, oh, it must be nice for you guys to just take two months off. Many years ago, when we first started this, it was like we didn't think we could do it. And so we really had to force ourselves to say, let's try it because everyone deserves a break from this stuff and let's see how it goes the first month that we ever did it and then go from there. And I remember when we were talking about this, one of the things that we chatted about when we first did one for WAIM was like, are all of our subscribers going to just not care about our emails when we come back? And we both had those feelings. And then when we came back, everyone was like, oh, we missed you. It was exciting to have you show up back in the inbox. And so I think just to kind of curb that fear for anybody who is thinking about doing a sabbatical, whether it's in the summer or the fall or the winter, whatever works best for you. A week, maybe not enough, but a month is usually what we find is like a really good kind of reset. And if you can go longer than that, great, if that works for you. But for us, I think we're going a little bit longer this summer, mostly just because we can and because we kind of set everything up that the summer can be quieter and it doesn't really matter.

Caroline: Definitely. Yeah. And I think the important thing is to... We always talk about this idea of testing your assumptions in your business and like finding small ways to experiment. And I think that not only applies to marketing tactics, but it also applies to balance tactics. And so start out and just say, okay, I'm going to take two weeks off of my Instagram content, or longer than that and I'm going to intentionally recharge my batteries and think about things from a higher level perspective. And I think what that does when you do it in kind of small doses like that is not only do you test that assumption of everyone's going to go away and not care anymore, but you also start to see the benefits that you just can't think about when you're even predicting doing something like that. And once you experience the different perspective from taking a break, I think then you will feel more empowered to do longer breaks and do what works for you.

Jason: Yeah. And I would say for any of our listeners who are working with clients but want to move into digital products, which we know there are many of you, or you're working at a full time job and you want to work on your side business to make your full time thing. Take a sabbatical from whatever that full time thing is or your client thing and kind of show yourself that one month off doesn't completely destroy that business, but it does give you a ton of time and energy to work on the other thing you want to work on. And if you don't ever make kind of that move, you're never going to free up that time. You're never going to have the time to move forward on it. So this is our kind of like permission slip, fist bump, high five, take a sabbatical. Whatever that looks like for you, it doesn't need to be now. But put it on the calendar ahead of time and lead up to it. And do whatever you have to do to carve that time to take that time off of whatever you need to take time off of.

Caroline: Great.

Jason: Let's get into quite a big topic that we're not going to spend a whole episode on yet.

Caroline: Yeah, mainly because we just don't even know what to talk about.

Jason: Yeah. And that is...

Caroline: We've talked ourselves into quite a few circles on this one, folks.

Jason: Sourdough bread with rye flour or without? I mean, we just don't know. That is AI.

Caroline: AI, the elephant in the room.

Jason: Everybody is probably tired of hearing about AI. But what I think is funny about that is I see podcast episodes pop up and I'm like, I'm tired of... But I am really curious what they have to say about it.

Caroline: Well, I know because the thing is, this isn't just a moment, right? We're in the middle of a revolution. To me, this... I'm sure that's what people thought when the NFT things happened.

Jason: Well, I heard a really interesting thing about that.

Caroline: Analogy?

Jason: Earlier. Yeah. Which was basically that NFT, everyone was hyping them up, but they were still a product, not like a change in the way we do things. So they were positioned as like, oh, this is going to change the way that we sell goods and transact and do things. But really it wasn't. And we clearly saw that.

Caroline: So there were some people who were kind of pivoting to talk more about blockchain than NFTs, which is like what you're saying. So the blockchain innovation is more closely tied to the AI revolution.

Jason: And what I think that the truth for all of us, kind of like more normal people is like, AI is more akin to what social media was 15 years ago.

Caroline: Exactly.

Jason: That's more of the shift that you can think about it in, where I think it has a lot more practical uses. I think it has a lot more accessible uses. We are both very technical people. Never once did we feel like we understood how to use the blockchain or use NFTs to our advantage.

Caroline: Right.

Jason: Never. It's not accessible in that way. Now and we're not going to code our own AI anytime soon either. But we can use the tools to benefit us in certain ways.

Caroline: Immediately.

Jason: Exactly. And understand their value. So I think that's where the shift is bigger. So I think we do want to just spend some time to kind of chat about some of our thoughts on it before doing a full episode later on down the road, if that seems interesting to everybody.

Caroline: Yes. Because the truth is, if you're wondering, how are you using AI in your business? What does this mean for business owners? How should I be thinking about AI? The truth is we don't know yet. I don't have a well formed opinion and I don't like speaking on things that I don't have a well formed opinion on. So all we can share with you is the uncertainty that we're moving through ourselves, which I think is more relatable to most people who are probably moving through that same uncertainty. The one thing that we, Jason and I both can agree on, that I feel we always come back to in the AI conversation. And I think this speaks to both of the way that we view the world, which is like, through a very practical lens, which is like so much of it comes down to this fear mongering about losing jobs, right?

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: And I understand. People are nervous, and that makes sense to me and I'm not trying to invalidate those feelings or take that away from anyone, but you and I both always come down to this practical question, which is like, okay, but then what? It's like... Does it actually benefit anyone to just kind of curl up in a ball and be afraid of how AI is going to take your job? It's like we would much rather shift that energy from like a reactive position and a worrying position into a proactive position. And the one thing that I know for sure is that we are all alive in a time in history where the technology curve is getting steeper and steeper, which means that the opportunity for these massive revolutionary changes in the way that we live and work and make money and all these things, they're only going to become more prevalent the longer we live. Which means that every time one comes around, like the AI revolution, I'm just going to call it an AI revolution.

Jason: You're probably the first person who said that.

Caroline: I think we can all agree this is a massive, I think, moment where it suddenly is affecting a lot of the facets of the way that we live and work in the world. And so I think this is a big opportunity for us to practice resilience when it comes to a change of this size. So Jason and I were talking about the previous one that I think comes closest is the social media revolution. That had already kind of started when we got into the workforce.

Jason: Not me. Nothing existed when I first started working.

Caroline: Right.

Jason: I saw it coming and really got in early on everything.

Caroline: We were both pretty early on in our careers. So the point I'm trying to make is it's not like we had been doing business for so long and then all of a sudden this big tidal wave came along and we were like, oh crap. Everything we know about the way that we're working is different now. It was just sort of like, okay, we're starting out of the gate from this perspective of knowing that these platforms exist. That's what I'm trying to say. So we have yet to be working adults and business owners in the world where one of these massive tidal wave waves of change hits us. This is probably the first one. Those who have been working longer will probably remember what happened when the social media shift happened. They can remember a before and after. And even before that, there's going to be even more people who are business owners when the Internet happened and what did that feel like, right? But my point in saying all of that is if you are kind of our age or younger, this is the first big tidal wave of change that is an opportunity for us to practice resilience when it comes to adaptability. Because as business owners...

Jason: That's a lot of just what business is.

Caroline: That's a lot of what business is.

Jason: I think really it's kind of interesting, like a little sub headline of the AI revolution that you're coining is this idea of really showing who in especially like the online... well, especially in the online business space, who is afraid of change and who is willing to understand that change is just a part of doing business.

Caroline: Exactly.

Jason: As a business owner.

Caroline: Exactly.

Jason: And I think that anybody right now who's just like throwing up their hands, just being like, I don't even know what to do. This is just like, I can't even spend time on it. That's not the right outlook to have. The outlook to have is just to go, well, hold on, let me be a little bit curious. Let me just see how these things are going. And I think the real difference between what happened with social media in the 2007 to 2013 timeline versus what's happening with AI now is that social media took, like, five years for it to really get adapted and really especially for business to use and see the value.

Caroline: Very slow.

Jason: Extremely slow to do it. And understandably so, because they'd always done things a certain way and it had gone on for years that way. But now what we're seeing is like the AI jump, it's very quick in the using it. How do you use it? What are all the things that happen? It's very fast and it's very compact timeline. And for our human brains, it's very difficult to change quickly. But I think what we really want to just share and the way that we're trying to think about it as well, which is instead of running away from it, of what feels scary or different or like, oh, I don't want to do another thing I have to put on my to do list. That's not going to get you anywhere. What's going to get you somewhere with this, even if you don't use it, is just to lean in and say, well, what can I do with this? How could this help me? How could it benefit me? What do I need to be on the lookout for that might impact my business? And then how can to just be proactive about that?

Caroline: That's the biggest thing, I think, is being proactive. And like I said, that doesn't mean that... Being proactive or leaning in doesn't mean that you have to use AI. It doesn't mean that it's inevitable. If you're really against it.

Jason: Especially the ethics of it and all that, I understand. But it's the same thing with social media. You can sit on a higher horse and you can say, like, I'm not going to use these platforms. They collect our data, they do these things.

Caroline: But what you can't do is ignore. What you can't do is pretend it doesn't exist.

Jason: Exactly.

Caroline: You can't pretend that social media doesn't have a big impact on culture. You can't pretend that it doesn't have an impact on business. You can't throw up your hands and wish that it was a different way because that will lead to suffering, because reality is what it is. And so similarly, that's what I think to AI is the one thing you can't do is pretend that it doesn't exist because it's inevitable. And the wave is already coming. The wave is already here. And so even if you don't use it, being curious enough to understand how people are using it, why they would use it, how it could be used to do something similar that your business does, so that you can create some type of strategy to defend against that being taken by AI. I think those are all worthy thought experiments to engage in.

Jason: Yeah. And I think for especially our very creative listeners who listen to this show, I would just say that we are so long away from AI being creative. There is always going to be a need for the artistry that comes with someone who has a vision for something that is very unique and is very handcrafted. Even in a website design, there's still a craftedness to that that a machine can't do. I want to make sure that everyone who is in that field understands that what you do is still appreciated by people who are like you. And so there is always going to be a group of people who go, oh, I want to watch someone make a painting by hand, and I want to see how they do that. And then I want to learn how to do that because I want to be able to have that tactile skill that even though an AI tool can create an oil painting in a certain style in a matter of seconds, it's not going to be the same for a huge group of people. They're not going to care. They're going to be like, that's fine, the machine can do that, but I want to be able to do it myself. So I'm going to go learn from someone who can do that.

Caroline: Right, which is what we've talked about a lot, which is like, there's content and there's building blocks of things, which I think AI is good at doing. It's like aggregating and presenting to you the building blocks of a thing. But going back to what you were saying about style points, that's where you got to lean into your own style points. That's where it pays to know what your unique voice is, your unique differentiator, what is different that you can bring to the table? And also, this is where I think the skill of being able to think outside of the box is going to become even more valuable because the whole point of AI is that it's built off of what has come before. And so, yeah, it might be able to be, quote unquote, creative by putting those things together in a unique way. But so far, I don't think there's a match for the human ability to think outside of the paradigm.

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: Just like our consciousness is so limitless that I think we still have that leg up. Now, I don't know if that's going to disappear at the rate that it gets smarter, but...

Jason: I think to your point about style points, the thing that I would really want to hit home there too, is if you're seeing that, oh, maybe there's not a lot of uniqueness to what I do. Maybe I kind of do this thing that I do the same way that a lot of people do. Like, let's just take, like, copywriting, for example. I help write copy for people's sales pages or their emails. And I'm starting to see that I don't have a chance to compete because an AI can do it. It's like okay, great. So what can you do in that niche to get better at it? You could go one direction, which is just really lean into the AI tools. So how can you become really good at using those tools to write copy? And then be the person who can then lead other people to go, hey, I can help with all of your prompts. I can help with restructuring. I can help with taking an AI landing page copy and humanizing it. That's what I do. That's my craft. I'm very good at that.

Caroline: I know all the prompts to use. I know the best prompts to give ChatGPT. So you almost become... It's like instead of competing against AI, you become an even more attractive sell to your potential client because now they don't have to learn how to use AI to make their copywriting more efficient, right?

Jason: And I think the other way to go is you can then, going back to the style points thing is like, what is your extreme unique voice that you can do that an AI really can't do? Because as good as they can get, someone has to be extremely proficient at prompting, at being willing to have this thing rewrite something multiple times to get like a human voice that has humor or has sarcasm or has whatever. It can do it, but it's not great. If you can get really good at that, and that just comes with honing those skills, practicing, writing a ton of things, getting better at it. But again, you might hear that it's like, oh, now I have to do all this extra work. It's like, okay, you can look at that one of two ways. You can either do the extra work so that you still have a career and you still have an income, or you can let things pass you by and then you're going to have to go do something else. There's a way of thinking about this and like a opportunities, not obstacles. It's kind of the way that we always talk about this is like, this is an opportunity for me to get better at something I was maybe truthfully, honestly... and we can speak about some of this for ourselves as well, just mediocre at. I wasn't that good because I've been doing it for a long time and I just never needed to feel like I need to get better. But you do have to get better. And that's I think a big part of all of these changes is understanding where your kind of mediocrity is in your business and just up leveling that to a way that makes you stand out or makes it not replaceable by some copywriting tool.

Caroline: Yeah, and I'll just go back to my previous point, which is you can guarantee that this is not going to be the last piece of technology that changes everything.

Jason: It's going to come even faster next time.

Caroline: Next time, it's going to come faster and faster and like, yeah, there's a part of that that of course is scary because it's uncertainty and what does it all mean? And we don't know yet. But I just think to myself, what are my options? Is it to let that fear overwhelm me? Is it to let that fear make me ignore reality? Is it to let that fear kind of allow me to crumble under the uncertainty of it all? Or am I going to decide that this is my opportunity to practice resilience, to learn how to be adaptable in my business, to step into my own ownership as a business owner and learn how to ride some of these waves so that I don't crumble underneath it all?

Jason: Yeah. You want to chat about just a few ways that we are using AI right now just in case anybody wants to kind of hear how we're doing it? And I do love some of the way that you think about the percentage of which AI helps in doing things. So I think the phrase that you've been using a lot is like just getting the clay on the table.

Caroline: Yes.

Jason: And so I think about that, my brain thinks about that. And like, a project is 100% to get to completion. AI is helping with the first 25%.

Caroline: Totally, yeah. You kind of tripped me up because when you said percentage, I was like, I don't think of it... but it's because you interpret it as a percent. I interpret it as this metaphor. My visual metaphor is the way that... And we don't even have a very streamlined AI workflow in our business yet. We are very much in exploration mode. I've been really curious about what things my brain thinks of to put into. And really, we've only been using ChatGPT, really.

Jason: A little bit of Notion AI.

Caroline: Yeah, I stopped using Notion AI because I just was using ChatGPT for everything and then it basically does the same thing. But I've been curious of where my brain goes of like, oh. And it's anything... sort of now I'm stopping myself between when I think to myself, oh, I'll Google that. And if it's a more complex thing that sort of has anything to do with analyzing multiple things to find an answer, I'll go to ChatGPT instead. So that's one way I'm using it is just from like a search perspective. Another way I've been using it a lot is sort of example data. So in our coaching sessions, we do a lot of examples and in terms of... we're teaching marketing concepts, right? And then I'm like, okay, here's my business. And so I will ask ChatGPT to come up with a business. So then I'll ask it to like, if I'm teaching about newsletters, come up with a newsletter idea and really just kind of populate with example data. So that's one thing that's extremely useful because I don't have to think of that creativity. Sorry, going back to my metaphor, though.

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: So the way that I've been using it a lot when it comes to content creation is just getting something written so that I can then mold it and manipulate it into my own way. So if... I going back to the example idea, if I wanted to come up with a newsletter topic, I would ask ChatGPT to give me a list of 20 using whatever my prompt was so that I could just get my wheels turning.

Jason: Exactly.

Caroline: It's just getting clay on the table. And then some of them are crap. And I don't care that... I'm like, that's not even the direction I was trying to go, but one of them will give me the seed of an idea that will get me to what my brain was already going to do. And that's how I've been using it is like just clay on the table. And then I come in with my little clay tools and I'm like, Ooh. And I chisel out like whatever the final product is going to be and that works for me.

Jason: I think one of the things that you did that was really fun was in our coaching session last month with email marketing is you basically were like, hey, give me a table with five email service provider tools like MailChimp, ConverKit. Tell me the price that they have, tell me their unique feature, and then tell me something else. And it just like spit out a table.

Caroline: If you didn't know, you can ask ChatGPT to give you comparison tables and it's a game changer.

Jason: It's fantastic. So I just think little things like that are actually really helpful because again, we could do that and put that information together. But it's nice to have a tool that just does it for you. One of the things that I thought would be fun to mention, I know we haven't specifically used this tool to publish content, but you were playing with it and it was really fun just to see it, how it was doing. It was the video one.

Caroline: Oh, I forget what it's called.

Jason: Isn't it just like Video.ai?

Caroline: No.

Jason: But it's like a really weird spelling of video?

Caroline: What is it, babe?

Jason: Well, anyway, you found this tool and basically what it did is you can just upload a video file or a link and it will chop it up into what it thinks are like short segments. And you can assign the different aspect ratios, you can assign the different length of clip that you want and then you can do all these interesting little edits that it does for you automatically. But then you can go in and tweak. Like you can tweak like the cuts. You can tweak if there's two cameras, it'll then split it. You can tweak the text size and shape, the color, obviously. All these different things. Even if we can't remember the name of it, I'll put it in the show notes.

Caroline: You are right. It's Vidyo.ai. But it's spelled V-I-D-Y-O dot AI.

Jason: And again, we haven't used that to publish any content, we just use it to play around. But I think it's a really good example of exactly what we're talking about. Especially if you're someone who's maybe like a video editor or whatever. Don't run away. Go. It takes me 3 hours to put together short form clips. Let me use this tool and see if I can cut my workflow time down in half. That's a great thing to be able to do.

Caroline: Because I think the thing about all this... listen, I know there's going to be a lot of you listening to this, you're like, great, more tools, more things, more content. It's just going to lead to more noise. And I get it. But the thing is, marketers have been adding noise since the dawn of time. That's never going to change. I get it. It's overwhelming. But the way that I choose to think about all of this is like if I can use these tools to cut down on the processing time, in order to distribute things, in order to just feed the content engine. What that can do is free me up to actually think about the message that I'm trying to say, which is going to... That's the stuff that actually breeds quality content, right? Like if the machine part of it becomes easier, then it means that the part of it that's harder, which is actually coming up with the message, actually coming up with the thought provoking purpose of your content in the first place. You can have more brain energy for that. So I'm hoping there's one direction where this will go, which is like, okay, crappy content can just now be outputted ten times more easily. So that's just going to lead to crappier content. But I also hope that there's another direction that it can go where really good, thoughtful people can now create more, which means that it can actually compete with the people who are just creating crappy content.

Jason: And that's the point. That's the point of tools. You can dig a hole with your bare hands, but it's going to take a long damn time. You know what helps... go faster? A shovel.

Caroline: Right.

Jason: You know what helps go even faster? A backhoe. You know what helps go even faster? Like a bulldozer. All of those tools that advanced have put a previous tool out of commission or just made it look absolutely stupid. Listen, in Tears of the Kingdom, there is no way I'm picking up a wooden stick or a tree branch anymore. I'm looking for the traveler swords. I'm looking for the Royal Guard Sword. Like, I'm not going to pick up tree branches anymore because I know there are better tools out there.

Caroline: Yes. And I really like that metaphor because where I go with it also is and the thing about it is you can use that bulldozer to either dig a bunch of holes for no point whatsoever, and now you just have a field full of holes, or you can use that bulldozer to plant a tree. You can use that bulldozer to do something meaningful with it. And so with a lot of these tools, I think our brains immediately go to like, now there's just going to be a whole bunch of holes out here. But it's like what we're not opening ourselves up to is the idea that maybe a lot more people can plant trees now.

Jason: Yeah, I agree. Absolutely.

Caroline: It's all in how you look at these things and it's all about your perspective.

Jason: And listen, again, this is not the episode that we want to get into the ethics of these things and all that different stuff. There's a whole conversation to be had about that. But it is the same type of conversation with social media. We all know that social media is rotting our teeth in metaphorical terms, especially like the TtikTok-ification of content and not being able to put your phone down before going to bed and all of those things. But yet people still continue to use them and business owners still continue to use them. And so it's about figuring out what your version of enough is on those things, your version of acceptability, of using them. There are just certain things, like, we just don't want to do paid ads on Facebook or Meta, whatever it's called, anymore. We have made those decisions because we're like, we just don't want to give money to that company in that way.

Caroline: And it also means, but if somebody is doing that for their business, I'm not going to throw stones.

Jason: Absolutely not. We draw our lines in the sand and... we're not angry about it. This is not like a black and white thing. It's just like we're existing in this weird middle of this goop of time of all these different things, and we just have to be okay with the fact that some people are going to be okay with doing some things. We heard it on another podcast of someone saying, like, what percent of cringe are you willing to have in the way that you operate your business? And listen, we all know there are people out there who are like 100% cringey. It's just not fun at all to consume any of their content. That doesn't have to be you at all. And so it doesn't have to be 100% of your businesses using AI tools. Not at all. You don't have to do that. But it is kind of silly to not at least embrace the fact that some of these, like, ChatGPT, like the Vidyo.ai tools of the world. I think it was... Will you just look it up real quick? I think it was MyAsk.ai was the one that I told you about, which Caroline is going to confirm that URL, but it basically is like it indexes your entire website and then it can help build like a personal chat bot based on your content. Is it MyAsk.ai?

Caroline: It's confusing because there is a MyAskAI.com.

Jason: I don't think that's it. I think it was dot AI. I'll look up the actual URL and I'll put it in the show notes for what it is. But what I found really cool about it was, essentially, you put in your website and... I think that might be it. I don't know. I have to look it up.

Caroline: Okay.

Jason: But anyway, again, we haven't used this, but it was one of the ones that stood out to me of like, oh, this might be interesting for us to look into, which we'll kind of get to this summer and how we're going to spend our time. Just kind of like, what are we doing the next two months? But this is one of those things, like, I want to look into something like this more because I am very interested in we have now 200 published articles on our website. It's hard for people to find good content.

Caroline: That they're looking for.

Jason: Is there a better way with AI tools to take all of that content, have a tool be able to regurgitate it in some way that's more helpful and quicker? Because it's so hard to get the golden nuggets of content that we wrote years ago that are buried amongst a bunch of other stuff. So, anyway, I'll link that up in the show notes if I find it.

Caroline: And I think it's interesting in exploring that because the more people switch over from, like what I was just saying, the more people switch over from a search mentality to a chat mentality, I think that is inevitable.

Jason: Yeah. And I do think there's something to be said for the humanness of chat shouldn't go away. So when someone emails into Teachery customer support, I really don't ever want to have the robot customer support because I hate that so much when I go to websites where you're, like, you ask a question, it's like, I'm Janet the robot AI, or I'm going to help with your issue. What do you need?

Caroline: But do you hate it because it's bad?

Jason: Yeah, I hate it because it's bad.

Caroline: Okay, but what if it's good?

Jason: I've never had a good.

Caroline: Well, I know, but we haven't been in the middle of an AI revolution before.

Jason: Stop it. But that's what I'm saying. I think there is a time and a place for a humanness to it, like a chat experience, but then there's also one where someone doesn't need to chat with us if they're on the Wandering Aimfully site and they want to look through our articles and just have a better experience searching through our articles.

Caroline: Right. Speaking of tools.

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: You wanted to share a tool that... a shovel that we've been loving lately.

Jason: So this is a great example of a tool that is not an AI tool.

Caroline: Yes.

Jason: A tool that I do not believe AI can do in the next couple of years anytime soon because of the complexity of how it works.

Caroline: Although, to be fair, I don't know how they do the auto generated zoom.

Jason: It's based on your action. So it's based on, like, when you move the mouse.

Caroline: But that has no AI?

Jason: Oh, I don't know. It probably has an algorithm, if we're getting actually technical about it, but it's not an AI as we think about it, where it's doing...

Caroline: An intelligent... okay, okay, okay.

Jason: Anyway, this tool is called Screen Studio. The website is Screen Studio. It's $89 for a lifetime license. If you want to use our affiliate link, and we very rarely do this but I actually really love this software, so our affiliate link is in the description. It's a longer link. So I'm not going to waste time saying it. But you can check out the website, you can check out the link. But what Screen Studio does is it's another screen recording app. But what's really cool is it records your face, it records your screen, and then it gives you a ton of post recording options to edit that video, but then also track you as you're doing things.

Caroline: It's amazing. I'm not sure you did the best job of describing that.

Jason: Sure.

Caroline: Let me give you a scenario.

Jason: Yeah. Well, I was going to give a scenario.

Caroline: We just finished up creating for our WAIM Unlimited members a full Notion operating system called the Client Off-Ramp OS. And it's designed specifically for freelancers who want to transition from clients to products. Built this whole system, recorded some videos to show people how the system works. So what I do is I open Screen Studio and you set what your microphone is, what your video is. I record my screen, I move my mouse around. I do all sorts of things. I'm explaining what I'm doing. And then after I hit stop from that screen recording, Screen Studio plops out this beautifully... timeline, this beautifully designed timeline, where at the certain points, when I'm clicking on something, when I'm moving my mouse to one area of the screen, it zooms in in this beautifully glide-y, very smooth way that draws your attention to what I'm doing with my mouse. And it puts your video in the corner, kind of like a Loom video, but in this nice little stylized way. You can add a little background, you can add a little border to your window. And the whole thing takes what would take hours and hours of editing in editing software and produces this very slick screen recording video.

Jason: Yeah. And I can tell you that even just the setup alone of doing this... to replicate this would be very difficult because, like, a QuickTime when you record your screen. So this is a Mac only tool, sorry, for all of our Windows users, but, like QuickTime, it records in 25 frames per second. Screen Studio records in 60 frames per second, which means there are more frames per second. That's why it's smooth. That's why you get the smoothness of, like, a quick scroll. When you record in QuickTime, when I punch it in in Final Cut Pro, I'm only able to punch in 25 of those frames per second. Which is why it can look choppy, or why it can look like, oh, I wish that was smoother. It's because you don't have enough frames. Now, there are ways around this. There are other apps that do this. But that's the beauty of Screen Studio is it's doing this for you. So I just love that you sit down to record a video. You just recorded ten of them. But you sit down and record, turn on your camera, turn on your screen, you record. Afterwards, very quickly, there's no rendering, there's no nothing. The thing you just recorded is ready, ten minutes of a video. It already has the pre done zooms. So all you have to do is just go through and a new feature they added was actually trimming on the timeline. It didn't have that before, but now you can trim the timelines. You can cut out any of your flubs, and you can then go in and you can adjust the zooms. You can do all kinds of stuff. You can increase the mouse size so it's easier to see. You can slow the zoom down. You can make the zoom bigger or longer.

Caroline: And you can make like a branded background so that the videos look nice and branded.

Jason: And it's a very powerful, to me, worth the $89. If you do any type of tutorial videos or helpful videos, it just looks so much better. And so I'm going to re-record all of our Teachery help videos here, probably this summer, I would guess.

Caroline: Gosh.

Jason: And so I'm actually kind of excited. Where you say gosh? Yes. If I was doing that in Final Cut, it would be a gosh, but because I'm going to do it in Screen Studio, I'm like, I'm kind of excited because I know it's going to look better and I know it's going to cut down... It would take me an hour to clean up a normal screen recorded thing with my face on it. And listen, I know I could use Loom. I know I could not edit it and it would be fine, but I want it to be an experience where someone watched it, they go, whoa, this is the quality they put in their help doc videos? Their app must be really good. Absolutely is. Get in there and check it out. So that's our shout out to Screen Studio.

Caroline: It was just top of mind because we were using it for these tutorial videos, and we were just both like, wow, this is worth $89 ten times over.

Jason: And the best thing is things like DaVinci Resolve, which is like the most popular editing software right now, is free. That's great.

Caroline: It is free?

Jason: Yeah, but it's so cumbersome. Screen Studio does one thing so well, and again, it's like having the shovel. It's like this thing does this thing really well. I'm so happy to have it in my tool shed.

Caroline: Totally the bulldozer if you think about it.

Jason: Thank you so much. All right, let's talk about our last topic here, which is what are we doing this summer with these two months that we're going to be on break? Just laying by the pool, drinking piña colada.

Caroline: Piña coladas.

Jason: Eating guacamole.

Caroline: We're going to do a lot of things.

Jason: Rubbing suntan lotion on each other's backs.

Caroline: You, like, paused for a long time. I was like rubbing suntan lotion on each other's what?

Jason: I was going to say butts.

Caroline: Oh, that's why. I knew it.

Jason: But my butt's not exposed.

Caroline: Yeah.

Jason: Embrace that European life and have, like, have a...

Caroline: Speedo?

Jason: My butt has never seen the sun.

Caroline: I literally just pictured it. Please don't do that. People in this neighborhood are not ready for your butt.

Jason: Oh, they're not.

Caroline: It's nice.

Jason: Anyway, what are we actually doing now that my silliness has run the course?

Caroline: I have declared this summer the Summer of SaaS.

Jason: Hello. Now you mean like sass?

Caroline: Sass? Yeah, sass.

Jason: No, you mean...

Caroline: No, I mean SaaS, Software as a Service, but also sass. Yes. I am very much looking forward to not only resting and taking a break before we hit the ground running in the fall, but also learning. I love learning. And this kind of folds back into the conversation about being proactive with this AI thing, not reactive. And I know that, as a business owner, you're always going to be reinvesting in your skills and reinvesting in... There is always new things to learn, new ways to level up. For me, personally, I am finally at this place where this year we made an effort to finally devote a lot of time to Teachery, and I think we've made good on that promise. It's the most we've ever together spent on Teachery.

Jason: I think we've done a ton of foundational stuff. We haven't done a lot of external facing.

Caroline: Right, because that's how we have done everything. I forget where I saw this, but I really like this metaphor of like, the wider the foundation, like the taller the building that you can kind of build or whatever. And it just makes sense to me of like, you are going to have to spend a little bit of time in order to lay the bricks, in order to build whatever you ultimately want to build. And for Teachery, not that we want to build this huge, epic thing, but I do know that the vision that we have for it is going to require skills of me that I don't yet have. And it's going to require me to speak a language that I don't always have the words for, because the software world is of its own subsection of business and entrepreneurship. And part of that is also me understanding that, for my own confidence, being able to hold my own in conversations with developers or the future of our business...

Jason: You're going to learn Rails, what's going on here?

Caroline: I want to be able to speak the language, and that takes a time investment in learning this new skill. So, yeah, it's going to be a Summer of SaaS, and I have a few things that I want to learn in terms of... and I don't exactly know what that's going to look like yet in terms of what resources I'm going to seek out, but I believe in the value of education and building your own curriculum. So if you're listening to this right now and you know that things are going to be a little bit lighter on your schedule work wise this summer, maybe set your own Summer of whatever.

Jason: Yeah, I'm excited. I'm going to be along with you in some of the Summer of SaaS, but I do think it's also good to diversify our skill sets. So I don't want to just like, tag along to the exact same things, but I'm actually really curious to start looking into some potential AI options for things that happen within Teachery. Things like writing a sales page copy and could we integrate with an AI tool that someone could give a prompt for their business and say, like, I'm a branding designer and I teach a seven-part system to getting someone a logo and a brand identity they love. Write me a sales page. And if it could work within our Teachery template, how cool would that be? And then obviously, we would prompt someone to go in and say, hey, go in and change this, have it be your voice. But you don't have to start with a blank page. I just think that there's some really interesting opportunities. You showed me some of the things that other platforms are doing, but just some ways to think about little things to make everyone's life a little bit better within Teachery. And so some of the things I want to investigate. And then just in general starting to... I think we're going to have a new Teachery homepage here in like, a month, and we're going to have these new themes which are really exciting to get out there and to actually go like, okay. I feel like we've got our bridge from people finding Teachery to people using Teachery and being really happy. The bridge is solid. Like, six months ago the bridge was good, but there were a couple of cracks in it and maybe the bridge was hard to find, but now it's like, okay, we feel really good about the bridge. Now, how can we figure out what do we want to do to attract more people to Teachery that might be different than what a lot of other people are doing in the online course space? Because, listen, we're not going to compete on articles, and that would be a strategy, we would say, for a business owner. But that's not something I want to do with Teachery. I would do that with an info product business still, but with Teachery itself, I want to have fun. I want to have it be our sandbox to play. So I want to think this summer about what are some of those things that are fun to do, that are unique, that are interesting? And maybe we'll still do some article stuff for sure, just like cover the bases. But I also want to really lean into just having more fun with that business.

Caroline: Definitely.

Jason: So that's going to be our Summer of SaaS. Obviously, Patty will be here, so it'll be a lot of sass, you know what I'm saying?

Caroline: Oh, yeah, she's the sassiest.

Jason: And, yeah, we'll be back in your ears in August. So date is not exact on that, but in August, you'll see...

Caroline: Before you know it.

Jason: Yeah. We hope you've had an enjoyable time listening to our show as we've been here. We hope you don't miss us too much while we're gone. Hope you have a good summer if it's summertime for you. If it's winter for those of you in the other hemisphere where that happens, oh, boy, that's weird. It's just weird to think about right now. Some people are getting into winter.

Caroline: But I'm very excited to come back in August and be recharged, be excited. Have new content for you.

Jason: We may have a 23rd listener by that time.

Caroline: It's a goal.

Jason: It is possible.

Caroline: It is possible. Anything is possible.

Jason: 22 to 23...

Caroline: Listeners.

Jason: It's possible. I can tell you what's not possible: making a better batch of cookies. I made the best that I've ever made. For me. I'm saying I'm not saying, like, the best cookies ever. I'm saying for me.

Caroline: No, for you.

Jason: They're the best I've ever made.

Caroline: Right.

Jason: So I'm going to retire.

Caroline: Great.

Jason: I'm actually going to go make that bread that I have rising. Yawn. Okay. Goodbye, everybody.

Caroline: Thanks for listening. We'll miss you. See you in August. Bye.