How To Build A One Person AI Business With $0

0:00 AI is about to change your world, but everyone's telling you what to be fearful of and what to be scared of. Today, I sat down with Pierce Lenny, an ex-dragon, a multi-millionaire, and someone's business I just invested in because he knows so much about AI, he can make sure you don't get disrupted. And instead of giving you a basic list of AI tools, we're giving you practical advice on how to make AI work for you so you can build a one-person business that runs itself. Let's go. Right. What's the first thing we need to learn? So starting with AI the first thing people forget right is that you've got access to all human knowledge uh and also the more you use them the more it learns about you. So ideas right getting started it's about you know validating and ideas essentially so you don't have all the answers but now you can use AI to understand everything you can about

0:47 you give it context or people forget this don't just give it one line give as much context as you can about you your background your expertise your education what your likes are your dislikes what your dream is what interests you what doesn't what are your strengths and weaknesses give it everything and then ask it okay based on this here are my ideas But what other ideas could there be that I should be focused on? And then when you've got a list of ideas, you've kind of whittleled it down. Okay, start validating them. Ask, okay, well based on this idea, how would it execute? What's the first step? What's the competition look like? If you're using AI, you can use any, you can use OpenAI, Chat, GPT, Google, Gemini, Anthropic, whatever works for you, perplexity, but use them and start then doing the research. You've got access to basically a room of PhDs you can send off using deep research. That's what it's called

1:34 to do the research for you. >> I'm just thinking about the audience listening to this. My my my instant fear when I for the audience when I hear you explain this is they'd be scared to give away all their information. So I've got an app called what's your dream? People can download it on the app store Android store and you can go and ask it you know to figure out the dream with you but we've noticed that people are scared to put their information in there that what do you think about that side of it? So people need to understand okay there's a fear of where does the information go okay think of think of as a model as a as an intelligence a brain essentially and your context your information your ideas the research you want it to do it's using that intelligence to deliver the results you want okay your idea isn't going to be sucked into this model and then disseminated to humanity it's still private in a way you got to be slightly careful it's not a lawyer it's

2:21 not someone where like a doctor but you shouldn't be worried about that Right? This is having access to an infinitely patient, all knowing sidekick, mentor, business partner, co-founder, right? And you've never had this before. Most people because of these fears or not not learning to use it properly aren't using it properly. And if you do, you're already ahead of the game. >> Give it information that's going to help it understand you as a unique human being and how the ideas and and things that it could help you make money from are related directly to you. So if you do like fishing, tell it. >> If you do not like crypto, tell it. >> And make sure that the machine understands all the data points. >> Just give it more than you probably think you need to. >> Right. Over over explain.

3:08 >> Over explain. Okay. Great. All right. So what next people need to know? >> So the next one then is so you've got your you got your idea, you've validated it or you validated maybe several ideas because you you haven't quite whittleled down which one to do yet. The next one really is strategy and start making decisions. So by that I mean if you got your list of ideas, you got your dream and also you might have one dream but there might be different ways of going at it. So you start to whittle down the strategy and decisions about how do you start moving it forwards and that includes things like you know what are the difficult questions okay um what are the risks how what what assets do I need? What how much finance do I need? How many people do I need? And people don't often can't do this because most people have not grown up. I was a banker and a lawyer and an accountant, you

3:54 know, I went to university, all this kind of nonsense. You don't need to do that anymore. You can now have literally and this is why management consultants as you all know are struggling. You know, McKenzie's of the world. Okay. They're kind of going away because now you have a McKenzie literally in your pocket >> and and the decision side. Quickly, just quickly before we move on, explain a little bit more about the decisions. What do you mean by that? So a lot of people when you're when you're trying to start a business, okay, it's it's decision paralysis almost that you think you well often sometimes you don't know how to make a decision because to make a decision you've got to be able to take information and then analyze it and based on that process is then pick the best route. It's never going to be perfect. Any decision I always say to my children is better than indecision. >> But most people struggle to make decisions. So even now you can spin up a

4:41 couple of AIs and say right here's one customer type and here are three different customer types so personas almost and say based on my coffee brand in your case for this persona what should it look like what should the plan be how would I how would I reach them what would the branding look like so now you can almost people call it AB testing you can now A to Z test everything what that allows you to do then is make a decision if you can't make a decision ask the AI to start making decisions for you quite frankly Because if it knows you and you've been honest and you've explained and given it all this context, it will help you make decisions. >> I think making decisions in life in general, people don't actually know. They get, like you say, too many options. That's another way of putting it. They have too many choices and they don't go and dedicate themselves to one thing >> or you haven't got the confidence that you know enough to make a decision. Well, now you don't have that problem.

5:28 In business often, as you know, it's a path of least resistance, isn't it? What this allow you to do is find the path of least resistance based on the access, the assets, the guidance you've got. >> I love it. Okay, so people have come up with an idea, they've got a a strategy, they're ready to make decisions based on that data. Then what? >> So this is where your favorite subject, you start to think about, you know, content and marketing. And by content, I'd do that in in its broadest form. Everything from your collateral to to your brand actually. And then how do you once you've got an idea, you've got a plan, you've got a strategy, how do you let's call this go to market really. How do you take this product to market? And that's the thing where let's face it most venture capital goes in people technology but a lot of it's gone in marketing. So the question is how do you do this but in the most efficient and

6:14 optimal way and not thinking you need a plan where you've got to throw millions of pounds at something as you know it's starting small but so now you uploaded yourself your context you've now uploaded a plan okay your product what it is how you want to go to market what what you wanted to do now you're asking it okay based on that and all your access to this knowledge how do I start how do I take that first step how do I go to market how do I get my first customer do I prototype >> and right Now all of these processes we're already going through now open AI can you can use it to do >> you can use this other thing people get confused with okay you can use any AI but the issue is is try and use one because if you you use lots of them now you might use different ones to do sort of make images or video but in terms of the dayto-day try and use one because

7:00 >> you have all your data >> it's got memory now so it's it's building this context and memory over time >> because if I I want to download all of my thinking into all of my brain into one AI and then all these other AIs plug into it later. >> So that's where the world's going to go. So people now worrying about SEO and the internet, the internet's going away. So your AI will know everything about you. It'll know your heartbeat, your mood. It'll know your your, you know, your listener what you need for the barbecue the weekend, what kind of Barbie. It'll go off and talk to corporate AI. There going to be no internet anymore. So you got to think about >> they'll bring it to you based on your mood. You need to take vitamin C today. Here's a couple of links. You know, sort of >> links. It'll go and talk to loads of 455,000 supplement AIs that sell supplements and it'll do a deal. And if you're giving it

7:45 authority to actually transact, it'll buy it for you. So again, with AI, when you're looking at what your dream is and starting a business, this mistake people make, don't perceive the market and the world you're going to be playing in as it is today. It's about to change dramatically. >> Interesting. Yeah. And content marketing, people hear it all the time. So AI, you know, and things like what Google have done with Vimo3, is it VMO3? That you can literally come up your marketing campaigns as well with these. So they can literally come at your physical imagery. >> You can almost make a TV advert quality uh video these days with audio. You know, it costs a bit of money to do that, but the day is coming. You if you know creative agencies, it's your background. You can now create any content. >> You can conjure anything that's in your head into reality. So I'm quite

8:32 creative. I wave my arms around a lot, but I'm rubbish at drawing, right? But now I can have an an idea, a concept, a video, an image in my head, and I can literally use one of the many platforms to conjure that into reality. >> If I was starting a new agency today, I think the prompts is where the value is. So you need to tell these things the ideas >> for it to really make something totally unique. Number four, what's next? >> So it's the product. And >> by the way, a lot of this content and decision and ideas can help you come up with a product. Now, some people might come up with a product first. actually you might want to go through this process first. >> Yeah. So I would I would probably put this here actually. Um so product or the service. So this is the key to it. Now often you've got a great idea of what the product or service is. Now again when you're starting out in business, people can be locked into what they think the product or service should be.

9:18 >> So what you can do through you've got your context, you've got your ideas, you've got your strategy, you've now done a bit of market testing. Maybe even if it's virtual market testing with virtual personas, you can now start to test well actually is there a market for my product and you have this thing called product market fit and what you have to do is either change the product or change the market you're kind of going after and eventually they align and that helps you take your product to market. So with AI you've now got the opportunity to and this goes from physical product. I mean I've got a 3D printer at home. I don't know if you've got one. I got my I've got my 3D printer. I love it. And I can I can have an idea. I can doodle it and there are platforms you can doodle. It'll turn it into a 2D image. I can turn it into a 3D image. I could turn it into a CAD drawing and I can print the thing. Literally, you could not do this 6

10:04 months ago, a year ago. Prototype something, a physical product. >> This is such an important thing for you guys listening. So many people come to me and say they want to launch a shoe brand or a t-shirt brand or you can make one or two now as samples to even sell online as a pre-order for example. Right. So then you've got other product which are more sort of knowledge products and that's then a question of creating lots of different versions of it and and testing it and triing it and finding the people you want to sell to and as we all know people are afraid of doing this getting in front of them and getting feedback. >> Totally. Right. Number five. What's next? >> So number five. So you've now got your product or service. You're using AI to create decks and collateral and and documentation. So now you're starting a business. And now what AI is fantastic at is automation. So now you got to ask

10:50 yourself what are the 10 or 20 things I need to do every day or every week. Okay? And this is what I do in my business is automation. So I look at it as um this there are three vectors right. Look at it like this. Variability something which you you do lots of different things all the time. Velocity like lots of data and you then you got value something really really high value. So you won't use an AI say call agent to try and call somebody and sell them a very expensive product. Okay. But something is kind of low value, you will. If there's a huge amount of data, you'll use artificial intelligence. If there isn't, you can use yourself or humans. And if it's variable, you're doing lots of different things. AI is not very good at that. It likes like simple workflows. So, if you've got low velocity, you've got reasonably low to midval, and it's not too variable, AI can do it for you. If you're the opposite, you should do it. And

11:37 everything in the middle, which is a growing number of things because the AI is getting better all the time, is where you augment yourself. So look at what do I need to do? What is the workflow? What is the process? And then automate >> and this is the key to it. >> This by the way is probably one of the biggest mistakes people make in business before AI. They don't make enough processes. They have they make it blind on them and then when they're on holiday the business doesn't work anymore. >> Or you hire somebody, they they learn how to get get things done and for whatever reason they leave and you got to start again. >> So now you don't. The beauty is these people and AIs they never leave. >> And for making an automated system is there is there a type of prompt you'd recommend? I mean I think for a lot of

12:22 people let's say for example I I work with a brand called high level they automate your email marketing and stuff like that. So there's tools out there that are already doing some of this automation for you but what give me an example of an automation AI would do as a practical you know prompt. >> So there are different types of automation. Okay. So you mentioned one there where the place to start is the AI that your existing application providers or SAS providers software as a service providers are providing. So they're trying to add AI to everything. Okay. So start there and use that because you're used to using it. The problem is Simon is that once everybody's using the AI within the existing applications, it's like having been spellch check. Everyone's got the same thing. So how do you differentiate? And you differentiate by doing what you said is you write down literally no matter how boring you might find it your processes, your workflows

13:09 step by step and you look for AIs or you can build AI. So you can now take applications and take AIS and you can knit them together. You can use different platforms or lots of them to bolt together workflows and process. So write me this and then once you've written it uh draft me an email and put the email in my draft. Okay? Managing your inbox. Lots of things you can do, but don't try and be too clever. Okay? I always say start with the things where AI is good, it's reliable, and it works, and where there's a return on that investment for you in terms of time or money. >> You can do things which are very clever, like video production, for example. And the tech's there, but it's not quite there yet, but you're going to learn over time. to focus and automate on the things that are the most mundane, the

13:56 most repetitive that you have to do and that frees you up and your team to add more value. So number six really is about this is your creative support. The point here really is is to start thinking, okay, you've got your product, you you've automated the process. It's now that iteration, that ongoing process of testing your product, testing your marketing, talking to your customers or talking to avatars of your customers. You can now set them up as AIS essentially content collateral writing and you're an expert at this that constant iteration which can wear people down or can become very expensive. So the archetypal example I think is copywriting. >> So no matter what you do, you have to write something and it might be it might be emails. You might not be very

14:41 confident at writing emails. Now you can get help doing that. There's no need anymore to have any uh worry or concern or doubt about communications or writing anything and lots of people fearful of that. So creative marketing now becomes actually extremely powerful. But as you were saying the key here is is to learn how to use AI. You can have the best copywriter or the best business email writer or letter writer in the world on your desktop at your fingertips. It's also creative empowerment really. You might not be a creative. Okay, you might not be very good at mathematics but now you can be. So whatever you thought you weren't particularly good at, you now can be. And what this does, I think it empowers people, gives you the confidence. This is why I think everyone

15:28 can become an entrepreneur because this whole uh AI world is now giving you all these tools. You don't even need to come up with the ideas anymore and then the system will tell you how to do it. That's why I think the whole world is going to have to become an entrepreneur as well because a lot of jobs are going to get taken away from people to >> I think the gig economy is coming for all of us. >> We talked about this a lot. So every organizations don't want employees anymore. They want people to be there for discreet projects and to go on in life whether it's your business or even your career. You've got to be an absolute monster, a killer at using this technology. Otherwise, you won't be able to differentiate yourself. >> Seven. Let's keep going because it's blown my mind. >> Seven now is the big one. So, analytics. So, now you're motoring, got your business, you you feel empowered. You've got AI helping you automate the mundane.

16:13 But what it's really about is and and this can be analytics, metrics, how much money you make, whatever you want to, and insights as well. So the way I look at this is like this. Imagine you're a soldier looking across a field. It's dark you and then suddenly someone gives you night vision. You look across that field and you can see things now that they can't. That gives you a competitive advantage and it means you can react to it. The thing is you can now use all the data you have. I don't care if you've got a corner shop. I don't care if you got a oneman person. You're doing you know jet washing people's drives. You can now look at data across an area, your customers, where they are, how much they earn, what you should be doing, how your website's working or isn't as the case may be. >> Use AI to give you your night vision into data. That's competitive advantage.

16:58 And this now is something that only big companies could do. Anyone can do it now. >> So, just as a business example, so when uh we bought the house we're in now, my wife looked at all the crime rates in different areas and worked out that this street was the lowest crime street in Britain. one of the lowest crime streets in Britain and that made her want to buy the house. Now I don't see anybody say for example in the property industry giving those sorts of insights into when you buy a property like the house is nice that you know maybe the bedrooms are nicely done the bathrooms are good but if you could get AI to tell you that the crime rate and you are selling houses in the lowest crime rate location for example in Britain you can start to use these insights and analytics to be a completely different type of business >> thing is that the the existing business owners often they're doing what they do the way they've always done it and they're stuck in their way >> and they're using AI to try and protect

17:44 what they've been doing the last 10 50 years or even longer. Now there's an opportunity just to look at things completely differently and don't just tweak around the edges what everyone else is doing. Just think how do I build an AI first business like you just said there. You might find the property websites they could do this very very well. >> So always think AI first. >> Every single business can be disrupted if you even if you just use this part of this video and got every single business that already exists and started thinking about it with AI analytics first. You could probably beat most companies today. >> And what's amazing is this is what blows my mind. We've done this for a customer in the um healthcare sector. So you got the known knowns, things you know you need to know and you kind of know you learn it. Okay. Then you got the known unknowns, things you need to go and look at and research. But AI is fantastic at the unknown unknowns. Okay. You can just

18:29 give it a data set and say based on everything you know about me, based on my plan, based on how things are going, just tell me something I don't know. And it will look at the data and say did you know that these customers are buying this if you do this this many times? You I never knew that. Mhm. >> And then you can double down on it. >> Okay. Number eight, >> big one. So this is the kind of thing that a lot of people look for, people reach out to you for. So you've got your business, it's going, you know, you got your analytics, you're selling things, >> but now what? It's that it's that confidence, you know, the imposter syndrome sometime when you start to do well, the mentor, the support. And >> I use people think I've got all the answers, right? I don't. I use my AI as my own infinitely patient mentor >> uh and sidekick. And the beauty of these

19:16 things is they're never going to second guess you. They're never going to judge you. >> Where does the data source come from the mentoring? Because that's by the way why I built my app because I want people to know it's come from me, but where does the data >> so yours is a great example. So your your app is you. So you can now mentor as Simon Squib. Um but what you've done here going from 1 to seven, think of just think of the amount of data this AI has now got. Now, this is your business at the same time. I mean, mine's got my ECG. >> So, you're giving me a date about your business, but also about your personal life. I talked to about, you know, some personal things sometimes, just ideas. What do you think about this or the children or how do I get my kids for the GCSEs? >> It's like a secret diary. I want to read it now. I want to read all your prompts or questions. You don't want to read it. >> You definitely don't. So, so all that context about you is now okay. Well, given the support and don't forget this

20:02 has got access to all human knowledge about most subjects. So again, when you go through all of this, you know, AI can change your life, but don't completely cognitively offload, >> right? >> You've got to be using your the wet wear in our heads. But with mentoring though, it's like any mentoring is that it's really about the context, asking it questions, and then like any mentor, you just said there, I've seen that as well, is you know, you don't just run off and go and do whatever is said. You're taking in data and information and the mentor might give lots of ideas and you can apply analytics and insight to it to actually check what the mentor is doing. You can actually use I've done this quite a lot. You use two different AIs. >> So say what they're saying. >> Here's the context versus >> yeah now you can't all this context maybe but you can give us some ideas and

20:48 say what do you think about this advice or this as you set up as a mentor. >> So number nine what's next? >> So number nine is really is now it's the innovation isn't this? People talk about AI that's out there and it is and it's dial up internet. Okay, it's going to get a lot better. But now with the this technology is moving very very quickly. I always say we're living in an exponential world now. People are still thinking in a linear fashion. So if you can just change your mindset actually it'll make a big difference. But then use this then say okay my product's doing this and it might be doing you know two three five 10 grand a month already whatever it is. Do I grow that business? Do I tweak it? Can I innovate? How do I develop it? or do I start another business and it might be completely different but it might be adjacent as well. So start to use it to sort of innovate as well because one

21:34 thing you can't do in the world in which the world we're living in very very soon >> is less than your laurels and stop you always have to keep moving. I I gave a talk to my um daughter's um business studies class A level students and Btech in the UK they're all about 17 whole class said who's using AI and most people put the hand up. I said what for talking to your friends having a laugh they all kept the hand up. Who's created an image? One person puts a hand up. Probably my daughter actually. Who's created a video? Nobody. So very quickly, >> the the skill set AI drops off very quickly. >> You just got to jump on and do it. >> Yeah. You you've got to become an absolute expert. >> I I also think with the innovation thing, I would tell everybody >> that they should imagine a world where everything you think is normal no longer exists. So for example, people think websites are going to be around forever.

22:21 I'm already seeing where straight away people are just going straight on Tik Tok shop and selling. We can already see this, right? They don't have a website. They go on Tik Tok shop and they sell on Tik Tok. There's no website. So, I think we need to realize how much change is about to happen and you can start imagining. Imagine, you know, write your own like crazy new world and build a business around it. So, what's the last one? What what do we not want to miss out on? >> So, the last one really is so your business starts to grow. Um, I always say use AI first of all personally. You use a bit of an expert yourself in your organization. new starters do all these things especially this one here which is automate but the last one really is about an optimal organization AI first organization and productivity you know in my business we have a we have our strap line is this grow your workforce not your payroll >> so here you can have it's the infinite

23:08 team >> what's the name of your business by the way just script >> implement AI >> I've just invested in his business so just disclaimer there I've invested in it because it's brilliant and I I I will put a link down below if anyone wants to find out more >> so implement AI. Um, but this is the infinite team. Okay, you can now it'll just be you. But once you know what you're doing, you've the validation, you got the plan, you've automated, you've tested it, you've done the analytics, you know, you got the mentor and support, the confidence, you know how to innovate. Now it's a question of scaling up. And when you scale up, most businesses have the issue of as your as your revenue grows, your costs just go with it. In the worst case, your costs actually they increase. In AI, >> most people are raising money because their costs are more than >> doing that, isn't it? In AI, you want to basically disengage the two. So your costs hardly move, especially people,

23:55 but your revenue grows. And that gap in the middle is profit, dividends, wealth creation. >> Yeah. So if I if I want to be more productive, let's take my business, what I'm doing, h what would I do? How would I be more productive? >> So I guarantee you said it actually. I'd guarantee if we even if we sat down together and went through everything you do and you you wrote down literally the processes the workflows and you look at you say where in there can I use this technology today or it's nearly there in say 6 months where can you to automate some steps now you don't want to auto you've got 10 steps say you don't want to automate one and 10 because there's all humans in the loop in the middle you want to automate one to three 3 to 7 to 10 but try and automate as many steps in workflow as you can and the other point is which you might find if you look for your businesses is don't just try and automate and and everything the way

24:42 you're doing it today. >> So, I'll give you an example. So, we had a a recruitment company. They recruit um kind of, you know, builders, joiners, brick layers, you know, roofers for construction companies. They've got 200,000 people in their database. Got a room of about 10 people making calls all day. Are you available for work? Only cover 5,000. Our made 3,000 phone calls in 3 hours. contacted 500 people and found 50 that will work. >> Wow. >> But they would never think like that because they've never seen it >> and yet the existing system works as far as they're concerned on that. >> So once you understand all of this, you got to start thinking about productivity wise how to use AI in ways that other people aren't. >> When I come to productivity, I always like Yeah, there some tools aren't there yet. By the way, there's this tube ad where the company did. >> Yeah, I won't mention the name, but I

25:28 think that's one way of going. Yeah, I mean because but it was basically the tube ad was um >> don't hire humans and I was about to say it and I think it's their ad that got in my head. That is kind of a scary point around this, isn't it? Because productivity does like you say doesn't increase cost but increases your revenue. So more people need to do this >> so that as they don't get hired coming out of university for this, right? >> Cuz so we said it before the gig economy is coming for all of us. >> So if you're not being hired, you got to find a way of working for yourself. hire yourself and you have to and I know it feels scary but if you learn all of this stuff if you apply it even one of these things get deep into understanding one of these things then you won't need someone to hire you you'll have your own business and someone will want to hire you because you know how to do one of these things >> so if you can do all of this even if you end up working for somebody for a period

26:14 of time you are going to find yourself in in gainful employment >> yeah we have to save humanity and this is one way uh give them the tools to have a better life I hope you enjoyed that guys We're now off to have some chicken, but you can subscribe to this channel if you want to learn more business for free.