# Your Best Ideas Feel Too Obvious to Share Channel: Max Bernstein Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B53bl4pviG0 Duration: 1 hr 9 min Language: English Words: 12981 Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/B53bl4pviG0 --- [0:00] We have Max Bernstein who is a pretty good friend. We've been in connection for however long. I'll let you introduce yourself, but if I need anything related to AI help or even marketing help or even branding help, like Max is the person I would first go to for that. So, Max, tell everyone about your background, what you're doing [0:24] now. Hype yourself up a bit. give yourself the credibility so people listen, all that good stuff. Um, yeah. So, I like like you said, I've been in marketing my whole life. So, I started in uh experiential marketing, traveling all around the country, putting on events. Did that for about seven years. Then I got into brand management in the pet healthcare side. So, managing uh some large uh pet dog cat uh fleet tig brand. So got a lot of brand pharma experience. Then went to consumer package goods. Got some uh went from fur babies to real babies. Was managing some baby brands. And then um like most [1:05] people during COVID, I was home and caught the internet marketing bug. And that's actually probably when we met. I think it's probably right around co time. Yeah. Um and I just got obsessed with it and started doing marketing consulting and um just helping smaller businesses and other consultants and entrepreneurs. Um, and then two years ago I had just gotten story brand certified. So really love Donald Miller's messaging stuff and got certified in that. And that's right when I think chatbt 35 came out. And after I just paid a ton of money to go get certified in that, I saw uh someone showed me a prompt that just uh pretty [1:43] much did everything I just paid thousands of dollars to get certified to do in three minutes. And so I realized I better uh I better fix that and I better shift. So, um, I decided that day to go all in on AI and, uh, I've been obsessed ever since. So, it's 12, 14 hours a day of just, um, playing with tools, experimenting, teaching, building. Uh, it's so much fun. And one of the the paths that I I've gone really deep into, um, that I think we're going to talk a lot about today is using AI to lean into what makes you human. So there's such a [2:21] there's a massive narrative these days around, you know, AI commoditizing people or commoditizing expertise or treating, you know, employees as a line item. Um, and a lot of what I do is I use AI to uncover what I I call your invisible expertise. So, um, and we can get into the the details of exactly how we do this, but it is able to go and look at, you know, especially things like your transcripts, your your past content, um, potentially interviews, and pull out so many of these patterns that you have inside you, these your the way you make decisions, um, your blind spots, your mental models, all these things that only only [3:00] you have. um and help you be able to see those, be able to articulate those and turn it into intellectual property, turn it into content. Um so it's been tons and tons of fun. Yeah. And I know you're working with [clears throat] a few big names right now and like when you show me what you do for them, it's it's pretty cool and I feel like a lot of people don't realize you can actually do that. Um, so like as an example, it's like you would work with a very large personal brand. You would help them figure out their cognitive fingerprint, so to say, which is what we'll touch on uh in this [3:37] live for a bit. And I've even seen you do things further just like build out funnels really fast for them using AI and whipping up offers left and right just to be able to test and iterate on things super fast. But the thing that comes to mind when you say that is I've recently like gone through a content crisis myself. Not because I think AI can like somehow replace my writing, but just because I I feel like I've said everything that needs to be said. And I know that's a wrong thing. Like when I actually question that belief, obviously not like I can continue writing. I've [4:17] written for so long. I I know that I can do that. and I uh got back into my groove so to say this past week. And the thing I realized that may help a lot of people here is that for me content, good content really comes down to just having a really cool idea that you want to write about that you're excited to write about. That idea could come from a book, a YouTube title, um a YouTube video that you want, literally anything. a conversation. You just need an idea that you think is very cool and worth [4:53] sharing. And then you need to find the right angle to position that from. So the way that I like to do that is I'll look at my best content. I'll look at uh the most popular YouTube videos from a specific account or my account because the more views it has, like sure that may not be reminiscent of the value inside the video, but it's reminiscent of things that people want to click on and watch. So then it's like, okay, I [5:19] have a few angles I can work with here. I have an idea I really want to write about. How do I kind of merge these two together? [snorts] And that's kind of where the secret lies to me is like I may use the same angle quite a bit and look like I'm talking about the same thing, but the ideas that I'm rotating in that I want to study, learn about, and kind of ease in there, it makes it a lot simpler to do. Um, but when the when I realized that Max had something here, uh, you I forget how it started, but we were talking about how we're using AI, [6:00] and then you kind of just like pulled a bunch of my YouTube videos. You pulled a bunch of my content. you sent me a Google doc called the cognitive fingerprint that just listed like first I'm pretty sure it listed like all of the patterns that are there. So all of the ideas that I talk about over and over again and that made me realize like oh I I do kind of repeat myself but it's because it's a very important idea and it's a part of my brand so I need to continue repeating that. And then the second thing there is it revealed um kind of the patterns that I may not have [6:36] realized before. And so once I was able to make those conscious then it's like oh okay I actually have this solid set of ideas that I should just repeat over and over again from the different angles right so that they reach more people because it's not like I'm ever going to dive into a billion different niches. It's like I have maybe 10, 20 very core ideas that I think are very important that shape my [7:04] worldview, my beliefs. I need those front and center because then creating content is kind of like especially writing newsletters is like playing with Legos. It's like I choose a validated idea or an angle. So, how to fix your entire life in one day. People want to people want to read that. But then I pull from my cognitive fingerprint so to say to kind of just weave things together to create a unique piece because um how to fix your entire life in one day is so clickable, so broad that anyone who writes with that topic is going to write something that's unique to them if they weave in their own [7:45] concepts, ideas, etc. So, what you're here to show us today is how to find or reveal the concepts, ideas, etc. that you may not realize you have. Mhm. That allow you to stand out. And in my case, what it helps with is have a lot more clarity when you're writing. Yeah. Exactly. And I think at least you know my hypothesis and why I like to follow your work is because you could tell that you're you're genuinely passionate about like what you do, right? You're not writing about all these metac like cognitive thinking models and studying all these philosophers and doing all that extra work on on your walks because because [8:29] it's work if I had to guess like right you probably doing something else like you genuinely enjoy it and so it it really is like finding what you know what you're interested in what makes you unique what makes you different really leaning into that and then on the other side of it is to your point finding that that cross-section of okay what what can we put at the top of what is the top of funnel thing to get people's attention and and just finding that intersection and um and if I had to guess that's what's also allowed you to do this for so long right like if you didn't enjoy [9:01] doing this like there's no way you'd stick with it every day and spending hours and hours you know it'd be miserable dude uh one thing there before um after this let's let's go over the cognitive fingerprint I feel I feel like we're building it up a lot but one thing that comes to mind there is like I know so I know my audience very well, at least the ones that like really resonate with what I write. Um, we share the trait that [9:26] like we actually have too many ideas. Like we have all of these interests. We um like dive into these really deep uh philosophical texts and other things, other just like weird concepts that we like geeking out over. But the problem is that like when people try to write about those things or to become a creator so to say they the example I give I don't mean this to be harsh and it's kind of an exaggeration but like you're not Marcus Aurelius right you you can't come and write you're not Alan Watts either like many people you can find exceptions but you're not going to come and write this [10:07] super clever spiritual tweet or Substack note and just watch everyone one view you as being as insightful as Marcus Aurelius or as Alan Watts. Like you can have those ideas but you really need at least what helps me is learn how to package those in a way that people actually get the value out of. Like save the deep stuff once you already have [10:31] their attention. Yeah. And what you do a really good job of too and bringing back to this is you show them how to apply it, right? like like I I've you know in this process I've looked at a lot of your work and what what you do is you always just even though some of these con concepts could be very very uh let's call it like technical or or complex you're always able to bring it back down to and here's how you apply it to your situation or here's how you fix [10:59] a problem with this type of thinking. Um, another thing, and it supports all of this stuff too, is, and I've talked a lot about this, is people can just feel, and I I think especially these days where everything is starting to sound the same, and it's so easy to create content, people can whether or not like you say, "Oh, that's an AI pattern that like you recognize in the writing." Like that's that's that's the easy thing. But there is a feeling that people get when you are just getting something generated and it's not coming from like a genuine interest or genuinely from you or or you know [11:34] there's almost like a different frequency that that comes off especially over a longer period of time that you obviously have because you are deeply invested in this you care about it and so I think that comes through in all your content as well. Um, so super cool. Last thing there is like I'm I we're dragging on, but like maybe maybe this helps some people is the for me if I read over my newsletter like I'm very hyperritical. Like I I feel like I have the traits of being one hyperritical but also just being like this is good enough post it right. I don't like I don't let the hyper [12:16] criticism get in the way of like me hitting the deadline of actually publishing the newsletter. But the hyper criticism makes me think and question like way too thoroughly like could someone else could someone else have said this or could AI have said this? Most of the time, like, yeah, AI probably could have said it, but even just running through that filter makes you think about like what you're actually trying to say. What's the value you're actually trying to provide? You keep coming back. What's the actual takeaway I'm trying to give with this piece of comment? And is it piece of [12:52] content? And is it actually hitting? Right? I can just zone out and write a lot and let my thoughts run wild, but then when I read back over it, I'm like this. There's nothing here, right? What is this leading to? And so just Yeah. It's like metacognition for your content. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's always like either what is the problem I'm trying to solve or what is like ensuring there's at least one unique insight in everything [13:19] every every piece that you do, right? like like you could build an easy prompt for that of like just as a quality check before something goes out, is there one unique insight in this? Am I solving a problem? Um, etc. Do you want me to um do you want me to show the the website that kind of the overview of your stuff to kind of give people an idea of what it is or do you want me to save that and [13:39] get out the other stuff? Uh, let's start with the fingerprint present. The first link you sent. Okay. Yeah, we can dive into other stuff just to show all of it later. Um, but yeah, as you're pulling that up, um, someone mentioned like being able to One thing that pisses me off so much right now, this is why I'm so hyperritical, especially right now, and why I kind of fell into that content crisis, so to say, is on YouTube, on Instagram, you can just tell blatantly that people are reading off of an AI [14:16] script. It's the same thing every time. It's like it's hook. It's like a decent hook, but you can tell they're reading a script, so it like doesn't feel like they're talking to you. Yep. It's like, okay, you got hook and then you have like three sentences. It's hard to explain. No. So, you know, I I can go deep into this too because so like it's just the AI has leveled up, right? mean like it's uh it's it's moved up a step. Before it was like again it was the very easy phrases that you were able to catch. But as AI has gotten better, it has become [14:54] more sophisticated. The writing has gotten better and it sounded better. But there is still like almost these meta patterns that people are starting to catch almost on a subconscious level. And so even though the content is different, everyone is still sounding the same because AI is writing it and they're still using a lot of these same patterns. They're still using the the most people most people never do X like that that most people or most of you are saying never do what what they won't tell you like it's always problematic solution almost in all these YouTube videos now um they're they're pulling from like the old direct response videos if I if I see [15:30] uh nobody talks about this I know it's instantly AI you it used to be like oh you read cash advertising now it's like oh you wrote this with AI yeah and and there's little things like I went deep into it like if you notice AI now is always using if you ask for like an example it'll always be like yeah last Tuesday like it uses Tuesday all the time now and I [clears throat] I was like why why is it always using Tuesday and so I actually like went deep into that as nerdy as I am and it's like well Monday is actually like a really [15:58] like popular day in this one in like the the self-help niche. So that got really saturated. So we AI tries to avoid that that Wednesday is hump day. So it already has a day. Friday is uh kind of like the happy hour ending day with the weekends or weekends and then like Thursday's boring. So basically every other day was already taken and so Tuesday [clears throat] according to the algorithm is actually like supposed to be the most non-defaulted day but because of that you just look at everybody's content everyone says Tuesday in their stuff and you just know that that's I haven't noticed that. I'm gonna keep [16:30] Yeah, it's funny. So like but it but it's more of those little things that like that you just start picking up on. Yeah, it's funny. All right, we'll we'll dive in. Um, this is this is a a short presentation because I I I get more excited by just screen sharing and problem solving and prompting and all that kind of stuff, but I thought it'd be good to give you guys a uh a lay of the land. Um, because this is kind of a a new concept. see if it ever so [clears throat] so much of this and what I dig into, especially especially with anybody that's been [17:08] doing something for a while, right? Like if they've developed a level of expertise, the better you get at something, the harder it is to explain that. I I'm sure you've experienced Dan with all sorts of stuff, right? But there there's Sorry, I'll I I'll stop interrupting, but No, no. I I I I like the back and forth. Okay. It's like if I write something down that I like is too easy, I'll stop myself from writing it down. And I'm [17:35] like, I need to over complicate this. Yeah. It's exactly that. And it's uh it creates almost this blindness to us all. And the the reason it happens is because the better you get at something, the more expertise you've developed, the that expertise is essentially it it's pattern recognition. It's you doing something over and over and over again. It's seeing the same thing over and over again. You're seeing what good and bad look like over and over again. And you're developing these patterns, this [18:05] pattern uh even awareness. And the way the brain works too is the more patterns you get, the more it starts chunking those in the back of your brain into your subconscious. That's how it's able to store them. And it's, you know, for uh energy and everything else. And so when you enter your zone of genius, when you're doing something like problem solving that you know that you need your expertise for, it is essentially activating your subconscious. I mean that that is why so many times you see this all the time with copyriters, right? like like we'll just look at a headline and so many times they'll just be like that that's just [18:37] you know like I I could tell there's something about that that's not right. It's not going to do well. I can't tell you exactly why but I just know it's not running or like like copywriters or you know anybody like doing something they'll get they'll get finished with it and you know right away people be like well how do you know that? Especially in any kind of consulting or coaching um they'll just have a feeling about why something is wrong or they'll know how to steal some c people in a certain direction. Um, and if you ask them why, they can't really tell you. They can't [19:03] really articulate exactly why. Um, and it goes back to the this almost this invisible expertise that we all have. And it it it's uh it's because it's chunked in our back of our heads. And so you are uh working through unconscious confidence when you're working. And what I love to say like this is the one thing and we'll we'll probably beat this over the head today is everybody because of AI because the way everything's moving so fast everyone is trying to create like always trying to create something new and every time I work with anybody um it could be businesses it could be um you know it [19:44] could be friends it could be you know like some of these bigger brands whatever it is I always tell them like stop looking to create new. You have so much that you've already done. There's so much inside of you. There's there's so much, you know, buried in there. Focus on extracting versus versus trading all the time. Like we need to go in there. We need to dig this stuff out and build off of that because there's so much that hasn't uh hasn't been extracted yet, hasn't been excavated yet. And when you could take that and then start turning that into to content, turning in the intellectual property, [20:18] turning that into assets, it's coming from such a different place, too. You're not going on the internet and just googling or just going to chatbt and looking for for what might fit. You're you're pulling from stuff that you've already done that is that is yours and is unique to you. And so when I start to look at how people think, I um I got super nerdy and started breaking down what you know what are all the the the different levels of of thinking you know what are all the data layers inside of somebody's head and when I started extracting this and like what I did with your stuff um and I [20:53] do for everybody too is I start breaking it down at at the very top level is declarative knowledge. Like declarative knowledge is all the the surface level stuff like when when probably when you're out and like and someone would ask you what you do you'd probably say like oh I do YouTube videos content creator something something you know just very surface level that's very declarative uh procedural is more of how you do things so a lot of the you know the the SOPs that people see like the how you're the the processes the step-by-step things which can also you know be cop copied pretty easily, right? Like anybody can reverse engineer [21:30] and copy step-by-step stuff. Um, again, any like it goes into automation. It's not to say these aren't important. These are all good, but you'll see as you start going down, we start digging deeper, it's the things that make you truly who you are and differentiated and it gets into to exactly how you think. And so conditional is you almost want to call this like your decision DNA. So when we look go back and again transcripts are so powerful for this because you know a lot of times when you're pulling a lot of these transcripts you're doing coaching or consulting or or whatever it is uh you [22:01] are in your zone of genius you're making a lot of decisions and so when you could pull out it's almost a these patterns of if then statements like every time then you say like somebody on you're interviewing them and every time they say this you always respond like this or like you know like and it's different for everybody. Everyone has their own set of patterns and if you start looking at somebody's body of work or a series of transcripts you're able to start identifying those and say yeah like just about every time this happens you make this decision and um you know and this goes across all sorts of things it goes [22:36] to people studying art it goes to you know you know I have people in finance that I work with like everyone has these too so it's really really uh really interesting to to dive deep into and the fourth and to me the the most valuable is your your metacognition, the stuff that you've gone probably probably the deepest in is how you think about thinking. And so you what are your mental models, what are you know all your different frameworks, all all these different things. Um and when you get that when you uncover that and then you use that and understand that to form the basis for all of your content and you're [23:07] able to articulate it, um it becomes very very uh very powerful. And what's what I really love about this stuff too is it's not just, hey, I went and found all this stuff and I like I'm I'm just putting it together and making it up, right? Like everything I'm describing is all based in science. Like this this like Michael Pollen stuff of tacet knowledge like the more the more uh we [23:33] know more than we could tell, right? Like it's it's the invisible expertise. You guys were saying this all the way back in the 60s like John Flevel was talking about metacognition in the 70s. Um they're talking about like the the unconscious competence in the 80s like so on and so forth and like the architecture of expertise. This has been talked about you know for over 60 years already. The science has been there all along. We've just never had the [23:54] technology to extract it at this level. Like I like it used to take if you go and you read um a lot of these old books about this thinking like it would take somebody out in the field studying people for weeks, months, years on end to try and uncover exactly what was going on these people and they still can't get as close to what we could do now in in 20 minutes with AI and the transcripts and the right prompts. And there's there's a uh there's a lot of reasons for that, but like the the one that I really always go back to is just AI's ability to hold like over like tens [24:32] and thousands of patterns in its head at the same time versus us. We can only hold, you know, between five I think it's u I'm blanking on the the it's like Miller's law. I think it's where you can hold like five like five plus or minus two things in your head at the same time. We just cognitively we can't hold that many patterns in our head at the same time to even make the different connections that AI can't. And then not only that, it could see and pull out the different dimensions that we're not even able to see, right? Like if I were to say like, you know, like if I were to [25:06] say like Dan, describe the like my black chair to me, like describe my chair, you'd probably be like, "Oh, well that's a ergonomic chair. It's black. It's got leather." Blah, blah, blah. where AI will take that and it would break down all the different dimensions of the color black and how you know and then all the different types of the material the chair was made in and what and how do those relate to each other and so it's just seeing these different dimensions and it's able to hold all that in its head at once. So now when you extrapolate that and think about that in the form of analyzing [25:35] transcripts or analyzing um any of this stuff um um it's able to take this and is able to set like look at the the voice pattern look at you know how often you're pausing it's looking at like your emotional cadence it's looking at all these different things to start pulling this out of you um [snorts] and so I pulled this in here um and I I want just jump through this actually would rather do it live because I I just pulled one of your YouTube videos for us to go through. Um, do you want to kind of jump [26:06] into that so we can we can see? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. All right. Let's see here. [26:22] Um, like everybody, I'm sure you got a million tabs open. I F3. So, I'll just quickly scroll just scroll this just really quickly just to give people an idea and then we'll take you into Cloud. But, this is this is a just very high level of what we did. We won't need to go through all of it. Um, but it it's super cool is you could see like the persuasion DNA the world graph you we'll get into these but what I really loved about this one Dan was when we were able to look at your your thesis evolution. So how like your your thinking actually evolved over the I [27:04] think it was close to five years when we did it. And then like looking at your world graph view of like you know you talked about like the the different um things that you talked about and and how you thought about almost like the world over time too. um and how you know it's it's centered around business but it has all these different almost like knowledge planets and you're able to really like track exactly like how frequent it was the connection to everything and and and like rank them again to to get a [clears throat] view of this over time. Um again decision DNA the evolution timeline that we talked [27:38] about I pulled in like the all of your articles um tons of YouTube videos. Um, I I think this one may not be updated with the YouTube, but we have your YouTube videos in here. And then even your voice, right? Like this was really fun to look at like what are the the words you're even saying all the time like your the different metaphors like you know 656 physical metaphors, gaming metaphors, you use those a ton. Um, rhetorical patterns like it's just so good. And so now when you think about this this like it could be almost overwhelming to even look at this but this is also like the patterns that you [28:13] you know that you're using too all the different times. So like this one writing is operating system in 19 articles and and and all this stuff. Um and if you click on these you can get into you know like moving into more detail on all of them. Um and as cool as this stuff is and we'll go into this thing. What is even more powerful is when you take all of that and you package it up and you give it to AI as a knowledge file. Because when you do that and give AI this as your knowledge file, it instantly knows so much more about you than any other of these, you know, [28:49] call like personal knowledge files, custom custom instructions that you normally see. And so it it's when it's able to think like you and help you make decisions because it knows your blind spots. It knows your your mental models. It knows all of that. It is it's able to to really be your strategic partner and help you think and help you come up with different uh ideas. And it's even more important now that everyone's using OpenCL and they're using Hermes or Hermes or however you call it and all these different personal assistants, right? like everyone's using this and they're giving him soul docs and they're doing all that, but how are they, you [29:24] know, really training him? They're giving him a personality, but if you can embed that with almost like a mini version of you of how he thinks, it just takes it to a completely different level. Yeah. This is actually kind of what I did in the past before like agents were really a thing is I created uh what I did is I fed a bunch of PDFs from books and other things of that nature of like the top seven thinkers who I've pulled a lot of my ideas from or who I've studied the most and have shaped how I think the most. Um, and then I kind of just like [30:01] had AI break down each of their worldviews, put those into their own markdown documents. Um, and then I was able to like feed those to AI whenever I wanted to pull something from them. Um, or just look over them, right? So, yeah, I'm curious about how one would start doing this. You said we're going to move to Claude, but another thing to just like keep a tab here. Um, Adangelo, you said, "This seems incredible for someone with a larger library of existing content. Any recommendations for reverse engineering without much published content or like how do you go [30:38] about this when you haven't said much? Is that more of like a kind of like an introspection type prompt that's kind of similar to like the intellectual signature one that I have?" Yeah, I mean there's there's a lot of different ways you could do it. So um if you have like the content content is good and what you had is good because you had a lot of interviews in there, right? Like so you actually like what is most beneficial is anything that is not presscripted because when it's presscripted it's giving you some stuff but it's not pulling out of your you know when you're in your uh your like [31:15] your true zone of genius when you're not thinking you're just reacting like when you're still like not even able to explain what you do like that's when it's going to get like the rich data. say like anytime you can record a call with anybody, record uh a consulting, a coaching, like any whatever is your your area of expertise, just record yourself doing it, right? Like just just, you know, there's a million transcription options out there. Millions of free ones like um I have it on the back of my phone, too, where I think it's like flawed now. So you could like even like if I'm out like and I get a call like [31:46] you just turn it on, you're like so you're always recording stuff. Um that is one good way you could have Yeah. there like the introspective prompt that you talked about and there's other ways where you can set those prompts up just to have AI interview you, right? So like it's um it's literally just like having an interview and you can just uh just talk back to it too. So just like flip on the microphone, dictate to it and just like [32:10] again try not to even think so much. Just like start answering and just like almost try and get yourself um just like in a a stream of consciousness, right? just ju just let it all out and just get your thoughts out there and then you can use AI to to unpack that as you start doing it over time you'll see these uh you'll see these start to develop and I think someone said what if I don't have a lot of published content to begin with I I've done mine without putting in any of my content like meaning like all of my stuff has come from team meetings [32:40] it's come from pulling out of Slack channels to see like how I'm like interact you know what how am I interacting with with uh with some with some of my partners There's like how uh any of my coaching calls, any of the consulting onboarding, like any of these things you just pull out and you start collecting and then you extract the data from it. You just start collecting over time. Um and we're going to we'll do some stuff where we can show you just even if you just take like a LinkedIn post or a like in this case, we just took a one of your YouTube interviews [33:09] and we go through it. Um and we'll give you some prompts to to to do this. And I got a whole bunch a whole bunch of prompts to do this. I have two things. The first um it's kind of along the same vein, but what I found super helpful if you don't have a lot of published content um is kind of similar to what I mentioned of breaking down the thinkers that you really admire. So if you are a notetaker as an example or you have a lot of notes um you have you pretty much just like curate a database of all of the thinkers and ideas that you [33:50] think are really important. So if you have a notes database incredible like you're off to a great start. If you don't, then you can stick with like the books, the other things that you've consumed um and like made a part of yourself and however you can feed those things to AI, put them in there and then I can't write a prompt off the top of my head right now, but you would ask for things like what are the general worldview of these people? What are the patterns that you notice between all of these things? Um, if you were to assign me a uh creative or intellectual profile, [34:27] what would it be? I just want like a comprehensive map of everything here and that'll there's a better prompt that you could use for that or think of for that. But you could just talk to those things for a long time and start to kind of realize your own thinking process through those because at least in my case like my way of thinking really reflects a lot of the content especially books that I consume. Um so that's a good way. The second thing here a question for you Max. Uh, nerdy dude said a really weird thing here is that a real productive component will happen completely AIless in a sense because if [35:08] interference is involved, if inference is involved, it's by definition pulling from a distribution of the training data. I'm curious. Would you say that it's better if you're uh I don't know if this answers the question, but would you say is it better to have your own content that isn't touched by AI rather than like, [35:32] how would I put it? having the AI interview you and influence the way your thinking is going and then pulling from that. I'm trying to understand I guess what what I'm trying to understand the original question like is it inference involved by the definition like is it saying I I'm trying is the question more along the lines like if AI is interviewing you it's going to try and lead you down in a certain direction versus letting you just get it all out of your head. So meaning the transcripts are much more valuable because it like AI is not involved at all and you're just bringing AI in the back end [36:14] is to act as a non-biased third party just to tell you what you want to know based off the prompt versus if AI is interviewing you can it lead you down a certain direction. Is that kind of the It it is kind of the question, but now that I'm thinking about it, it's like I mean the same thing happens to your thinking right now, right? Like your your thinking is biased based on the training data of society [36:37] based off that question, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think some of us Yeah, it is interesting. And yeah, I mean it depends how many qu like I mean if it's a preset series of questions that you come up, you know, and come up with advance for the interview like it could you could set in rules and guidelines on how it sticks to it and all it's doing is just you know just probing you. Um, but yeah, like and you know, I have one that's already pre-done, but I like to your point, Dan, like just to show people, um, like even if we were to do this and [37:14] show people like how how we could do this, like what is what is a thinker that you admire? Like you uh Daniel Schmuckenberger? Okay. C H M A C H T E N B E R G E R. You would have picked that one, huh? So like Yes. All right. Help me break like down how things like I don't want the surface level stuff. I am looking for the mental models he uses as well view the things he may not uh even know he knows and trying to fm a full cognitive profile of him. So, like it doesn't even have to be that uh like that intense of a prompt, right? Um [38:25] like it could be it could be a lot better, but like if you're just trying to get started, like you could start with something like this just to get start getting and and you know 47's very good. So, I guarantee you what we're going to get back to you even just from this is going to be really really good and enough to at least get you started because you don't you don't need to get like you don't need to get like very very granular with his stuff. You're just trying to find some of these baseline almost like principles of how he thinks and especially when you're [38:54] trying to like say things like things that he may not even know he knows. like you're going to get some pretty cool stuff. Like it's already looking at, you know, the recursive patterns that he uses and all these different things in here underneath. Um now he's comparing them to adjacent thinkers and blah blah like his his actual blind spots which is uh some of the prompts I'm going to give you guys today. Um like explicit mental models, tacid knowledge. This is all polony stuff. So it's going to go into it and then I'll show you again how to get started with this stuff. So you could start cuz what [39:26] you want to do is you want to figure out how you think about this stuff because inherent it's going to bring that out of you. Like what we don't want to do is now take this and just write a a bio on Daniel's like uh however you the hell you say his name I don't know. Schlottenburgger. Um but like like that like to that is just AI would just be AI content, right? anybody could produce that but it the molecu um but like when you start getting into this stuff like read what it like we we'll read what it says here and then what I would ask AI [40:06] to do is like pick out like three things that you're interested in and say okay now ask me to describe how like tell me about those and then ask me to describe an experience I've had with those or how I feel with those or my general understanding of that or how I would apply that, right? Like so it just gets you to even think and explore your own thinking because without that like starting from the blank page and just to try and write down like this is how I think about thinking is is is almost impossible. You'll never get to where you are. But if I could, you know, [40:37] take whatever ends up coming out at the end of this and then getting it to interview me about that, that's when I think it could be really powerful. you know, you'll start having your real insights and your own opinions about his work in in finding that cross synthesis that you're talking about, right? Um, and you can do that no matter what you're interested in. But again, it's based off of how you're thinking your experiences potentially, right? And now that is only content that is going to be coming just from you and not anybody else on the internet, not anybody else that's reading about his stuff because [41:10] nobody's going to think about it the same. like you were saying that before like that that one title at the top that you know will get people to click a million people could write about that same title and they're all going to write about it a little bit differently as long as they're relating it to how they they think about it or their [41:26] opinion of it um etc. And so if you look at this it's the operating system underneath everything close to a civilization operating system on top of personal cognition. Most thinkers have a topic the thing they return to. His topic is civilization itself. So his core mental models he reaches for. Um so you can go and like you can just see like does anything jump out? Like does anything stand out? Can you relate to any any of this stuff? Um the signature moves are always uh super impressive because they're like you could start keep building on these. You could build prompts based on all these which is [42:05] really fun too. So you could, you know, you can start building like, all right, give me his top three patterns and build me a prompt around it that I can use in my next situation, right? Um, and again, when you take that plus your, you know, let's call your your cognitive fingerprint or your your profile, um, it gets the thing underneath blah blah blah. But then here's where you'd say, you know, [42:28] uh, like take the top three insights. I'm just going very general here like you pick and then create uh three interview questions to ask me to help me figure out how I think about about them, you know, how can I relate my general opinion, etc. Right? Again, this is how you like to me also this is how you come up with different angles that nobody else is going to come up with too because like when I started with funny and then you again you cross synthesized from where this came from. It's just it's super easy content and this is not even what we planned on talking about today but I [43:13] think it's still I I think teaching yeah teaching people how to fish is is super important versus just handing over a prompt too. I think so. Just show them a little bit of of this too on this side to make it cuz so much of like AI and what AI show me is like you see all those studies about AI making you dumber like AI has made me what so much more so much smarter than I I I was before just because it's made me so much more curious and learning how to like how do I communicate with AI? How do I uh you know [snorts] break down [43:45] complex topics? How do you know how do you instruct AI? How do you communicate? um it just becomes and it just overall I'm just so much more again curious about everything. So like question one I I'll touch on something there. Um I I've realized that like I I've used AI in so many different ways and the thing that I found most beneficial is just using it as a [44:10] learning tool. Like everything has to filter through me. Um, I I feel like I still retain the philosophy of like if I don't care about the work, sure, AI can do the work, but if I care about the work, then like I've tried to let it touch it, I've tried to let it do it. And to me, that's what led to me feeling dumber is I'm not refining my thinking on the things that I care about. And so if I limit the the AI usage to being a learning research tool relating to those things, especially if I'm writing my newsletter and doing things like this where I'm like, hm, I I [44:48] reach a section where I'm like, okay, um, some Daniel Schmuckenberger stuff could come into play here, but I don't really know what. I don't tell the AI like, hey, how could I write about this, this, and that from Daniel Schmuckerberger in this section of the newsletter? I'm more so just like probing to get the right information to learn about how he would think and then like this how I would think about that and then I write it by hand in the newsletter itself so that it takes that shape and I kind of I mean I don't solidify the knowledge all the time but I definitely solidified [45:25] some of it. Yeah. No, 100%. Like it's u the when you get when you start getting like some of these patterns that you see with a lot a lot of people out there that are just mass-producing content like and if you're like doing it for you know a a direct like a DTOC brand or you know you're doing it to create ads like get that that's the goal like you're you're not doing it because it represents you it's it's for a product whatever but like if you're doing it for your content and you're doing it to learn it it's just such a yeah it's a different animal And [45:58] there's no way, like if you do it the right way, there's no way you're not going to get smarter and learn learn something else about yourself. Like it it's it's incredible. Yeah. Like it if it's your I I use the term life's work a lot and I I feel like even to myself at times that seems a bit grandiose, but like if you I don't know. I feel like that's where the most growth is. It's like it's worth romanticizing and it's worth like what else if it's your life's work. What else are you going to spend your time and thinking on? Like it's not something that you want to reduce the amount of [46:32] time that you spend on. It's the thing you want to increase the amount of time you want to spend on and learning. But to touch on like that's the thing is I feel like the people on social media who are just posting the things of like, oh, I had Claude write all my content and I gained a billion followers in this certain amount of time. I think about it, I'm like, like, yeah, that sounds really cool and like good for you, but what did you get out of it? like there [47:04] wasn't even a journey to grow on, right? It's like you kind of just like wrote something, boom, it posted it, and you got this result, but you didn't yield any fruit from it. It's like it's like the robot has made you a robot in a way. Like like you literally purpose like there is no purpose. You're just you're sleepwalking is is what you end up doing. And like like you almost get in that phase sometimes. I get it. Especially like a lot of work stuff where you just everything just becomes so automatic and you just kind of get into a rhythm, but then you like sometimes you'll get to the end of the [47:39] day like I have no idea what I even just did, right? Like it's just like what was the point of all that? Like it's like you just check boxes all day. Like versus like being genuinely engaged and like interested and and but it all start it all comes back to first like understanding kind of understanding yourself and why why I really like this like [48:00] understanding what makes you different. what like how do you think leaning into that and then following that right like and when you and then when you can articulate that when you could talk about how you think to other people when you explain how you do the things that you do how your work is different than everybody else like when you go into um I mean just think about like when like let's just say you're you know you teach people all the time too about you know starting a one person business and a lot of it starts with consulting right when you go in and you [48:30] need talk about your consulting work. Like if you go in there and you talk about, hey, I I can create a, you know, a six email sequence funnel with blah blah blah. Like the second you say that, you're a commodity. But if you enter in uh, you know, David Baker, another really smart consult that I follow too, like he always talks about like you need to enter every client conversation through the through the [48:56] strategy door, not the execution door. you're when you're living in that execution door with with what I just said with the the the funnel creator or the email, you know, marketer, whatever it is, you're living in an execution door and and now more than ever, that is such a place that is so easy to be commoditized. You're you're now you're you are just in the same bucket as everybody else. But when you enter in and you talk to clients about the way that you think and the way you make decisions in the strategy that you're going to help them with, that is now being put in a completely different [49:27] bucket than everybody else and a different value tier than everybody else. So, not only are you more differentiated, but by doing that, you're going to be able to to charge more. Um, you'll be able to talk about your stuff differently. Like, there's just so many advantages. And you're doing it from a genuine place. Like, you're not just going out there and saying like, I need to go find a framework. let me go Google how to you know put a framework together right like it is literally just based off of your experience of how you do like everyone has frameworks like if you go and record yourself doing something there's a [49:54] specific set of steps you take to accomplish that and so now you just need to be able to name it articulate it and and put you know make it intellectual property and so just for the purposes of showing you guys and we'll go into the other one too um with all the prompts I'm going to give you to do a lot more of this but uh All I said was, you know, answer these for me like since we don't have time to do it and it did it and I was like I agree like and it shows like what this exercise revealed and like if I wanted [50:22] to learn more it's gonna get me immediately and start thinking differently about these topics and how I relate to them. So when you when you can relate to it when someone can relate to a problem or a topic you're going to remember and retain it so much better. Dear point, right? Um, and then look how quickly these become very unique content angles that you could start writing and [50:42] talking about. I've I've written about some of these. I I It's funny we were talking about that in terms of like the fast content, but um yeah, I I've written about that specifically and I think it was a pretty unique angle. It I didn't do it this way or with AI. I think I did it before I was actually using AI but how fast content and social media is kind of like driving civilization into a hole. So from Schmuckenberger's perspective but uh paired with something that I am knowledgeable in or have yeah or experience in right like you could talk about I I can relate to this because of the [51:23] time that XYZ happened right um and and so yeah let's look at uh quickly before before you move on uh walk through like big picture steps uh TLDDR of what we did here. Yeah. So at the very basic level, pick somebody that you're like that you're interested in, right? So it could be uh and you know what we'll do here at a meta level. Can you break down the process that I just did so we can turn this into a repeatable [52:02] AI workflow? Yes. leaving the variable generalize. So anyone can use this. [snorts] It's exactly what you do. See another good meta AI type thing. Um everything's workflows now, right? With AI. So always always think. Um but yeah, so like I mean we we could see what it says because it's probably gonna do a better job than I did. But if you think it all the way at the top, it is like you picked a thinker. So, if this is something you want to do, you can do this for anything you're interested in, but we're we're talking about thinking right now, right? So, we we picked a [52:40] thing or we picked somebody that Dan you are interested in um to at least set the baseline, right? Is is almost like it needs a baseline to at least start with. And so, what that's giving us is giving somebody out there that it can go learn about and give you something to work around um and build off of. So, for here, like we we asked for a deep cognitive thinker, not a summary. Um, and if you look at the top, it wasn't just like, hey, tell me how this guy thinks. Like I I uh and I can share this with everybody too, but it's, you know, [53:11] I don't want surface level stuff. You always want to try and see like how can you get AI to go a step deeper than um whatever the default answer AI would give you is. I'm looking for the mental models he uses, his worldview, um, etc. So, I'm really trying to get the the full cognitive profile of who he was. Um, and I didn't do it specifically in this situation, but I would have probably picked somewhere in here a few [53:33] things that I was interested in, right? So, like the shadows I think could be super interesting to go into. And, you know, like I could say, you know, what what do all of his shadows and blind spots actually have in common or, you know, it's like just just whatever you're drawn to, take that and get AI to interview you about it. Because again, what you're doing is you're looking to extract something different about this person, understand how they think and then create the the like almost that that cross-synthesis collision with yourself to pull it out of you as well. And that's what we did. So, you know, take [54:05] the top three insights and then create three interview questions. You could pick a number uh to help me figure out how I think about them so I can relate, you know, uh how I can relate to them, my general opinion, etc. And so, yeah, that's what it did. And then um so pretend I answered those and then very super basic prompt. You could get much better versions. I'll give you much better versions in a second. Um but you know what would be 10 unique angles uh create newsletters about. And so again now it's created that you know it's that collision of ideas that's pretty much happened. someone who's that you admire [54:41] that's very well established and kind of you know extracted those from him and then got AI to extract how you feel about those ideas and it it created something very uh very uh unique and different but again something that you are would probably be interested in writing about. Yeah. And and the other thing is like all of this is something that you wouldn't have read or thought about [55:03] before. Not a chance. Yeah. I mean it uh it's almost like you you always want to just think about like how can I put my position or how can I create the environment to just let these ideas collide like and and so it is it's just like finding that one baseline thing and then as you'll see like in the the one of the problems I'll give you like how can you remix it? How can you combine it with something almost like from a completely different uh industry, [55:31] from a completely different category? Like you just want to keep putting yourself in these situations to let these these things collide. Um and and you synthesize them and see what comes out on the other side. Um but again, it all start it all comes back to you need to be in there somewhere because that is what makes the biggest difference. Um if you want to to learn to get smarter to stand out like all all these different things. Um, so is that a pretty good pretty good summary? And then we can could save this and give this to everybody too if this [56:03] is this interesting. Yeah, sure. That I I want to read through it because I just like I feel like with Daniel, he's like so high level. Like I I understand his like framework, but so much of how he thinks just fascinates me. It's like I want to adopt all of his ways of thinking because I think it's just very useful. It feels very like [56:33] unlimited if you know what I mean. Yep. All right. So, I'll have that creating and then we I quickly show you the prompt that I'll give people. So, I know we're at the hour. I don't know if how long I'm good to keep going. Um but you tell me. Yeah, we can keep going for a bit. Um, God is the gym after this. Got to get a [56:59] sick pump. I I do not [laughter] go chase the dogs around. Um, there's four of them, so it's a workout. Um, and so one thing I I created for you guys is a a a you're not boring skill. Um, and so I'll I'll make sure to to share this in the chat, too. Um, and you know, like a skill you can obviously install this so it's like it it can always have in the background. You don't have to copy paste it every time. I also [57:30] will give you the prompts individually. Um, they're all on the Google Drive, so I'll just give this to you. Um, and what I did is you you posted a video of you and JK Molina recently. Um, and so I all I you know, very basic. I just put the skill in. And skills are great because [57:46] they're they're pretty universal now. like doesn't matter if you're using chatbt or Gemini or Gawk or even like toss in the skill and it's going to read it and treat it because underneath the underneath the hood the skill is a prompt in some some reference files. Um and so I put that in there and then I put your your full transcript of that interview and I just said can you run this skill against this transcript? Um and I let it roll. Um, and so what it's doing, and we could we could um I could show you the prompt, but pulled a whole bunch of different things again because [58:18] we're looking to show people how you can, you know, from your own content. Um, and so this could work on if you have a LinkedIn post, if you have what I, you know, just you talking to a friend, like whatever it is, it'll it'll still work. It's going to it'll pull stuff out of you. Um, and so like prompt one, it's going to look for some metaphors and mental model miners. Um, so quote, you know, it's got like [58:41] started to pull in all your quotes. You're explaining what it reveals. Uh, a whole bunch of stuff here for you. Um, and then it's going to do the contrarian belief surfacer. So it's now it's so first it looks for the mental models. Um, then it's going to look for some contrarian beliefs that you have inside of this. So recurring revenue turns into conscious obligation when the community is built around the operator's [59:02] personal products. So, I mean, that's very uh applicable to all the stuff we're talking about right now. Um, so the hook re reoccurring reoccurring revenue is reoccurring work. Most recruiters won't admit it. Um, these are all good. Yeah, I could I I could create an entire newsletter about that if I wanted to get like super specific because like that's another thing is I I I have that I can say that if people ask me like, "Oh, what do you think about building a subscription or building a community, especially when school was becoming a thing and like everyone was starting communities?" It's like I already I'd already gone through [59:41] that and yeah, I could write an entire newsletter breaking that down and well, I think it's a good thing in many regards, but also like not what a lot of people are expecting or what they are doing long term or what they want to do long term. Well, I mean it's exactly that, right? Like the the the mainstream assumption is reoccurring revenue is the this is the gold standard, right? So it's like it's your contrarian belief. Um, and you have evidence to back back it up. Like so it's not like you just saying this to be different, right? Like and it's something you believe. So it's coming [1:00:18] straight from you like and I I I'm sure you Dancoy this, but like this is not a bad hook just even just for Twitter, you know, like or I think I got that or I mentioned it in the actual podcast with them, but I got that from Dicky Bush. Um, and then you know like I turned down [1:00:41] every consulting inquiry. Here's why. Like people who resent $150 course usually resent something else. That's a good you know like Yeah. Yeah. I can write like the problem is I won't publish it. You just said that again, right? Like after four hours I start producing work that I that shouldn't exist. Like just all these like these are things that like again going back to the extract don't create model like you already you you're saying all this now it's just like let's go let's go in there and get it. Um, this is very, sorry, this is very similar. So, anyone who's in here, you're a paid subscriber, so you have [1:01:13] access to the AI prompts that are on uh my newsletter. I'm pretty sure there's a deep post ideas one which is kind of the same thing where it's like you feed it a transcript and then it uh pulls out the paradoxes, the big ideas, the quotes, the pain points, like all of the building blocks of what content could be. And so I don't use it much now. I probably should. But what it would do is it would like take something like a newsletter or something abstract even like a book and like give me the things that like light up my brain in terms of oh this can become a content idea and I [1:01:52] can take it from here literally just with that sentence and then think through it on my own. It's like if because if I come across something in a book or on social media that triggers that same response like I'm going to do the same thing. So, how do I do more of that to think more in [1:02:11] that direction? Yeah. It's like again, it's almost uh creating the environment for that stuff to happen, right? Like putting yourself in that situation by doing these things. So, it's going now like all these looking for all these potential frameworks you have in here that you could do. um blind spot revealers, which is always very interesting to look into, you know, like over and over again. Um all this different stuff just from that one. It's something you've already done that you can start pulling out. And what it's going to, you know, like now it's going to ask you want to take one of these into content. Name the one that made Dan [1:02:44] flinch or the one that made you flinch on his behalf. Tell me whether you want five ankles, 10 hooks, or a fourmeg diagnosis, or a five-part series. I'd also suggest a worksheet that actually recommends walk back and then convert. I was like, "Hey, you just stick you know." So it's like blah blah blah and it's like it contains cognitive on the pen. So it's something I talk about a lot. Two truths that we can't resist the resolution. So it's telling you why it's good like because it's creating a cognitive not like a a paradox in the reader's head, right? Um which makes something much more compelling as far as [1:03:14] content goes. And then like five angles on finding 2.4. So like, you know, just the beats like it'll just keep going. Like so it'll help you just keep building this stuff out into content as you go. And again, you don't want to just like just let it roll the whole time. Like give it feedback like go back and forth with it. Like build these out as you as you go. Um and then again, we could just keep running with this stuff to to build out an insane amount of [1:03:37] content just just from this one prompt. And I could have taken this like a million different directions. Like I could run it again and pick something else and it'll go down a different path, right? Um, so super cool stuff. So I'll make sure to to share those and I have tons of other prompts you I'm going to give [1:03:56] everybody. Nice. Um, yeah. Any, uh, questions, thoughts, anything else coming to mind for you on this stuff? Um, I guess looping back to the topic, I I think the core thing here, like we can the the topic of this live stream is like you're not boring because I feel like I've talked to so many different people who just feel like they don't have something to say, right? They haven't I don't know. I don't even know how you reach that point, right? But I just want to instill the belief that you do have something and I encourage you to go and find it and to um or not find it but [1:04:51] extract it to like look at your own thoughts, ideas, beliefs through a critical lens, not through the lens of you so to say the person who thinks that those things are worthless, but trying to like see them from an angle where they could be valuable to someone else. Because I think that belief alone is the thing that stops a lot of people or allows a lot of people to write about those things and then that's the only way they get the feedback. Uh some negative feedback as comes with being a creator but a lot of positive feedback that like your ideas can really help people and that feedback [1:05:25] loop is so rewarding. Yeah, 100%. Like it's um you you just the the feedback is rewarding but it it's just the process like the process of of doing it to learn to understand yourself to you like it it's validating it's rewarding just to understand how you think like at the end of it when you when you go through these processes like you you will learn not you not only will you learn about the topic or whatever you're into but you'll learn something about yourself. you you'll learn to uh and here's the other one too. Um here like you'll learn different ways of how you felt about something, right? Like [1:06:08] and it'll every time you do this, you'll you'll get something that'll you'll use somewhere else. Like you you'll be shocked how one time you'll think you'll do something like, "Oh, that was just a quick throwaway exercise or that was the quot throwaway thinking experiment or piece of content." But I'm sure you see this all the time. You'll be in another situation where there's something you learned in that that you'll you'll almost pull in again like unconsciously like your subconscious will just go and grab something small from that. Hold it in. You know, that little piece will bring you the the thing that pushes it [1:06:37] over the top. It's like a it's the the comp compounding effect of doing this is is it's really incredible is just you build a habit. To me, it's so much more fun than just writing content to write content because you had to, right? It's uh Yeah. Oh, I I scrapped a draft earlier this week because I was like, "This just isn't like what I wanted to write." Like somewhere it took a turn and like halfway through I'm like, "This isn't it." Like this doesn't When I say this doesn't feel like me, I what I mean is like this doesn't feel like writing should feel. So, I was [1:07:15] like, "Fuck it. Scrap it. Start over." And the next newsletter that you guys will get, I think is pretty good. So, we'll see if others like it. But like honestly, like you kind of had to like maybe you had to go through that process of that first one just to get like whatever that was out of your head because it helped [1:07:37] Yeah. push you into a different direction or gave you like that wasn't the angle that I was actually looking for. It was it was this over here. Like it actually made me think about that differently. Like that wasn't actually what I was trying to say at all. What I was really trying to say is what you probably ended [1:07:51] up with. So it just it it you know you talk about all the time. People talk about it like it clarifies your thinking. Like that process of it being shitty and it didn't feel like you actually like helped you clarify what you really thought and and were thinking. Yeah. Well, that was awesome, man. Um Max, put the links in the chat. I'll also add them to um the recording. When the recording's [1:08:18] posted, you'll be able to click on it. You'll be able to see like a description. Max, you said you might write up something for it. Yeah, I'll do a Yeah, I I can do a nice recap underneath it and talk about some of these concepts with a little more depth for sure. [snorts] Okay, cool. And yeah, we'll include the links there so you can have the prompts, the remix room, uh, etc. Yeah. So, thank you guys all. First paid subscriber only [1:08:46] live stream. I hope you guys enjoyed it. We'll have more coming. I know Dakota Robertson wants to come on one to share his writing process. So, good stuff coming. Appreciate it. Thank you, dude. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for your time. Everyone, thank Max. clap in your room even though he can't [1:09:05] hear you. Okay. [gasps and sighs] All right. Thank you everyone. Yeah. See you guys around. See you, Max. --- About this transcript Read from YouTube's own caption track and laid out by ViewRank AI (https://viewrankai.com). ViewRank AI finds the videos already beating a creator's own average on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, transcribes them from the audio itself in more than 60 languages, and turns what worked into new ideas and scripts. Free transcript tools, no account needed: https://viewrankai.com/tools How to read any video this way: https://viewrankai.com/llms.txt