What if everything you believe about building a successful business is actually keeping you trapped? Most solopreneurs think more hours equals more money, but they're stuck in what I call the "hamster wheel of hustle" – running faster and faster while getting nowhere because they're doing everything manually. You become the bottleneck in your own business, and no matter how talented you are, there are still only 24 hours in a day.
But what if you could flip the script entirely and build a thriving 6-figure business working just 25 hours a week using an AI Assistant? I've brought you someone who's living proof this isn't just possible – it's proven.
Meet Tim Cortinovis – a man who's been working with AI for 35 years and has cracked the code on anti-hustle entrepreneurship. Tim is a bestselling author of six books, including "Agentic Sales: AI and the Future of Sales," and he's recognized as a Top 10 Thought Leader in Agentic AI. But here's what makes Tim remarkable: he's built a 6-figure consulting business that runs almost entirely on autopilot, requiring just 25 hours of his time per week. His newsletter runs completely hands-free with 40% open rates, and he's created an AI assistant named "Rick" who handles all customer communications. Tim isn't just talking about the future of AI in business – he's living it every single day.
The AI Hat Podcast host Mike Allton asked Tim Cortinovis about:
✨ AI-First Mindset: Shifting from viewing AI as a tool to seeing it as your business partner and primary operating system.
✨ Automation Architecture: Creating interconnected systems that handle research, content creation, customer communications, and lead nurturing without constant oversight.
✨ Strategic Time Investment: Understanding that working fewer hours requires more upfront planning and system design, but pays exponential dividends in freedom and scalability.
Learn more about Tim Cortinovis
- Connect with Tim Cortinovis on LinkedIn
Resources & Brands mentioned in this episode
- Tim Cortinovis
- Agentic Sales: AI and the Future of Sales by Tim Cortinovis
- 10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less
- Notion
- Zapier
- Make.com
- ElevenLabs.com
- AI Work Buddy
- How to Create Your First Custom GPT in 15 Minutes: A Brand Voice Assistant
- Descript
- Grab the free Scalability Audit and find your leaky buckets
- Follow Mike Allton on Threads and get more AI tips
- Explore past episodes of the The AI Hat Podcast podcast
Full Transcript
(lightly edited)
How to Build a 6-Figure Business Working Just 25 Hours a Week with an AI Assistant with Tim Cortinovis
[00:00:00] Tim Cortinovis: I hear this argument a lot that AI makes it so impersonal, and we're talking about personal brands, that's totally true.
[00:00:07] But the question here is, what do I gain using ai? And I think customers gain a lot of speed in getting more information, getting what they need, and getting things done with you and your offerings.
[00:00:23] I need speed also as the solopreneur. And I think AI is the way to, to get that needed speed. Sometimes I think that this human touch is overvalue, or at least to put it another way, I think it is sometimes an excuse not to apply AI. Because AI, to apply AI in, in that huge degree I do apply it, I think you need a lot of courage and you need a lot of trust to the system.
[00:00:57] So you need a lot of that, um, spirit of letting go. Put the system, trust the system, and let go.
[00:01:07] Mike Allton: Mike's got The Hat, the AI kind. Unlocking power in business, you'll find. Cut through the hype, explore the tech. Every week, new ideas to check.
[00:01:32] Allton leads us on a digital quest. AI secrets he'll always invest. Tune in tight, don't miss a beat. Knowledge, groove, keep you on your feet. Listen up! To the AI flow.
[00:01:55] Business growth, here we go. Cuttin' edge insights, that's the plan. With The AI Hat you'll understand.
[00:02:16] Greetings program. Welcome back to The AI Hat Podcast, where I selfishly use this time to pick the brains of experts at harnessing the power of AI across all areas of business. From streamlining operations and boosting productivity to getting a competitive edge and driving explosive growth. Oh, and you get to learn, too.
[00:02:33] Subscribe to be shown how to prepare yourself and your brand for this AI revolution and come out ahead. But what if everything you believe about building a successful business is actually keeping you trapped? Most entrepreneurs think more hours equals more money, but they're stuck in what I call the hamster wheel of hustle, running faster and faster while getting nowhere because they're doing everything manually.
[00:02:55] You become the bottleneck in your own business. And no matter how talented you are, there are still only 24 hours in a day. But what if you could flip a script entirely and build a thriving six-figure business working, Hmm, just 25 hours a week with an AI Assistant. I've brought you someone who's living proof this isn't just possible, it's proven.
[00:03:14] Meet Tim Cortinovis, a man who's been working with AI for 35 years and has cracked the code on anti hussle entrepreneurship. Tim is a bestselling author of six books, including Ag Agentic Sales, AI in the Future of Sales, and he is recognized as a top 10 thought leader in AG agentic ai.
[00:03:31] But here's what makes Tim remarkable. He's built a six figure consulting business that runs almost entirely on autopilot, requiring just 25 hours of his time per week. His newsletter runs completely hands free with 40% open rates, and he's created an AI assistant named Rick who handles all customer communications.
[00:03:50] Tim isn't just talking about the future of AI in business. He's living it every single day. Hey, Tim, welcome to the show.
[00:03:58] Tim Cortinovis: Hey, Mike. Thank you so much for having me. It is a total pleasure to be here.
[00:04:02] Mike Allton: My pleasure to have you. This is gonna be such a fun conversation. It's the kind of topic that I have been thinking about, writing about, struggling with even dare I say, on a day-to-day basis.
[00:04:13] I mentioned you've been working with AI for 35 years. I think that's longer than most people've even heard of. Ai. How did you transition from traditional work to building this incredibly efficient solopreneur business model?
[00:04:26] Tim Cortinovis: Yes, I was, um, my, one of my, uh, strongest uh, drivers here is I am, I have two lovely daughters and a wonderful wife, and I want to spend time with them.
[00:04:39] And me and my wife, we are, um, splitting the care work for our daughters 50% to 50%. And so. From the very beginning on there was a huge need to automate my business and I started, as you said, my journey into AI 35 years ago was, was a very nerdish young boy at my first computer in the 1980s. I started programming it with a, something like a chatbot.
[00:05:04] It had nothing to do with what, what we have today, but it was a first glimpse of that idea of the machine taking over some part of our thousand of our work. And so I got obsessed with it and I studied linguistics for the strong focus on computer linguistics. And uh, just after after leaving university with a degree in 2001, I started working in a, in a.
[00:05:28] First AI company. We automated websites in the sense that it could detect or this mic, and he's reading some texts, uh, on deserts. And so we can propose him the latest coffee table book from the publisher about the SN desert. So that kind of thing. And, uh, that got me thinking how to automate marketing and sales a little bit more.
[00:05:52] And so I founded my own company in 2011. Since then, I'm traveling the Globe Giving. Workshops, uh, holding keynotes in English, German, and Spanish about how to apply AI and AI agents recently in our businesses. And of course, my own business is automated to a very, very high degree, as you mentioned it, uh, to work less and less and not, uh, decrease my revenue and not, uh, yeah, not to decrease it.
[00:06:25] Mike Allton: Fantastic. So let, let's talk about how you are working less. I, I mentioned a 25 hour work week, which to some might sound even fanciful. Can you break down exactly how those 25 hours are allocated, what your typical work work week looks like?
[00:06:42] Tim Cortinovis: Yeah, there's, uh, a, a lot, uh, of my working hours is spent in knitting systems, knitting and uh, setting up systems to, to automate more work.
[00:06:55] And I'm, you mentioned Rick. Rick is my personal AI assistant for me, and, uh, it handles a lot of my. Uh, mundane tasks and also my customer operations and communications. And I still work a lot in improving Rick to get better answers, to get, uh, a better tone of voice and so on. And I think about what can I automate more each and every day.
[00:07:22] We are. Growing very fast and we get more and more tools and, and yes, right now I love this hype. I love this AI summer we are seeing right now as I've been into it so long and I like trying out new tools and, uh, trying to get more things done. Right now, uh, what I'm able to do right now in, in August 25 is more than I was able to do in April 25.
[00:07:51] And so I'm applying more and more and, uh, so a lot of my daily work is done in setting up more systems. And the second part is also you would, uh, you will wonder about this, but, um, it is communicating with people. I like to answer a lot of emails manually as I've, I free my time also to, to have more meaningful conversations and to, um, to answer emails and to, to think broader ideas and to communicate with people to get a broader sense of the whole and, uh, to reduce the, the administrative tasks. So, and, and the third part of my, my working hours is spend on developing more ideas, ideas for new books, developing on how to, um, yeah, had to grow my business. And, uh, I recently read a very fascinating book. This, uh, called 10 times is easier than two times.
[00:08:57] By Dan Stewart, I think it's, uh, the author's name. And, uh, it is talking about how to grow your business 10 times and it really results easier than two times. I, uh, observed this a lot in my business.
[00:09:14] Mike Allton: Fascinating. I, I love how you're illustrating through that answer and I hope folks go back and maybe listen to it again.
[00:09:21] 'Cause Tim, you talked about, uh, spending more time on personal communication and, and emails and strategic thinking. What you're talking about is how the automation of the routine tasks in your life and your business has freed you up to devote that time to other things. A lot of us today, I think, frankly, who are using AI a little bit piecemeal, we're automating a system there, a process there, and we're saving a little bit of time.
[00:09:46] Well, we're just pouring that time back into other routine tasks and other mundane things. Uh, we're not saving ourselves so much time that a, we can reallocate strategic thinking and, and activities or, and b, just reduce the total amount of time that we're working. I'm not to your point yet, I'm working full-time for Agorapulse still 40 plus hours a week. I'm doing the side hustle 10 to 20 hours a week. So my week is still huge and, and filled with with work. But I'm getting there. Now, obviously it feels like almost your entire business runs on ai. If you could walk us through just some of the core systems, the tools that make this possible.
[00:10:26] cause I just switched a lot of my business processes to Notion, for instance, uh, 'cause now I can incorporate, uh, Zapier and LLMs generative AI to automate some tasks and I'm, I'm working in that respect. What's your AI tool stack?
[00:10:41] Tim Cortinovis: Y yes. Before I answer Mike, I just, uh, wanted to say I have an unfair advantage.
[00:10:46] Uh, when I try out something and, uh, when I do this automation, I'm able to monetize it as I, I'm giving keynotes and I, I'm getting paid for, for the knowledge on how to automate this. So, uh, there, there's, um, at least a twofold, um, opportunity in it. Okay. So my tech stack, uh, basically I, uh, work a lot with, um, OpenAI's GPT GPT-4 oh and GPT five, of course mine now.
[00:11:16] And I really concentrate on that sometimes. Uh, I work a little bit with Claude as well, but I try to focus on on fewer LLMs to, um, to reduce the time to the, of the onboarding and so on, and I use for text production and, uh, nearly all tasks, I, I used, uh, GPT five from of AI and for market research and for background research, I use Perplexity a lot.
[00:11:48] I, I love Perplexity. And also when my, my little one, she's nine years old and she has a lot of questions, uh, about the nature of woods. And I always take out my phone, uh, and ask Perplexity about the trees we see or and the animals we observe and so on.
[00:12:04] So I like this really a lot and okay. To go more in detail. For instance, uh, the platform I work with and I, um, I build the agents upon is make.com. I like this a lot. Mm-hmm. I worked a lot with Zapier here as well, but I encounter make more intuitive and there are more connections, more native connections, I think connections to 1,300 applications and it's really, really easy to connect things and to build automated workflows and agents, uh, to run on their own.
[00:12:37] And yeah. Let's start with the newsletter. For instance, some three and a half years ago observed that 25% of my working hours were spent on research, and I had to go through New York Times, Tech Crunch, Recode each and every week, uh, again and again on, uh, researching articles, blog posts, podcasts on AI in sales or AI and automation and marketing.
[00:13:02] And so I automated the whole process using, uh, curation ai. I shifted now this year, and I use in the workflow with Make.com. I use Perplexity, uh, to do the research every Friday morning, and then this is handed over the News 10 news Each week. It is handed over to GPT five and GPT five produces a very well formatted and well written newsletter out of this.
[00:13:28] This is published automatically to my web. WordPress blog, and from there my CRM system and gateway takes the new entries in these RSS feed and publishes these items to the newsletter subscribers via email. Yes, as you mentioned, I've opened rates by 40% and click rates by 20 30%. And so obviously people are reading my newsletter.
[00:13:56] They love it. I, uh, get, I'm getting a lot of feedback on this and recently, four weeks ago I started an automated synthetic podcast, uh, made off my, since synthesized voiced with ElevenLabs. So there's another make.com scenario, they call this workflow where he, where we take the new entries with the 10 news items every Friday morning.
[00:14:24] And, uh, GPT five writes the podcast script. And this is synthesized via ElevenLabs and published automatically. Uh, it is still in the beginning, but uh, on the very first week we had some 80 listeners. On the podcast, which I think is not that bad. And I hope we will grow in the future. And it is very, very short.
[00:14:47] It's six minutes, uh, about AI in sales news. And um, yeah, I also get a lot of feedback on this podcast. So last one here to mention is Rick, my AI assistant. Uh, Rick has two front ends and you can communicate as one of my customers via WhatsApp or Messenger. And by email with Rick Rick answers. Has been answering the last 11 month, all of my incoming emails I first in Make I first, uh, identify the intent of an email, whether it's an inquiry for me as a speaker or task for me in an, uh, in an ongoing project or just an information or a newsletter.
[00:15:31] And, um, according to that qualification, that intent identification, it is handled, uh, in the, in the workflow. And I right now, um. Its, uh, also some research on the inquiry. So if you send me an email with an, uh, inquiry and, uh, I got the domain of your email, I do the research with Perplexity, and the automated answer from Rick is based on the, the research it does.
[00:16:03] With your domain, so I'm able to, to answer an inquiry, um, with a matching of my keynotes or my offerings With that background from the, this is sent out automatically. So, and I have another, um, scenario with Rick. And Rick is handling all my, uh, assistant work. So for instance, if I, uh, am going to send you Mike an, an email with two proposals for, for meetings next week.
[00:16:32] I just, uh, sent, uh, Rick a a WhatsApp message asking Rick to, uh, to check my calendar for next week and sent to Mike two proposals for next week when I'm available to talk, and it handles it all alone. So it checks my calendar. Uh, it searches my CRM database for your email address and sends out the proposal with the two dates to you all on its own without my supervision at all.
[00:16:59] And the last one here when this is what I'm working on right now, is I'm, uh, putting all my contact data from the CRM system, which I, uh, find a little bit outdated right now. I, I think CRM systems are not that. Not that good as they used to be. So I'm building a pine cone web database out of my contact client's database.
[00:17:23] So this is very good for AI access and I will handle all my, uh, follow-ups and all the sales process with an agent. In May that has access to the Pine C database and is able to, to check whether a an inquiry has, uh, an answer or a decision right now. And if not, is able to decide whether to send a follow up email and to ask the inquirer on my behalf where the obstacle is and what the decision is or what we can do together to, to get to the decision.
[00:17:59] Mike Allton: Fascinating. Now I have a, um, AI system of my own, mine's named CLU, my AI Chief of Staff. It's very much an internal resource for me to use as a strategic brainstorming partner, that sort of thing. Okay, that's great. Um, and I teach people how to create an AI Work Buddy, which is basically, and they AI chief of staff for themselves. But these aren't customer facing. How did you train Rick to authentically like, sound like you and talk like you when answering emails and, and WhatsApp messages and so on?
[00:18:29] Tim Cortinovis: Yes. Um, the first thing, of course, uh, Rick is nothing more than an assistant GPT from OpenAI.
[00:18:35] It's quite easy. You set up the assistant GPT and just upload all the documents you have, and as I've written a lot of books by now, I have a lot of material. So it has all the, all the books I've written and also have a lot of recorded keynotes and, uh, podcast sessions. I have lots of interviews like this one and I've uploaded everything.
[00:18:57] So, Rick has more or less all the, the knowledge I have okay. Minus the books and, uh, the stuff I have I read in the way, but everything I produced more or less over the last five to six years is in it. My first purpose was, my first goal was, uh, to have an, uh, assistant GPT that is able to answer sales related questions to my clients.
[00:19:29] That is possible by now. I have no frontend for this, but that is the reason why it works so well. Also in answering my emails, it has a tone. It, it knows my tonality 100% and right now. As this is part also of the broader knowledge of Chat GBT, I'm able to go to the to blank Chat G PT without being locked in, without being in my profile and I can prompt my own persona to get better results.
[00:20:00] This is quite a good thing.
[00:20:03] Mike Allton: Yeah. That's fascinating. Folks. We're talking with Tim Corte about the incredible power AI has to streamline operations and free us up to focus on more strategic tasks. And I've got several more questions you're not gonna want to miss. But first, a quick word from our sponsor.
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[00:21:15] So, Tim, I, I think some of the solopreneurs listening might be hearing you talk about your fully automated blog, your fully automated newsletter, your fully automated podcast, and thinking, wow, that sounds very impersonal.
[00:21:28] How do you maintain human connections while running all this on AI autopilot?
[00:21:34] Tim Cortinovis: Yeah, the, of course this has a, a little bit of a, an inhuman touch. I'm deeply convinced that, uh, when the, the content is valuable, it doesn't matter that much. I don't think that you can sell a market everything. Doing this, but, uh, in my case, in my very special case, it is congruent.
[00:21:59] So I have, I'm talking about automation and so it's totally natural that I use automation myself, but the things are getting better. And for instance, the, the Synthesized podcast is. I've, um, played it to my family and they were not able to decide whether it is my phone voice or my synthesized voice. So it is getting better and better and better each and every day.
[00:22:24] And, um, uh, yes, of course in the, in the newsletter there is still, you will detect it as AI produced from the first moment on, but it is so valuable and it has all my ideas in it. That it is worth the, this downside. And I hear this argument a lot that, um, AI makes it so impersonal, and we're talking about personal brands.
[00:22:53] That's totally true. But the question here is, mm. What what do I gain using ai? And I think customers gain a lot of speed in getting more information, getting what they need, and, uh, getting things done with you and your offerings. I need speed also as the solopreneur and I think AI is the way to, to get that needed speed. Yeah, I think it is worse the, the loss of of the personal human touch. Um, sometimes I think, uh, that this human touch is overvalue or, uh, at least, uh, to put it another way, I think it is sometimes, uh, an uh, excuse not to apply ai because ai, to apply AI in, in that huge degree, I do apply it. I think you need a lot of courage and you need a lot of trust to the system, so you need a lot of that, um, spirit of letting go for the system.
[00:24:06] Trust the system and let go. And I know that a lot of solopreneurs struggle with this and they struggle with, um, employees also. Um, they might have, and they're always supervising their employees, not trusting the resales. And because things are not done the way they 150% want them to be done and they can't let.
[00:24:32] And I, I, I am, the peral principle is my first amendment, I think you say, uh, and this is very, very, very important principle. With 20% of your efforts, you gain 80% of your results. And that is more so true with ai. And, uh, yes, I, I, I think in most cases this 20% of effort are enough, and you don't have to be perfect, and you can live with an AI assistant R sometimes.
[00:25:07] Rough. But in the last 11 months, there has never been a, a super accident and, uh, I, I, I can, I have count the stories right now for my keynotes, uh, of what Rick did and what what went very well and the very, very, um, few cases where Rick did not act according to the situation, uh, do not matter that much.
[00:25:37] Mike Allton: Got it. Well, I couldn't agree more. In fact, everybody listening, I, I want you to hold onto this truth. Not every piece of content and copy has to be written by a human being. Yep. Yes. There are specific examples. You know, maybe you've been publishing a newsletter for 10 years and it's, you know, an op-ed, your opinion on, you know, whatever subject matter it is that you're talking about.
[00:25:58] Should you replace that with ai? No. You've got an audience that has come to value and respect your opinion, and that's what they're looking for. But I loved your example of the podcast, Tim, because correct me if I'm wrong, you weren't podcasting before and if you didn't have all this free time, you probably wouldn't have started a new podcast.
[00:26:16] So that's an additional channel that's you're leveraging that other people can now listen and, and learn from and gain from that's made possible due to ai. Is that fair to say?
[00:26:28] Tim Cortinovis: Yeah. Yeah, that's fair to say. Yes. Uh, that's the point here. If I hadn't, uh, the chance to use ElevenLabs and AI to produce a podcast, I wouldn't do it because you know it very well by heart.
[00:26:39] I think, uh, my, um, it is a lot of work. I've done podcasting in the year 2007 with the first novel I wrote. And, uh, I podcasted that first novel in German language, then was a lot of work for all episodes. And I wouldn't do this without technology right now. Yes. But I, I see that people, uh, are valuing this speed and this information they, they get and also the, uh, the short from it.
[00:27:09] The six minutes are enough to, um, to get to know the state of the art of AI agents and sales this week.
[00:27:17] Mike Allton: Yeah, this is my third personal podcast. I've had a bunch with Agorapulse, but the first two never made it past the 10th or 12th episode because it was so much work. And there's a different mindset with podcasting.
[00:27:32] Like you said, you had 80 downloads the first episode. That's fantastic. If you're not in the podcasting world, 80 doesn't sound like a lot, but 80 people actively listening to your show. It is an incredible amount and because of the nature of the medium, I value each and every one of you that are listening right now because we are literally in your head right now.
[00:27:49] And, and that's, uh, very different from like a blog post that somebody might skim or worse yet a social media post. So it's a different medium, but it's, it's, it's a lot more challenging. And so for me to be on my 100th episode today, it's only possible because I have AI helping me every step of the way.
[00:28:06] Obviously, you and I are very real. Uh, that's an authenticity check here in the middle of the show. We are not AI generated, but you know, I create the materials for the show, the questions, the processing, the editing. All that's helped or done by ai and, you know, another, you really
[00:28:21] Tim Cortinovis: use, uh, AI for editing.
[00:28:23] How do you do it? Uh, I, I wonder because I searched for an editing tool and I still struggle. I would like to include some music in my podcast and there, uh, I have some music and there are some ways to combine automatically MP three files. Uh, right now for me, this doesn't work. How do you do it?
[00:28:46] Mike Allton: Yeah.
[00:28:46] Well, it's, it's definitely not automated. I use Descript and, which I love. I'll put a link to it. Show notes I love.
[00:28:53] Tim Cortinovis: Descript is is great.
[00:28:54] Mike Allton: Yeah. But it's not automated, right? It's going to automatically apply sound levels and it's gonna automatically remove the ums and ahs and fill their words and get rid of a lot of the audio stuff that I was spending way too much time. My first podcasts were all solo episodes. They were probably 10 or 15 minutes each tops, and I would spend two hours editing a 10 or 15 minute show. No more. These are now long form interviews. Our show's probably gonna end up topping out at 45 minutes or so, and I'll spend an hour editing it.
[00:29:25] And that's mostly simply because I'm listening to everything that you've said in that show, Tim, in this recording and I'm picking out the clips that I want to use. I am dropping in the music clips myself, so none of that's automated yet. But like to your other point, these tools are literally improving.
[00:29:42] Every single day. I've been in social media marketing for two decades and we used to joke how fast social networks changed, but then AI came along and said, hold my beer. I'm literally gonna change every single day. So it's all improving. So folks, if, if something you're trying to do isn't working quite right today, just relax, just wait.
[00:30:01] It'll be better tomorrow. You mentioned your novels, and I wanna talk about that because you've written thick. Books, which to me is insane. I have one published book with Entrepreneur press, which was so painful. I'll probably never publish a novel again. You've done six while working just 25 hours a week.
[00:30:18] How did AI play into that? How did it change your content creation process? How did it help or, or get involved in your thought leadership? How, how did AI help you there?
[00:30:28] Tim Cortinovis: Yes. Uh, I reveal the secret here uh, and I'm not talking often about this. My last three books were almost entirely written by AI and I, I've created process and, uh, it's very well structured.
[00:30:44] Also using make, and, uh, first I write the outline with ai, I, I give it just the prompt to, uh, to give me a high. Uh, a high pitch of a book in that direction and I got, uh, the outline. Sometimes I correct it a little bit in the outline, and then I let it ride the outlines of chapters for this one. And I refined these outlines.
[00:31:10] Even more using AI in that same process. And then it writes the whole chapters for me. And uh, when this is done, I read really, really carefully the output. And sometimes I change something, but most of the outcome is written in a way that I would have used if I had written them by myself. It is just smarter, faster. And, uh, it is done by the machine. And I think this is, uh, the, the future of one part of the future of book writing. I don't believe that, uh, a lot of book readers in the future will build their very own books. But for instance, if you are looking for a book about fishing in Namibia in, uh, the southern part of Africa.
[00:32:07] And there's no such book on the market. You could go there and let the book write just for you, and I think this will be one or, or for instance, I'm, I'm a sailor and I love stories and books around sailing and history, and I'm very interested in the history of the Polynesian sailors some 3000 years ago.
[00:32:29] I would love to read a novel about, uh, let's say maybe a crime scene in, uh, um, based on some sailors in the Polynesian era some 3000 years ago. There's no such novel on the market, and I would like to to read this novel, and this is probably the next one I am going to write maybe just for me, because there won't be any market this kind of novel. I think this will be a huge future of book creation, and I don't think this is uh, this is not synthetic. It's a, a new era of creation. I, I call it co-creation with the ai. And, uh, I, I'm not feeling to be a liar on this. I'm just creating a book and, uh, if you see, uh, uh, um, a movie for instance, you have the director of the movie and, uh, uh, and the director does not make the filming, does not write the script, does not hold the camera, nothing like this, and does not act in front of the camera, but they are the directors of the movie. And, uh, the movie is known for the director. And I think this kind of book creation is something similar. So you, to be an author, you don't need to write the book anymore. You de you need to have the idea and to assemble the whole thing and, uh, to orchestrate everything in the book.
[00:34:06] And, uh, that is my personal conception of this co-creation.
[00:34:12] Mike Allton: I love that analogy of the, of the film director. I'm doing something very similar today where every time I run into some aspect of my own business that either I've never done it before or it's something I'm doing today, but it occurs to me I could do this better.
[00:34:30] Maybe I've been doing it a certain way just 'cause that's the routine I had. So like today this, this morning, the, the morning that we're recording this, I happen to drop this week's podcast episode and I was doing the normal stuff that I do when I promote a podcast episode. And then it dawns on me, what am I not doing?
[00:34:48] What am I forgetting, right? What, what is it that I'm not aware of that I should be doing to promote a podcast episode? So the habit I've trained myself to do is to jump into Gemini, that's my preferred LLM, and run a deep research and have Gemini go out and research a hundred different websites. And I'll typically tell something like, look only at, you know, sources did it this year, last year.
[00:35:12] Depending on the topic, if it's ai, it's gotta be this year. If it's, if it's something a little more social media related, maybe I'll go back a year or two. Right? Uh, or if it's historical, we could go way back and. Is able to not only pull, you know, best practices, information guides, and so on, but of course I can give it context about my business.
[00:35:30] I'm a solopreneur. This is DAI have podcast, or whatever it is, whatever the topic it is, right? And so all the research is done for me. It's co-created with me, for me, what I need. In that very particular moment, just like you decided I want a crime novel about the Polynesians, uh, from centuries ago, that's what I feel like today.
[00:35:52] So let's create that today for ourselves. I love that. What would you say are some of the biggest challenges that you've faced when transitioning from a lot of the manual operations that may be used to do to this AI powered completely or virtually, completely automated model? How'd you overcome those challenges?
[00:36:12] Tim Cortinovis: Yeah. First of all, there are technical glitches and obstacles and, uh, you know, tech doesn't always work as it is supposed to work. So, uh, there are obstacles and sometimes I have days where I spend way too more time, uh, with my head in this, in this nitty gritty of the of the coding or of the, um, putting together a different, uh, tools to work.
[00:36:41] And, uh, sometimes I, I overcome these obstacles using AI and asking Claude or, or ChatGPT how can I do this? Or watching YouTube videos. Of course, sometimes I hire, uh, freelancers on, on Fiverr. This is, um, for me, the most effective way normally. But yes, this has also some downsides, but I yeah, I work a lot with, um, coding freelancers on fiber and, um, and letting things go.
[00:37:14] As I said, um, sometimes I, I overcome the obstacles by just shifting and asking myself, do I really need this kind? This kind of result? Or can I live with a less lesser one? So sometimes, um, I have that, that approach. Um, yeah, that's basically it.
[00:37:40] Mike Allton: That makes complete sense. 'Cause I, I went through something very similar recently and I, and I blogged about it. I was, um. Sitting in the hospital waiting for my wife to go through a procedure, and I had a couple hours that I knew I'd be sitting there in the waiting room. So I thought, oh, I'm gonna take this opportunity to try and automate some stuff with Zapier, and it was just not working at all, every single step.
[00:37:58] I ended up having to break it up into multiple steps and just kept more and more complicated, and at the end I had to ask that same question. Do I really need this? Am I saving myself time? Can I live with a lesser result? Because sometimes, yeah, it's just the, the challenges are too great to overcome in that regard.
[00:38:14] But I'm wondering, Tim, last question for you. For a lot of the folks that are listening, maybe like me, they're working 60 hours a week feeling overwhelmed. They love this idea of a 25 hour work week. This, they love this idea of automating way more of their lives, of their professional lives and so on.
[00:38:32] Where do they start? How do they get started in this 25 hour model?
[00:38:37] Tim Cortinovis: Yeah. First thing is ask your, ask the chatbot of your choice where you, where do you have to start? That's it. It's so easy and you don't need, uh, any, uh, more advice or watching more YouTube videos. Just ask the chat bot where to start, and then, and this is a very tough truth here.
[00:39:01] You have to put time a way to develop these kinds of automations. There is no other way to do this. You have to, to say no to some things to free up your time to focus on this. So I, I know a lot of people working lots and lots of hours and telling me they don't have the time to, uh, to keep up with the latest developments.
[00:39:28] And they're always complaining and I just can tell them, you have to put away things to free your mind and to start using this. And this is, um. W with observed this in automation for the last 50 years. You have, uh, when you work normally, you have a flatline. You work and you work and you work and, uh, you know, uh, what you, uh, are able to, um, to accomplish.
[00:39:58] On a certain day working 8, 10, 12 hours maybe. And uh, you are on a flat line. And with automation you always have that kind of peak and there's a very, very steep, steep peak at the beginning. And you have to, to learn a lot and to get familiar with new tools and everything. And then once you got over the peak, it goes down and it saves you time.
[00:40:24] And then you're here, you're not there anymore. And from there on the automation runs and you freed your time, but you need to go over the peak. That's another way.
[00:40:39] Mike Allton: That is a fantastic note to leave on. Tim, you've been absolutely amazing and this has been such a critical interview. I hope folks listening you go back and listen to it a couple more times and really ingest all these lessons and and concepts that Tim's been sharing.
[00:40:52] But for folks who want to reach out to you, maybe they've got more questions. Tim, where should they go?
[00:40:58] Tim Cortinovis: Uh, if they have more questions, uh, I hang around, uh, a lot on LinkedIn, they will find me and I answer all of my, uh, dms personally. Uh, don't be afraid of an answer from Rick, but if you, you can get answers of Rick in, uh, on LinkedIn.
[00:41:15] On my LinkedIn profile, you will find my link tree. And there is also the connection to Rick Meyer WhatsApp Messenger or email and, uh, that we can, uh. Go in, uh, in contact and then we can get in contact and you will find all of my books on the Amazons. Just go to Amazon and uh, search for Tim Cortinovis and you will find all of my latest and the older books I've written.
[00:41:45] Mike Allton: Fantastic. Thanks all of you for listening. That's all the time we've got for today. Of course, we'll have all of Tim's links and books in the show notes below, and if you're still trying to wrap your head around where to start, I'll throw a link to my scalability audit in, in the show notes below as well.
[00:41:59] It, it's a free download. It's a worksheet. It'll take you 15 minutes across, three days, and it'll help you identify the areas of your business where you're investing a significant amount of time right now. That could be automated and helped with ai, so check that out. Until next time, welcome to the grid.
[00:42:17] That's a wrap on another episode of The AI Hat podcast. I hope you've gained some valuable insights and actionable strategies to boost your business with ai. If you enjoyed this show, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with your network. And don't forget to visit the ai hat.com for more resources and to connect with me.
[00:42:36] Until next time, keep innovating and remember, the future of business is human and it's powered by ai.
