What if I told you there's a way to grow your business and deliver exceptional results around the clock without adding a single salary to your payroll?
Here's the problem every owner faces: you need more hands on deck to grow, but hiring means higher overhead, longer training periods, and the constant worry that your best people might leave for greener pastures. You're caught in that classic trap. You can't scale without people, but people are expensive, unreliable, and frankly, we need sleep.
But what if you could build a workforce that never calls in sick, never asks for a raise, and works tirelessly to deliver results for your clients 24/7?
Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to Cien Solon, a true pioneer who's cracked the code on this exact challenge. She's the founder of LaunchLemonade, which she describes as "the Canva for AI agents," and she's on a mission to ensure no one gets left behind in the AI revolution. But here's what makes Cien's story so compelling for agency owners: She's been integrating AI solutions for businesses since 2018, managed big teams and budgets in her fintech days, and now runs her current business lean with just her co-founder and an army of AI agents. With barely any marketing spend, they've built a community of over 3,000 users who have created more than 10,000 AI assistants and agents on their platform. She's not just talking theory—she's living proof that this approach works.
The AI Hat Podcast host Mike Allton asked Cien Solon about:
✨ AI Agent Economics - Discover how replacing traditional hires with AI agents can dramatically reduce overhead while improving client delivery timelines.
✨ Entrepreneurial AI Mindset - Learn the specific skills and thinking patterns needed to identify automation opportunities within your solopreneur operations.
✨ Practical Implementation Roadmap - Get a clear step-by-step approach for building your first AI agents without technical expertise or massive upfront investment.
Learn more about Cien Solon
- Connect with Cien Solon on LinkedIn
- Follow Cien Solon on Instagram
- Follow Cien Solon on Threads
Resources & Brands mentioned in this episode
- LaunchLemonade
- Why Agentic AI is a Game-Changer for Small Business with Alex Carlson
- Zapier
- Magai
- AI Digital Clone: How to Augment Your Team’s Expertise with George B. Thomas
- The Bottleneck Diagnostic Quiz: A free 2-minute quiz to pinpoint your biggest business bottleneck. Find it at theaihat.com/diagnostic.
- Follow Mike Allton on Instagram or Threads and get more AI & solopreneur tips
- Explore past episodes of the The AI Hat Podcast podcast
Full Transcript
(lightly edited)
How to Build an AI Agent Army That Delivers Results While You Sleep with Cien Solon
[00:00:00] Cien Solon: Before thinking about what to build, think about what you need it for. So what I mean by that is have a really clear understanding of what your North star metric or what your goals are. There's so many shiny new things that can do this and that, but if it's not aligned to a goal that you're trying to achieve or a metric that you're trying to move, then it doesn't matter.
[00:00:23] It should. You should remove or remove that from your roadmap. Focus on the things that you wanna achieve, identify the blockers or the activities that either are, are hindering you from achieving that goal faster. Or that you need to activate in order to achieve that goal faster. And then think about what you need to build.
[00:00:44] And this could be distribution, this could be, um, customer service. This could be ops, could be admin. But whatever it is that you build first, make sure that it's aligned to a metric that you're trying to move. Is it acquisition? Is it growth? Is it retention? So, yeah, that was what I would do first is identify, uh, either that problem or that thing that you wanna achieve.
[00:01:08] 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.
[00:01:33] 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. Business growth, here we go. Cuttin' edge insights, that's the plan. With The AI Hat you'll understand.
[00:02:17] Greetings program. Welcome back to The AI Hat Podcast, where I selfishly use this time 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.
[00:02:34] Subscribe to be shown I prepare yourself and your brand for this AI revolution and come out ahead. Now what if I told you there's a way to deliver exceptional client results around the clock without adding a single salary to your payroll?
[00:02:48] Here's the problem every owner faces, you need more hands on deck to grow, but hiring means higher overhead, longer training periods, and the constant worry that your best people it might leave for greener pastures. You're caught in that classic trap. You can't scale without people, but people are expensive, unreliable, and frankly, we need sleep.
[00:03:08] But what if you could build a workforce that never calls in sick, never asks for a raise, and works tirelessly, deliver results for your clients? 24 7. Today I am thrilled to introduce you to Cien Solon, a true pioneer who's cracked the code on this exact challenge. She's the founder of Launch Lemonade, which she describes as the Canva for AI Agents, and she's on a mission to ensure no one gets left behind in the AI Revolution.
[00:03:35] But here's what makes Cien's Story so compelling for owners. She's been integrating AI solutions for businesses since 2018, managing big teams and budgets in her FinTech days and now runs her current business lean with just her co-founder and an army of AI Agents with barely any marketing spend.
[00:03:53] They built a community of over 3000 users who have created more than 10,000 AI assistant and agents on their platform. She's not just talking theory, she's living proof that this approach works. Hey Cien,, welcome to the show.
[00:04:07] Cien Solon: Wow. Thanks Mike. Uh, what a lovely introduction. We actually just reached 4,000 builders now and over almost 12,000 AI assistants and agents built on the platform.
[00:04:19] So, yeah. It's been an exciting, it's exciting journey for sure.
[00:04:24] Mike Allton: That's amazing. Congratulations on not just a milestone, but just having a startup like that, that seeing success. It's gaining traction. I know what it's like. I've been in that shoe. I've, I've worked with so many other founders and friends. We've had Dustin Stout, for instance, on this show who built Magai, and I've seen him go through many different iterations of trying to get to that phase where you're seeing success, you're seeing growth. So that's exciting. I wanna start with your transformation story, because I think it's so fasting. You went from managing big teams and budgets to running lean, uh, with these AI agents and for some of the owners listening, or just solopreneurs in general, they might be drowning in hiring headaches.
[00:05:06] Walk us through what that shift actually looked like for you in practice.
[00:05:11] Cien Solon: Yeah, sure. So. When startups were heavily funded this was, you know, like in 20 15, 16, 17 before, before Chat GBT and actually before COVID. And the tail end of that. Startups were heavily funded and therefore they could hire a lot of people to not only just build their startups, but also to validate their idea.
[00:05:34] And that's how I got to manage these, these big teams. 'cause I work for these heavily funded startups now. When chat PD came out alongside. Other LLMs, you know, hugging Face opened their startup as well with their open source models. Everyone was able to fine tune cheap and build AI solutions. I was like, oh my God, it's gonna be so cheap now to do something that will actually impact a business and you no longer have to have a big team of 30 engineers, data scientists to do something profound or to build something profound to to get you revenue. And since after COVID, startups have been struggling to get funding, it was easier before. 'cause you could just have an idea. And, um, that idea can get funded. Now it's more about, getting traction and, and validating first before you could even consider getting, getting funding.
[00:06:29] I mean, there's still some startups that, that do it well, but more so, uh, now you need, you need to validate it with traction with revenue and. That's when I thought, oh my God, I'm just gonna bootstrap these, this startup. Uh, and we we're still bootstrap. We've had recce, we've received zero funding, and I wanted it to be a living proof of how small businesses can go to market and get customers without needing overhead.
[00:07:02] Mike Allton: That is fantastic. Now, you mentioned now you're at 4,000 users who've quilt created over 12,000 AI agents on the platform. You talked about how, you know, minimal marketing spend. I think that's really impressive results, particularly for like agencies. They're always counting every single dollar. What do you think like the first AI agent that you'd recommend an agency or marketing team build and, and why?
[00:07:30] Cien Solon: Before thinking about what to build.
[00:07:32] Mike Allton: Hmm.
[00:07:33] Cien Solon: Think about what you need it for. So what I mean by that is have a really clear understanding of what your North star metric or what your goals are. There's so many shiny new things that can do this and that, but if it's not aligned to a goal that you're trying to achieve or a metric that you're trying to move, then it doesn't matter.
[00:07:53] It should, you should remove or remove that from your roadmap. Focus on the things that you wanna achieve. Identify the blockers or the activities that either are, are hindering you from achieving that goal faster or that you need to activate in order to achieve that goal faster. And then think about what you need to build.
[00:08:14] And this could be distribution, this could be, um, customer service. This could be ops, this could be admin, but whatever it is that you build first. Make sure that it's aligned to a metric that you're trying to move. Is it acquisition? Is it growth? Is it retention? So yeah, that was what I would do first is identify, uh, either that problem or that thing that you wanna achieve.
[00:08:40] Mike Allton: Well, maybe we should, we should go a little higher level for a second and, and talk about what in your opinion, AI agents even are. We've talked about 'em a little bit on this show. We did an entire episode with Alex Carlson about AI agents. But folks listening. They still might feel a little unsure. They might see a lot of, let's just say big tech companies that talk about their AI agents, which are really just AI automation and not true agents at all.
[00:09:04] So help me understand that and help those listening. What is an AI agent to you?
[00:09:09] Cien Solon: To me, well. I respect everyone's definition of what an agent is. We are just figuring things out together. There is, for me, there is no right or wrong answer, but there, there's something that makes it agentic which is something that can adapt and make a decision whether it's a yes or a no decision.
[00:09:29] Um, and it makes those decisions based on what it's learned. Even if it's just an output, that it gives you a yes or a no or text output. So automation has existed forever. You know, automation has always been there. You can automate a decision through machine learning or decisioning trees. And you've got generative ai that is a really smart auto complete.
[00:09:53] Now you combine them together, that's AI automation, but not necessarily agentic yet. Uh, what makes something agentic, in my opinion, is something that, again, like I said, through building its memory, building the capabilities for it to improve over time and make better decisions over time based on what's what it's learning.
[00:10:12] I think that makes it age agentic. So yeah, that is how I would define a basic age agentic workflow is, is it has to be learning, it has to be adaptive. So it can draw information from a knowledge base, for example. And over time, through using it over and over again or optimizing it, it can make better decisions for you, whether that decision is a PowerPoint presentation or an Excel file or an email or a text output that you, you know, have a conversation with in chat.
[00:10:40] But yeah.
[00:10:42] Mike Allton: That's awesome. I love that definition. I, I think it really paints a clear distinction between something that could be just a simple Zapier automation. It reports the same things every single time. There's no decision making. There's no learning or adaption in that process at all. It's simply running that automation.
[00:10:58] And like I said, I, I, I see a lot of folks, a lot of brands talking about how they've created AI and agents and that sort of thing, and it's causing a lot of confusion in the workforce, I think. So I appreciate that definition. I know one of the other worries that a lot of solopreneurs and creators have is that this idea that AI is just gonna make their services feel robotic or impersonal, if they're automating all these things and having these AI agents do these things for them, how do you maintain a human touch?
[00:11:29] With clients while leveraging AI agents for these kind of heavy lifting.
[00:11:36] Cien Solon: That's a really great question. I talk about this often. One, I don't actually go full automation on most of the things. Mm-hmm. I like to stay in the loop and hit publish. I, I, I like to edit and hit, publish myself specifically around my distribution flows.
[00:11:53] So it's not fully automated. Uh, but I, I've augmented myself to make sure that. My 'cause agents go rogue, so I actually have full automations that run. And some still run, and I see. Often that agents can go rogue or they even deprecate and make the wrong decision sometimes. And therefore I have made a conscious decision that for the time being that, um, the system that you build around a generative AI that allows them to learn over time because they can learn the wrong.
[00:12:27] That's the thing. They can learn the wrong things and, and grow in the, in the way, in a way that you didn't intend to. So in many ways, I'm still in the loop and I still, uh. I'm part of the decisioning making process that just heavily augmented with ai. So about 90% of that workflow is going to be run by, uh, an ai, a agentic ai.
[00:12:52] So it's got memory, it's adapting, it's got my knowledge base and, and it's making a decision to a point. But on action, a part of that action, that 10% of that, of that entire workflow is still me. I'm still showing up in my videos. I may be reading a generated script, or I may have, I may still be publishing on, on, you know, like a scheduling platform.
[00:13:17] Uh, so it's still me and I make sure that it, it's still authentically me.
[00:13:22] Mike Allton: That's fantastic. I love that perspective. It's, it's something I talk about all the time, what I'm working with. I have an entire framework, the H.U.M.A.N. framework that we work through to make sure that any kind of AI implementation keeps that human in the loop.
[00:13:34] We identify the things that are repetitive that in, in like in a solopreneur's perspective, like don't have normal client touch. So we keep the, the owner in touch with those clients. We make sure that they're in the loop for all those different things. It's super, super important, but let's get tactical for a second.
[00:13:52] So I, I've got solopreneurs, creators, micro business owners that are listening, they're sitting here right now. They've got clients or stakeholders that are demanding more. What do you think their step-by-step process is for identifying like, which tasks or roles should they try to replace with AI agents first?
[00:14:11] Cien Solon: Don't replace. Multiply. Yes. So you're not replacing anything. You're multiplying yourself. You're cloning yourself. But you, AI right now is not magical. It's not gonna fully solve anything. You, you can't just say, I want my acquisition or conversion rates to increase and the AI will figure it out. We're not there yet.
[00:14:30] You have to think about what your day-to-day looks like. Again, align on the goals that you wanna achieve or the problems that you wanna solve, and then think of the tasks that you have to do every day to, to allow that aligns on, on those goals or those, those problems you wanna solve. And then chunk them up, and then multi, you know, multiply yourself by building an AI teammate.
[00:14:53] Mike Allton: Love that. Thank you for pushing back on replace. That's fantastic. I'm so glad you did that. You talk about developing entrepreneurial skill to participate in ai, AI economy. I love, by the way, all your videos on TikTok and Instagram will put links to, to those in the show notes for folks who want to go and, and listen to all your video Cien.
[00:15:11] But what does that actually mean for a solopreneur or business owner who's been successful, let's say, using traditional methods? What mindset shifts do you think are really essential or necessary for them?
[00:15:25] Cien Solon: Great question. Again, so. Historically before we were pushed to you know, before we thought of the things that we had to do at work as problems to solve, we solved problems as a a team.
[00:15:39] And there's nothing wrong with that, you know, we've been successful in, in doing so. But over time we've learned how to just stay on our lane. Uh, because a team solved the problem. So when a problem comes or an opportunity comes on the table, we meet about the meetings, we, we meet about this problem before we even start problem solving.
[00:15:59] And we, we think of ways to problem solve together and roles get assigned. And based on your skills versus subject matter expertise, you are a part of a puzzle to, in order for, for you to collectively solve problems. And that's, that's great. You know, that's, those are great skills. But now with ai, you can actively problem solve without needing to meet about the problem.
[00:16:23] Um, you see a problem at hand or a metric that you wanna move. You can become entrepreneurial and look at the tools and the opportunities around you and solve that problem by yourself or, you know, like a, uh, with, with that, specifically with an ai. So you become, you become a problem solver yourself for yourself, rather than, um, just a part of a, or a cog of a, yeah, rather than just a cog or a piece to a, a puzzle.
[00:16:54] Mike Allton: I, I think another way to think about that, particularly for folks who aren't part of big teams like myself, I work for Agorapulse, but this is a side hustle. All of my AI stuff is, it's just me. It's just me and the dogs, and they don't really help me very much. So up until last year, if I had a problem that I was struggling with in my business, I'd either try to figure out how to solve it or I wouldn't solve it.
[00:17:18] Right. There are problems in my business that I have never gotten around to or hadn't previously gotten around even trying to fix. Because there was nobody else to help me. There was no one else to have that conversation with today. AI has kind of changed the game when it comes to that sort of thing.
[00:17:32] Folks, we're talking with Cien Solon about entrepreneurialism agents and more in this AI revolution. I've got several more questions you aren't gonna wanna miss, but first, a quick word from our sponsor.
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[00:18:41] So Cien, one of the things that I mentioned in the introduction that, that really intrigued me, was that you, you've referred yourself as the Canva of ai. Canva for AI agents, for agencies that might be, let's say they're intimidated by the technical side of some of the concepts that we're talking about today.
[00:18:58] How simple are we really talking here? Can someone who's never built anything technical create effective AI agents?
[00:19:06] Cien Solon: Yes, but there are hurdles that you have to jump over or go through yourself, and it's not, it's not a technical barrier, it's a mindset shift.
[00:19:16] Mike Allton: Hmm.
[00:19:17] Cien Solon: The problem with adoption right now is because historically we've been, uh, we've been trained to stick on our lane and, and think this is my skill, this is my subject matter expertise. This is what I'm doing. And so we're unable to think entrepreneurial and we're unable to. Uh, think out of the box in order to solve, uh, uh, problems architecturally.
[00:19:40] So developers were able to creatively solve this problem by thinking, okay, what can I develop now just to build some, to build a solution or to solve a problem? Creatives or non-technical people, for example, we, we we thought of our, our, our skills as kind of like just a piece, to that solution. It's just a part of it.
[00:20:03] So we have to learn how to think about architecture and, and, and solutions and how you can build solutions yourself and systemizing those solutions. You have to learn how to do, uh, understand prompt engineering. You have to think, you have to now understand that AI is not just a chat bot that it can learn.
[00:20:24] Um, you now have to think, to see that by just by. Allocating 30 minutes a day, you can start learning how these things work. So it's a mindset shift. It's not just, it's not just you're, you know, you're not an expert, a naturally an expert at building AI agents. You gotta put in a little bit of time and, and unlock yourself in this new way of problem solving by not just sticking to what you know, but thinking about, okay, in order to, for example.
[00:20:54] When you're hiring someone, you, you put the job spec together and after you select someone, you give them the knowledge, like your company handbook, your branding guidelines, and so on and so forth. Your p and l, if they're an accountant, and then you train them over time. So, um, you check their work and if they do something wrong, you give them feedback and then, uh, after that you optimize the, uh, you optimize them by giving them more tools and more capabilities.
[00:21:23] That's the same thing as in ai, you know, building an as something that's agentic. So understanding that, that that is a mindset shift that you, uh, have to think when you're building an AI agent, either multiplying yourself, cloning yourself, or building an AI teammate allows you to, to start understanding what you can actually build.
[00:21:46] Mike Allton: That makes so much sense as I've just been building, you know, more, much more simpler you know, custom GPTs and Gems and, and that sort of thing. I still have to have that. Systematic mindset of thinking through, okay, if I want this to help me, like in this case, prepare for a podcast episode is something I've talked about a lot on this show, right?
[00:22:04] I've got a Gem where I have learned, I can give it the guest name and the guest LinkedIn. It can help me research the guest and help suggest topics and take what they gave me in a form and take their bio and create a really great bio that I read. I tell people very transparently, Claude writes the introductions to these shows.
[00:22:21] That, that definitely took a, a shift in how I was approaching podcasting and interviewing. So that's a, I think a great example of how these systems are helping, uh, the folks that are using them and helping them think differently about their businesses. I, I know, again, for the coaches and consultants listening, one of their focuses is obviously on, on delivering great product for their clients. Have you seen ways in which these AI agents are actually improving on the business or improving on, on what processes or workflows or output they're actually div now that you know they weren't doing before? Does that make sense? Uh, how are they improving the businesses that are using them?
[00:23:04] Cien Solon: So on my platform, you can white label the solution and open up a new revenue stream instantly. And we're seeing businesses do this unlocking new revenue for their small to medium sized agencies just by cloning themselves and making those clones available to their customers. So instant, in instant impact and benefit.
[00:23:28] Mike Allton: Wow. That is, that is fascinating. Are, are they I'm gonna go down a little bit of a tangent here. 'cause we had George Thomas on the show a while ago, and he was using a platform, I believe he called Oracle. I haven't used it myself, so I'll have to look it up. I think it was Oracle where he'd fed it, like his blog content, his podcast, his YouTube videos.
[00:23:46] He's a, a HubSpot expert. He is known as the HubSpot helper. So he'd fed it all that material so that the, the tool knew everything that. Essentially he knew, or at least everything he documented about HubSpot. Is that kind of the process that they're going through in that example that you gave?
[00:24:02] Cien Solon: Exactly.
[00:24:03] That's what I, what I talk about knowledge base and multiplying yourself. You need to put yourself in there, whether that's your transcripts or um, your, uh, website or your blogs. You make it you and you make your agent authentic by feeding yourself in these systems as a knowledge base, and you curate your memory as well.
[00:24:27] So memory curation is an important thing. If you're a ChatGPT user, you're gonna say, I love my ChatGPT because it knows me. But you're missing out on the other language models. Yeah, because you're tied to ChatGPT. on Launch Lemonade, you can have one single memory for all of these language models. So you're taking advantage of the different language models that are, for example, more fine tuned or more trained for agentic work.
[00:24:52] So there are models that are better at working with your knowledge base. For example, if that knowledge base is external, so you connect it to your website, your scrape, you're using a web scraper to. Read your, your website and whenever your website gets updated, your, your AI knows and AI adapts to that new information.
[00:25:12] Now you're also gonna curate your memory to make sure that your AI only remembers the better things. 'cause it can remember, remember the bad things. If you're not curating or if you're not giving the right feedback and you're not curating your memory, it can remember the bad things or it can just.
[00:25:28] Mirror what you keep feeding it. And so it doesn't improve, it just stays stagnant or worse becomes worse. So, it's all about, using the right L LMS for the right task, curating your memory, connecting it to your knowledge base, that makes it more capable depending on, on what you've designed it to do.
[00:25:50] So, for example, if you're building an AI accountant or CFO, you're not gonna feed it your marketing materials. You are gonna feed it your p and l and your cash flow. So it's about feeding the right things as well, and, and again, curating that, that memory.
[00:26:05] Mike Allton: Got it. Got it. So let's talk about the economics for a second.
[00:26:08] What, what kind of ROI frankly, can businesses expect to see when they start to augment, some of their services or their processes or their employees with these kinds of agentic systems?
[00:26:21] Cien Solon: Overhead is one clear thing. Um, reduce your overhead by multiplying yourselves. As an example I have no teammates, uh, except apart from my co-founder, and we've been able to scale ourselves so far without any funding.
[00:26:37] So we've been sustainable and profitable. Uh. Servicing thousands of of customers globally, mostly from the US and the uk. Without the overhead and we're able to go to market, we're able to. Uh, do customers serve our customers? Do masterclasses be at events? So the ROI is revenue, it's just, it just revenue and, and, and cost savings from, from overhead, especially if you're not in the position to go to Mark, you know, uh, grow.
[00:27:13] Mike Allton: Could you give an example of, of one of those employees, these, these AI agent employees, how, how it functions, what it does, what the, the role that it serves in your business?
[00:27:24] Cien Solon: Customer service is one. We've had our customer service bought on our marketing website and it runs by itself. The only way to get to a human is if when you sign up or reach out to us on our community channels.
[00:27:39] But our customer service bot on our marketing website is completely ai, and it's been, it's been onboarding people for the past year, been there for a year. I actually need to check it if it, if it's been performing well. And you know, our conversion rate from website to signup is 15 to 20%. Peak was 20%, which is insane.
[00:28:03] I mean, it's usually like two to 5%. So that's one clear example. I also have an AI CFO that an, that helps me analyze my, my PNL 'cause I'm not a. There's, I, I'm not a finance person. I mean, I come from FinTech, but I'm a builder. You know, I'm in from the, the building creative area and I also have, and everything content I.
[00:28:29] At one point, my peak was 167 posts per day. I managed about 10 accounts both for me and Launch Lemonade. I actually hired an advisor, a LinkedIn advisor, and she said, Cien, you're posting too much. You've been posting three times a day. I was like, well, I just, you know this, I have no marketing budget.
[00:28:48] I have to make sure that I'm present. And she was like, just try once a day. I was like, okay. Once a day. So I've had to dial down. Yeah, it's, it's like I said earlier, you know, revenue is the metric. If it's, if it, I'm building tools that allow me to achieve that metric. Whether it's making sure that we've got our terms and conditions, privacy policies up, um, whether it's getting NDAs revision, depending on the contracts, whether it's a proposal, whether it's a customer service bot content.
[00:29:26] Helps with accounting. Yeah. You build AI teammates up until I actually just hired a fractional CFO to do to make sure that everything's in place as we as, 'cause we're start, we're actually starting to fundraise, to capture bigger market share when you're ready to hire than you can because you've, you've augmented as much as possible.
[00:29:50] Mike Allton: That makes complete sense because like I was saying, I'm, I'm a solopreneur with this side hustle. I have an AI chief of staff that I run all my suggestions and ideas and frustrations quandaries by Exactly. That's the person I'm turning to. And, and I could definitely see myself adding very, very specific roles.
[00:30:08] Um, you know, beyond just a podcast show run and that sort of thing. I'm wondering what. Yeah. What's your biggest mistake been or learning moment specifically when it comes to building these kinds of AI agents?
[00:30:20] Cien Solon: I make so many mistakes. Making mistakes is my, my, uh, actually what I do, it's my profession.
[00:30:29] It's. It's the biggest mistake is not to recognize it's a mistake or letting that mistake linger and not doing anything about it. You will make mistakes and I think from an agent, but let's, let's not stay off topic because, uh, that's an even bigger conversation. But the biggest mistake, my biggest mistake with my AI assistance and agent so far is letting it run without me checking up on them.
[00:30:56] Mike Allton: Hmm.
[00:30:57] Cien Solon: What I mean by that is you need to regularly put on your calendar time to see if your agents are working as you designed and not monitoring if they're still, performing based on how you configured it. Um, because they can, they can make mistakes. And also not paying close attention to your invoices and your API costs is also one of the mistakes that we've made.
[00:31:24] Uh, actually a couple, a couple months ago. Claude went through organo and uh, yeah, so not so tho those two. From a AI perspective,
[00:31:35] Mike Allton: I think that's a really great point. 'cause we've talked about how. If you've got the right AI agents in place, that might reduce your need to have to hire more people. But you still kind of need to treat them like new people.
[00:31:47] Just like you would have a weekly one-on-one check-in with your direct reports. You should have a one-on-one check-in with your AI agents. Now they're gonna gonna, you know, come to you with a bunch of issues and. Heads up. Uh, you still need to have that time set aside. So I, I think that's a fantastic approach and fantastic reminder.
[00:32:04] Now, one of the things that I've really picked up on, I think through your videos and even our conversation today, is that you're obviously really passionate about making sure nobody gets left behind in this AI revolution, which I really, truly think is admirable. What's your advice for folks listening who feel like maybe they're already behind.
[00:32:23] Where do they start tomorrow in your opinion?
[00:32:27] Cien Solon: First is don't just consume, build, and don't get overwhelmed with the idea of building 'cause it literally just needs you to. Type in English and not even just in English, like in your own language. Um, and don't marry to a, to a a single language model. You wanna evolve and learn.
[00:32:47] These language models have different capabilities, are trained on different data, and are great at different things. For example, chemic K two is a new language model that came out and it's probably one of the better language models out there from Angen perspective. You know, like if you wanna design your own workflows.
[00:33:04] But my message is don't just consume, build and become entrepreneurial.
[00:33:11] Mike Allton: That is terrific advice. I think one of the breakthrough moments for me was when I was listening to Carlos Sanchez talk about his, my showrunner custom, GPT, uh, and how he uses it for podcasting, and that's how I dove into custom gpt and learning how to start to build those for myself.
[00:33:29] And then last year. Yeah, it was late 2024. I was doing an AI bootcamp, uh, with a friend and partner of mine, Chris Carr, and he came to me and said, Mike, I know chat GPT really, really well. I'm in it all day, every single day. I don't know Gemini or copilot. Can you learn one of those platforms? And so we've got somebody who can speak to them at our in-person bootcamp.
[00:33:49] So I started playing with Gemini. Found out I was already paying for it because I already had a Google Workspace account, and so I fell in love with Gemini. Now I'm using Gemini every single day, which I wouldn't have done if I hadn't gone into it and tried to build some things and learn how to do it.
[00:34:04] So fantastic advice folks. Pay attention. To what Cien just said. Cien, you've been absolutely amazing. This has been such a thought provoking conversation. I want to thank you. I know folks' minds are buzzing. They're gonna wanna rush out and start building their own AI agents. Where should they go to get started and where should they go if they want to connect with you?
[00:34:23] Cien Solon: LinkedIn definitely find me on LinkedIn, it's Cien Solon, and our web, our website is Launch Lemonade app. You can also find me on TikTok and Instagram and um, threads. I'm everywhere. You just have to find me.
[00:34:39] Mike Allton: Fantastic. We'll have all Cien's links in the show notes below, so don't worry. You don't have to go looking.
[00:34:43] Just scroll down and tap threads if that's where you're active. It's a fun place. She's super active over there. I think that's where I first connected with you Cien, if I recall correctly. That's right.
[00:34:52] That is all the time we've got for today, friend. I'll see you in our next episode. Welcome to the grid.
[00:34:57] 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.
[00:35:15] Until next time, keep innovating and remember, the future of business is human and it's powered by Ai.
