How a simple time-tracking experiment revealed the uncomfortable truth about solopreneur workflows—and the AI systems that can finally set you free
You tell yourself the podcast will take an hour to record. The client proposal? Just 30 minutes to knock out. That content creation session? Two hours, tops.
Here's the brutal truth every Growth Architect needs to face: You're lying to yourself about how long things actually take. And that lie is keeping you trapped in operator mode instead of scaling to owner mode.
The $10,000 Lie We Tell Ourselves
Rich Brooks discovered this the hard way. As the founder of Flyte New Media and host of a 600+ episode podcast, Rich thought he had his workflows dialed in. His "one-hour" podcast felt efficient, streamlined, under control.
Then he did something most solopreneurs never do—he actually measured it.
The reality check was devastating: Three full hours. Every single week.
But here's where Rich's story gets interesting. Instead of throwing in the towel, he used AI to map every minute of that process and create systems that handle the heavy lifting. The result? Better content, stronger SEO results, and reclaimed time to focus on revenue-generating activities.
The Admin Tax Is Bleeding You Dry
Rich's revelation isn't unique—it's universal. Every Growth Architect I work with suffers from what I call "The Admin Tax"—the hidden time drain that quietly sabotages your genius.
You think you're spending 20% of your time on administrative tasks. In reality, it's closer to 70%. Those "quick" client follow-ups, the endless content repurposing, the proposal writing that somehow stretches from Tuesday afternoon to Friday morning—it all adds up to one devastating truth:
You've become the bottleneck in your own business.
When AI Becomes Your Digital Teammate
But here's what Rich discovered that changed everything: AI isn't just about saving time—it's about multiplying quality. His Claude-powered "Agents of Change Podcast Producer" doesn't just speed up his workflow; it creates better SEO-optimized content, generates multiple promotional assets, and turns one conversation into a content engine.
The breakthrough moment? When the NBC producer told him his AI-assisted TV segment was "actually one of your best." Rich's response was perfect: "It was absolutely disappointing to me on many levels. But also kind of like when your kid does better than you do."
The Conversation-to-Conversion Blueprint
Rich's system reveals something crucial about scaling a solopreneur business: The goal isn't volume—it's strategic multiplication. His process turns every podcast episode into:
- SEO-optimized blog content that actually ranks
- LinkedIn newsletter content (1,000+ subscribers with zero promotion)
- Multiple social media assets via automated clipping
- Proposal-writing systems that close more deals faster
Each piece builds on the others, creating what I call a "Conversation-to-Conversion" flywheel that generates business relationships while you sleep.
Your Next Move: Stop Guessing, Start Measuring
Rich's transformation started with brutal honesty about where his time actually went. Before you can build AI systems that scale your business, you need to know what you're actually scaling.
The uncomfortable question: When you say something takes "30 minutes," what does it really require when you factor in prep time, follow-up, context switching, and all those micro-tasks you've been ignoring?
The liberating answer: Once you see the truth, you can architect systems that eliminate the Admin Tax and reclaim your genius for the high-value work that actually scales revenue.
Ready to stop being the bottleneck in your own business? The AI Solopreneur OS helps established entrepreneurs like you build simple AI operational systems that eliminate admin drag and multiply your impact. Learn more about joining our curated community of Growth Architects.
How many times have you told yourself that podcast will only take an hour to record? Or that client proposal? Just thirty minutes, right? Here's the uncomfortable truth every solopreneur needs to face: you're lying to yourself about how long things actually take. And that lie is keeping you trapped in operator mode instead of scaling to owner mode.
The problem isn't that you're bad at time management; it's that you've never truly measured what your workflows actually require. That's where today's guest comes in with a revelation that changed everything about how he runs his business.
Rich Brooks discovered that his "one-hour" podcast actually consumed three full hours of his time. But instead of throwing in the towel, he used AI to map every minute of that process and create systems that handle the heavy lifting. As the founder of Flyte New Media and host of The Agents of Change Digital Marketing Podcast with over 600 episodes, Rich has mastered the art of turning time-intensive processes into AI-powered efficiency machines. He's the perfect guide to help you stop underestimating your workflows and start building systems that actually scale.
The AI Hat Podcast host Mike Allton asked Rich Brooks about:
✨ Time Truth-Telling: Discover how to accurately track where your hours really go and why most solopreneurs underestimate by 200%.
✨ AI Workflow Mapping: Learn Rich's proven process for identifying time drains and building custom AI assistants to handle repetitive tasks.
✨ Scale Without Staff: See exactly how one conversation becomes ten pieces of content through systematic AI integration.
Learn more about Rich Brooks
- Connect with Rich Brooks on LinkedIn
Resources & Brands mentioned in this episode
- Flyte New Media
- Agents of Change
- Scalability Audit
- Fathom
- Descript
- AI Solopreneur OS Community
- Notion
- AI-Powered Blueprint for Solopreneurs
Full Transcript
(lightly edited)
Stop Lying to Yourself: How AI Reveals Your Real Time Investment
[00:00:00] Rich Brooks: You cannot beat the internet on volume, so you have to beat it on quality, and you have to beat it on clarity, and you have to beat it on perspective because those are three things that you actually can win on. You don't have to have volume to be able to do that. You just need to be able to hone your skills.
[00:00:16] So that's where I put a lot of that effort as well. When I'm doing proposals, like this is another example, this is another Claude project, one of these AI assistant that I developed. We have a template that, uh, we put in all of our proposals into, and what I do is I basically uploaded it, and then I have the transcript of a sales call that I do with a client.
[00:00:38] And upload that. And I ask it, there's like 12 sections or whatever in our proposals. Which one should we keep and which ones don't we use? And then for each one that we keep, I want you to take the generic template, boilerplate text that I have in there, and I want you to rewrite it based on the pain points that were surfaced during this call.
[00:00:59] I hate to say how much better it is at that than I am. It, not only is it better, it takes seconds, I'll be like, how come I never wrote like this?
[00:01:09] 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 to the AI Hat Podcast, the resource for established solopreneurs who are ready to stop being the bottleneck in their own business. Each week we architect the simple AI operational systems that eliminate admin, drag, and reclaim your time, bring you to focus on the high value work that truly scales your revenue.
[00:02:35] I'm your host, Mike Allton. Subscribe. And let's build your empire together.
[00:02:40] Now listen, friends, how many times have you told yourself something like this, that a podcast will only take an hour to record? Or that client proposal just 30 minutes, right? Here's the uncomfortable truth every solopreneur needs to face.
[00:02:53] You're lying to yourself about how long things actually take. And that lie is keeping you trapped in operator mode instead of scaling to owner mode. The problem isn't that you're bad at time management, it's that you've never truly measured what your workflows actually require. That's where today's guest comes in with a revelation that changed everything about how he runs his business. Rich Brooks discovered that his one hour podcast actually consumed three full hours of his time, but instead of throwing in the towel, he used AI to map every minute of that process and create systems that handle the heavy lifting.
[00:03:29] As the founder of Flight New Media and host of the Agents of Change digital Marketing podcast. With over 600 episodes, Rich has mastered the art of turning time intensive processes into AI powered efficiency machines. He's the perfect guide to help you stop underestimating your workflows and start building systems that actually scale.
[00:03:47] Hey Rich, welcome to the show.
[00:03:50] Rich Brooks: Hey, Mike.
[00:03:50] Thanks for having me. Great introduction. I know people always say that when they come on after they've given you their own bios and they're like, oh my God, I didn't know. But actually I didn't have anything to do with that bio at all. And so thank you. 'cause that made me sound much smarter than I actually am.
[00:04:04] Mike Allton: Well, I appreciate that. And um, in full transparency, when people do say that, and I love hearing that, there's two parts to that. There's, there's a delivery, which is important, but the, the, the text I tell people very transparently say, Claude wrote that about you. I took the stuff that you gave me. I feed it into my podcast show runner.
[00:04:21] And Claude says, cool, this is the stuff I know about Rich. Let's make him sound fantastic.
[00:04:27] Rich Brooks: Good job, Claude.
[00:04:29] Mike Allton: Yeah. So let's, let's talk about your revelation. 'cause you discovered that your one hour podcast actually takes three full hours. Walk us through that revelation. Were you, what were you missing, like in your original calculation?
[00:04:42] Rich Brooks: Well, so I'm the boss of Flyte New Media. So I don't need, and I don't do as much client fa, I used to do all this client facing work. Now I don't, now I have a team that does most of that work for me. I'm in charge of biz dev and sales and that sort of stuff, and creating content. So in my mind I was like, yeah, you know, if I have Mike on my show and we do a 30 minute interview and maybe there's that 15 minute pre-interview show we do where we kind of flesh out the topic.
[00:05:07] Uh, and then I kind of prepped the files for my team. My investment is an hour. And then earlier this year we were trying to get a better understanding of where our time as a team was being spent. And so in the past, we only asked our team to log the hours where they were actually doing billable or productive work.
[00:05:25] But now we said we really want you just for a, a few weeks to track everything. And, and I will also, even though it doesn't matter, I will also track my own time. And that's when I started to see the truth of where my time was actually going, that I was spending even, I had already, like, in my mind, streamlined the process, but I was spending so much time between prepping the interview and, and the, the questions and then going through and editing things.
[00:05:56] Just all the work went, all was said and done in getting things over. It was on average over three hours every single week that I was spending on this. And there was actually a time in my life where I was running two podcasts. So that was probably close to five or six hours a week of my time. And really, I can't afford to do that.
[00:06:13] I love doing my podcasts, but it is, and it's generated business for Flyte in the past, but it's not the number one thing we do to get new business. So it was really. What do I do about this? Is this something I can still do? Do I need to cut down, maybe only produce it every other week or something so that I can get the rest of my work done?
[00:06:31] It was definitely eyeopening.
[00:06:33] Mike Allton: Yeah, I, I share that pain. I, I've shared this story before, I think on the show where at the outset of 2024, I had one show, one podcast for Agorapulse, where I was working full time, and the CEO came to me and said, Mike, I, you're a great interview, or I'm, I think you're doing great work.
[00:06:49] I'd like you to add two more podcasts. And I was already thinking, I knew I was spending a lot of time preparing for the first shows guests and episodes and interviews. These were starting as live video interviews, uh, you know, broadcast to social media. And then we were returning them into a podcast and, you know, adding two more themed, just incomprehensible to me.
[00:07:12] And the idea wasn't to do just two. The idea was actually to do four more podcasts, just starting with two. So by May or June, I had five podcasts and shows with Agorapulse. Plus. I launched this one. So for a hot moment there, I had six podcasts and I was spending at least two hours just on the prep for every episode.
[00:07:33] And so, yeah, figuring that out, finding the systems, you know, were, were absolutely critical. But I, I want folks to listen to understand this. This particular episode isn't necessarily just about podcasting because I wanna know Rich, how that time tracking experiment actually kind of changed the way you approached all of your projects at your business.
[00:07:52] Rich Brooks: Well, I think it was kind of eye-opening for everybody on my team in terms of just seeing where their time was spent. You know, a lot of times we think that it's like, oh, you know, I spent this much work time working on a SEO project for a client, or I spent this much time writing the copy for a website or whatever it is, and what you're not paying attention to when you just blocking out that one task is that, but you had like all these back and forths with the client and then you also had the weekly status meeting with the client. And then you also, you know, every time you stop to answer that question, you're losing time there. And then there's the staff meetings where you have to report on what's going on.
[00:08:28] And I think we don't realize how much time we're investing in all these different tasks. So it's a little bit io it's almost like. When you're trying to lose weight and you start counting every calorie it's sometimes it's just about becoming aware of the time that you're spending on this. So, yeah, I mean, podcast for me was, was the big one, but you know, there's other places where it's like.
[00:08:49] I used to think, oh, I spend about an hour probably putting together a proposal and it turns out well, yeah, an hour writing and sending out the proposal, but you also weren't including that 45 minute meeting and then going over your notes and then doing follow-up questions, and then talking to your team and getting some answers about whether it was WooCommerce or whether we should try some different solution and all that back and forth until you finally put together the proposal and sent it out.
[00:09:14] And that doesn't include the follow up time because the, the prospects don't get back to you in a timely fashion and getting on the phone and harassing them until they finally say yes, no. Or, you know, I'm calling my lawyers for a cease and desist on your Rich.
[00:09:28] Mike Allton: No, but that's, that's so right. I, I love that analogy of, of weight loss.
[00:09:32] I am not a weight loss expert, but I have to imagine if you're not tracking your weight and your calorie intake on a daily basis, you're, you're just never gonna lose weight. And how did you, how would you even know if you were, so you have to be monitoring those things and you've gotta be monitoring your time.
[00:09:45] And for folks, if you're not quite sure how to do that, I'll drop a link in the show notes to, uh, an audit that you can download for free. It's a few pages, it'll walk you through how to start tracking your time and give you the actual places to track those time. Uh, just a few days. Spend a few minutes every day, jotting down some notes, what you're doing each day that'll help you identify really quickly.
[00:10:04] Oh wow. I'm spending 70% of my time on administrative junk that really should be delegated or automated or systematized. And one of the things I know you told me before we started talking Rich was how you are, what I'm calling, multiplying the content you created like this engine to take your podcast content, or it really could be probably any kind of original source content.
[00:10:24] Right? And break that down into multiple conversations. Talk to us about how you're doing that.
[00:10:31] Rich Brooks: Yeah. Actually, if you, if you don't not mind, maybe the best thing to do is start from the beginning because that tool that, that ai uh, in this case cloud project actually is the last thing that I touch.
[00:10:42] So one of the, so a couple of things are about automations. So I used a text expander, but you can use any tool you want. Text expander basically just allows me to put in short codes for anything that I want to type. So for, you know, one of my my most common text expander tool is I, I always use XX before something, so I is xx off.
[00:11:03] So every, I don't know if you get any, um, unrequested emails that come into your email box, Mike. I get a few. No, never. Often with the subject line, quick question. And so what I basically do is 'cause 99.99% of them, I don't ever wanna hear from them in the first place. I just type in XX off and that says, thank you, but please remove me from your mailing list.
[00:11:24] And so just that one goes out. I have much longer ones as well. And so. I get you. You mentioned I have over 600 episodes now on the podcast, and when you get to that point, you start getting a lot of inquiries from want to be guests and their podcast booking agents. And I get somewhere between 25 and 35 a week for one spot.
[00:11:45] And that doesn't include when I want to do solo shows or when I wanna bring friends on who I just happen to have seen out there. Or when I go out and I find somebody, I'm like, I really would love to bring you onto my podcast. So it's like a one out of 50 chance you're gonna get on the show. I can't respond to everybody.
[00:11:59] So I use Text Expander to just, basically, I think it's, um, XX Guest is the code that I use and expands into a very polite, friendly message that asks them to fill out a specific form on my website, which then goes to a Va. She vets everything for me, and out of all the ones that come in, maybe two or three a weeks, she knows my personality, my show, who might be a good guest, and then I go through that very smaller list to decide who comes on the show.
[00:12:27] And then I, you know, ask them, would you come on for a 15 minute interview? And this is where I start to really integrate AI into the flow. So if I'm having you on my show, Mike, and obviously you and I are friends, but it's still a good idea for us to talk through what we're gonna have have on the show, so we get on a 15 minute interview.
[00:12:43] I use Zoom currently, and Fathom, which is my favorite AI note taker. So we get on a conversation, we talk about whatever it's gonna be about probably something about AI, and we just have a nice conversation. I don't even have to take any notes anymore. Really, one of the greatest things for me on AI is not having to take notes or the ability to take a different style of notes.
[00:13:06] So my notes is no longer, what did Mike say, but what ideas am I. Think, you know, did Mike spur in my mind that I want to jot down that we didn't actually talk about. So it's kind of almost this creative note taking. But now I have this, uh, Fathom recording, which with a click of a button, I get the transcript, and now I have that.
[00:13:24] So the first thing that I do is that saves me a lot of time. I used to spend a lot of time trying to come up with questions based on those conversations. During those 15 minutes, really struggling to keep up and keep it conversational. 'cause I'm trying to jot down all these ideas and thoughts and notes.
[00:13:39] I no longer have to do that. I can free up my brain, just have a nice conversation with you, try and get to the meat of what we're talking about. And then I have a prompt. And again, going back to Text Expander, I think it's xx prompt, honestly, or so. Oh, xx. PQS for podcast questions. And what it does is it takes a look at our conversation and your area of expertise and puts to together 10 questions and not just any 10 questions.
[00:14:07] I have a style of questions that I like, including an introduction, like what's your origin story kind of thing. And then each question builds on another question, on another question, on another question, getting deeper and deeper and more detailed until finally there's a few, finishing questions like, Mike, if somebody wanted to get started with AI automations today, what do you think the first step would be?
[00:14:27] So something along those lines. So I've trained it with this, robust prompt, and now I have these questions. And admittedly, I'm not using those questions outta the gate because even though that prompt includes links to my my brand voice, Rich's voice, and so it sounds like me, it never really sounds like me to me.
[00:14:47] Uh, so I go through and I clean up, but that takes me five minutes rather than all the time that it used to take me. And then when we finally get on the call and we do the recording and it's, you know, half hour of an interview or something like that, and I get that recording, that's where I really start to use the Claude Project, which I call the, uh, agents of Change podcast producer.
[00:15:08] Before we jump into that, I just wanted to kind of check in with you and see if you had any questions so far about that process.
[00:15:14] Mike Allton: No, that's fantastic. I love that you're using a text expander. I use it the same way, like I shared with you the Google Doc, right? That had our run a show for today. So you could take a look at the questions in advance.
[00:15:27] There's, whenever you're sharing a Google Doc with somebody, there's an opportunity to insert a message. So I said to you in that message, Hey Rich, looking forward to our chat this week. Here's your pre-show document and all this kind of stuff, all that message in there that's in a text expander, because I'm doing that so many times, I'm winding down those shows at Agorapulse.
[00:15:45] But you know, for a hot minute, I had six shows going on. A lot of them were weekly shows. I was interviewing, you know, eight to 10 people a week. So I was sending out eight to 10 run of shows every single week. I had my right, my entire Monday blocked out to do nothing but podcast prep for the rest of the week.
[00:16:01] So I made that into a text expander. I don't have to type that in, saves me minutes, and those are the little kind of nuggets that I just love looking for. Particularly again, as a solopreneur, I don't have a team I can delegate to. I admit the dogs are here in the room. They don't do anything for me. So I need to find those moments, uh, where I can, so I love what you're doing with this.
[00:16:20] Let's take it further. Tell me more about your podcast producer now inside a Claude.
[00:16:25] Rich Brooks: Right. So that's really where a lot of the AI work is going on right now. So in, so it actually solves a couple big problems. One is the time it it takes to do these things, and we'll get into that. But I also wanna say that.
[00:16:38] I'm really into SEO. Like I, that's always been a cornerstone of, of my approach to business and my approach to marketing as well as what we offer at Flyte. And it always frustrated me that our podcast never seemed to rank that well. A few exceptions to the rule, but in general, we just, the podcast themselves, the show notes never did well.
[00:16:59] And I always offered a full transcript, which originally I'm like, well, this is great. So much content for Google to, to absorb. But I, my belief is that the reason they didn't rank well is because when people are talking like I am right now, they're all over the place and they, they go off on tangents and they say things and then they retract them and they go on another one.
[00:17:20] And it's not really the straight through line where if I sat down and wrote a blog post on this topic, I would be editing and re-editing and getting it really clear with headers and subheaders and all those sorts of things. Organizing in the way that Google wants as opposed to this kind of stream of consciousness you get from a lot of podcasts.
[00:17:37] So one of my goals was to start writing blog posts for each podcast, but I knew that there was no way I wanted to add to my work, and I also didn't want to give this off to a teammate and basically be paying them to do this either. So I decided that this was gonna be a great uh, use case for AI. I originally did this as a Chat GPT or custom GPT. What I have found, and maybe this is not as true anymore with with Chat GPT five, but no matter what custom GPT I did, if it asked if I required too much of it, it kept on stopping and asking me if I wanted to continue when it was running.
[00:18:16] Mike Allton: Oh,
[00:18:17] Rich Brooks: Where I would give the same information, the same instructions, the same knowledge docs to Claude.
[00:18:23] And Claude would just run through it the whole way. And I liked Claude's writing better as well. So even though I use Chat GPT more often, there are certain things where I'm like, once I nail down, uh, what I think is gonna be a really good AI assistant, I bring that over and I turn it into a Claude project.
[00:18:40] So, it basically what I do is I gave it a series of instructions, you know, and I won't go into the boring details, but you know, you are podcast producer for the Agents of Change podcast. Here's the, and I uploaded three docs. I uploaded a doc that was about the Agents of Change podcast. To kind of give it some context, I uploaded a doc that taught it how to speak in my voice, and I also uploaded a a buyer persona who, who I believe the audience is.
[00:19:09] And all of that was because I wanted to ask. I wanted to ask the right kind of questions for the first one, but I also wanted to think about what kind, how to write these blog posts and, and the other things that I'm gonna ask it to do. So those three Knowledge Doc goes up there, plus the instructions of exactly how, what I wanted to do.
[00:19:27] And so some of the things that I wanted to do is I wanted to write an SEO optimize search, optimize title for this page. I wanted to write the opening paragraph in my voice. Obviously we had the full transcript. I wanted it to find the best clips like the bumper that I could use before, you know, what is the best clip that could possibly come out of this.
[00:19:50] And then I also wanted it to identify what the SEO keywords we should be going after this. So when it writes the blog post, I want you to integrate the blog post or the keywords into this blog post. I wanted it to write the social media post that would promote this show as well. What else do I have it to?
[00:20:09] Uh, the ID three tags. So I wanted to write the ID three tags for when you put the podcast out and a couple other things. Oh, I like to, you would think that I would've nailed down the sign off in like episode three, but I've never had a really good sign off for my show, and so I, I asked Claude, I'm like, I need a sign off for the show.
[00:20:28] I want every show to end with the words. Agents of change or agent of change. So it'd be something like, you know, and if you implement your AI uh, automation in this way, you'll truly become an agent of change. But I was like, brain dead by the end of this. I'm like, I need you to give me my outro on this, but not just one.
[00:20:47] I want you to gimme five different styles of outro and one will be a contrarian approach and one will be this and one will be that. And so it gives me all of this in one fell swoop. So when I'm ready, when I. You know, it's, it's Tuesday and I'm prepping the, uh, all the files and everything. I just take the Fathom transcript, I upload it.
[00:21:07] I don't even have to give it a prompt anymore. I just press the go button. Basically, it reads the instructions, it reads the knowledge docs, it reads the one document that I'm uploading, and basically in about 30 seconds, I have all of the post-production information I need, and the only real manual work I'm doing at this point is I take that blog post, I put it into another document.
[00:21:30] And I edit it because even though I've trained it, and even though it's quote unquote sounds like me, it doesn't, I mean, I don't know what your experience has been, but I'm super particular about my, my personal brand voice and writing has always been one of my favorite things to do. So it's never where I want it to be, but it is so much faster for me.
[00:21:53] Like one of the things that always pisses me off is every single title that it gives. In parentheses and how to fix it, like what you're doing wrong with AI automations and how to fix it. I'm like, okay, once a year, maybe that's okay. 52 times a year. No. And so it also uses the word actually at least seven times per blog post.
[00:22:15] So these are things that I fixed, like once I realized like. Everything is actually, then I would say you're only allowed to use actually twice in the blog post, things like that. So you keep on iterating these, make it better. But yeah, get to the point, and I read through it. I make sure that it still sounds like me and sometimes I don't like to take it, you know, the, the take that it has.
[00:22:32] I'll sometimes push back and I'll say like, I want you to go again. This feels kind of negative, which is not my tone, or, or, I think you're insulting the intelligence of the audience. So let's bring this up a bit. But generally it's just a matter of just making some, some small changes to it. And then that, that basically is everything I need to do.
[00:22:51] And at that point, I have all the things. So basically I do a little bit of audio editing my own these days. Pop that up. I use a company called Bear Value to do my post-production. So they get this I send a couple things over to my team, so they post it up to the website, they post, they send out the emails on my behalf.
[00:23:10] But all these things has all been basically streamlined by this Agents of Change podcast producer that's really just putting out content and I've started to see anecdotally better SEO results because we've got that blog post up at the top too. It's hard to prove that it's just because of that.
[00:23:28] It's just like anecdotally and my belief on what's going on that we're starting to see that some of these more recent blog podcasts show no pages are ranking higher at the search engines and that, oh, and then the last thing that I'm do doing that I've started to add into it is. One of, so I have three AI tools that I probably couldn't live without.
[00:23:48] One is Chat GBT, although I mentioned I use Claude for this. Uh, the other is Fathom because I take terrible notes and I don't remember anything. And then the third one is Descript because it's just become the most powerful editing tool that I can think of. And I keep on, uh, getting rid of other pieces of software and moving over to the Descript for this.
[00:24:05] And so what I do is I just take the video from Zoom. I pop that into Descript, and you probably are well aware of this. There's a clip feature. Sometimes I'll put in the keywords from the interview that I wanna focus on. Sometimes I just let it choose its own, and it has templates that I've tweaked a little bit with the agents of changed logo in the bottom.
[00:24:28] Usually it'll knock out 10, 30 seconds or less vertical clips for me with the dynamic captions, you know, underneath or above the person's face with what they're saying. And it takes me about five minutes, maybe less, to choose a couple, tweak 'em if I need to send those over to my team. And then those get into our social media calendar as well.
[00:24:49] So that's what I'm doing and I'm finding that it does save me time, but what I always stress with people is my goal is not to save time. I know that it's a goal for a lot of people and a goal for a lot of your audience. That is a secondary concern for me. Yeah. My concern has always been, and hopefully will always be, can I use AI to create better outcomes?
[00:25:12] And that's what I keep on reminding my team about. I'm not looking for you to save time by using these tools. In fact, I see it as. It's gonna slow you down at the beginning because you need to invest some time, just like you would invest time in training up an intern or a new employee. But after a while, you're gonna start to see these time games.
[00:25:28] But what I really want you to focus on is did it produce a better product than you could have done on your own? And that's really what my primary goal is. Whenever we put things out.
[00:25:41] Mike Allton: Oh my gosh, Rich, so much to unpack what you just shared. Uh, thank you. That was amazing. Love the process there. A couple notes from my end.
[00:25:50] I was thinking as you were talking first, I, I use Gemini as I think, you know, that's my primary LLM as, as opposed to Chat GPT. I've never had that error with chat GPT, but I, I have experienced the same thing, which is that I use Gemini very strategically. I have an AI Chief of Staff that I'm talking to all day, every day.
[00:26:07] But the writing just isn't great with gemini, it's okay. It's good. You know, if I'm, you know, just shooting out an email or something like that, it's fine. But when it comes to content that's going to be published under my name, it's, it's not anywhere near good enough. And I also turn to Claude then to help me spruce up those posts, weave into things that I would normally say.
[00:26:29] Claude's just such a better writer and I don't know why it doesn't make a lot of sense 'cause I have the exact same instructions for both. So I've, I've tested them side by side. They have the same instructions, same knowledge files, Claude's better. So to level set for a second, for those of you listening who may be just a little bit lost in what we're talking about. You've got the major LLMs Chat GPT, Gemini, Claude. With each one of those AI models, you have the option of customizing it with Chat GPT. That's called a Custom GPT with Gemini. That's called a Gem. With Claude, it's called a Project. They look different, but functionally, they're all identical.
[00:27:05] You put in a name for your customization. You put instructions, which could be a sentence or multiple pages of text. That's up to you what you wanna do with it, and you can upload knowledge files, like Richie mentioned, uploading a voice document and a document about your podcast, giving it that background information.
[00:27:20] I have the same thing with my AI Chief of Staff. I have the same thing with my podcast showrunner. They're just custom versions of the AI that allow us to do things. So folks, if you've never built something like that, I'll put a link to a reference, uh, document in the show notes below. One of the just logistical questions I had for you, Rich, is as a podcaster, I too am publishing a show notes blog post, we'll call it, right, with a description of the podcast and then the full transcript.
[00:27:46] And like you, I've seen, zero SEO impact are, is that now what you're doing? Only instead of a brief description, you've got the actual article. And then the transcript
[00:27:58] Rich Brooks: I'm leading with below that is two different posts, right? Yeah. I'm leading with the blog post and then underneath that is the original transcript.
[00:28:04] And then underneath that is like the final show notes and links and stuff like that. And again, it depends on the show. Uh, one that did really well was I interviewed Tom Webster on How to Grow Your Podcast. Sure. And maybe it was just the phrasing or whatever that one seems to do, especially well, but I have seen more of them start to come up that way.
[00:28:22] And then, you know, I. This isn't part of the podcast per se, but it is in a way. So Friday mornings, and I just realized, uh, I need to take care of that. Uh, Friday mornings, what I do is I take that same blog post, I go over to LinkedIn and I publish it as a LinkedIn newsletter. Takes me about an extra five minutes to get that out.
[00:28:40] The content's already there. It's the rough draft is by Claude. The, the Polish draft is by me. I put it out there and with zero promotional work. We have over a thousand people signed up for that newsletter. Now, I don't have the stats from LinkedIn on how many people actually read the newsletter, but they, a thousand plus people have signed up for it, and that was only in a couple of months.
[00:29:00] So it's just another way of getting your information out there and you know it. It takes a lot of energy to create a valuable piece of content. So I think one of AI's real strengths is creating these repurposed pieces of content that we can share in different places. So between the, the, the blog post and the show notes, turning that into the LinkedIn webinar, turning that, um the video into vertical clips that can be shared on social media. All of those things are happening because of ai, and obviously we're talking primarily about podcasts, but you know, I'm seeing the same thing in almost everything I do. I'm putting the focus on creating a better product because I know there's a lot of people there trying to get stuff out there faster.
[00:29:47] That's not my vibe. I've been saying for years. You cannot beat the internet on volume, so you have to beat it on quality, and you have to beat it on clarity, and you have to beat it on perspective, because those are three things that you actually can win on. You don't have to have volume to be able to do that. You just need to be able to hone your skills. So that's where I put a lot of that effort as well.
[00:30:09] When I'm doing proposals, like this is another example, and this is another Claude project, one of these AI assistant that I developed. We have a template. They, uh, we put in all of our proposals into and what I do is I basically uploaded it and then I have the transcript of a sales call that I do with a client and upload that.
[00:30:29] And I ask it, there's like 12 sections or whatever in our proposals. Which ones should we keep and which ones don't we use? And then for each one that we keep, I want you to take the generic template boilerplate text that I have in there, and I want you to rewrite it based on the pain points that were surfaced during this call, and I hate to say how much better it is at that than I am.
[00:30:53] It's not only is it better, it takes seconds, I'll be like, how come I never wrote like this? I, I still think I'm a better writer. I put it in my own words, but it identifies and says, oh yeah, this is what they wanted to do and this is why this particular thing, instead of just selling Google Ads, is like, it's when people wanna buy.
[00:31:11] You want to talk about this thing over here? And I'm like, oh yeah, they brought that up. That's a great point. And putting it in there. So that's also been, again, better output, better outcome rather than just trying to get it done more quickly. Although, I will be honest, it definitely happens more quickly 'cause I don't have to think about it.
[00:31:27] I just have to take a look at it and be like, yes, that works. Or I need to tweak that, put that up there and get that the, get those proposals out the door more quickly.
[00:31:36] Mike Allton: Oh my gosh, yes. That's one of the things I've talked about in my AI entrepreneur OS community that need, if you're doing any kind of client work at all, systematize that process so that you've got a proposal writer that's trained on your best proposals, that understands here, you know, you're gonna give it a transcript and here's our business model, here's the products or services that we offer, whatever it looks like for you.
[00:31:58] That not only, like you said, it, it, it does a better job, frankly. It, it saves you time. It also ensures that it gets done in a timely manner. 'cause a lot of folks, if they're busy, they get off the 45 minute discovery call, then they're onto the next meeting and the next meeting and the next meeting before they know it, it's two days later and they forgot to get back to the person they talk to a couple days ago who has now probably moved on to a different vendor because they were in the mood to buy three days ago.
[00:32:25] So. Love that tip, and I love your point about that.
[00:32:28] Rich Brooks: And you've also forgotten. I was gonna say, and you've also forgotten so many of the details, if you just did four sales calls in two days, it was like, was that the person who was on WordPress or the person who was wanting to move from Squarespace? Or did they want to, so because my memory is shot, so thank goodness we've got Fathom to remind us.
[00:32:46] And I can always go back and check the notes and if I, I'm like, did they really say that? I can always go back to the original video, do the search, find it just fantastic tools that, that us old men. Have at our disposal now for our family members.
[00:32:58] Mike Allton: Right. Yeah. I mean, like you said, you know, maybe they just mentioned as a brief aside.
[00:33:03] Oh, and then we wanna develop a membership too. Okay. If you're doing a website quote, that's a big deal, right? Yeah. That's not, oh, yeah. Okay. We'll just toss in a membership for free. Oh, no. That might double the proposal. Uh, right, and that's something you probably should have explored more on the call, but if you missed it and then, you know, that's, yeah, it's, it's essential I think to have that.
[00:33:24] One of the things that I've loved doing is, uh, I'm now using Notion as kind of my headquarters for my whole business and Notion has a web extension that will, if you're on any kind of video call at all, including Stream Yard where we're recording this, it prompts me, do you wanna record this, Mike? And so it, you know, I don't necessarily have to.
[00:33:42] Use Zoom or Google Meet, you know, maybe the client or whoever I'm meeting with had their own platform. I know Fathom's good 'cause they can jump into all those as well no matter what you're doing. But Notion's gonna make sure that that transcript goes straight into my business database. I can refer to it at any time.
[00:33:58] And I've started using it for actual client and consulting calls as well. So I record those conversations and. Now, those are basically case studies that I can use in blog posts and marking material that I had this conversation with a client and walked them through how to do something. The other thing that I wanted to just stress that you mentioned as an aside was the LinkedIn newsletter folks.
[00:34:20] If you're not doing a LinkedIn newsletter, but your audience is on. LinkedIn, that should be your number one takeaway coming outta this call right now. I had, for a while, I was doing a LinkedIn newsletter that was written by my AI chief of staff. I was transparent about it. I said, this is CLU. I gave him a name.
[00:34:37] This is CLU's Newsletter and his perspectives on the last podcast interview, and I just had it trained. Here's the transcript. What do you think as an AI about this conversation about ai? So it was kind of an interesting angle. I thought. 2,500 people. Subscribe to that with zero promotion and it was getting at least 10% were were reading it every single week that I put that out.
[00:35:00] And it was just a matter of giving it the prompt, copying and pasting in the LinkedIn hitting go, folks, you gotta be doing that kind of stuff. We are talking with Rich Brooks about the various ways that he's incorporated AI and automation powered systems to save his time and free him to focus on truly viable work.
[00:35:17] And I've got a couple more questions that you aren't gonna wanna miss, but first a quick word from our sponsor.
[00:35:21] This episode of AI for Business Leaders, The AI Hat Podcast is brought to you by Magai. Tired of juggling multiple AI subscriptions and trying to figure out which tool to use and when? Magai simplifies AI for businesses by offering access to all the leading language models and image and video generators for one low price.
[00:35:42] With Magai, you can create custom instructions to personalize AI for every business need. And use them across all LLMs, including Chat GPT, Gemini, Claude, and even Deep Seek. No more building custom GPTs or gems that are limited to just one platform. Magai also lets you create customized workspaces for your entire team, giving everyone in your organization access to the same AI assistance and tools and props ready to streamline your AI workflow and empower your team.
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[00:36:19] So Rich, I wanna go back to the whole voice question and, and, and dig a little bit more into how you're handling that process. I'm, I'm gonna use a technical term that I learned from Molly Mahoney, and, and that is, how are you shushing up your output so that it actually tries to match your voice? Is it just you put it in once you see what comes out and then you edit it?
[00:36:38] Or how are you dealing with that?
[00:36:41] Rich Brooks: That's funny. 'cause Brooks Sellas is my jeush person. That's who I, oh. I wouldn't say I heard it from first, but she was the one where I'm like, oh, I could, I could integrate that. So it starts with yeah, giving it different examples of your writing. And as time goes on, I think you can basically trade up, like you have your chief of staff, I think you might wanna have the Rich Brooks that writes email newsletters, the Rich Brooks that writes webpages, the Rich Brooks that does this.
[00:37:04] So it's interesting. I, I have different thoughts on this. I put in a bunch of stuff that I had written over the years. More of the recent stuff as I think, you know, obviously the more you write, the more evolved you become and got it trained up. And it said a lot of things that I thought were like pretty spot on.
[00:37:23] And then I asked it to create a, basically a voice doc for me that I could use going forward. And then I read through the voice doc and I was. Concerned because it's accurate, but it's really just minimal. Like I'm sure that in the whole world there's tons of people, you know, maybe 10, 15% of people would have a very similar voice doc that I do.
[00:37:51] And this is problematic to me because my voice, I feel is. Unique to me. And so whenever I'm doing voice docs, or almost always when I'm doing voice docs, I also include examples of my writing as well. So yes, use the voice doc AI to get a better understanding of how Rich would write, but at the same time, I also want you to check these sample or these examples that Rich Brooks actually wrote so you can kind of get more of a sense because really the brand voice doc that AI creates for you.
[00:38:23] Is a map and it's maps are incredibly valuable. They help you get from place A to place B, but they're not a perfect representation of what it is like to travel between those two points. So I think that's a critical piece that a lot of people are missing when they're creating their voice talks is still including examples of the voice.
[00:38:42] It actually, I, one example I have is I have been on the uh, local NBC affiliates here in Maine. On their evening news program called 2 0 7 for 17 17 18 years. The show's been on for about 22 years, and I've been on for 17 or 18 of those years. The only person who's been there longer is one of the two hosts, and I think the reason why they have me back all the time is I literally write out the full question and answers I'm gonna give on the air.
[00:39:10] So all they have to do is show up and read the questions and they know exactly what my answers are gonna be. And they, they've told me they love that, like I'm their easiest guest. Because when I got into AI, I am like, I am curious. It takes me about three hours to put together a five minute segment that I don't get paid for, but obviously great visibility in the local market.
[00:39:29] And then I can repurpose their videos and put them up online as well. But since I have all these scripts, I wonder if I could just get AI to do my job for me. So I created a custom GPT that would basically act as me go out, do the research on whatever the subject was, and then use it. I basically created the framework for the show.
[00:39:49] I uploaded a doc that said. Who two oh seven's audience was again my brand voice. And then I included several scripts from previous episodes that I had written. And then I would say, this month's episode is going to be about how to recycle your electronics. And the first time I did this, I sent it out, it did the research, it came back, it gave me the questions.
[00:40:08] I was like, wow, this is pretty spot on. It was a little too long. There were a couple things I wouldn't have said, but again, rough draft. Great. Then I, all of a sudden I got really nervous because I hadn't done the research myself. So what I ended up doing is opening up a new window and saying, this is some research that was done for me.
[00:40:25] Could you please go online and find out how much of it is accurate? Tell me are things. True and provable. Are they likely true but not provable or are they false? And I ran that through Claude as well, and Perplexity. And basically they came back and they were like, 90% of this is true and provable, 10% is likely true, but we can't prove it.
[00:40:47] And not nothing was a falsehood. So that was good. And I went on TV and I basically did the bit and afterwards Rob turned to me and he said, Rich, that was just, that was a great segment, actually one of your best, which was absolutely disappointing to me on many levels. But also kind of was like, kind of like when your kid does better than you do, you know, it was kind of like, okay, I guess this is the future.
[00:41:08] But it was funny. Of course I did make some changes and it's trading on my stuff and all that sort of stuff, but, but that was a good example of. Even with examples, the voice got, the voice got better for sure in terms of more accurate, but there were still things that it leaned too heavily on. And I think that's what I see sometimes in the writing.
[00:41:26] It leans too heavily into something like, you know, I love using metaphors, so all of a sudden everything is a metaphor. So, you know, trying to pull that back. And another thing is when we were doing the Brand Voice Doc for Flyte New Media, my agency. I had it, vet a bunch of stuff that was written and a lot of the stuff that was on the current website, which I'm currently rewriting, was written by an outside copywriter who I absolutely love, didn't want to do the job because she likes my writing, but I'm like, just please help me out here.
[00:41:52] And she did it. Mm-hmm. There were so many aviation puns in there, and when I asked Chat GBT to vet it for me, it said, oh, well you've got two. You know, you, you really love using aviation metaphors. And I knew that when I rewrote everything, I didn't want as many in there. So I said like on a scale of one to 10, where one is almost never and 10 is almost constantly, you know what?
[00:42:14] What would you give that score? And it said probably like a seven or an eight. And I said, okay, I want you to dial that back. And I want it to be a three. Because I knew I didn't want as much aviation metaphors in there as we're currently going on. And I think that that's something else, like when you see what.
[00:42:30] AI tells you about your own brand voice if you don't feel they have it right? Or if you wanna maybe up it a little bit, think of it like an an EQ and ask it what your rating is, and then ask it to change that in the final document if you want it to be more trustworthy or more funny. Although I don't think AI can be funny, maybe more sarcastic, you know, whatever it would be.
[00:42:51] And I find that I get some good results that way too.
[00:42:55] Mike Allton: That reminded me of, uh, Matthew McConaughey's character, an Interstellar who's often telling the AI powered robots to dial down or dial up their humor or their, their, uh, their, their transparency and so on. But it's a great example, and I love your analogy of the map to the voice guide, because another way to look at it is it's great to have a map.
[00:43:14] If you wanted to, you know, drive to St. Louis, you, you're probably gonna need a map, right? But the map itself isn't gonna get you here. You still have to do the driving right of flying if you're gonna fly, right? You, you right. You can't get there With the map alone, the human's gotta be part of it. It's something we talk about all the time on the show, how the human's gonna be part of the loop.
[00:43:34] And, uh, my process is very similar to yours. I, I used to have my AI Chief of Staff. It knew that I loved Star Wars, knew that I've even talked about Star Wars, but I had to dial that back because it was putting in that Star Wars metaphor and analogy and pun. Every other paragraph, I'm like, I do not drop Star Wars references like that.
[00:43:51] At least I don't think I do. No one's told me that I do it that often. I don't think I do. So as, as we wrap up, Rich, I wonder if you could share for maybe the like, kinda like you suggested earlier, the solopreneurs are drowning in these kinds of tasks, that they think it's an hour actually taking them three hours or more.
[00:44:08] Where do you think they should start with their AI integration?
[00:44:12] Rich Brooks: Well, and I think you hit the nail on the head, Mike, is the first thing to do is to do a self-evaluation. And for us, we use a tool called Tick to manage our time, uh, and to Mo to basically track our time so that we can do appropriate billing for our clients.
[00:44:26] But honestly, it could be a Word doc, it could be a sheet of paper, it could be a Post-It note, but literally everything you do. Write down the time it takes you to do it. And do that for, I would say I would recommend a minimum of two weeks. It depends on your workflow. I mean, maybe some people could get that done in less time or in, in fewer days, but I think two week minimum gives you a better sense of really what you're running into.
[00:44:49] In fact, with my team, I said two weeks and then I expanded it to four weeks to, to get better data. That's gonna tell you where some of your time sucks are that you may not have been aware of. And then it comes down to: what are the things that I can outsource to AI with, either without losing quality or maybe even improving the quality of the output?
[00:45:08] And those would be the first two things that I would try and focus on.
[00:45:13] Mike Allton: Love that. I love that, that perspective that you've just added to what I'm telling people all the time, which think about basically, how repetitive are your days, is can you pretty much accurately predict what your day, tomorrow and next week is gonna look like?
[00:45:26] Or does it feel like every day's different? Because the more different your days feel, the longer you need to spend writing down what you do every single day. 'cause if they're tomorrow's not the same as today, then you know you're gonna have a different output. But then, yeah, bucketize, those things that you wrote down, what is driving revenue?
[00:45:43] What isn't driving revenue? What could be outsourced? What's like completely unimportant at all? That's going to give you such a great picture as to where you should start implementing some automation, some AI, some delegation. Rich, you've been absolutely amazing. This has been such a powerful interview. I know folks are gonna reach out to you.
[00:46:00] They've got questions. They want to know how they can maybe even have them help you with what they're doing, uh, in their business when it comes to marketing and so on. Where should they go?
[00:46:11] Rich Brooks: Where should they go? Well, if they like podcasts, they should check out the Agents of Change podcast. I'm guessing they do if they're checking out your show.
[00:46:17] If they want to connect with me. I am The Rich Brooks on almost every social platform, but you'll find me hanging out most often on LinkedIn. And uh, then also, if you are interested in working with the digital agency to take your business to the next level, they can check out take flyte.com, which is FLYT e.com.
[00:46:36] But you know what? Just start with me. Find me on LinkedIn. Let's start a conversation.
[00:46:40] Mike Allton: Do that, find Rich on LinkedIn. I'll have the link in the show notes. I'll also put Rich's podcast down there and his other links, all the resources we talked about today. Definitely follow Rich. He's fantastic. We've known each other for years, and I will tell you also folks listening if you're not quite sure where you're at with your business, if you feel like you're really struggling with the direction of your business.
[00:47:00] I've got a resource that's kind of a. AI powered coach that'll walk you through how you should be thinking about your business. It's, it's kind of like building a business plan, but it's not that static document that you're gonna put on a shelf. This becomes a really dynamic AI powered blueprint, frankly, for your business and how you can move forward in the coming year.
[00:47:18] I'll have a link to that below in the show notes below, but it's just the ai hat.com/blueprint that's free. You can walk you through that, walk yourself through that, and get some AI powered coaching for your business. Check it out and I'll see you on our next episode. Welcome to the grid.
[00:47:33] 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.
[00:47:52] Until next time, keep innovating and remember, the future of business is human and it's powered by AI.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How do I know if I'm actually lying to myself about time investment like Rich was?
A: Start with a simple two-week time audit. Write down everything you do and how long it actually takes—not what you think it should take. Most Growth Architects discover they're spending 70% of their time on admin tasks they estimated at 20%. The gap between perception and reality is usually shocking, but that's where your biggest opportunities for AI automation live.
Q: I'm not technical—can I really build AI systems like Rich's Claude projects?
A: Absolutely. Rich isn't a programmer either—he's using tools like Claude Projects, ChatGPT Custom GPTs, and simple automations. These platforms are designed for non-technical users. The key is starting small with one repetitive workflow (like proposal writing) and gradually building your AI toolkit as you gain confidence.
Q: Won't AI make my content sound robotic and generic?
A: This is the biggest myth holding solopreneurs back. As Rich discovered, AI often produces better content than we can alone—his NBC producer said his AI-assisted segment was "one of your best." The secret is proper training with your voice documents, examples of your best work, and treating AI as a strategic partner, not a replacement for your expertise.
Q: How do I avoid the "shiny object syndrome" with all these AI tools?
A: Focus on systems, not tools. Rich's success comes from mapping his entire podcast workflow first, then finding AI solutions for each step. Don't start with "What AI tool should I try?" Start with "What's my biggest time drain?" Then build one system at a time that eliminates that specific Admin Tax.
Q: I'm already overwhelmed—how can I find time to build these AI systems?
A: This is the classic solopreneur catch-22. You're too busy to build the systems that would make you less busy. The solution is treating AI system-building as an investment, not an expense. Rich invested time upfront to save three hours per week on his podcast—that's 156 hours per year of reclaimed genius time. Start with just one 30-minute workflow per week.
Q: How quickly can I expect to see results from implementing AI automation?
A: Rich saw immediate time savings, but the real transformation happened over months as his systems compound. Expect quick wins (like text expanders saving minutes daily) within days, moderate automation (like AI proposal writing) within weeks, and complete workflow transformation (like his podcast production system) within 2-3 months of consistent implementation.
Q: What if I'm not ready for a full AI transformation but want to start somewhere?
A: Begin with Rich's text expander strategy—it's simple, immediate, and builds the systems mindset. Create shortcuts for your most common emails, responses, and templates. This alone can save 30-60 minutes daily while training you to think in systems. Then gradually add AI tools to your existing workflows rather than rebuilding everything from scratch.
Q: How do I know which tasks are worth automating vs. keeping manual?
A: Apply Rich's "better outcomes" filter: Can AI produce equal or better results than your manual process? His proposal writing improved because AI caught client pain points he missed. But he still manually edits everything because his brand voice requires human judgment. Automate the research and first drafts, but keep human oversight on anything client-facing or strategic.
