552: How AI Can Transform Your Work with Geoff Woods

[INTRODUCTION]

Hal Elrod: Hello, friends. Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod. And today we are talking about how AI, artificial intelligence, can transform your work with my good friend, Geoff Woods. If you don’t know who Geoff is, well, he is now the author of the AI-Driven Leader, and he’s the founder of AI Leadership, where he empowers leaders to harness AI, escape operational overwhelm, and think strategically to accelerate growth. However, today I said, “Hey, Geoff, we have a lot of listeners of the podcast who are in leadership positions and we have many who are not.”

But ultimately, I want this to apply to all of our listeners. And so, if you are like me and you are not jumping in with both feet with AI, you’re a little maybe hesitant, a little reluctant, maybe even a little scared, Geoff breaks this down in a way that I think we all need to hear and really explains, yes, the cons of AI, the risks, but the extraordinary opportunities that AI presents for all of us. And he addresses that, number one, AI is inevitable, right? Like, you can be old school like I am, you can resist it, and delay it, and be hesitant. It doesn’t change that AI is not only here, it is here to stay, and it is accelerating in terms of the use cases, the ways that we are using it in our society.

He talks about why you don’t need to be afraid of AI replacing your job, which I know a lot of folks that’s a real concern. He also talks about why AI is not another Google. He explains how to use it effectively where you’re not just using it to bring up search results, but you’re actually using it as a thought partner to help you think through your challenges and things you need to figure out how to do more effectively. And he uses business examples but he also uses an example of how his wife used AI to help her fix her pancake recipe when it was too watery in a really specific way.

He talks about why AI is very similar to the assembly line in 1900, back in the 1900s when the assembly line came on and factory workers were scared that they would not have a job anymore. Craftsmen were scared they’d be out of work. He also talked about how to have AI interview you to learn exactly who you are and what you need help with so that its solutions are very specific to you. And really, the quality of your communication with AI determines the quality of the solutions to your problems that AI will give you, and a whole lot more. It’s a phenomenal episode. I think you’re really going to enjoy this.

And before we dive in, I want to take just a couple of minutes to thank our sponsors for bringing us this episode today, bringing you this episode. First and foremost is Organifi. If you want to improve your health, improve your sleep, improve your mental focus, lose weight, any aspect of your physical health that you want to improve, Organifi is one of the fastest, easiest, most effective ways through their powder-based, organic whole foods supplements. You’ve heard me say this before, right? But I take their Focus supplement in the morning for my nootropic cognitive function improvement. Those words don’t go together that way but you know what I’m saying.

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And then last but not least, Organifi’s cousin if you will, my second partner if you will in my supplementation is CURED Nutrition. And I wake up with CURED Nutrition and I go to bed with CURED Nutrition every night. I wake up taking their Rise supplement to boost my cognitive function, similar to Focus. And then I utilize their Night Caps and/or Night Oil, same product, two different forms, capsule or dropper. And that helps me with CBD and CBN oil with sedative effects to put me to sleep every night. And I cannot tell you my neighbor, Hillary, she swears by it and recently, oh, I can’t share that. It’s personal. Anyway, a relative of hers who is young was struggling with sleep and total game-changer.

In fact, I ran into that person the other day and they said, “Hey, I love those Night Caps. I take them every night and they help me sleep.” So, if you want to improve your sleep or improve your focus in the morning, head over to CUREDNutrition.com/Hal and use that same discount code ‘HAL’ for 20% off your order as a listener of the Achieve Your Goals podcast. Alright. Goal achievers, without further ado, let’s dive in for the first time on this podcast talking about AI, how AI can transform your work whether you are a leader, whether you are an entrepreneur, or an executive, anywhere in between, AI is going to be a game changer for you after you listen to this episode. Enjoy!

[INTERVIEW]

Hal Elrod: Geoff Woods, it’s good to see you, buddy.

Geoff Woods: Good to see you, Hal.

Hal Elrod: Last time I saw you, we were playing pickleball probably a week ago.

Geoff Woods: Sounds about right.

Hal Elrod: Maybe two. Yeah.

Geoff Woods: Sounds about right.

Hal Elrod: Actually, and you were filling in for me. It was you and my wife. I showed up late and you and my wife were taking on Justin and Jennifer Donald, man.

Geoff Woods: That’s correct.

Hal Elrod: I love playing sport. You’re one of my favorites to play sports with because we have a similar sense of humor. And both of us yell at ourselves in the third person when we mess up. But I think I learned that from you. You’re like, “Geoff Woods, you’re better than that!”

Geoff Woods: My self-talk is strong.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. It’s one of many areas that I strive to emulate you. So, dude, alright, let’s dive in. This is your third time on the podcast. I just looked it up. Last time was October 2020. So, we’re going on almost four years, which is kind of crazy. You’re Episode 252, you’re Episode 345, and then now you’re Episode 548, I think, give or take. I’ll look that up. So, the other reason I’m excited to have you on is, I mean, you’re one of my favorite, most enjoyable people to be around. So, there’s that. But specifically, you’re here to talk about AI and I was almost embarrassed as I’m like, “Wait a minute. This is the first conversation I’ve had about AI on the podcast, first guest for sure.”

And I’m pretty sure I haven’t talked about it because this is not something I’m almost in that camp of people that, A, not an early adopter, B, I’m kind of hesitant, I’m kind of avoiding it, and I think I represent at least half of my audience with that position. I know half give or take, are like, “What do you mean, dude? I use ChatGPT every day like I’m utilizing AI in my web design and in graphic design.” I mean, AI is very quickly becoming a source or a tool for just about anything and everything we do, especially if it’s on our computer or on the web. So, your niche is very specific, though. The AI-Driven Leader is your new book, right?

Geoff Woods: Yes.

Hal Elrod: Founder of AI Leadership. So, you’re specifically teaching leaders how to use AI to grow their business, to streamline their operations. But I want to start with the basics for the rest of us, okay? And we’re going to get into the leadership pieces. Let’s start here. Why do you believe we should embrace AI, for anybody that’s listening that’s like that’s hesitant or resistant? Let’s start there.

Geoff Woods: I’m not going to say that everybody should embrace AI.

Hal Elrod: Okay. All right. Good start.

Geoff Woods: But I will give you the advice that I was given when I was a senior in college. I was interning for a startup tech company. And right before graduation, I sat down with the CEO and asked him, “What job should I get after school?” And he looks at me, Hal, and he says, “Geoff, you’re asking the wrong question.”

Hal Elrod: Okay.

Geoff Woods: “You should be asking, what are the skills I can master that are so valuable they will serve me no matter where I go, and what jobs will help me get those skills?” Best career advice I have ever had. When I saw generative AI for the first time, I found myself feeling like this might be the next skill, that if I can master this, it might serve me no matter where I go. And so, I approached very much with curiosity of how might this work. Will it even work? It fundamentally changed the way that I do what I do. And then it ended up leading me to me driving this through a whole organization and now starting a whole company around it. I genuinely believe that AI will enhance you, not replace you. And here is why. Hal, I want you to think about the decisions and things you have to think through on a weekly basis.

Hal Elrod: Okay.

Geoff Woods: You do all of that thinking and all those decisions based on what’s up in your head, which is a collection of everything you’ve learned over your lifetime multiplied by the percent that you can recall in that moment, which is not AI. Limited.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, I’ve got brain damage, man. Mine is, yeah, it’s not good.

Geoff Woods: You’re right, which means our potential is limited by our ability to process information that we have learned over our lifetime. Now, look at AI. It’s like a really powerful calculator for your mind. It has been trained on 200 million books worth of data, and it can recall 100% of it in a fraction of a second. So, now imagine a new relationship with you as the thought leader and AI as your thought partner. You have a situation like there’s a situation you’re dealing with right after this call. Now, you’ve approached it the old way by asking, “How might I approach this?” I would approach that situation differently now.

I would approach that saying, “How might AI help me approach this?” And I would go to AI as my thought partner and say, “Here’s the situation. I’m going to have to have this type of conversation. For context, this is the history of the relationship. Here’s the outcome that I’m looking for. I want you to interview me to ask a few questions, to get some deeper context. And then I want you to lay out how you would approach this conversation.” You then are getting to tap into all this data that you’ve never learned or don’t have the ability to recall, and bring it front and center, not so that you implement it, but so that you have another perspective to consider.

Hal Elrod: Wow.

Geoff Woods: This is how AI can help you make faster, smarter decisions.

Hal Elrod: That’s brilliant. I mean, okay, I’m sold. Like, I mean, that perspective. And I’ve heard someone else talk. Rene Rodriguez, I was talking to recently, I had my podcast and he told me I think it was off the show but he said, that’s how he’s using AI essentially, right? It’s his thought partner, and it’s helping him think through things. And you think about like often if you talk to a friend and you’re like, “Hey, man, I need another perspective,” and then their perspective is different from yours. And you go, “Oh my God, that’s so helpful. Thank you.” But to your point, having access to 200 million books, including those by the most effective moms, dads, leaders, right? Like, instantly, as opposed to one person’s perspective, here’s the consolidated perspective of the collective consciousness of humanity that’s been input into this. Okay. That’s profound.

I want to real quick play devil’s advocate or even just, I guess, ask you, are there any realistic concerns that we should have? And I’m going to represent a couple of things. Number one, when I was a kid, I saw this movie, Terminator 2. You’ve probably seen it. That was probably my first introduction to AI. And I’m like, “So, okay, the robots are going to take over. Okay.” I’m halfway joking there. But I’ve had conversations with Tom Bilyeu, and Tom is going hardcore into AI, into his business. He’s had a lot of thought leaders talking about it, and he even says, “This is either going to be the greatest thing that ever happened to humanity or it’s going to be the end of humanity,” which is pretty bold, right? And he doesn’t even say that in jest. We’ve had serious conversations about that.

So, what should people be concerned about? What’s the worst-case scenario? What’s the likely scenario? What are your thoughts?

Geoff Woods: When I was writing the AI-Driven Leader, I knew I had to talk about the risks, and I was really struggling to put into words. One morning I was driving my daughter, Daphne, to school. It was a rainy morning and we’re about to turn onto the freeway, and we hit a red light, and I see it’s just bumper-to-bumper traffic. And I’m thinking, “Oh, it’s going to take so long.” But my daughter sees it differently and she goes, “Yay, daddy. We get more time together.” I’m like, “Oh, so good.” And she asks me this question, Hal, that really stopped me. And as I was about to answer her, instead of asking how might I answer Daphne, I found myself asking, how might AI help Daphne get the answer?

And so, I opened up AI and I put it into audio mode, and I said, “Why don’t you try asking AI that question?” And she asked it. The light turns green. I pull onto the freeway. For the next ten minutes, I listened to Daphne have this deep conversation with AI. And, Hal, I was so excited because I felt like this was a defining moment, like her first interaction with AI. But what was interesting was how my excitement quickly turned to fear and anxiety.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. I was going to say that was my first reaction when you told me that, I’m like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, she’s talking to the robot. Okay.”

Geoff Woods: AI appeared so empathetic that I was going, “Holy smokes!” I could imagine a world where it learns her better than another human being, and it’s able to show up in a way that builds better rapport and connection than a human. Like, how do I teach her the difference between a relationship with a human versus a relationship with a machine? She was asking it questions and it was giving her answers, and she was just accepting it as truth. How do I teach her to understand the difference between fact versus hallucination, which is when AI just makes things up? How do I teach her to understand what you do share with AI and what you do not share with AI from a privacy standpoint?

We ended up getting to school early, and so I pulled into a coffee shop and I saw this is a real teaching moment. So, I sat down with her and I asked her, “How was that?” And she said, “I feel like I have a new bestie.”

Hal Elrod: Okay.

Geoff Woods: And I then walked through and explained to her that richness comes from the moments that matter with the people that matter most. AI will be a part of your life, but you need to understand the difference between a relationship with a machine versus a relationship with a human. I also explained to her that AI is just a prediction machine. Like, if I say, “The sky is?” you think blue. It barks like a? Dog. That’s all AI is doing is predicting the next word. So, you also have to be discerning of what it gives you and validate if it’s fact or not. So, I then taught her how to fact-check AI. I helped her understand that all the things AI has been trained on gives it biases that you need to be aware of.

And I also talked to her about how if what you’re sharing with AI you wouldn’t feel comfortable being blasted out to the world, then you shouldn’t share it with AI unless you’re using a model that has the right privacy requirements. So, these, I believe, are the generic risks. And then there’s two more. Job loss and then you brought up the humanity thing. Let me tackle job loss first. I wanted to be really smart about this when I was writing the book. So, I went back and I researched the printing press, the steam engine, the assembly line, electricity, internet, the last five major technological disruptions. Here’s what I realized. Technology changes the skills that are valued and the processes that we follow. And that is all your job is.

Like, your job right now, Hal, is a bunch of skills that you apply and a bunch of processes that you follow. AI will change which skills are valued and it will change which processes we follow. And in every technological shift, we adapt. So, here’s why I actually believe this is good news. I learned this when I was running the company behind The ONE Thing. Most of people’s days are spent bouncing from meetings to meetings and drowning in low-value tasks. If I told you that AI could already augment or automate half of what you do, that scares some people. I believe that’s fantastic news because that can liberate you from the low-value tasks that keep you from actually achieving your goals, and can free you up to harness your strengths, focus on the priorities of your role, align with the goals of your company, and then supercharged with AI. But you have to have a growth mindset to be able to take advantage of this.

Hal Elrod: When I think that’s such an important statement to make, which is AI is inevitable, right? Like, we can resist it all we want. We can think it’s negative or what if it becomes smarter than we? On and on. What if having a relationship with a machine, people will decide to do that because like you said, it’s able to be more empathetic. And so, then they are choosing to have a relationship. I mean, the sci-fi implications here are very real. But the point being, it is inevitable, right? AI is here and it is inevitable. So, how are we going to work with it? And that was Tom Bilyeu’s point, which he’s like, “You can hide your head under the covers all you want, like it’s not going away.” In fact, it’s only going to become more prevalent in our society and in our life. And so, rather than live in fear of what if it replaces my job, it’s like you said, what are the skills I can develop?

And somebody I recently, I forgot who it was, but I was watching a video on YouTube and they pointed this out, which is that if you have children right now, I would absolutely have them focus on learning how to use AI because that is the future. Just like when the internet was new and people back then that were old school were like, “I don’t like this internet. You can just send something across to somebody,” whatever it was, where it’s like, “No, no, no, you better learn the internet. You better learn coding because it’s not going away.”

Geoff Woods: Right.

Hal Elrod: Or learn to be a plumber or an electrician, right? And those are real conversations about my kids, like, “Hey, learn AI,” and it’s actually an AND. Learn AI AND learn real, useful, real-world skills that AI likely can’t replace. What was your journey to AI? Or go ahead, what are you going to say?

Geoff Woods: Let’s hit the skills and I’ll tell you how I got here.

Hal Elrod: Yeah.

Geoff Woods: Technology changes the skills that are valued and the processes that we follow. When the assembly line came out, it created a tectonic shift in the skills that were applied. Before the assembly line, products were made by craftsmen, handmade start to finish, lots of pride, lots of ownership. It required certain skills. But during the Industrial Revolution, there’s factories that are booming. It’s 1900 and John D. Rockefeller is running Standard Oil. He sees all of these factories booming, and he goes, “Hey, we need people to work the factory jobs.” But he realizes we have a problem. The education system was teaching critical thinking and inquiry, and he even went on record as saying, “We don’t need a nation of thinkers. We need a nation of workers.”

So, in 1902, he gave a million bucks to start the General Education Board with one sole purpose, to reshape the education system to create industrial workers. And over the next 20 years, he ended up giving, I think, close to $100 million. And it stopped teaching kids critical thinking and started teaching them show up on time, take direction from a superior, do something repeatedly, and memorize the steps, and do it with minimal error. That’s the skill that would be required for the Industrial Revolution. It worked. The problem is we had to set aside our humanity to meet the needs of the machine. That is going to change. All those things that we now do, if you are focused on being a taskmaster, those skills are going to go down in value.

The skills that will be valued in the future in an AI-driven world, strategic thinking, problem-solving, communication, collaboration. These are the skills that make us uniquely human that, frankly, we have not harnessed our entire lives that I believe AI has the opportunity to return us to.

Hal Elrod: Interesting.

Geoff Woods: Interesting, right?

Hal Elrod: Yeah.

Geoff Woods: So, here’s how I got into this. So, when I came on the last two times, I was running the company behind The ONE Thing.

Hal Elrod: Yeah.

Geoff Woods: Great opportunity. I loved the work very much. Had the opportunity to actually have an exit and sell my shares in early 2022. That came with a two-year non-compete. So, I had to do something. I was willing to take two years off to figure out the next chapter, but I ended up getting a call from a guy named Naveen Jindal, who’s the chairman of Jindal Steel and Power. It’s one of the largest steel companies in the world. I had been his coach when I was with The ONE Thing, and I’d been coaching his executive team, and when he found out I left, he calls me and he says, “Hey, would you come in-house?” And I said, “Maybe. What’s the job?” And he said, “You tell me.”

So, I stepped in as their Chief Growth Officer, and they kind of operate like a family office. They have a whole bunch of companies that roll up to the Jindal Group. My job was to sit at the group level next to the chairman and his family to understand their vision for the future, but then to work with the executive teams of every operating company to drive growth. We ended up taking one of their companies, Jindal Steel, which is the listed company. We took them from 750 million to 12 billion.

Hal Elrod: Wow.

Geoff Woods: And I did that by focusing on four things: strategy, execution, people, and technology. Strategy is the competitive advantage you want to build in the long run through the actions you take in the short run. Execution, what’s my plan to achieve my goals? People, do I have the right people in the right seats doing the right things? And technology, how am I harnessing tech to help our people execute against our plan to achieve our goals and our strategy? While I was there, I came across AI. Saw it as the future. I just said, “I’m going to start learning this myself. I want to figure out…”

Hal Elrod: Sorry to interrupt, but two years ago?

Geoff Woods: Two years. Yeah, yeah. I mean, literally, the month after ChatGPT came out, I saw it. So, it was that early and I started playing with it. And as I became proficient, I ended up having a conversation with the chairman and I said, “This is the future.” And he goes, “I agree.” I said, “Well, we should drive this into the companies.” And he said, “I agree.” “Well, you’re the chairman of the board. You have to own this at the board level if you want this to happen.” And he goes, “How about you do it for me?” So, now I’m asking the question, how do you drive AI across a company of our size, which we have 100,000 people across the world?

Hal Elrod: Wow.

Geoff Woods: Now, every quarter, I’m flying to India. I’m meeting at the Google headquarters in Delhi, sitting down with their developers. I’m looking at use cases, we’re tuning models, and eventually, Hal, I’m looking up and going, “I’m playing too small,” because I’m doing this all in one sandbox. And I saw a huge void in the market because all the thought leaders on AI were tech companies pushing it as a solution looking for a problem, telling people, “If you don’t adopt this in six months, you’re going to be out of business,” which I believe is just hype. And so, I felt like there was a real need for transparent, ethical advice to leaders on how to adopt the technology, which is why I started AI Leadership and wrote the AI-Driven Leader.

Hal Elrod: Brilliant, man. So, like most good things in this world, right, it organically evolved from a need, from an opportunity. So, the AI-Driven Leader, you’ve said that AI is not for everybody. Obviously, you do believe it is for leaders. I know that in the book you interviewed over 200 executives. What did you learn from those folks that maybe surprised you or that was helpful?

Geoff Woods: This was a gut punch, my gosh. So, I resigned from Jindal. This was a very lucrative job, and I burnt the boats to start a company because I was so convinced that AI was the future and that everybody would literally just throw money at me if I said, “I’m building an AI business.” And I started interviewing leaders to understand what’s on their minds, and I asked the same three questions, “Do you believe AI is the future? Will you adopt it? What have you done?” 100% said it’s the future. 100% said they would adopt it. Less than 5%, Hal, had done anything.

Hal Elrod: Got it.

Geoff Woods: And so, I’m going, “Holy smokes, I just quit a job to build a business that solves a problem that people are saying is not a problem.” But then as I really peeled the onion back, I realized the reason is they’re too busy and they don’t know where to start. And so, that actually became the opportunity around the book, which is how do I show while the book is written for leaders, I wouldn’t say any person who is a professional, even if you do not have direct reports, this applies to you. How do I help you understand how to go from 0 to 1 so that it enhances you, it does not replace you, and now you gain a competitive advantage in your career?

Hal Elrod: Got it. So, let’s get right to, what are the ways that a leader can use AI?

Geoff Woods: I believe that your ability to think strategically is the difference between growing your business or going out of business. But there are all these things that stop us from thinking more strategically. We don’t have enough time. We don’t have access to the right data. We have biases and assumptions that lead us in the wrong direction. And there’s this constant pressure to do more with less and deliver results yesterday. But this is where, again, Hal, my realization is using it as your thought partner to elevate your strategic thinking and to help you make faster, smarter decisions. It’s so valuable and it is so simple.

Most people, however, that’s not where they start. They start by using it to write a better email or for social media posts or for a blog. That does not create business value. That is not going to help you achieve your goals faster. I would say that is an 80% use case that only drives 20% of the results. I want to teach people to focus on the 20% use cases that drive 80% of the results, and that’s where it comes down to how you think.

Hal Elrod: So, give me an example, a real-life example, either from you or a leader that you’ve worked with.

Geoff Woods: This happened three weeks ago. I was sitting down with a group of CEOs, and I was asking them what their problems were. What’s a really big problem you have that you are trying to solve that’s going to require you to think strategically? And one guy looks at me and goes, “Okay. I got one. I’m a manufacturing company, at least a bunch of equipment from a company out of Japan. The debt structure is killing my company. We’re literally going to go bankrupt if we don’t get the debt restructured.” And at the time I said, “I’m so sorry. What have you done?” And he said, “I’ve gone all the way up to the board of this Japanese company. But because they’re publicly traded, they are refusing to restructure the debt because they’re worried it will make them lose face in Japanese society.”

Hal Elrod: That sounds like a complex problem that I would have no idea where to even start with.

Geoff Woods: What do you do? What do you do? And so, I said, “Okay. Let’s try this.” And so, I opened up AI, specifically ChatGPT in this use case, and I wrote the following prompt: “I’m the CEO of a manufacturing company. We leased all this capital equipment from Japan. Like, I gave all the context I just shared with you and your audience.” Then I said, “I want you to act as an investment banker with deep expertise in restructuring debt.” So, that’s me tuning, like, 200 million books worth of data. I want it to compress down to the books that matter most to this situation.

Hal Elrod: Yeah.

Geoff Woods: “I want you to interview me by asking one question at a time, up to three questions, so that you can gain additional context. Then I want you to generate five non-obvious strategies I could consider that could help restructure the debt. List them in order of priority and explain your reasoning for each. And for additional context, here’s what we’ve done in the past and why it didn’t work.” So, let’s pause. Some of you, your mind just went, “Holy crap. This is not another Google. If you have been treating it like another Google or thinking this is something to be an assistant to help you write better emails, you are selling yourself short.” Immediately, AI asks a question, “Do you have relationships with any other influential executives in Japanese society that this board might respect?”

Hal, I watched the CEO almost fell off his chair. What a question. And he goes, “Actually, I do.” And so, we start putting in who those people are. And then it asks two more questions very much around Japanese culture. And it goes, “Great. Here’s five non-obvious strategies ranked in order of priority.” The very first one was the Saving Face consortium. It suggested that this person actually has enough relationships with other executives that he approach these people and offer them extremely favorable terms to restructure the debt, essentially acquire the debt from this company, so they would take it because it’s a great ROI and the debt would get restructured and the company would get to save face.

And the guy looks at me. He goes, “I’ve been wrestling with this for 90 days. It’s literally going to put us out of business. And in less than ten minutes, you actually showed me something that I think can save our company.”

Hal Elrod: Wow.

Geoff Woods: Your ability to think strategically is the difference between growing your business or going out of business. The old way of doing it is relying on the context that you have and the information that you can process in the moment. And I’m telling you, with your thought leadership, you can use AI’s thought partnership to give you way more data in a completely different perspective so you can make faster, smarter decisions.

Hal Elrod: My mind’s a little bit blown. But this brings up this for me, Geoff. The importance of the prompt, right?

Geoff Woods: Oh, yeah.

Hal Elrod: Which for anybody that’s not familiar with ChatGPT, you’re using AI, right, the prompt being what Geoff just gave an example of. This is what he told the – it’s the input he gave to the AI that was so specific, told them what type of person they needed to be, an investment banker, to draw on those resources, told him like, and I’d imagine in the book that’s something that you go in-depth on.

Geoff Woods: Yeah. And think of it this way, well, how important is communication to your relationship with Ursula?

Hal Elrod: I knew you were going to go there for some reason. Yeah. My wife, Ursula, it’s pretty important.

Geoff Woods: Yeah. Your quality of communication determines the quality of your relationship. I would say that most people are probably average when it comes to effective communication. It is a skill we have not had to master because we set it aside to meet the needs of machines. It is going to become absolutely critical with AI. Your ability to communicate with AI determines the quality of your result. So, when you write a prompt, I want you to think of it like a recipe. If I opened your fridge, I would see certain ingredients. You don’t use every ingredient in every single recipe, and you don’t use the same quantity of every ingredient. It’s the same with a prompt for AI.

So, let me give you some of the communication ingredients that help. Always describe the task. I’m amazed at how many people all watch them, and they don’t clearly tell AI what they want it to do. And then they wonder why AI didn’t do what they wanted it to do. Look in the mirror. I will literally say, “Your task is to…” and I will answer the question. Always give context. While AI has been trained on so much data, it doesn’t have your context, your experience that will make it valuable to your life. So, you need to be willing to share the context. I told it the type of company, the situation with the company in Japan, the type of solutions that we had proposed in the past and why they didn’t work. That’s why it was able to harness it so well.

Assigning a persona. Just like in The Matrix, Keanu Reeves did not know kung fu until they pushed a button, uploaded data into his mind, and then he knew kung fu. When you assign a persona to AI, like in my case, an investment banker with deep expertise in restructuring debt, it will adopt that persona based on the data it’s been trained on. So, you can ask it, like in your situation, Hal, the person you’re about to have a call with, you could have said, “I want you to adopt the persona of this person,” and then you could have described them in vivid detail and actually asked AI to role-play the conversation with you. I’ve done this.

Hal Elrod: Okay.

Geoff Woods: So, describe the task, give context, assign the persona, and then I call this one the salt and pepper, asking AI to interview you. When you ask AI to be an oracle and just generate answers out of thin air, you’re on a path to be disappointed. But if you put AI in the driver’s seat of interviewing you to gather additional context and then specifically to accomplish a task, oh, baby, that is so, so powerful. So, let me show you like on the content creation side. When I was doing the book, I took the cover of the book, the copy of the book, uploaded it to AI, and I said, “You’re my ideal customer.” I then described the ideal reader in vivid detail.

I said, “I want you to review the cover of the book. I then want you to interview me and ask me up to five questions to learn more about the problems I’m trying to solve. And then I want you to come back and tell me what you like about my cover copy, what you don’t like about it, and the top changes I should make to it so you’d see it and you would automatically say, ‘I want to buy that book.’” This applies to everyone who works because you have to create things and you create it with the assumption that it’s actually going to deliver the result or persuade whoever needs to be persuaded. I’m now saying you have a thought partner at your fingertips that you can put your marketing copy in front of it, ask you to adopt the persona of your customer, and give you feedback on it and make it better.

Hal Elrod: Brilliant. So, again, it’s for anyone that works, period, if you’re a professional.

Geoff Woods: Literally.

Hal Elrod: Okay.

Geoff Woods: If you are a professional and you work, done. I mean, even my wife, my wife stays at home with the kids. She has the hardest job of all. Literally, the other day she was making gluten-free pancakes and they weren’t holding together. And she’s freaking out. She’s going, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to throw the batter out and start over.” I go, “Hold on. Where’s the recipe?” And she showed it to me on her phone. I screenshot it, sent it to myself, uploaded that to ChatGPT, and said, “Here’s the pancakes we’re making. They’re not binding. What can we add so that they will bind?” And it used optical character recognition to read the image, understood the recipe, and said, “Add some arrowroot powder.”

Hal Elrod: Wow.

Geoff Woods: Done.

Hal Elrod: Done. That’s incredible, man. What would you recommend for someone that is not familiar with AI starting out? Is it download ChatGPT to their phone or computer? Like, what is the first step?

Geoff Woods: Sure. First step is you just making a commitment to exploring if this is the next skill for you. It’s mindset first. Wherever you are on the spectrum from optimistic to skeptical to straight-up fearful, you developing a level of literacy and understanding what AI is and how it works will get you out of emotions and into logic. It will help you make better choices moving forward on if you should adopt it and if so, how? So, that’s step one. Step two is you can download an LLM, large language model. So, here’s some options for you: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, that’s Google’s product, and then Perplexity is a great one for research.

I also have one on my website at AILeadership.com that has been specifically trained on the content of the book to be a thought partner for you. It’s free. If you just hit AILeadership.com, you’ll see it on the website. Pick one. Just start somewhere and then start writing. Start practicing interacting with it. I would tell you, approach with curiosity rather than an expectation of a result because you will try, you will swing, and you will miss, and you will think it’s not a good use of your time. And it’s specifically because you just don’t know where to start. So, if you hit my website again, AILeadership.com, I have a free crash course on there that will teach you kind of the foundations. It will walk you through the prompt ingredients.

I also have a prompt library with pre-written prompts that you can just copy and paste and use. The goal is that you can have what I call the light bulb moment, where you see AI turn a relatable moment into a remarkable experience because once you have that, you go, “Holy smokes, this is incredible.” Now, you actually want to go through the curve of learning this.

Hal Elrod: Yeah.

Geoff Woods: Once that happens, I’m going to promise, you’re going to fall off the cliff and you’re going to have the reality check because you don’t yet know how to communicate with AI. That’s where you got to focus on those prompt ingredients. And if you write good quality prompts, when you step up to the plate and swing the bat, you’re going to connect with the ball, you’re going to start building momentum, then you’ll be accelerating progress, and eventually, you’ll just be expanding what’s possible.

Hal Elrod: I love the way that you think. I love that when I ask you, “What’s the next step? Should we download ChatGPT?” I basically gave you two options, ChatGPT on our phone or on our computer. Which of those is the next step? And you’re like, “No, it’s deciding whether or not it’s valuable for you to learn about AI, to develop a skill related to starting out with competency, right, and then going beyond that. But because here’s the thing. We fear what we don’t understand. And I’m at that place where I understand AI a lot more based on this conversation. I understand it a bit from before. But no, I’m going to commit to I have to learn about it.

And it’s like I’m literally taking my own advice that I said earlier, which like, “Hey, guys, this is inevitable. It’s not going anywhere. So, you’re either going to be in the dark or you’re going to learn what it is, learn what its limitations and capabilities are, and learn how to use it. And because of the way that you think, Geoff, I’ve ordered a copy of the AI-Driven Leader. What is your goal with the book, by the way?

Geoff Woods: Three goals. One, to bring a lot of value to people. Most people know it’s the future but they don’t know where to start. I wanted to show people where to start in a place that would matter. They would actually deliver results and help them achieve their goals, which is why my focus is on strategic thinking.

Hal Elrod: Yeah.

Geoff Woods: Second was to position me as an authority in the space. And third is that it becomes a driver of the whole business behind which we do workshops for teams. We’ve got communities that help people go on the journey together. We do consulting to actually help businesses grow. And then we have a tech offering as well.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. And for anybody that doesn’t know, you’re doing basically now a similar model to what you did with The ONE Thing. And The ONE Thing is over a million copies sold book by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, one of my top ten, top 20 favorite books. And I do remember I actually tried to hire you when you told me you were leaving them and you were like, “Nah, I’m going to do my own thing,” because I know how brilliant you are, and I know what you did with The ONE Thing and so, yeah, man. I’m excited for you as a friend because this is the perfect niche for you. So, the book is the AI-Driven Leader. Everybody, go check that out. AILeadership.com, I literally just brought it up in my browser. So, that’s a great place to start, leveraging the free resources.

And remember, the next step is it’s not the tech. It’s the mindset. It’s realizing this is something that is inevitable. And you’re either going to be aware of how to utilize it in your life, in your work, or you’re not. So, I would encourage us all to take that next step. Geoff, I love you, brother. Thanks for being here.

Geoff Woods: Thanks, Hal.

Hal Elrod: All right. Talk to you soon, brother. Take care.

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