115. How to Use AI as Your Ultimate Competitive Edge with Earl Waud | How to use AI

In this episode, Ricky Locke sits down with AI educator, author, speaker and “Hindsight Mentor” Earl Waud to explore how artificial intelligence can help you think bigger, act faster and transform your life and business.

If you’ve ever wondered:

“Is AI going to take my job?”

“Will it make me less human?”

“How do I actually use this stuff without feeling overwhelmed?”

...then this episode is for you.

Earl shares how a near-death experience reshaped his mission, how he became a bestselling author using AI, and how he now teaches entrepreneurs, speakers and creators to use AI as a superpower rather than a threat.

Together, we dive deep into:

• What AI really is (in simple terms)
• How to stay ahead in the new AI-powered world
• The skills that will matter most in the next 5 years
• Why people who use AI will replace those who don’t
• How to keep your voice, authenticity, and humanity while using AI
• The four pillars Earl teaches to help people gain their ultimate competitive edge
• Whether AI will replace creative jobs (editors, designers, writers)
• How to use AI daily in practical, stress-free ways
• Earl’s favourite tools, prompts and productivity tricks
• How AI can help you write books, create content and build your brand faster
• The truth about deepfakes, fake news, and the future of trust
• Why curiosity, courage and communication still matter more than ever

This episode will shift the way you think about AI, from something to fear, to something that can unlock your potential and elevate your success.

Key Takeaways

• AI doesn’t replace humans, it replaces people who don’t use it.
• Your competitive edge will be your ability to prompt, adapt and apply AI.
• Authenticity isn’t lost with AI, it’s amplified when you train it in your voice.
• You are one tool, one prompt, one skill away from transforming your business.
• The future belongs to the curious, not the fearful.

Patreon thanks!

Shout out to the amazing Patron supporters for keeping this podcast going; thank you Ant Howe, Jasmine Barnes, Chloe Wilmot, Sara Kay, Cheri Brenton, Steve McDermott, Chris Lovett & Rory Barnes! You are all amazing!

Come Join the UNLOCKED community where you can receive...

• Early access to episodes
• Patron shout outs and recognition at the end of every episode
• Exclusive backstage content and bonus episodes
• Ask me anything - have your questions answered online
• Shape the future of the podcast with your requests.
• (Optional - become a sponsor of the show!)
• Exclusive giveaways and HUGE Discounts off my online courses and so much more...

To be a Patron and support the podcast just head to this link or head to https://www.patreon.com/theunlockedpodcast

I can't wait for you to be a part of this journey!

Free Resources

• FREE Ebook 10 SIMPLE STEPS TO SELL WITH CONFIDENCE
• FREE Ebook 10 tips to improve your productivity
• Free Workbook : Understanding Your Values
• FREE EBOOK : Improve your confidence and create awesome videos with a smartphone
• Follow me on Instagram & Facebook at: @rickylockemagic
•  For more about me and what I do, check out my website

PODCAST MERCHANDISE!!!

It's officially here! Woohoo! You can now buy your own UNLOCKED podcast notebook. The perfect addition to share your thoughts, ideas, and inspiration from the podcast.

Available here!

A new episode is out every Wednesday. So make sure you hit SUBSCRIBE so you don’t miss out on any episodes coming soon.

And, if this episode brought some value to you, or even a smile, then please leave a review or a rating. That would be amazing!

Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoy this episode and I'll join you next week for another episode of UNLOCKED!

myths and conceptions. A lot of people fear AI. Not probably the fear, but the fear of learning something new or it's new or I don't really know, I'm not comfortable with that. So let's talk about some myths and conceptions. What's the easiest things that we can demyth of using AI?

Well, a lot of people like AI is gonna steal my job. That's gonna happen a little bit. There are certain jobs that it's just so darn good at doing it. It's gonna eliminate that completely. But for the most people, it's not AI that's gonna take their job. It's somebody who knows how to use AI that will. And as long as you've got that understanding and start to learn it yourself, you're protecting your job.

Today we unlock the mind of a man who turned a near-death into a life mission and who built success one belief at a time and who now teaches people how to use AI like a superpower. Ward is here to show us how to upgrade our minds, our tools and our lives. Welcome to the podcast, Earl. How are you?

I'm doing fantastic, Ricky. Thank you so much for having me on. This is very exciting for me.

Thank you so much for early. It's quite cool to have you on it because you are the first, Jack Canfield certified success principles trainer like me who's come on the podcast. So it's like, I'm talking to someone who just knows my love language. So that's right. So I have to make sure that during this podcast that this doesn't go off to, you know, like quote tennis success principles tennis, where we both reel off all the things. Cause we both all know that.

Kindred Spirits.

But before we obviously dive into this, because there's this massive concept we want to talk about, which is about AI. The things that you've done in your life, which will kind of unravel throughout this. You're a professional speaker. You're a coach. You're an author. You're an AI educator. You're founder of the hindsight mentor. A huge movement on that. Also Canfield Success Principles trainer, as we've mentioned, and other things such as a bestselling author. Or I should say plural bestselling authors. That's just incredible. So.

Where do we even start with that?

There is a lot. I'll throw one more in there for you. I'm also a painter of landscapes in the style of Bob Ross. I've followed Bob Ross since I was a little kid and that's one of my creative outlets is to create landscape paintings. So that's a total unique and different thing about me.

I love it. We are. said Jack there because what was on my mind was a jack of all trades. I'm very similar in terms of lots of different things. Yes. So love it. Well, let's talk about a little bit about AI and this whole thing that's like taking over within just a period, short period of like a couple of years. One of the things that I wanted to discuss about this was this whole idea about what does the future look like for AI?

Because we know that we have seen over the last couple of years how it's just been adopted so, fast. And even 10 year olds are now going out there and creating amazing businesses and generating lots of cash and income. So, yes, I, where do we even start with this?

Well, it is going to disrupt everything. In my opinion, there isn't a business industry category that won't be impacted a lot by this technology, right? It is so inexpensive. It is so effective. It is so fast. And it just produces brilliant results to the point where if you're in business and you're not using it,

you're going to fall behind. Right. you've as a business owner, you've got to adopt it, get good at using it right now. Don't wait because it is here now. It's not the future. There are things that we're going to see AI do. I believe in the next five years that will revolutionize our lives. It's going to change medicine, right? It'll find cures or at least reduce

challenges by certain medical conditions. I honestly expect it to cure cancer. I think it's going to be doing stuff like that. We're going to see it move into physical form off of computers, right? There's going to be robots, if you will, that are going to be using AI to interact with us, do tasks. A lot of the entry-level jobs that people know now will be replaced by automation using AI.

I expect Lyft and Uber to be impacted, right? You won't need the drivers. The cars will drive themselves pretty soon. That's already starting to happen in some places. The ability to have conversations with AI on complex topics is going to just keep growing and growing to the point where it'll solve major problems, not just medical, but just everything you can imagine and some.

we probably can't even imagine yet. And it's just fun. There's so many different ways to use it just for pure enjoyment, creating images and videos and other things that are just pure fun.

It's funny because this the platform we're using now to record this, if anyone's listening to this rather than watching it, don't forget to head on to YouTube. You can watch this interview. But one of the things that Riverside have just released, which is really fun and super cool, is it gives an animation of your actual video so it can now use AI to transform us into aliens, soft cuddly toys, Sesame Street kind of thing. So it's super fun. And just with the click of a click of a finger and it's done.

I find really fascinating because years and years ago, if he was to get someone to go do that and edit the whole thing, that would take days or even weeks and professionals to do that. So I'm curious to ask you about this, about the whole idea of, we at risk here of professionals, let's say video editors, graphics designers, completely losing everything because AI in the speed of it creating can just wipe them out.

That's a really good question. I believe that it's not going to wipe them out. That if those categories of skills, people who have those, embrace AI and start to use it, it's only going to exponentially increase their capabilities. If they're reluctant to go down the path of AI and try to fight it, then they're in trouble, frankly. It's going to work.

the same in the music industry because AI now can create incredible music. And if you're using it, then you're going to win. If you're not, you're going to fall behind. And I think we'll see that in most categories of business and technology.

Hmm. It's funny because the thought that comes to my mind is this idea about fake news and fake content. Whether that is a government having its own agenda or somebody having its own agenda.

How are we going to safeguard the future so that we know what is real and what's not? Because already we're seeing, I think it was at Taylor Swift, there was some fake photos of her in a specific position or whatever they say. It wasn't real, you know, but obviously people led to believe it and we know social media, quick, it's a viral video. How are we going to safeguard this with what's going to happen?

Well, that's another good question. And I don't have an exact answer for that. I know that it's going to spawn a whole new industry of technology and tools that will be used to be able to distinguish real from fake. Those tools don't exist yet. And there are probably a lot of people developing them or trying to develop them. And like you said, it is going to be fairly easy to create content that is

fake and looks real enough to believe. know I'm a little bit guilty of that myself. I'm playing right now. I have a client that I'm working with one-on-one coaching with AI to create content for her keynote speeches. In her speeches, she uses one of Napoleon Hill's ideas of counseling with a legendary council of visionaries. And she uses Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King.

Margaret Thatcher, cetera. In her keynote, she was just kind of using a prop and explaining their answers, right? I'm working with her. I'm creating what they call deep fake videos of those personalities speaking now to her the answers to her questions so that people can literally see the person responding to her and it's less imaginary. It's still, right? stuff like that, it's...

going to be more and more difficult to distinguish real from fiction. Obviously Abraham Lincoln isn't talking on video today, but so that's an easy one. But you know, if somebody went out and did Taylor Swift or Donald Trump or whoever it might be, you'd really have to be careful to make sure that it's authentic.

Yeah, there's a really popular thing. You might have seen it in the States. It's spread quite a lot on like adverts at the minute on Instagram, social media in England, where you can have a photo maybe from the 70s or 80s, you know, with your your grandma and it into like an animation video where they put their arm around them. Yes. Leaveable. Like how accurate it really looks. mean, some of them, there are a little bit, you know, nose is not in the right place, but. Yeah.

Even just. Yeah. And even the space of what two years I saw a video recently where it showed a picture of like Aristotle or something like that. And all the background was like fuzzy, you know, like pixelated. And then it shows you now just being smooth, clean cut. So I'm really like amazed by how fast it's come. But before we get into what I want to talk to you about this ultimate competitive edge, because I know that you train people to use AI as that competitive edge. Yeah. What is AI for anyone listening out there is going, is it

They're getting better.

It's just this weird computer thing that's doing everything. What is it and how is it working?

Right. Well, there's a, a called large language model, LLM. Basically it's a database of information, a larger database than you can mentally conceive. I equate it to in, in states or something called the Library of Congress. It's one of the largest physical libraries in the world. It's got somewhere around 39 million books in the library.

current release of ChatGPT's large language model, the 4.0, has data equivalent, if you were to put it into books, to about 56 million books. So not quite double what the Library of Congress is. So it's got so much data that it's able to produce answers to questions and things like that that feel

human that feel real, that are incredibly valid and accurate. Unfortunately, there's still a little bit of what they call hallucination where it will make things up. It'll infer based on data it may not have for a specific thing. So you always need to kind of fact check the results if you're going to share it publicly or do anything with it. But 95 % of the time it is so accurate that you'll think it's reading your mind sometimes. mean, it is, but it's just using data.

to produce results based on inputs you give it, right?

So this can sound and I hope it's not a silly question, but how was that information fed into the LLM? Like it had to be programmed at some point with here's some language books, whatever. How, did that happen?

Yeah, there are tools that they use to import that data. It gets consumed in a variety of different formats, text, audio, video, everything you can imagine going into that gets filtered and processed into the LLMs.

Yeah. So, I mean, I'm curious about this. so before we talk about this competitive edge, we see a lot now, we were having this discussion recently in the team, in the Confident Club, you know, we use, we use our helpers generate copy and Chatgy BT and a few other things. Yeah. Now it's got to a point where you can easily spot, an AI written thing. Cause I saw this recently where Chatgy BT, specifically likes to put dashes in.

you

So it's become quite apparent now. You can see easily if someone's generated something on chat, you say, so the question I'm trying to think of this is this is anyone a business who's going to use a I create this still authenticity because even now, if I scroll through LinkedIn in a second, I could see how many posts will be generated by AI. And I kind of lose a bit of trust there. I still want to read it, but I kind of think, it's like a lazy way of doing it. So how do we make sure that

I'm guessing the answer is going to be a prompt here. But how do we make sure that we keep this authenticity so that it's not creating this world of that's clearly AI.

Yep. So comments on that, if I will. First is, right now there, there's that bit of skepticism, like what you said that, that's AI. It's probably not as good, right? But in reality, the content is probably as good, maybe better than if, if I just spit out myself, right? So that, that, kind of mentality of it's not as good will transform to the point where, they didn't use AI. I probably don't want to read it, right?

Yeah, that will happen eventually. The second thing is yes, prompts, right? One of the things that I share in my training class, the one that you've referenced where I help people use AI as their competitive edge, is I teach how to train AI to know your language, your style, your voice, right? And so I've done this for me and I've done this for many of my clients already.

There's a, I have it learn the writing style, say of Ricky, it'd be Ricky's writing style. And then when you ask for content, you say, please give it to me in Ricky's style. And then it comes back. doesn't sound like AI. sounds like Ricky. and it honestly, it does put some of those dashes in. So I just will do a tech swap, right? Replace dash with comma, right? And yeah.

set up. It's funny because that is a meme right now. Dashes are the indicator.

emojis I see a lot. Yeah. Like to put emojis in.

And I specifically might say, you know, a lot of emojis, none or few. And again, anything that I produce with it, I proofread myself and I will remove emojis if there's too many. I'll replace those dashes with commas, things of that nature, before I share it publicly, right?

So it sounds like a silly question, it'd be check the prompts to make sure that you're getting the output you and train it in your voice so that you reduce the amount of time that you need to look for those things and still have that authenticity run through it.

Exactly. Yep. And I've created a specific agent, is essentially just a very fancy prompt inside of chat GPT that has, I've taught now 50 different writing styles. So I can literally say, write this in the style of Earl Watt, or I could say, write this in the style of Jack Canfield or write this in the style of Edgar Allan Poe. the list is again, it's over 50 people now that, I've

essentially taught it their writing style, their voice, their tone, and I can now have it produce output in those styles with just one quick prompt change.

That's interesting. So you could potentially produce a book in Ed Galland Poe's style and just get it out there.

Yes, 100%.

So this might be a myth. Maybe you can help me out on this one, because this was something that so so if I do a podcast like this, Riverside is already has AI on it that it generates fantastically the transcript for you. It generates subject tiles that are SEO focused. It even generates magic clips of the key moments, which is great. So I'll take like a transcript of this episode, for example, stick it into chat GPT with the prompts I've already said and say, please create me an SEO blog.

on this transcription and we'll embed the link of whatever the question that I often don't I don't know the answer to this is what I'm asking yourself is the myth of I've heard that if you put something out of AI on to internet like Google so a new blog page on my website it recognizes that it's been written by AI so it won't rank it as high. Is that true?

There is within Google search and ranking capabilities, it does look for AI specific keys, right? So that is true. But again, if you form the prompt correctly, it's less likely that that will be. There's actually a tool that I've used. I don't use it as much anymore now that I've trained my chat GPT to speak like me.

Okay.

But there's a tool out there where you can put generated content in and it'll tell you, is this AI, what's the percentage of human to AI ratio? And then it will suggest how to fix it so it sounds human.

Wow. So there's a way that you could kind of, well, I'm hearing, if I'm hearing right, I could cheat Google in a way to say this is an AI because it's been, I've used this tool. Okay. That's interesting. Cause I mean, we all want to like produce content. We want to produce, you know, good stuff. And if we're doing something in a business level where I want to probably create a funnel or I want to create this as that blog transcript, people can organically find it. Then they want to find out about you. And then they might go into your funnel of your books and all that sort of thing.

It's kind of like the eyes making this really easy for us to do this, but then we're still being punished for it. So that's why I'm finding it hard to understand is that we're giving you all these tools to make this easy. So why now does it make well, now you use AI, so we're not going to do it. It's like AI is the world, right? So, yeah, change.

I do. We're going to see that transition, like I was saying earlier about how when you see something, say, that's AI. It's probably not as good. Pretty soon you say, that's human. That's probably not as good. The same thing will happen in this environment. It'll transform to the point where if you're not using AI, you're going to get penalized. I think that's going to

So it's kind of like the AI will become the alpha of the main controller. This is interesting now with Google. What I find fascinating because Google has Gemini, I think it is. But now if I type in Google, for example, when I went over to America, had to get my ESTA. I was like, when do I need to apply for an ESTA? And what happens is on Google now, the top box now, even before the sponsored ads that people pay to get up there, Gemini will start to find the answer. Cool, found the answer, done.

So now I'm not this point where I'm not even scrolling through page one page two page three to find my answer. Yeah. Which is just like, what the hell? That's that's just sped things so quickly, but I feel bad for these people put it out there.

Yeah, it's disrupting search, right? Google the search engine, right? It's disrupting them as well. An example, my wife's car popped up the service and it had a code, B127 or something, and to us that means nothing, right? I took a picture of that and I dropped it in chat and said, hey, my wife's Acura has this code, what's it mean? And it came back and said the B means this, the one means this, the two.

And so we know exactly what service her car needs within seconds. And it wasn't a Google search, it was a chat GPT.

That's incredible. So so here's nine. Is there a danger here that we can become so absorbed into this and so reliant on this that if like one day it was to just just shut down or something, we've kind of become like obsolete because how am going to find the answer to my wife's? You know, it's like how the hell is life going to continue where we still have resources around us? I guess.

Well, it's an evolution, if you will. I for me, I know for a long time, I got so reliant on Google, right? That if Google went away, I'd be like, I don't know. I don't know how to find where I'm going. Where's my Google Maps, right? Where's, what restaurant do I want to go to? I don't know which one's got good ratings, you the whole. And without that, I would probably lose my mind a little bit, honestly. If you go a little further back, the internet itself, right?

before the internet, we transformed where we really live without the internet, without streaming services. And it's going to be the same with AI. We are going get it, and it will rock if it goes off for a while.

Yeah. So the particularly interesting this one, this was a bit of a lot about how do we stay ahead of the game? You know, we don't want to fall back. You know, we run a company which is presentation training and all about beliefs. And we, as I mentioned earlier on, we help you communicate with impact. And a lot of it's about beliefs because that drives a lot of those behaviors. And we don't teach like a single thing at PowerPoint, but we teach people how to really communicate, you know, make impact.

And we've even been discussing about, how are we going to start to import AI into our business? And you mentioned your friend who's using AI for like presentations and stuff. We still recognize that there's still that human element, you know, that AI could write an amazing script, but the human still has to develop it. And I'm wondering if like, we're going to see this in the future where an AI avatar could deliver a presentation.

in such a way that that human element comes out, the vulnerability, the tears, the cryingness, know, just being a human that's got to happen. I'm sure in the future. Yeah. It's like, how do we stay ahead of the game so we don't fall back? Because chat GPT now a lot of things I've been seeing about how the over 40 year olds are using these chat GPT, but there's so many other tools that people are just not using. So how do we stay ahead of the game?

The answer is you got to engage with it. You got to get good at using it so that you can augment what you're doing You don't necessarily have to be replacing yourself, right you have but you do have to leverage it because they're there Frankly things that we haven't even thought of ways to use it that will Make us be able to do more do it better do it faster do it cheaper then we can right now and

You gotta get good at using it. That's why I teach everybody that I work with, use it every day. Even if it's just for one thing, simple, get in there, play with it, get so comfortable with it that it becomes, you become like you gotta have it.

Yeah, it's it reminds me of the Kubler and the change curve where, you implement a change in life and then you get the, the depression part of it. And then eventually you come out the other side where you accept it. It feels like that curve has to be even shorter now because we've just got to accept it quicker and quicker because we really don't have the time to go through the, geez, depression side of it. We've just got to go, right, this is part of it now. We just got to be more resilient because the, the time I take get used to it at all. The next tool would have been out.

and then I'm behind. So it's very fast learning now. You question then because obviously that whole thing about, you you train people use AI as their ultimate competitive edge. So how can I help someone unlock their potential, not just their productivity? That's a question for me.

Excellent question. Thank you for asking that one. So the in my training that do four pillars right now The first one is getting good with prompting you got to know how to ask You got to give it the guardrails I mentioned so much data in there if you don't know how to narrow that focus you're gonna get general responses You want very tailored specific laser focused responses. So I teach how to do that The next thing is the communications. There's one of the

biggest superpowers of AI is its ability to craft communications in all forms. That's social media posts, that's books, that's scripts, whatever it might be, podcasts, blogs, et cetera. It can help craft that communication in such a way. And I show people, like I said, I've got an agent now that's 50 different languages, if you will. And a side note on that, literally, I just got the idea it actually can speak Klingon as well. I don't know if you're a Star Trek fan or not, but.

I asked you something into Klingon and sure enough it did it. So, yeah, well, I don't think on that well, so it looked accurate. but I have used it to translate things into Spanish, French, Russian, Chinese, and I've asked native speakers of those languages and they said it's spot on. So, And I have a tool that I use that creates audio as well. I took something I wrote in English.

accurate as well I guess.

Translated it into those four different languages. put those Translated into this audio generator that I've trained it with my voice and it spit out a recording of That speaking that language that's much like me that my own family Couldn't tell it wasn't me right? So it's really getting good already. Yeah The third thing the communications right the third thing is our company brand

Wow.

A lot of us think we know what our brand is and what it stands for and how it attracts clients, but we don't know it as well as we should. And the third pillar is I show people how to get the definition for their brand so clear that it makes it easy for your business to attract instead of you having to chase.

Which is the dream, right? That's we all want.

what everybody needs, right? And then the final pillar is getting to know your customer. I help you use AI to take that brand and use it to define your customer so clearly. And I literally show you how to create prompts so it creates visual pictures of examples of your ideal customers, your ideal clients. So you can look them in the eye and craft your message, your voice, looking at them, knowing that you're speaking directly to them.

Right, and it helps you get that focus. Those four pillars transform businesses. So that's what I've been teaching people to do.

So someone listening today, I guess the question would be, what's simple way that someone listening today can use AI? Obviously, those four pillars, obviously contact, right? Get in touch with that and show you how to do it. But what is just a simple way that someone can use it? Maybe it's track GPT or maybe something else, but just to help them get to where they want to get to, whether that's a business goal, life goal, whatever it might be. What's simple way using it?

Use it in their messaging, right? Whatever that message might be. An example, a lot of people use social media, Facebook. You get this little pop up, hey, it's Ricky's birthday today, right? And you click and then there's this little thing, happy birthday Ricky, he hits and then boom, it's on their wall. Well, there's so many people doing that that it's noise now. And I know it is personal because you went in and you clicked it and you fought a Ricky that day. But if you take that and you

go into chat and you say, Hey, it's my friend Ricky's birthday today. he's got a podcast. He's, he's got this other that he does, you know, give it a little bit of information. Say, I want to give him a message that connects with him. It'll spit out something that is personal. And if you use it in Earl style or whatever style it might be, it'll sound like your messaging. Right. And then you paste that into that happy birthday and it's going to read, it's going to resonate with persons so much more.

Yeah.

And build relationships, right? Relationships are one of the most important things. Your network is your worth, right? But it's more than that, right? It's the relationships are the valuable thing we have. doing a little bit of messaging tweaks using AI can transform that process.

really powerful because I'm a big lover of direct mail, physical things that go in the post because physical things stay. They make an impact, you know, like a gift, something like that can can stand the desk to that point. You just said there does the same thing because I know when I see someone's happy birthday and quite often you see some Facebook where it says happy birthday, red balloon, red balloon, pie cake. You know that they've just clicked the one button done. Yeah, it's just like

I'll just say, you know, but doing that is a really nice way to connect with people. That's going to make them. Wow. I mean, they probably not going to know if you say I or not, but that's so lovely that you wrote that. That's going to mean so much more rather than me just because this is what I do on my birthday. I always have this thing every single year. A girl, can I get more than 100? And I've realized as I get older, I'm getting less and less less birthday, you know, comments on my birthday.

However, what I do is I'll see all of those comments like, you know, a hundred comments saying, happy birthday, Ricky. And I'll just go like, thanks mate, like, thanks mate, the process. Whereas I'd much rather go for and read all of the lovely comments that they have generated. So I love that. That's really powerful.

I'll share. I did that recently with somebody. There's a gentleman that I met a while ago. He's in an industry that I'm very interested in supporting. And I'm not going to give names or anything right now, but we're acquaintances, right? We're just, we're not beyond that. We met and connected. I had this process with him. He got hundreds of, he's well known. He got hundreds of messages. were, were, you know, thumbs up and stuff like that, that he responded on some of them. The only one that I saw that he actually wrote.

a message, hey, thank you, appreciate it kind of thing was mine. I mean, that speaks right.

Yeah. Yeah. So are you saying then I can sack off my family because the AI could probably say something much nicer to my own family. Well, and myths and conceptions. A lot of people fear AI or the not probably fear, but the fear of learning new or it's new or I don't really know. I'm not comfortable with that. So let's talk about some misconceptions. What's the easiest things that we can de myth of using AI? Yeah.

Well, a lot of people, AI is going to steal my job. Yeah. But that's going to happen a bit. There are certain jobs that it's just so darn good at doing it. It's going to eliminate that completely. But for the most people, it's not AI that's going to take their job. It's somebody who knows how to use AI that will. Right. And as long as you've got that understanding and start to learn it yourself, you're

you're protecting your job, you're protecting your future, your income, your livelihood. If you say, no, I'm afraid of it, you're putting yourself at risk.

Yeah. Okay. So I'm really curious about this because it's something that I'm using daily all the time and chat GPT is my go to, but I'd love to know what tools you use day in day out. Is it chat GPT? Is it something else? And why are you using these?

Yeah. So for me, it's a long list. I've been using AI for quite a while. I helped co-found a company a while ago that used AI and other models to stock prices. So I had about two years of deep in the trenches working with AI as kind of lessons that most people won't ever have. Right. So that's kind of how I got my foundation. So I've been using AI for more than five years.

I've got a list of probably 25 tools that I use regularly. ChatGPT is top of the list. And I think that is for most people. I heard recently they get somewhere 40 million queries a day to ChatGPT. And the next is a couple of million. So it's a big difference. Another tool that is very much like that that I use is Claude. Claude AI. I've found if you're writing fiction,

It is much better at generating relatable, real, involving fiction. Claudia is my fiction go-to. If I'm doing research type work, I use a tool called Perplexity. Chad GPT is kind of caught up to that one, so I haven't switched that back and forth as much, but a lot of people still think it's better for research type relating. It provides good references and links that you can use in your

final result. So those are the probably the three most used tools. There's a tool called Suno AI that I use to create music. And again, this goes back to another thing that I do for people and instead of just sending that little birthday message, I'll take that information I know about them, drop it into Suno and create a song that think

still remember you playing this for me when we were on a call together.

Yeah, yeah, I that. When I do my trainings, you know how you have a little bit of time before the training starts. I have AI music playing in the background so that as people come into the the conference into the webinar trainings, it's not boring. It's something going on. And the birthday songs land well. I've had people respond, say, this is the best present I got all year. You brought me to tears. mean, it's impactful, right? So, you know, is a powerful little tool.

S-U-N-O.

suno.ai

You've just given me a fantastic idea. You probably already do this. So apologies if I'm saying that I have to suck eggs and maybe this is a first for us before this gets published. I do a lot of workshops. use a lot of Jack Canfield's work as you do. Yeah. just thought of a great idea. You probably know this already. Most of the time you get the list of the attendees. You could program a song. So I always use, so I use Ecamm as a streaming device to generate content and animation. I can create a song.

I could get all of the names. Maybe I could find some information about them if I knew them, whatever put into a music track. So as they're in the waiting room or so, usually if I use zoom, they come on. There's a holding screen with my face on it and then a countdown clock. Yeah. It could be played with all of their names like, you know, Ricky Locke is here today with a magic and you know, imagine them go, was that my name? How special that they would feel because you went the time to do that.

Yeah.

I might have to use that.

There you go. Yep. I use that. You can generate instrumental music as well. So I've used it to create the opening for podcasts that I have. Right. So that's got the, yeah, I own the music rights. I don't have to pay anybody for that. Right. So, yeah, things, things like that. So that's a tool. There are a whole variety of video tools that I use. Excuse me. There's one called cling K L I N G. there's another one.

I the name of that. Hold on, I gotta look. Starts with an H. Hedra. H-E-D-R-A. That's a video generation tool. I use Mid Journey. It's an image generation tool that is the best in class. Chad GPT just recently, their image generation tool, and it's thousand times better than the old version. Mid Journey's superior. But they're both good. I both a lot now.

Well, I don't know if you had this in America. Everyone in England did this where they started making pictures. I did this myself and I did it for my members of my team. A picture of me as a item like a toy. Yes, a box. Everybody started doing that. Yeah.

I've generated that for myself and for some of my friends. I also did the whole Lego where I've got about 15 different versions of Lego Earl in iconic movies. So like there's Lego Earl being chased by a dinosaur for Jurassic Park. There's Lego Earl swinging on a lamp post in the rain with an umbrella singing in the rain. So you get the idea. A whole bunch of those I created. I've just started doing the baby. Right. Have you seen the baby ones?

Intro to one of my speeches on stage. I'm now doing as a baby, right? On my website and I think you'll probably share the link the hindsight mentor comm I have a Reese resources tab Menu and in there all the different things that I use regularly are linked. So it's very easy to find them

the platform, hosting platform I use. I've got some training people that I follow, of course, Patty Aubrey, et cetera. And then all the tools, the video tools, the different, yeah, they're all there.

So I have to then you have to share. But how much do you pay for all these subscriptions? Because that's a lot of AI tools. pay by $24 a month for chat GPT. You must be spending a lot of money for all these subscriptions.

I am. It's in the house per month. A lot of them I'll buy the annual subscription and get a little bit of a discount, right? And then they're staggered, so I don't have to pay it all at once. But yeah, I've got quite a few that I've used, some that I've stopped using and I've let go of because they aren't keeping up. I've got some that I use for authoring books. As you mentioned, I've written bestselling books. I've got

Okay.

International bestselling books, I've co-authored books, et cetera. And there's a tool that I use called Novel Crafter that I'm using a lot that's AI, helps with AI generation. That is, yeah, probably north of $500. And yeah.

But clearly from what you've been able to produce, that is nothing compared to the result you're bringing in Crayon. So as a segue then for that, because I know that particularly interested about the writing of the books and you're helping people to offer their own books using AI. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah.

Yep, so I have a program called the Hindsight Author Accelerator Program. I help people in whatever phase of their book writing journey they are in. I can help them move it forward. I've helped people who I've wanted to write a book for 20 years, I don't really know where to start, go from that to published and having their book available on Amazon, using it as their credibility piece. I've helped

All the way at the other end of the scale right now. I'm working with Robert Allen He's written his own book everything and it's phenomenal book on how to write a bestseller, which is Appropriate it's launching today and I've been helping him market it, right? So I've got a lot of people who are helping it go to number one. It's already up this morning It was at number eight overall and in his category on Amazon, which is huge and then everywhere in between right if somebody's got I've got

Pages of pages. I format and translate that into good prose to put in a book. I help them format it. I'll help them design the cover, come up with title and subtitle because that is one of the most important pieces to cover the title and subtitle. They've got to be spot on or you're not going to get any traction. So I help with that. I help them go on Amazon and do all the work with self publishing, coming up with keywords and search engine categories, all of that.

And then I've got methods that I use to help them promote it to ideally go to number one in their categories. So I do all the things from idea all the way to bestseller.

We might have to have a chat because on my vision board is a book. So as you know, Ted X coming out soon. So we might have a chat. Oh, that's great. Well, to wrap this up, because there was loads of things I want to talk to you about as well. But I've been so engrossed into this conversation because your life is just incredible and you've had so many things happen. know, software engineer, Tentis, personal growth and now speaker, training AI and lots of things. We might have to come back on the podcast to talk about that as well. I'd love to wrap this up by saying

What's like one thing you want the listeners or watchers of this video to go away and think about or do based on our conversation?

gosh. One thing.

Well, that would be to embrace it. Don't be afraid of it. Know that it's not here to take over your life or replace you. It's here to augment you, to make you better, to be able to do things faster, quicker, cheaper. It can be your skill. it. And remember, it doesn't have to be all about business. It certainly is the competitive in business. Without it, you're not going to

have this that you will with it in my opinion. It can just be fun. Creating videos of you as a baby, doing a presentation or turning yourself into a Lego or a toy in a bubble package, right? One of the things I've really enjoyed, I told you I've got it trained on how to write in different writing styles. I've combined that with my love of success principles and I've created content to share

various principles like taking 100 % responsibility in the style of Edgar Allan Poe. And that is such a weird combination, but it somehow really works. And so I've shared articles on LinkedIn and various other places of, know, here's a success principle, but written in the style of Edgar Allan Poe. And it's a lot of fun.

I'm curious to ask, have you done it in Napoleon Hill? Because I know that was a big, big book in your life. Have you done it in Napoleon Hill's voice?

I have. And I mentioned my friend doing the keynotes. One of her visionary council members is Napoleon Hill. So I've also created videos of him speaking answers to her in his voice. And it's pretty darn cool.

That is cool. That is cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on. If people want to find you, learn more, maybe train with you, whether they want to learn about the books or obviously the ultimate competitive edge, know, where can they find you?

So the easiest way is they can go to my website, thehindsightmentor.com. I have information about the programs I offer. I've got a link to find all of the books that I've published and a couple that I've helped others publish as well. That list will be growing continuously. I've got the link to the resources that I mentioned, a way to book me as a speaker if you want me to come and speak. All the things are there, so you can even

Book a time to meet with me in person, online, like through a Zoom call. That's probably the easiest way. Earl at The Hindsight Mentor dot com. You can email me.

Yeah. you much. An absolute pleasure. Thanks for coming on to the Unlock podcast. Thank you.

Ricky, I am so grateful that you invited me. This has been a blast for me. I love AI and I love sharing it about it and helping people embrace it. So thank you for this opportunity.

Thanks, Al. Thank you.