S1 Ep11 - How A Single AI Automation Video Sparked A Career

Katie: Welcome to the AI Automations for Business Podcasts. We're your hosts, Katie and Null, and we'll be discussing how you can use AI for your business along with the latest news, updates and automations to help you stay ahead of the curve, allowing you to grow and scale your business more efficiently. Please be sure to subscribe

Noel: and I hope you enjoy this episode.

Katie: Hello, welcome back to another episode. As always, we've got me, Katie, here. Hello. and we've got Noel.

Noel: Hello.

Katie: This week, I'm interviewing someone who gets asked this question time after time. And although I've only been a part of the agency for a month, I've heard it being asked multiple times. And it's, Noel, how did you get into AI? So I know that OpenAI had just released ChatGPT. It's just been launched. Can you remember how you even heard about it?

Noel: Yeah, I kind of heard from it on YouTube. So I was watching some tech YouTuber and then were like, oh my God, this amazing tool's just been released called ChatGBT. It can do all this weird and wonderful stuff. And I was like, oh, wow, I need to get onto this. Have a look. So yeah, that's kind of how I heard about it. But yeah, back in the good old days at the very start.

Katie: So how old was Chachy-G-T when you started using it? Can you remember?

Noel: A couple of days, a week at most. Okay, right.

Katie: So literally from the very beginning, you've been using it.

Noel: Yeah, this YouTube video was out within like a couple of days of it launching. And I was like, wow, I need to check this out. But yeah, sketchy times with GPT 3. there was like a massive backlog and stuff like so you couldn't really use it very well but you know thankfully times have changed

Katie: yeah okay so then you started using chat gpt three and from there tell us like what what you were doing with with it

Noel: so i was kind of creating some social media content for my electrical design company That was kind of the main focus. But back then, GPD3 wasn't amazing. It wasn't great at creating imaginative content and things that. So, yeah, that didn't really last all that long. But, yeah, I was just tinkering around with it, learning how it all worked. And I would see things on YouTube with people saying, oh, you could get chatyPD to do X, Y, and Z. And I was like, oh, wow, that sounds cool. I'll check that out myself. And then, yeah, from there, I've been building my prompt engineering skills from day one. Yeah.

Katie: And I know you had like, was it a TikTok account for prompt engineering?

Noel: I did, yes. Yeah, a long time ago. Yeah.

Katie: And I can always remember because we started TikTok around the same sort of time. And your TikTok just totally like took off from your, from your videos, that you were just like giving people prompts to use for chat GP2.

Noel: It's more kind of like, as well as like tips and saying, well, here's how you could chain prompts together and things that. I mean, looking back at it now, it's very dated and you can do all of this now in one single prompt. But back then, yeah, you'd have to say, you know, here's the first start of a prompt, wait, and I'm going to tell you a bit more. And then it would go, okay, I'll remember that. And then go, right, here's the next bit. And now create the output. Because, yeah, back then you couldn't really do a lot in terms of you couldn't give it like a big. document to work with. It was very strict on its character limits. So, yeah, that's when you could get on.

Katie: I love that. I love that. You can always get on. No.

Noel: I might be wrong, but I think we started out at 25 messages a day when it first launched.

Katie: Well, someone could only use it for 25 messages,

Noel: and then that

Katie: was it.

Noel: Yeah, because originally it was kind of like the first couple of days, it was open to anyone use it as much as you like and then they absolutely crashed all the servers and then I'm like right you can only do it 25 messages per day and it's off even then it didn't work but yeah

Katie: okay yeah oh well it has come a very long way since then

Noel: it has yes thankfully

Katie: okay so from that YouTube video scene about chat GPT and then doing prompt engineering which I'm guessing did you teach yourself prompt engineering or did you learn it from someone somewhere?

Noel: Initially I was just going around on YouTube and things out and just seeing what other people were doing and trying to figure it out for myself really. Since then, I've learned from a guy who's incredibly experienced in prompt engineering and I've been lucky to meet him in person in Vegas. And that guy is Devon McPaul and he's one of the biggest prompt engineers in the world at the minute. So if anyone's used AI in ClickUp, he's done the prompts for that as an example. So they're a good guy to learn prompt engineering from.

Katie: We will leave a link for Devon below so people could go and check him out. Okay. So it's mostly going to Devon then that you know about prompt engineering.

Noel: Yeah, I used to, I would say up until a year ago, I was half decent at prompt engineering, but then in the last year where I've been learning And seeing things from him, it's come on a hell of a lot. Yeah, I've learned so much. And there's all kinds of different tools that you can use. So there's a particular tool that he likes to use that builds prompts in like building block fashion kind of thing. So, yeah, I use that as well for any complex prompts. Yeah, really helpful.

Katie: So how did you go from prompt engineering to AI automations? Because that's quite the jump.

Noel: It is a little bit, yeah. So there was one day I was just doing my electrical design work for a satellite system as you do. And there was a YouTube video was on in the background. I wasn't really listening to it. And then it also played the next video and that was from a guy called Jack Roberts. And I'll never forget what he said at the beginning. It was the, I'm going to create this automation, zero code that's going to you know, use OpenAI to create social media posts. I'm going to instantly post it on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, X, all in one go. I was like, what, with no code? I said, how's that possible? You know, normally you go chat GPT and you would create it, you would copy paste, and then, yeah, so yeah, that was a real eye opener. And then from there, I binged all of his videos that he had at that time. So, yeah, that's kind of how I got into that. And then, yeah, he created a school community. He fought from that. And, yeah, I've been a member ever since.

Katie: And now you're part of the team pretty much.

Noel: Yes. So, yeah, I joined almost a year to the day, as we're recording it now.

Katie: What, the school community?

Noel: Yes. So, yeah, I joined that end of April last year. And then by August, I was one of the technical administrators for the community. So, yeah, a bit of a jump.

Katie: Yeah, that's quite a bit. a flash track.

Noel: It's a bit, yeah. Yeah. But then Jack exploded in popularity. So when I joined, I was within the first 200 people to join the community. It was a nice, quiet space back then. And then he went on and he won the thing called the school games.

Katie: With Alex Holmesey? Yes.

Noel: Yeah. So he went from like 200 to 1600 in a month. Wow. That is awesome. Yeah. It was all up. like, hold on a minute, we need moderators. I haven't got any moderators. So that's the first step for me. I became a moderator for the community. And then, yeah, he was like, oh, God, we need all these things building and testing for the community and there's no one to do it. So then that's where I stepped in with a couple of other guys to help him out with that. Amazing.

Katie: And you've also built things for the community as well. Do you want to

Noel: talk a little bit

Katie: about that?

Noel: Yeah, so the biggest thing I've built for them is the AI chatbot, which lives within the DMs on school. So with Jack, there's so many videos and things in the classroom that it was kind of hard if you wanted to, if you saw something on YouTube that was maybe three months old, it was kind of hard to find those resources within the school platform. Yeah,

Katie: I think that's what a lot of people who have got memberships with a huge, huge amount of resources struggle with, it's their members being able to locate the information. And unless you have got people on your team that know the membership inside and out,

Noel: it's also

Katie: very hard for the team to locate that information.

Noel: It is, yeah, because they would send DMs to Jack himself or to any of the moderators and admins and go, hey, you know, I saw this video. It kind of did something with zero. kit. I can't really remember where it was and it's like, it's not really a lot to go on. He's done probably four videos with that. So yeah, it was kind of really hard to find that sort of information. And as well, like, I'm just looking at on my other screen now, but he's got nearly 13,000 posts within his community from day zero. So there's a lot of really good information in there as well that the community members share. So we kind of needed a way where we could collate all that information in one place and then people could then chat with that information and then go off and find it. So yeah, the first thing we built was that chatbot and that links into a vector database. It's a fancy database which makes it easy to find stuff. So yeah. But obviously this community is kind of like it's got a bit of a Terminator thing, AI and all that sort of stuff. It's a bit nerdy. So yeah, our chatbot is called John Connor. so from the turpinator films. So, yeah, he's got the persona of the character from the movies as well. So, you know, he's talking about as if he's in the trenches, you know, fighting the good fight, you know. Don't let the machines take control, but here's the information you need.

Katie: I love that. There was a theme and everyone's just run with the theme. It's just kind of like, yeah, we're going to go fall in on this theme. I love that.

Noel: Yeah, yeah. They love it, yeah. He answers so many questions. But even now, there's still people that come and ask questions like they would use to. Like, I can't find this. You know, me and the other admins would go off and have a chat to John and go, where is it?

Katie: Okay, so even like the team are using it to find resources and then you're going back to people and saying, you know, here is where it is. So actually it works two ways. It works for the team and actually for the members as well.

Noel: Yes, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, it's really cool. It all works.

Katie: That must just save, like, so much time for everyone, but also, I know, like, from helping run memberships and running my own memberships, it also cuts down that, like, overwhelm because a lot of people leave memberships because, you know, of the overwhelm, they can't find things and people think it's always great to have like all this information and keep adding and adding things but actually unless you've got a way for people to find them and you know people to work through things then actually it does feel very overwhelming so I'm guessing like this chat bot actually gets rid of a lot of the overwhelm and the feeling of like

Noel: yeah yeah I think it does yeah It's a real big help for new people joining because if you've joined it today, there's probably, there must be at least 120 YouTube videos that are on there. Either, you know, they're all based on his videos off his YouTube channel. But then there's also like dedicated stuff for like make.com or any end in different sections. So, yeah, it knows all of that information. It's got, you know, thousands and thousands of what we used to call them tips within the, community that are now called gems but that's where like community members would be like i found this something that's really cool here's a youtube video on it you know it might help somebody out but yeah we're going off and grabbing those those gems and then we're grabbing all the transcripts from those youtube videos or loom videos and then inputting that into the chat box so it becomes you know super powered so it's not just jack's content but it could be anyone's content yeah

Katie: i do love that it's not just like the resources and the content from the membership but it's actually, you know, people within the community because I feel like those community parts of the membership are like, like they're like gold. There's so many golden nuggets from people's experience and knowledge. And I think people really underestimate like what actually is in those spaces. So it's great that that's also included as well.

Noel: Yeah, because there's people even today that have just, just like in a post that I put out in May last year about Etsy. You know, they've probably found that via John.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: And they're like, oh, I'm doing some for Etsy. Jack hasn't done anything on that. And it's like, oh, well, Noel's done something. This is great. I can go off and find his resources and get the information they need. Yeah.

Katie: That's really awesome. So when you found Open AI all those years ago, Did that spark something inside of you to think, oh, I really want to move into the AI world while you were sat there doing like your technical drawings and things like that? Or do you feel like you've just like kind of gone with the flow and you've somehow ended up creating like chat bots and agents and AI automations for people? and now you've got an agency, I mean, because I don't think that was like ever, you know, on the cards for when you started. And I think not even for like when you were doing your prompt engineering.

Noel: I guess back then, no, I didn't really see that that would be something that I would ever get into doing, mainly because the tools that are available, they still needed some sort of software engineering background to connect over with. together and make it all work. But I think the real catalyst for me to start using it properly and then interlinking all the information was those videos from Jack in both the early days and get me into make.com and now NAN and other different tools. So yeah, I wouldn't have never have dreamed of it. I was happy doing my technical drawings until last April. Oh,

Katie: what is your favourite thing about AI? And then I'll ask a follow-up question. What is your favourite thing about AI automations?

Noel: My favourite thing about AI is the pace that it goes at the moment. So, like, since we've recorded the last couple of episodes, there's three new models released by Open AI. They went crazy. They released one, one week, and then two of the first. following week. So the pace that everything's going is incredible. So there's always something new to learn. And that's what I really like about the AI space. So you can't really sit still. There's always something that will make your life easier and better, especially in the automation space. I guess, yeah, what gets me excited about automations, though? It's just the possibilities. There's so many different things. I think I actually ask you know,

Katie: what got you excited about AI automations? Can I just clarify? I said, what's your favourite thing about AI automations?

Noel: Oh, my favourite thing about AI automations. It's the ease of use these days. It's really simple to get into. And, you know, if you know what you have and what you need at the other end, it's really straightforward to build you. You don't need to be some sort of, you know, software developer to be

Katie: able to get these sort of things to work anymore.

Noel: and yeah there's loads of AI even if you get stuck you can always ask AI and it will help you out I

Katie: love that and what you were saying about AI and the fast growth of it it reminds me what social media used to be like 10 years ago like you had to have your finger on the pulse to know of all of the changes and the updates and I feel like the last few years that's well probably the last five years it's really slowed down But, yeah, 10 years ago, like when I was, you know, going to conferences like social media marketing world in San Diego, it was always like so fast-paced. And, yeah, you needed, you know, you really needed to be in those places and spaces. And, you know, yeah, so I feel like this is that exciting part of AI. it's new and it's fast pace and it's changing and I'm really excited to see where it will be in 10 years time and all the new jobs that it's going to create the ones that we don't even know exists at the moment yeah

Noel: that's it that's a really excited thing but yeah um I think like with social media there's like your key players like your Facebook and your Instagram and you know those those guys that's I guess that's one guy anyway isn't it but They're not going anywhere, but, you know, I remember there was that time where you used to use, if I remember it was right, it was called Periscope. It had some really irritating notification sound. I was like, oh, thankfully that one went away.

Katie: Yeah, that didn't last very long.

Noel: No, but I remember it was all the craze, wasn't it? But I think we're finding a similar thing in AI where, you know, like something will pop up and it will go, oh, wow, that's incredible. Everyone will use it for like 10 minutes and then be like, well, actually, I'll just go back to. of what I know best. I'll go back to the big players, you know, because they always guarantee the service is going to be there, you know, it's always up and things that you're never going to have any issues with it. So, yeah.

Katie: So, no, what are you looking forward to in the AI world for the next? I would say next couple of years, but I'm going to say next couple of months.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: And where do you think you'll be? Oh,

Noel: such a question. Where would you like

Katie: to be?

Noel: Oh, on a beach building automations, but I'm not sure that's allowed.

Katie: Why isn't that allowed?

Noel: We've got our dogs, haven't we, so we can't leave them behind.

Katie: But it could be a beach in Devon.

Noel: Oh, yeah.

Katie: You'll need your big coat on.

Noel: It's not quite the same appeal, is it? But yeah, I think what was really exciting. It's just all the new things that are coming out. So everything's getting better from, I know we talk all about automations, but everything from like a coding perspective in these AI models is also getting incredibly better as well. So there's like tools out there where you can build your own, you know, platforms or web apps, websites from scratch just by using text, you know, just speaking to an AI model. So I think those sort of tools are going to be incredibly exciting in the next couple of months, especially as they start bringing in these newer tools from Open AI and Anthropic, I'm sure they've got other stuff coming up soon.

Katie: And what would you say to someone that wants to get into AI but feel like they should have got into it a couple of years ago

Noel: and they're feeling

Katie: like a bit behind? Because what you answer it and... Yeah.

Noel: So with the pace everything's going, like you can get ahead of somebody that's been in the game for two years because there's always something new. And I think they put it really well on an Open AI product release a couple of weeks ago. And they were like, if you're pushing that model to its full limits, then you know that you're on the cusp of the technology. So as long as you're pushing those boundaries and finding out what's new and. you know and really you know putting it through its paces then you're you know you're always going to be ahead of the game so for anyone even if you're getting into it today i mean you could get ahead of me within within a month you know if i take my eye off the ball and don't look at all these new things that are coming in you know you could easily uh surpass you know in the technology and things that so so yeah it's it's not a bad time to get into this isn't like bitcoin where you know you've missed out buying it for a penny and now it's like a thousand dollars and you're like oh you know I should have got in it when it was a penny but yeah it's not like that you know it's always changing so yeah you can get in at any point

Katie: fantastic well that was the question of how not we've got into AI and I hope you find it helpful hope you find it useful and I hope it inspired you for those of you who are listening and you really want to get into AI or you want to just get better at AI, AI, AI automations. It's not too late. It is possible to get started now, today. You haven't missed the boat. I still believe that you are an early adopter into the AI world. And we will catch you on another episode very soon.