Streamlined Solopreneur: Tips to Help Solopreneurs Automate Their Business

Welcome to the Streamlined Solopreneur, a show for busy solopreneurs to help you improve your systems and processes so you can build a business while spending your time the way you want. I know you're busy, so let's get started.

I don't need to tell you that last year was a nexus point, let's say, for AI. Yes. ChatGPT blew up in, November 2022, and it entered the public consciousness in such an incredibly fast and furious way. But I feel like we spent 2023 adjusting to this new technology. We saw people label themselves experts because they happened to use it slightly earlier than everybody else.

But in 2024, I feel the technology started to mature. We took a beat and we were able to develop actual opinions and not just hot takes about generative AI, large language models, and artificial general intelligence, which is the idea that soon machines will be able to perform tasks at the human level. Of course, to do things like book flights, it'll have to figure out CAPTCHA, which I'm not confident humans can do predictably yet. So we'll see what happens.

But last year, I put out an episode of this show talking about how I am using AI two years into the AI craze. And while I am still extremely bullish on the fact that we should not let AI defacto do wholesale creative work for us. It has become more useful to me. I'm using it to transcribe and summarize sales calls to extract the most important part of those calls and help me create useful proposals.

And this is useful to me specifically because I'm pretty bad at writing proposals. And instead of spending 8 hours crafting a really good one, I'd probably just cut corners and spend an hour writing an okay one. And so with AI, that hour becomes incredibly powerful. And I can take what it's generated, refine it, clean up the language, and record a video to go along with the proposal. And that's been, that has been a successful process for me.

But, in December, I was writing a bunch of articles for Podcast Advent, and on day 11, I wrote an article called How I Produce a Podcast Completely from my iPhone. I included this disclosure at the bottom. Disclosure. This article was written after I recorded the embedded episode and fed it through ChatGPT, and then I edited it for voice and clarity. And moving into 2025, that is going to be a huge part of how I use AI and what I'm considering my AI manifesto. Use AI and disclose you've used it or don't use it at all.

So let's get into what I think about disclosures when you should disclose using AI and how I got to this conclusion at all.

So I was reading a book in November, and December, called The Coming Wave. And while I was thinking about how I use AI, I came to this realization. This is the exact thought I had in my head. If you use AI to write, record, or produce something, it should be disclosed the same way affiliate links or paid promotions has to be disclosed.

And I know I'm not the first person to think of this. There are books where ChatGPT has an author credit. James Cridland of Podnews pointed out when I published this back in December that he has been, he's had a similar disclosure on his websites for about 6 months at that time, and it reminded me of a talk, or it reminded me of something Andrew Davis or Drew Davis said, during his talk at CEX last year in 2024. His talk was all about creating a digital doppelganger. His was named Drew Dean. And one of the points of the talk was to let people know if and when they're interacting with an AI version of him or you. He was convincing all of us that we should have a digital doppelganger. The point was if you're using AI so prominently, you shouldn't be ashamed of using it, And I love that idea.

So I went ahead after or right before I published this article on my blog. I'll link that in the show notes. You'll be able to find everything over at [streamlined.fm/455]. But I went ahead and added disclosures to both [casabona.org], my primary blog, and Podcast Workflows where I write about podcasting.

So let me share with you, maybe, the text of the disclosure. It's a, it's pretty straightforward, and it's like one disclosure page. I talk about the affiliate links first, and then I say this, “I use AI to assist in content creation”. This is mostly image generation, which is both pretty obvious and labeled in the alt or description text. I'll also use it to check my writing for grammar and clarity and for ideation and research. If I use AI to write more than 5% of an article, it will be disclosed explicitly at the bottom of the article.

So there's a couple of things here. Right? I say, generally, how I use AI. But I also I also assign this seemingly arbitrary, percentage. Right? If AI writes a certain percentage of this article, I'm gonna disclose it explicitly. And I purposely picked a very low one. Right? I want people to know that 95% of what is on this site is my own words unless I explicitly tell them otherwise. So why add the disclosures at all? Should we assume that people are just using AI and you'll be able to tell? Well, there are some people who reasonably think you cannot tell if AI is used, and there are people who are writing custom GPTs to make AI sound less like AI.

So why add the disclosures at all? It's all about honesty and transparency. I was reading a newsletter from a creator. I won't name names, but they're a big influential people hang on their every word creator. And he was talking about I oh, well, I just gave that up. And he was talking about how he decides what to prioritize. He was unequivocally describing an Eisenhower matrix, Except he didn't use the term Eisenhower Matrix anywhere in the newsletter. It got passed off as his own framework.

And, that always makes me question the integrity of the writer. But this instance was even worse because the guy who named the Eisenhower matrix, Stephen R. Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, named it after President Dwight D. Eisenhower from whom he got the idea.

So the guy who named the Eisenhower mmtrix didn't even name it after himself. He was giving credit to who he got the idea from, which means the person who is passing off the Eisenhower Matrix as his own thing took it from an extremely popular author who took it from a popular president.

And as an aside, I get that multiple people can come up with the same idea. Newton and Leibniz, basically, invented calculus separately at the same time. But Newton and Leibniz invented this thing really before, information traveled so quickly. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People came out 35 years ago and is one of the most ubiquitous productivity books ever published. So it's a little hard to believe that somebody invented the exact Eisenhower matrix 35 years after it was mass published and printed and continually written about.

My point is, that disclosures say I respect you enough to be completely transparent about where this content came from. I am not so insecure that I need you to think that I have invented everything I'm telling you. It's okay to be a conduit of information. Ideas gain momentum by building on each other. When I was writing my first book, I got some early feedback from my editor that I cited too many sources and that people were reading the book because I'm an expert. And, perhaps, it's my academic background. My first published work was an academic paper. But I fully believe that you should cite the sources you're pulling from always.

The reason our society got to where it is today is because ideas can be easily shared and built upon. The Renaissance was brought about in part due to the printing press, which made it easier than ever to disseminate knowledge. The Internet was invented to help academics share research. And as we use AI in more ways, it's important for us to continue to give credit where credit is due.

Trust and integrity are everything in a world where it is so easy to create misinformation and sell snake oil. If you use AI to create large portions of something, disclosing it will help keep people trusting you. And if you're struggling, you could always use the copy that I shared as a starting point. AI had no part in writing that.

So that's my manifesto for how I'm going to use AI this year. I'm probably going to use it more than I've ever used it, but you're also going to know exactly how and when I've used it.

On my sites, I tell you that I almost always use it for proofreading, research, and ideation. So you can assume that anything I've written has included AI in that process. But if I write more than or if AI writes more than 5% of an article, I'm going to tell you explicitly. When I publish an image that's been generated by AI, again, you'll be able to tell. Right? It's so obvious, but it will be either attached to the image or explicitly stated in the article or in the context where that is shared.

Now, the last thing that I want to share here in this episode is I had another thought from The Coming Wave and it is maybe a little, it could be extreme. I feel the book, The Coming Wave, while good, was very alarmist and it probably had to be because he is describing or the co-authors, I should say, are describing the worst possible scenario for what could happen if AI is not governed in some way, shape, or form.

But one of the lasting takeaways came from a seemingly benign example in the book. They were talking about how robots will replace mundane jobs like busboy, like a busboy or a waiter. Right? And I'm not saying I really need to clarify here that being a busboy or a waiter or waitress. I say mundane, but that doesn't mean easy. I know how hard, you know, I used to wait tables. I know how hard that could be.

But I thought about it in the context of how it collides with the creator economy. As mundane or repetitive jobs become less of a reality, the best ones will be based on personal relationships and storytelling.

I'm worried that we're going to lose the human touch of having a good waiter or waitress. Someone that is so skilled at their job that they can connect with complete strangers over a very short span of time.

The AI experts are focused on AI creating their work for them while ignoring the real-world implications of AI outside of a chatbot. And, you know, this is something that I've said across multiple talks and pieces of content I've written, but the thing that AI can never and will never replace is the human connection.

And when I read the example of AI robots replacing busboys or, waiters or waitresses, it made me sad because you will lose a little bit of that human connection. Right? You go out to eat, people are on their devices, and you're forced to talk to the waiter or waitress. But soon you'll just be able to be on your phone and order and then a robot will just bring it to you.

And that's the thing that worries me the most. I'm not worried about, you know, AI writing a book for me because I know it's always gonna be garbage. It's not gonna be it's going to be mediocre at best because that's what AI produces. Right? Jason Snell said that on upgrade. I think it was upgrade. AI produces mediocre. It averages everything it's learned and puts it in the middle. And, yeah, you could say, like, oh, make it spikier or make it more casual, but it's still, it's taking the average of everything. It's removing the personality from it. And if you're bad at writing, that's fine. But if writing or creating is your job, then you need to really make sure you keep that human interaction, that human element to it.

So, I feel, to sum up, that if you're disclosing the use of AI, you're letting people know, hey. I couldn't find the right words that I wanted for this particular section. AI helps me with that. I said that in the last episode. Right? There was, I was explaining the difference between systems, processes, and automation, and the words I was coming up with didn't feel right or it still felt convoluted. And so I asked ChatGPT to help and it did a good job. It took the average of the explanations and gave me something that I could confidently relay to you, and I disclosed that.

But I think disclosing in times where you lean on AI a little bit to help you find the right words to tell an overall story, I think that's important, and I think it keeps the human element. You know, it's almost like if a musician samples a musician's other work, they get a writing credit on it because their earlier work helped create this newer work. And something unique came from it, but it may not have happened without that earlier work.

So that's how I feel about AI. And if you're listening well, if you disagree heavily with this, you've probably stopped listening. But if you're thinking, no, I'm not gonna do that, then I don't think you should use AI to create work for you. I think it's dishonest. I think that prompting AI to write a blog post for you and then publishing it or write a script a podcast script for you and then publishing it and not giving any indication that the only input you had was a prompt is as dishonest as that creator taking the Eisenhower Matrix and passing it off as his own.

So that's on you, and if you fool people, fine. But I think that people will see through that. If not now, then soon. And I think disclosing is about honesty and integrity and building trust and showing people that it's okay to use AI sometimes when you're stuck. Tools like this are there to help us get unstuck.

So that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. Let me know what you think. I suspect lots of people will have opinions about this one. You can head over to [streamlinedfeedback.com]. And right into the show, you can be anonymous if you, well, you can, if you don't want me to read your feedback on the air, you can be anonymous. But, I'd really love to hear what you think about this. I think this is a discussion that we need to have.

And, I think there was a little discussion when I first published this article, but I want more to happen in 2025. Because I also recognize that I'm just one guy who's AI hesitant at best. And I want, I want to hear other opinions and I want to surface those opinions.

So again, that's over [streamlinefeedback.com]. You can find a link to the article, and my disclosures and all the show notes over at [streamlined.fm/455].

Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, I'll see you out there.